Bea Leiderman
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bealeiderman.bsky.social
Bea Leiderman
@bealeiderman.bsky.social
910 followers 760 following 790 posts
Educator, technologist, photographer crawling in the underbrush of the forest next door. Natural conservation is political. Please don’t complain about my liberal views. They are a feature, not a bug (pun intended).

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bealeiderman.bsky.social
I’m a huge fan of @wikipedia.org and just spent about 4 hours uploading a handful of my photos. I hope someone finds them useful. Here’s one of those images. An ant and its funky Cordyceps horn.
An ant that’s been killed by cordyceps fungus. The ant is tangled in a strand of green moss. The fungus sprouts out of the back of its neck like a horn. Then it widens into a ball with a texture like poppy seeds clumped together, then continues again as a thin horn that bends down towards the strand of moss. If not for the horn, the ant looks like it’s eating the moss.
November 11, 2025 at 3:09 AM
bealeiderman.bsky.social
Diminutive fairy wombat poop. Tiny cubes under 2mm on each side.

These are egg sacs made by a spider in the family Theridiosomatidae.

They made yesterday’s hike special. Finding something I’ve never seen before is such a thrill.

🌱 #nature #macro #spider
Tiny pink and cream colored cube under 2mm stuck to the surface of a leaf. There were several, scattered around randomly, but the photo is cropped to show the one that was in best focus. The second picture shows a bit of my thumbnail in the corner, with sparkly nail polish. Tiny pink and cream colored cube under 2mm stuck to the surface of a leaf. There were several, scattered around randomly, but the photo is cropped to show the one that was in best focus. The second picture shows a bit of my thumbnail in the corner, with sparkly nail polish.
November 10, 2025 at 9:48 PM
bealeiderman.bsky.social
A moth in the genus Paleomolis stopped by the front light last night.
A moth on my finger, facing the camera. The top of the head and visible part of the thorax are white. The bottom half is a color between pink and orange, like a sunset. The eyes, antennae, and legs are black. It’s a very furry moth.
November 7, 2025 at 7:18 PM
bealeiderman.bsky.social
The celebratory baking continues. Hearing from friends in Virginia who worked so hard for this. Also, I thought about heart attacks and aneurysms as I punched down the dough. Some day we will wake up to excellent “bad” news.
Challah I’m about to put in the oven for tomorrow night. It’s a new braid I leaned from the challah Prince on instagram. It is a circular 9-strand with one of the strands coated in sesame seeds.
November 6, 2025 at 9:46 PM
bealeiderman.bsky.social
I baked a batch of celebratory biscuits. Paul Hollywood would shake my hand.
Biscuits in a baking pan, cut in squares. I used a brownie pan since I had already baked brownies and didn’t feel like making more dirty dishes.
November 5, 2025 at 3:46 PM
bealeiderman.bsky.social
I have been so stressed I had shut out all news. And just now when my kid called to tell me about VA I had a massive crying jag. I’m so happy.

This is me shaking Spanberger’s hand, grinning like a loon. I was so excited to meet her and I’m so happy tonigh.
Image from newspaper article showing me, my child, and a friend greeting Abigail Spanberger at an event. I’m grinning like a loon, of course.
November 5, 2025 at 2:55 AM
bealeiderman.bsky.social
Hummingbird feathers. Maybe I’ll make a tiny fan out of them. These are likely from a sparkling violet ear, a very aggressive species that frequents our feeders.
Four feathers held between my thumb and forefinger, fanned out. Each feather is maybe 3cm long. They are iridescent blue green.
September 16, 2025 at 6:55 PM
bealeiderman.bsky.social
It’s not a sun dog, it’s not a rainbow. It’s a straight line of rainbow colors above the tree line. Never seen anything like it.
A straight line of rainbow colors across a band of clear sky between bands of cirrus clouds. We are 6 degrees north of the equator at about 8050 feet of elevation.
September 15, 2025 at 3:24 PM
bealeiderman.bsky.social
Slime molds FTW!!
Clusters of wasps’ nest slime mold along the middle of the image. They look like a combination of Lorax trees and grape clusters, iridescent black and purple. Along the edges of the image are bunches of coral slime mold, white tentacles that resemble sea anemone. There is a tiny springtail at the bottom as well. These like to eat slime mold. The whole thing shows about two square centimeters of a rotting log’s surface
August 26, 2025 at 12:31 AM
bealeiderman.bsky.social
Here’s the dorsal view of the same moth
Amaxia moth in all its glory. Yellow wings with a red abdomen peeking in between. There is a dark brown diamond shape near the shoulders and dark brown markings at the tip of each wing. There are three lines of dark brown freckles on each wing going from the diamond pattern to the tips of the wings.
July 21, 2025 at 6:30 PM
bealeiderman.bsky.social
I’m staying away from here because I need to protect my mental health. But, it’s #mothweek2025 so here’s a peek at what I’m shooting this week. Se alt text if you’re interested 😊

