D. Allan Drummond

@dadrummond

Scientist by day (drummondlab.org), artist by night (dadrummond.art). Sculpture, drawings, and other works. Obsessed with the details of the natural world. Lab posts at @drummondlab.bsky.social 🧪

405 Following13,333 Followers2,449 Posts

Bluesky

alt

Is this your profile?Claim it and dadrummond.dirty.social is yours.Claim profile

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jul 18

Another Mydas fly encounter—and a bit of biology! See those little pale-orange flag-like bits hanging from her legs? Those are pollinia, the pollen packets of a milkweed plant, stuck on and hoping for a ride to a different gene pool 🤓

A massive black fly with folded, intricately, ridged wings, and bright orange spots on its upper abdomen, feeding from mountain mince flowers. The fly’s back legs are outstretched. On her middle legs and feet, you can see tiny leaf- or petal-like packets of pollen hanging down. These are pollinia from a milkweed plant.

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jul 16

A view up the tree: buffet line 🪲🌳 This is on a random elm half a block from The University of Chicago, not in Borneo

A Siberian elm with a long gash up it. The photograph is aimed up the trunk, and all along the length of the gash, there are green June beetles, and other insects, clustered and feeding.

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jul 16

More…see how many species you can count! 🪲🦋🪰🐛 #bugsky

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jul 16

An unbelievable sight on the way home from work today. Our local sap weep is bursting with beetles! 🪲🤯🪲 This is a local wounded Siberian elm leaking sap, well-known to longtime followers. Look at this menagerie! More to come…

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jul 15

One week apart! 🤩 #bugsky

A monarch caterpillar munching away at the underside of a milkweed leaf. The caterpillar is substantially smaller than my thumb, which can be seen in the very upper part of the frame.

A monarch chrysalis hanging from a leaf on the same milkweed plant a week later. It is covered in condensation, and has beautiful highlights of gold and black on its pale green surface.

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jul 15

Check out the details on this ‘did 🔬 #bugsky

A male nymph fork-tailed bush katydid (Scudderia furcata) on lilac leaves. He’s missing his right hind leg. You can see his ear (hearing organ) on his left foreleg’s tibia 👂🏻

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jul 14

Mydas fly!! Not a wasp, a huge black iridescent orange-spotted monster slurping on swamp milkweed. Plant native plants…never know who’ll show up 😳

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jul 10

Not a natural sharer, but just wanted to say...a year and a half ago, I got the biggest single order of my life from a famous artist I deeply admire. (No pressure!) Took me *forever* to finish. But they were patient (and so kind), I delivered, and they are happy. This whole thing might work! 😅

A bronze ant being presented a 2-carat "honeydew" (cubic zirconium) by a sterling-silver aphid against a white background. One of five pieces I made that took me a ridiculously long time. The aphid was the hardest, for some reason!

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jul 10

Oh, my favorite! Hyles lineata. I even sculpted one! Wishing you luck for another sighting 🤞🏻

A white-lined sphinx moth sculpture in bronze with a dark patina, perched on my two fingertips.

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jul 10

Nessus sphinx! In the back yard! I used to count myself lucky if I saw one at all 😍 #bugsky

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jul 8

Monarch: TNG #bugsky

A monarch butterfly caterpillar, with characteristic white, black and yellow stripes and black horns on either end, chomping on a common milkweed flower upside down.

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jul 6

False bee-killer (Promachus bastardii) with its true-bee kill (Agapostemon) #bugsky

A massive robber fly perched on unopened joe pye blossoms, sucking on the remains of a much-smaller native bee

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jul 4

Yes, print is individual parts. Resin is just a waypoint; the final version will be bronze and silver (investment casting from 3D printed resin). By "solid axle" I just mean that many joints have the typical axle structure (one rotation plane) rather than a ball's free rotation.

A flat lay of an earlier version of the grasshopper model, showing all the gray resin 3D printed parts on a dark background. The middle- and forelegs have since been further split up into articulated pieces; here they're combined coxa/femur/tibia with separate ball-jointed feet.

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jul 3

bug feet train, quote with some bug feetsies

A hand-sized grasshopper nymph resin model laying upside-down in my hand against a gray background. His feetsies are all visible.

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jun 30

And here’s that adult breathing 😳 so now you can see what holding that little baby was like! 3/3

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jun 30

Here’s an adult from last year. These guys make that tick-tick-tick noise way up in the trees at night here in the Midwest (USA) 2/3

An adult greater anglewing katydid on a wooden fence. It is very large, bright green, and has a striking resemblance to a leaf, complete with leaf veins on its wings.

