A student of mine said that it must have taken a really expensive camera to be able to get some of these photos. Not true. These are strictly amateur photos taken with amateur equipment. The real requirements for getting photos like these (and having a lot of fun taking them) are patience, not objecting to crawling around in the leaves, grass, and dirt, and the willingness to take hundreds of pictures to get a few really good ones. These pictures were taken with a Pentax K110D camera. Shots before May 2008 were taken with an 18-55 mm Pentax lens and Vivitar close-up kit (with #1,2,4 lenses). From May 2008 until now, the photos were taken using a 100 mm Pentax macro lens.

While these Backyard Biology pages originally started out with photos of birds, insects, and "other critters", it quickly became apparent that Class Insecta was going to take over. After filling two pages with over 100 insect species each, I decided to reorganize the insect section. Below you will find links to 15 orders of insects. Each order has its own album; the number next to the name tells you how many species are represented in that album. Also, below each order's picture, you wil see a button for BugGuide.net. Clicking on that link will take you to a page on BugGuide that will give you a little more information about that particular order of insect.

With the exception of a few photos (which list the location below the photo), the photos in these albums were all taken within a few hundred feet of my house. If you click on the thumbnail of a photo, you will see a bigger picture, sometimes including more background. Some of the pics would even make nice computer desktop backgrounds. I've marked those pictures with a {BG!} after the insect's name. (If you've never grabbed a picture for a background, it's pretty easy: on most computers just click on the thumbnail, right click on the bigger picture, and then follow the "Set as Desktop Background..." entry.)

Like this page, there are also BugGuide buttons below the photos in the albums in case you'd like to go to the BugGuide page for that specimen and find out more. BugGuide is an incredible resource. While I was able to identify some of the insects using field guides and online resources, the amateurs and experts at BugGuide helped me to key out the majority of the critters listed here. In some few cases, I was lucky enough to be able to provide the first example of a particular species for their site. Those critters are special to me and marked with a .

I hope you enjoy browsing through the critters shown in the albums below even half as much as I enjoyed taking their photos.