#moth #insect #macro #photography
A moth in the genus Amaxia on a twig. I moved it from where it was to protect it from birds. This is a male. Just the face is visible. The eyes are round and the face is pink. The top of the head is bright yellow. The antennae are extended on either side and they look like fish skeletons, but super long. They taper off at the ends and fade to white. Male moths have longer teeth on their comb-like antennae. Female moths have shorter teeth. Makes use the antennae to sense pheromones from the females and can sense just a single molecule at a great distance. In short, moths are insanely cool.
July 21, 2025 at 6:30 PM
bealeiderman.bsky.social
The only way to make this picture better. Toss in a visible invertebrate 😁. Visible because I’m sure there are springtails in that Stemonitis. What an excellent scene!
Image of a frog on a log (perfect reading primer example) near some mushrooms and Stemonitis slime mold fruiting bodies. I’ve added a sticker of a beetle to add an invertebrate to the party, but it’s quite good with protists, fungi, plants, and animals. What a find!!
July 9, 2025 at 1:45 PM
bealeiderman.bsky.social
Could it be a stiletto fly?
A stiletto fly on a pink rose petal. A gray fly with a long body, furry and gray, with long legs and little feet.
July 1, 2025 at 8:35 AM
bealeiderman.bsky.social
One of my favorite bits of #edulearn25 today. Punya Mishra dunking on chatbots.
Punya Mishra on stage at Edulearn with a slide showing son old man with a beer at a bar. The text reads “chatbots are smart drunk biased supremely confident interns.
June 30, 2025 at 8:34 PM
bealeiderman.bsky.social
Oh. I’d forgotten this person existed
A picture of michelle bachmann from when she was a presidential candidate eating a corn dog at the Iowa state fair. It pretty much killed jet candidacy.
June 25, 2025 at 11:05 PM
bealeiderman.bsky.social
Yes! They elect someone who’s not a ghoul.
Screenshot of tweet by Stephen Miller @StephenM NYC is the clearest warning yet of what happens to a society when it fails to control migration.
June 25, 2025 at 9:18 PM
bealeiderman.bsky.social
Here’s the detail on the sticker inside the O
A sticker with trump holding up his left hand with the pointer finger outstretched that reads “I did that” inside the o of the word Elon from the Fuck Elon graffiti
June 24, 2025 at 7:08 PM
bealeiderman.bsky.social
Seen in Lyon today. I love this city.
Graffiti on a white wall spelling Fuck Elon
June 24, 2025 at 7:05 PM
bealeiderman.bsky.social
It’s #insectWeek so here’s a cute one for y’all. Please stop hiring those “have a mosquito-free back yard” companies. They kill ALL invertebrates. Not good for the planet.
A grasshopper nymph, probably in the genus Paramastax, peeling over the edge of a leaf. It seems to be looking directly at the camera because of a trick of the light on the compound eyes. It’s a short-horned grasshopper so the antennae are stubby little things on top of the head. It is green and the eyes look pink, but probably aren’t. It’s cute. Looks like I startled it
June 23, 2025 at 8:41 PM
bealeiderman.bsky.social
If you see this post a picture from your device with no explanation.
Two pipes coming out of a brick wall and angling into a concrete sidewalk. One is painted red. The other is gray and broken with two wires sticking out of it. Next to them is a little black label with white letters spelling “stretch”
June 23, 2025 at 7:22 PM
bealeiderman.bsky.social
In France, everybody cooks.
A painting from the 1300s depicting the martyrdom of a person who was boiled to death. The martyr is naked and tied up in a pot above flames. There are people watching while one man tends the fire and one man seems to be pouring something (spices?) on the head of the martyr.
June 21, 2025 at 8:18 AM
bealeiderman.bsky.social
Angels in time-out at the Metz Cathedral.
Four statues of angels behind a fence in the restoration workshop.
June 18, 2025 at 10:05 PM
bealeiderman.bsky.social
When you tell your 14-yr-old apprentice to manage making the knockers for the cathedral
An iron knocker on a door at the Metz cathedral. The top, where the knocker is attached, is a fisted hand. The rest looks like a penis graffiti.
June 18, 2025 at 10:04 AM
bealeiderman.bsky.social
The cathedral in Metz. The largest expanse of stained glass in the world.
A panoramic image taken from the middle of the cathedral. At the bottom is the back of the cathedral with the rosette above the door. At the top is the front with the altar. Along the sides are the stained glass windows.
June 18, 2025 at 8:59 AM
bealeiderman.bsky.social
Post a bug that looks AI but is actually real.

Alchisme treehopper from my hedge in El Retiro, Colombia
Picture of a treehopper on a twig, head on. The legs are hugging the twig. The eyes are at the bottom and above is the pronotum. From this angle the treehopper seems to have three horns like a triceratops, green close to the body and fading to light orange with dimples, I guess also like an orange rind. If you saw this guy from the side it would look like a thorn.
June 18, 2025 at 6:21 AM