What’s a harvestman?
a. A man who harvests. like a farmer or a migrant worker;
b. A pocket electronic device made by International Harvester (like a Walkman or Discman);
c. An insect related to a spider; or
d. Spiderman’s adversary in the new Spiderman movie
Until earlier this week I might have responded with selection “a” if I had been posed this question—it is the most obvious answer. I would have been wrong. The correct answer is “c.”
As I was finishing up a photo shoot in a local garden one of my friends excitedly pointed to a bush and exclaimed, “There’s your first harvestman.” I did not have a clue what she was talking about. All I could really see in the bush was a bunch of long legs connected to a body. (My friend Cindy D. has some photos of the entire body of a harvestman in one of her blog postings in case you are not familiar with this insect.)
I shot some photos anyways and when I looked at them on my computer I was shocked. There appeared to be two eyes on a stalk in the middle of the insect’s back, with the eyes looking sidewards in completely opposite directions. Could they really be eyes?
Here is one of my photos of the harvestman. It is not a technically perfect photo but it gives you a pretty clear view of the unusual eyes of this strange insect. If you want to learn more, check out this page, which is full of fascination factoids and photos.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Mike Powell 
Nice shot, Michael. And it was me who pointed out “That’s your first harvestman.” Michael wouldn’t have known what it was, but since I had photographed one last year and did my research, I was armed with that factoid. You did a nice job in this shot!
I fixed the pronoun, CIndy. Memory starts to fade as you get older. You’ll be happy to know I was manually focusing on this shot. There was no way that auto focus would get this right.
Fantastic shot! I hope to see many more harvestmen shots like this one!
Wow. I checked out your blog and you really know an incredible amount about these guys (and their family members). Thanks for your encouragement. Usually I am attracted by the more typical bees and ladybugs but I’ll be on the lookout for more of these wild and interesting creatures.
They’re fascinating creatures and I’ve been studying them for more than 8 years now. I just started my blog a couple weeks ago. I have a lot of photos up, but I haven’t even begun to upload all my harvestmen photos (thousands of photos, probably more than 100 species photographed). Your photo here has inspired me to make that my weekend project. Its just such a daunting task – I have so many! I’m going to try to have some up over the weekend though!
Hi, Michael, and thanks for commenting on my newest post yesterday and introducing yourself. I’ve also been fascinated by harvestmen for years, and if you’ll permit me a small correction, they are not insects but arachnids, much more closely related to spiders. Their eyes are indeed fascinating, and these small folk are certainly worthy of much more attention than they ususally get.
My eyes are gradually being opened as I shoot more and more. I am starting to see things that have always been there but that I never noticed. I have a lot to learn about bugs in general, a real lot. So I don’t mind corrections at all about terminology. Thanks.
Therein lies the real joy–really seeing things we’ve only just looked at before, or maybe not. And there’s so much to see!