It’s hard for me to catch mosquitoes and flies with my big camera rig. Generally they don’t like being approached by the Big Black Eye and take off, at speed. I have so many photos of places where a bug just was!

I caught this female cattail mosquito (Coquillettidia perturbans) on a very chilly morning (for Florida, anyway), and managed to snag a shot without annoying her unduly. She let me get very close — below is the same shot, cropped a bit. I generally dislike mosquitoes, as they like me very much, but, up close, she is quite beautiful! Truly the most longleggedy of beasties.

Cattail mosquitoes are common throughout Canada, the United States, and Mexico, except for a bit around the Rocky Mountains in the U.S. They are “salt and pepper” in color, with a lot of white banding on the legs and abdomen. This is definitely a female — the males have huge, showy, feathery antennae.

This individual was identified via the fine folks at iNaturalist.