Focusing on the small things in life... Macro Photography

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Tuesday... A day a lot like last Monday, Sunday, Saturday, Friday, Thursday, Wednesday, and Tuesday... Work has been INCREDIBLY slow because of the Covid-19 lockdown. One day blurs into another... At least it is not Winter so I can go outside and do the bug thing. My kids say I've gone "Bugging" when I head out. I actually had a few jobs come in early today, so I was up and about sooner than usual because I am NOT a morning person. It didn't take long for me to get bored and head outside so I wouldn't end up sitting in front of the computer all day.

This is a cool moth. The little long bits on the back of the wink look a lot like antenna. The dark spot under them kind of looks like the eyes. The first few times I spotted this guy, I did in fact think he was facing the other way until I got a look through the lens and could see better detail. I guess this is intended to confuse would be predators regarding which way the moth is facing. Kind of cool.

 

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The big bush behind my fence in the back yard is really starting to bloom finally! I could hear the buzzing almost 15 feet away. By the time I was standing near it, it was quite loud. The bush is actually a cluster of multiple large bushes growing wild outside the fence. They are at least 10 feet tall and span probably 30-40 feet of the fence line. Many of the branches hang over the fence right about shoulder height, which is where I REALLY like to find bugs when I am shooting pics of them Those critters on the ground are tough on me! Anyway, in addition to the multiple variety of bees, wasps, and moths flying around the bushes, there are also quite a few different sizes and types of flies. At first blush, they all kind of look blackish, varying only in size. However, when the sun hits them or the flash pops on them, their colors really stand out!

This guys reminds me of the Drunk Uncle stereotype. His buzzing was like a drunken slur and he was kind of wobbly when flying. He is a big thick around the waist and looks like he hasn't bathed or shaved in weeks.

This guys reminds me of the young studs looking for ladies, all nice and clean, constantly preening, and looking good.

I was going to leave this one out because it is not well focused. But then I saw the little photo bomber in the bottom right corner. Had I realize it was there when I was actually taking the pictures, I would have been trying to get both of them well focused at the same time. I like the pics with multiple critters in them.

 

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Daniel finished his school work and came out back to pester me. He wanted to head across the street to our neighbor's yard. She is a recent widow and he helps out around her house with various chore type things. She has a HUGE yard (5-6 acres I think) that is wooded with trails, little clearings, a creek, several bridges across the creek, and all kinds of flowers and bushes. The kids (including the boys next door) go over there all the time to play in the creek and woods. She just enjoys having kids around. So we headed over to see what we could find. It didn't take long. Daniel is REALLY good at spotting stuff.

An Assassin Bug sucking the life out of a Love Bug. Remember that if you see one and are tempted to kill it. THEY EAT LOVE BUGS!! This one wasn't keen on posing and I had to chase him across several stalks and to a different plant even. He slowed a bit when he stumbled into the edge of a spider web...

 

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I cannot recall what kind of flower it is, but it is about 2-3 feet tall and has clusters of small flowers on multiple branches along the stalk. I often seem them along the shoulders of the FMs around here. Anyway, there were a LOT of them all over the place in the neighbor's back yard on the far side of the creek, which is the more wooded area. They were all full of love bugs for the most part, but there were still other bugs in some of them, beetles, spiders, small flies, bees, etc,...

 

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Daniel moves pretty fast. He will point out a cool bug. I will start taking pictures and five seconds later he is already trying to get me to come see a different bug. It usually takes at least a few minutes with each bug to get any decent shots, and that is if I am in a hurry. Daniel is kind of like a humming bird, rarely sitting still for more than a few seconds. Right around the other side of a bush from the green beetle above, he found a mess load of grasshoppers clustered together on the ground in an area about 1-1/2 to 2 feet in diameter. The biggest looked like they might be 1/2" long or so.

This is just a small section of them.

 

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Just around the other side of the bush from the grasshoppers was a big cluster of beautiful purple flowers. I figured there HAD to be some kind of bugs in there! Sure enough, I found a beetle wedged between a few petals, looking like it was just hanging out and not real active. I prodded it gently to see if it was alive and it started slowly moving around. This is another new bug for me as I've not seen one like this before, at least the color scheme, it is very similar in structure to the green beetle.