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jun 30

Greater anglewing katydid nymph! 😍 I’ve only ever seen the adults (which are huge). Kind of like meeting a baby elephant for the first time 💚 let me show you… #bugsky 1/3

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jun 29

Kidding, of course, but look at these things www.inaturalist.org/taxa/221386-... (pic by joemcgee23 on iNaturalist)

Picture (by joemcgee23 on iNat) of a ribbon longhorn beetle showing the full spread of its verrrrrrry long antennae

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jun 29

A ribbon longhorn beetle (Hippopsis lemniscata) in our back yard. @inaturalist.bsky.social has only a handful of photos, none of which show the length of the antennae. This is because the antennae are infinitely long. 🪲 #bugsky

A ribbon longhorn beetle seen from close up, showing its alternating yellow and black stripes and compound eyes interrupted by large, long-segmented antennae proceeding out of the frame

A ribbon longhorn beetle seen from farther away, showing the whole body from the side. Its antennae are pointed forward and downward, and go out of the edge of the frame at the bottom after eight segments and more than a body length and a half (and this beetle is long and thin to start with)

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jun 28

I might have just the thing 😁🪲

Three 3D printed stag beetles on a white background. One large male has another male flipped over and held aloft on his mandibles while a female looks on. Lucanus elaphus.

A male and female Lucanus elaphus stag beetle pair, 3D printed in gray resin, sitting on my open hand against a white background

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jun 28

Setting aside Herbert’s intent… 😎

Dune ornithopters in the new Dune series are modeled after Orthoptera

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jun 25

🦀 see a crab, post a crab 🦀

An ebony pencil drawing of a ghost crab.

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jun 24

Pretty invasive 🥲🪲

Exomala orientalis, an invasive Oriental beetle, on limestone (Chicago). The beetle is beautiful, cream-colored with brown splotches that shimmer with green iridescence when the light strikes at the right angle.

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jun 24

Much tighter! Now to investment (plaster) 🛠️

Various pieces of a jumping spider 3-D printed in purple resin arrayed around a central wax trunk. These are all castable pieces which will sit inside a flask.

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jun 23

Assembly test 👍🏻 …new parts now printing in castable resin 🛠️

Two versions of the jumping spider hindquarters. On the left, in purple castable resin, are the original hind legs and abdomen as a single piece. On the right, in gray resin, is the assembled version of the two hind legs and abdomen as separate parts held together by a nut and bolt.

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jun 23

Double oof! Those hind legs are so wide they’re almost impossible to get into the right orientation in a flask. Multiple failures. Finally bit the bullet and split them into separate pieces, which should make everything much easier. 🛠️

Jumping spider pieces and parts laid out on a cutting mat. On the left is a single purple resin piece, an abdomen and two hind legs together. On the right, it’s the same anatomy split into three pieces, test-printed in gray resin, with a nut and bolt nearby. The finished spider looms above.

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jun 21

One more for #WorldHorseshoeCrabDay —look closely and you can see my preparatory sketch on the previous page 🖊️ I adore these ancient monsters 🖤

A crosshatched ink drawing of a horseshoe crab in a Moleskine notebook sitting on a picnic table. The 01 Micron pen used to draw it lays across the page. On the previous page, you can see half of a horseshoe crab drawn with thicker lines.

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jun 20

A ghost throwback for #WorldHorseshoeCrabDay …a perfect molt. These guys shed their old exoskeleton by crawling out the front rim like an engine block climbing out from under the hood of a Corvette. And they leave this ghost of their former selves, golden and translucent and astonishingly not alive.

Two pictures of a fresh horseshoe crab molt side-by-side, the left a top view, the right from underneath, in both cases held between my fingers against a white background.

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jun 18

Common drone fly (Eristalis tenax). Big pretty fly, first of the year at this size #bugsky

A large fly with brown fuzz on its thorax and a black abdomen with two orange stripes on it sitting on a mint leaf. Common drone fly.

D. Allan Drummond@dadrummond· Jun 17

Oof, done with my least-favorite part of the process—setting up casting trees. Mostly my fault for designing spider parts so big they just barely fit into a jewelry-scale casting flask. The blue and pink are wax, the purple is 3D printed resin. Next: investment (pouring plaster).