This is my preserved Darkling Beetle that I staged for a focus stacking session to showcase its face, mandibles and other mouthparts.

Darkling beetles are quite beneficial and they eat both fresh and decaying vegetation. They are a food source for birds, rodents and lizards so they play an important part in the food chain.

The larval stages of several species are cultured as feeder insects for captive insectivores and include the very commonly known ‘mealworms’ and ‘superworms’ and the lesser-known ‘mini mealworms’. They are available at nearly all pet stores and many raise them for a food source for their insect eating collection of pets.

Still playing with the Photoshop oil painting filter.
California Scrub Jay inspecting the peanuts. And a second shot from the burst where the Jay actually picked up a peanut - first as straight photo then as oil painting.

I discovered something. After I did the straight edit of the Jay with peanut I made a virtual copy and took that to PS for the oil paint filter - but half the filters were grayed out and unavailable including the oil paint. So I went back to LR and sent the non-virtual copy version to PS. All the filters now worked. I have done virtual copies in PS before and don't remember that problem coming up. Ah, as a friend who was a military computer repairman and code writer says "Don't try to understand, they work by Black Magic."

80D, Tamron 150-600 G2 @ 600, 1/250 @ f/8, ISO-800