What big eyes you have!

         When I walk down the bike path in Wildwood, I usually stop at the restroom to
          see whether there are any critters that have landed on the outside wall to rest.
          Sometimes I find an interesting spider, and the wall has spider webs that often
          catch leaves and other debris.
         One November afternoon, I thought I saw a small bit of brown leaf hanging in
         an upper corner. I gently poked it with a long stick. To my surprise, the dark
         "leaf" jumped away! I realized that it was some sort of bug so I snapped
          a picture and then tried picking up the critter. Another surprise - the
          critter seemed to like walking around on my hand!

As I looked at it through my super macro lens, I could see that although its body was
dark brown, its "face" was a very light color and it had very big eyes!

 

           I use my macro lens instead of a hand lens to get a magnified view of of nature.
           This little critter had a very angular shape and looked very tiny in my hand.
           After I got home, I measured the width of my finger - it's about 2 centimeters
           wide. The little bug was about half that wide.

         As it crawled around and explored my hand, I got a good look at it from the
         side and could barely see its wings tucked along its side. I was glad that it had
         jumped from the stick to the ground and had not flown away. I sent a photo
         off to Bug Guide (a wonderful online website for critter identification) and
         found that it is a Treehopper (Telemona collina).

        After I took lots of pictures, I carefully, placed the hopper on the edge of the
        water fountain. I had a hard time convincing it to leave my warm hand on
        that cold day.

                                      
                                                I think it was really mad at me for that!