Hannah Nendick-Mason

To contact me, please use the email address above but remove the _NO_SPAM insert.

Toronto,ON, Canada

I recently relocated to Toronto, Canada (from Gainesville, FL) with my family (July 2007). Currently I'm staying home with my toddler daughter and infant son. I trained in horticulture in Northern California (Merritt College), and have worked in that field in three states - CA, OH and FL. I have a broad knowledge of both cultivated and native plants from those states. Most recently I worked at the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity's Butterfly Rainforest, and I'm pretty familiar with butterflies and caterpillars for that reason. I garden chemical-free and deliberately plant my gardens to attract a variety of insects, and I have also raised many caterpillars in my home (I wrote an article for this site, Raising Caterpillars, and you can also see my rearing cage here). Mostly I just stumble across bugs because I'm working outdoors a lot.

Until 2007 my pictures were taken with the Kodak dx4900 4.0 megapixel digital camera plus diopter lenses, which I had for five years and would highly recommend for a pocket-sized low-end bug camera. It finally gave up the ghost (the latch on the battery door is the weak point) and I switched to a Canon PowerShot A710IS, which I'm still getting used to - so far, I don't think I'm getting such good shots as I did with my old camera .

For me BugGuide is the best possible place to share my pictures and learn more about what I'm photographing, and I've been a contributor since April 2004. I've also been an editor for a couple of years, and I enjoy trying to identify pictures in ID Request - but feel free to challenge my assumptions - I don't have any formal entomological training.

Some of my favorite pictures: