Nature is cool as shit, and the diversity of insects is wild. It's time you nerds started learning about bugs. So you better pick a bug you like and tell me about it.
Cheaper wiretaps are useful for smaller scale surveillance and for following cars, but usually I use police or military grade equipment that I won't link here.
I grew up in Indiana and read A Girl of the Limberlost over and over and over. Even now, it's a comfort read when I just want to feel cozy. CW: there is some wildly classist shit in there, if anyone decides to pick it up. But anyway, Gene Stratton Porter was an important naturalist and photographer at the turn of the century, and recorded a lot of native species in a race against time as people were draining the Limberlost for farmland. Her photography was particularly important, since she actually waited, sometimes for hours, to get just the right shot of a bird, while other photographers of the time would shoot the bird, have it stuffed, then take a picture of that.
Anyway, she also wrote a lot about moths, especially in Moths of the Limberlost, if you can get your hands on a copy. I got a deal on a really banged up copy because I can't afford a pristine first edition, like I'd like to. I really liked her description of luna moths and looked up pictures at the library. They are soooo pretty. I just love their color, and the long tails on their wings are so pretty and graceful looking. Later, I was in high school and on a trip somewhere with my church youth group when we stopped to eat at some rest stop along the road. There we were, in a Taco Bell or McDonalds or whatever parking lot, and all of a sudden, a little flock of luna moths started flying under the parking lot lights, and the totally mundane became magical. To this day, it's the only time I've seen a live luna moth, and it's a cherished memory. It even makes me long for my Indiana home a bit, though Lord, I can't go back there.
I forget the name of it, but that moth that morphs into a Lovecraft horror show when it inflates some sacks that spread it horny smells around, that's my guy.
I also love to pet honey bees while they do their thing... Don't really see them much anymore. đ
Dragonflies have long been a personal symbol of safe travels for me. So many times when I've set out on a long journey I would be greeted by dragonflies like something out of a fairytale. They're so beautiful and there's so many varieties.
Also, jumping spiders. I'm not a fan of other arachnids and many of them I have a straight up adversion to. But jumpy bois are adorable.
If spiders are being counted, Portia Fimbrata and the Diving Bell Spider.
If they're not being counted, Cicadas and Moths. Not picky on my moths, even if I did raise some Polythemus in the past.
I also like the eastern Dobson Fly because it has a cool life cycle. They start as eggs laid at the edge of a stream. They spend most of their life in their larval stage as long creepy looking hellgrammites, mostly under rocks in the fastest moving water. Eventually they all leave the water in the same week or so to pupate into the big beautiful 4 winged Dobson Fly. Then they mate, lay eggs and die within a week.
Lord Howe Island Stick Insect. They thought they were extinct due to invasive animals a century ago but they found them clinging to a sheer rock kilometers out in the ocean called Bells Pyramid, just chilling. Took awhile to find something they'd eat, but now they've bred thousands in captivity.