silaseckhardt
Silas Eckhardt
הצטרפ.ה ב:מרץ 14, 2021 פעילות אחרונה: דצמ' 7, 2023 iNaturalist Canada
I'm a senior in high school, based in central Virginia. I am a member of the Coleopterists Society and a recipient of the 2022 Youth Incentive Award (YIA). My main interest is in insects, mostly beetles but also wasps. I am also interested in plants and fungi. The latter two I mostly just observe, but I’d like to learn how to identify them Within beetles, my specialties tend to be Cerambycidae (the longhorn beetles) and Meloidae (blister beetles), but I’m interested in anything.
I have a collection of insects -- pinned and labeled specimens -- that numbers in the several hundreds of specimens, for the beetles. I have smaller collections of the other groups. I have been collecting for 3 years now, and have worked closely with Dr. Arthur Evans.
--- Equipment ---
I have recently started shooting macro! I use this mostly for insects, but it also helps with flowers sometimes. I use an Apexel Macro 100mm Clip-on lens (works for any mobile phone, mine’s an iPhone 13). For most plants I use my raw phone camera. This applies to fungi and pretty much anything else. I don’t have a DSLR. To focus the lens better on my subject, I often hold my hand or fingers behind the plant to lessen the focal range of the camera.
I am trying to get better at identifying things, please let me know or point out when I’ve made a mistake and I’ll correct it as soon as I can.
If you’d like to join the iNaturalist Discord server, you’re welcome to! The link is here. If this link breaks, let me know and I’ll make a new one.
--- Non-iNat Stuff ---
I play the guitar (I dabble in other instruments, such as bass and piano). I mostly do covers of songs by Wilco and Ed Sheeran, but I know other artist’s songs, just fewer of them.
I enjoy hiking! Part of this has to do with nature, but it’s really calming to be outside and in the wild away from other humans and development.
I’m a Christian, which means I believe that organisms were created purposefully and thoughtfully by God. I enjoy going outside and looking at the things He’s put on earth and observing them. There’s a cool iNat project here for Christian Naturalist observations. All are welcome to join!
