Six-spotted Tiger Beetle, Emmon’s Preserve, Kennebunkport Maine

While looking for River Jewelwings the other day, I happened to look down at the moss beneath me, and saw this bright metallic green beetle. A closer look showed the six white spots on the black margins of the elytra (hard shell). It was easy to google this morning: “metallic green beetle with white spots” brought up lots of pages about the Six-spotted Tiger Beetle…evidently a common forest beetle across much of the north eastern part of the continent. I don’t remember ever seeing one before. It was small, about 1/2 inch, but the bright green is hard to miss. 🙂

Sony RX10iii at 1200mm (Smart Digital Tel-converter in-camera crop to 5mp). I used Direct Manual Focus to fine tune the auto focus to separate the bug from the moss. 1/800th @ ISO 100 @ f4. Processed in Lightroom;