 

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Of course, walking around in the woods means walking into spider webs... As much as I like taking pictures of spiders, I am not wild about them crawling around on my head, neck, and face, nor the feeling of the webbing all over me. Occasionally, I will remember to pick up some kind of stick and just hold it out in front of me while walking to catch the webs before I stick my face in them. The webs that easier to spot are like little baseball sized spaghetti balls of webbing. They are usually spun near the ends of main branches where all the smaller branches terminate in a cluster. Sometimes these small branches will even be curved in toward the center of the web ball from the tension on the web! The spiders that make these webs are maybe an 1/8" in diameter. It is hard to distinguish the spider from all the remains of past meals in the web. They typically like to hang out either at the edge of the webs near a branch, or they sit near the bottom of the web, and always upside down for some reason.

These are from different webs, but the spiders are all similar. Some kind of Orb Weaver most likely.

These guys are always skittering about underfoot while I am trying to take pics of everything else. They can actually get quite large. Most are maybe 1-1/4" to 1-1/2" diameter, but I have seen a few upwards of 2-1/2" to 3" diameter!! My understanding is that they are Wold Spiders and they CAN bite, but they are not deadly by any means. They just create a sore that might get infected if not cleaned and cared for.

 

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This is a variety of jumping spider. As if to dispel any doubt on that issue, we had several jump like crazy trying to get away from us. Daniel was trying to reel one in as it was spinning its web in an attempt to reach the ground. He got it back up to one hand and it leapt from his hand, to his arm, back to his hand, and then off into the air where it rapidly descended to the ground to disappear into the grass and weeds. However, they like to hang out on the stalks underneath those flowers that grow in the little clusters. Daniel spots several more during our outing.

These are the flowers I was speaking of, these in particular appear to be the Honeymoon Suite... (some kind of weevils?).

 

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Given that there is a creek, it was inevitable that we would eventually end up on its banks. Daniel is drawn to them like a moth to a flame. He's not there two seconds before he spots a snake. I arrive and spot some beautiful Forktails! They are metallic blue and green. I've never seen them until just a few days ago when Sarah brought in a dead one she'd found to show me. It was missing its head... These were flying all around the area where Daniel said the snake had slithered off to They were shy as well, often flying away before I could get close enough to setup for a shot. I was wishing I'd had my D750 with the 70-200 lens and some extension tubes that let me focus closer with the long lens. As it was, if I zoomed out enough to get a shot, they were too far out for the flash because of the way my diffuser is setup. We were in a heavily shaded area so the ambient light just wasn't getting it done real well. So, I just had to pump up the volume in post processing. Excuse the graininess...

And we did see the snake again! About 2 feet long, but not sure what kind.

 

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Daniel was being eaten alive by mosquitoes. They weren't bothering me to bad. It might have had something to do with the rivers of sweat running down my forehead Seriously, it is only in the mid 80s and I am hot because of the insane humidity. I can hardly wait until June Daniel being Daniel, he was gone in a matter of seconds once we were done with the creek and hauled back to the house. I took my time and wandered back through the woods via a different route. The rest of these are just a few random shots from those last few minutes.

Another photo bomber I didn't notice until I got home and loaded the images into Lightroom.

And that's a wrap for the last few days.

 

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The new flash diffuser setup seems to be working nicely. It softens the highlights on the bug's eyes and on shiny body parts. It's still not ideal, but it is better. It would be nice to have an off center flash, especially if I could get a two flash setup to get more even lighting across the entire bug with a key and fill arrangement. But that might just be a lot more weight and my rig is already pretty heavy, especially if I am trying to hold it one handed! I have to stop and rest every few minutes because my forearms will start cramping.

 

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Your snake friend appears to be a Broad-banded Water Snake.

 

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Non venomous?

 

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Non venomous?

Yes non-venomous.

 

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The big Holly bush outside our front door has been a great place to look for bugs in years past. I was beginning to think this year might be a bust because I have been looking and looking, but not finding much. That changed this evening. It's like someone just flipped a switch and all of a sudden the spiders were all over the place. Daniel was finding them faster than I could take the pictures. Even with my old eyes I was finding them pretty easily!

Your basic Green Jumping Spider

 

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These are new for me... I've never seen this type that had such huge jaws. So I am wondering if perhaps it is a different variety or maybe a different sex? Imagine being that little bug being devoured by the one hanging under the leaf...

I believe this is a Magnolia Green Jumping Spider

Kind of cool how you can see through the front eyes because they stick out so far!

