As a final taxonomic catch-all for my 2023 nature photography, let’s go with … invertebrates? If I’m not taking a photo of a plant, a bird, or a mammal, it’s most likely an insect visiting a flower. I do love a good plant-pollinator interaction. And while larger animals are a challenge to manage well with my 150mm lens, I can frequently catch some nice close images of butterflies nectaring, like the blue above, or the Clodius parnassian below.

Or, a bumblebee in a more acrobatic pose to collect pollen from a pendant columbine flower.

Beyond those obvious subjects, though, I also got some images of charismatic non-pollinators, like a lady beetle that posed on a geranium leaf along a trail on Santa Cruz Island, below.

I even got beyond insects a couple times: A brightly alert jumping spider on another island trail, and green anemones in the tide pools of a beach on the outer edge of the Olympic Peninsula.