Is arthropod macro a British thing?

I've noticed that the overwhelming majority of posters in the Macro section who post insects and other arthropods are from the UK.

Is puttering around the garden in the morning searching for insects in a cold-induced stupor a quintessentially British pastime?

Plenty of arthropod macros are on view at bugguide.net, which is limited (mostly) to specimens found in North America, and it's not unusual for photos there to result from early-morning garden puttering. Maybe the macro regulars at POTN are too few to warrant conclusions about demographics.

None of my friends and acquaintances are remotely interested in macro photography or entomology so I doubt its a common interest but it may be that there are proportionally more of us scattered around the UK than other countries. The tennis forum I frequent would suggest its mostly Americans playing the sport but again I wonder how representative that really is?

I was just being facetious. It seems like on this site at least, the majority of macro posters ar from the UK.

Cool temperatures help slow down insects making them easier to capture so as you imply the UK therefore has an advantage with this. I'm personally very rarely out early enough to make use of it, instead I waste ages trying to capture dragonflies at lunchtime while they're darting around....

I do find tropical insects are often more interesting to capture, but they're also more likely to bite - we can't have everything.

Until I was forced to move during a fire, the majority of my images were spiders, millipedes and centipedes.

I work nights and there were tons of nocturnal spiders hanging around the garage doors at my apartment.

Now that I've moved, I haven't taken 1/10 of the photos I used to, for a lack of subjects. Between that and Winnie the Flu, I've mostly been out of photography for the last year.

Scrumhalf wrote in post #19191732
I've noticed that the overwhelming majority of posters in the Macro section who post insects and other arthropods are from the UK.

Is puttering around the garden in the morning searching for insects in a cold-induced stupor a quintessentially British pastime?

American working in Italy checking in

I shoot a lot of critter's.

It is very much a minority hobby in the UK and elsewhere.
However saying that interest in wildlife and entomology and arachnology in particularly is probably more popular in the UK than other places.
I would guess that after the UK, Northern Europe and the rest of the English speaking world are more interested than other countries.

For example if you are interested in stick insects there is only one English speaking society the PSG which is UK based (although are all very welcome to join).

It would be interesting to compare number of members of British entomological societies with the US etc.


The ironic thing is that the country with one of the least diverse wildlife is the best studied.
There are probably more books on Surrey's insects than Colombia's!

Thanks to the Surrey Wildlife Trust, impressive series indeed.