 

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These are more typical of the small greenish jumping spiders with the red/orange and white toupees... They are translucent, filled with fluid. They have valves that can rapidly pump liquid into compartments in their legs that makes them jump. Kind of crazy, but real effective! You can tell when they are looking right at you because the big front facing eyes go black.

More of the regular Green Jumping Spiders

 

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The green jumping spiders are relatively small, maybe 3-10mm, but there are a LOT of other spiders MUCH smaller. Some are so small I can't tell if they are dirt or a spider until I get the lens up and look at them through the camera. Even then, it is still hard to get them focused enough to see much detail. The trick to finding them is to look for the webs. Most of them are some type of Orb Weaver. The challenge can be trying to determine if what I see is just debris in the web or an actual spider. Here are a few of those.

 

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This kind of looks like the green jumping spiders, but it is white. Also, the leg proportions are way off, especially those front legs and the two appendages with the dark ends on them. This is actually a shot of the belly of this spider. I have never seen one inside a web like this. I was unable to get a face shot because of the shape of the leaf. The webbing is actually pulled so tight that it rolled the edge of the leaf over a bit, creating a small sheltered area for the spider.

 

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Okay, so this is kind of creepy... This is what is left of a fly. It is a shriveled dead husk, yet it still clings to the leaf. I couldn't tell you how it died. I have never seen anything like this...

I almost didn't even see this because it is so small, maybe 1-2mm at most. The only reason I noticed it was because it was perched on the edge of the leaf and made a disruption to the flow of the edge, which triggered my OCD I took a LOT of pics of it and this is the best I could do. I think maybe it is some kind of Aphid?

 

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I have no idea what dinner used to be... At this point it just looks like a gooey hunk of critter.

 

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Some one of my friends asked about the size of some of the spiders I've been taking pictures of and suggested sticking a finger in there for scale. Here is my attempt at that. It is a challenge to get the finger close to the spider with it freaking out and running away. My first attempt ended up with a spider running all over the camera dragging web as it went, then all up one arm and hand before I finally gave up and set it back on the bush. Then I had to spend a few minutes getting all the webbing off of me. This guy was a bit more tolerant. You can see though that getting both the spider and my thumbnail focused at the same time is tough because they are not in the same plane with each other. The big eyes never went full black because it was never looking at the camera. It was too busy worrying about my thumb.

Here is another one of those green jumping spiders with the huge fangs! there are barbs on them that point back toward the mouth to keep prey from slipping out of its grasp...

 

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Baby sitting... Up in the corner of our front porch cover.

And under the porch rail directly below the above nest...

These spiders are tough to photograph, not because they are small, which they are, but because they are so reflective! The white part of the body is almost like a mirror and it causes the camera to struggle with the exposure. When the flash pops, it almost washes out all the detail. I even cranked the flash exposure compensation down a full stop and it still does it. It probably doesn't help when there is such a dark background, which is part of why I changed up the angle to get more of the brown post in the background for some of the shots. This spider is maybe 3-4 mm long.

 

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Today (Saturday) was cooler and breezy, not always ideal for bug pics because of the breeze. However, I got bored and ventured out several times over the course of the day. I was home with our kids and the kids of some friends that were spending the day while Beth and their Mom had day to themselves. I kind of wandered all over the place, the back yard, side yard, front porch area, by the garage and eventually over to the lake again.

A bug's life is a rough life... kill or be killed.

I just could not get an angle that didn't have a leaf in the way! When I tried to gently move it, he flew away.

 

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Our whole yard is buzzing right now. The bees are busy! Makes me wish I had a bee hive or two. I used to help my Dad with hives back in the early 80s. We maintained 13 of them and harvest time was a LOT of work! We had honey for years even after the hives were long gone. The day we opened the last jar of it was kind of sad. It was REALLY good!

Two busy beetles...

A Zebra Longhorn Beetle

Almost missed this one, but it moved slightly and that caught my eye. I had to do some poking and prodding to get it to move to the outer edge of the flower cluster so I could actually get a clear shot of it. I had been nestled down among them were it was hard to see.

Barely as thick as the leaf, if that... I spotted it while looking through the lens and trying to focus on something else, otherwise I would have never seen it.

Assassin Bugs are serious predators. They will eat almost anything. I've even seen one eating a Praying Mantis that was considerably larger than it was. Whenever I see them in the bushes, that is a good sign because it means there are likely other bugs nearby that have attracted their attention. Their bright tail ends make them easy to spot, relatively speaking...