Walkingsticks are truely bizarre organisms, looking like a piece of the forest floor sprouted legs and tried to crawl indoors.  I found this one on the sliding door of the cottage Friday night, and he hung around the deck for most of the weekend.  I haven’t seen once since I was a kid — though not uncommon, their superbly deceptive camouflage ensures that they are rarely spotted.

This one is a Northern Walkingstick (Diapheromera femorata), a species ID I credit entirely to one of Seabrooke’s recent posts over at The Marvelous in Nature.  I find the whole process of insect identification to be entirely overwhelming, and have contented myself with the ownership of a small Peterson guide for tackling a few common lepidopterans.  In the photo above, the walkingstick’s forelegs are held straight out in front of him, extending the length of his twiggy disguise (I know just enough about insects to identify this one as a male, as evidenced by the claspers at the tip of his abdomen).

I don’t often sketch bugs — they have miniscule features and many tend not to move around much, traits that encourage very fiddley work if you’re not careful — but I was inspired to do so by some excellent field drawings I recently came across by Laura Gillis of YellowCatArt.  Besides, who knows how many years it’ll be before I spot my next walkingstick?