Posts in Category: insect

Snowberry Clearwing Moth

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I spent several hours yesterday at Massachusetts Audubon’s Drumlin Farm Wildlife Sanctuary being the ZEISS guy for their yearly Optics Fair. Mostly I was talking optics but I did take them to chase down this interesting moth when it flew by.

At first I thought it was a particularly yellow Hummingbird Moth…or “Hummingbird Clearwing Moth” more properly…but further study shows it as the closely related Snowberry Clearwing. It was quite large: 2 inches tip to tail and with a 2 inch wingspan. Quite a creature!

Samsung Smart Camera WB250F in Program and Macro, with Intelligent Zoom to about 600mm equivalent field of view at 10 mega pixels. Processed in Snapseed on the Nexus 7. Cropped for scale.

Flower and Moth from a German Forest

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I don’t know the name of this wildflower from the German Forest at the edge of Bavaria, or of the tiny moth. I will research them more when I get home to a stable internet connection. Both are attractive and the combination is even more so. Or that is what I think 🙂

Samsung Smart Camera WB250F in macro mode. Processed in PicSay Pro on the Samsung Galaxy S4.

Halloween Pennant

I have been looking for a Halloween Pennant for several years now. I mean, who could see them in the dragonfly guides and not want to see one, and photograph one, in real life. They are at the extreme north east of their range here on the coast in Southern Maine, but they are listed on the Odonata Central list for York County. I had hope. But I had no bug! Until last weekend when I found a single specimen at Roger’s Pond along the Mousam River in Kennebunk. Roger’s Pond is not nearly as productive as the Quest Ponds when it comes to Odonata, but I have found several dragons and a few damsels there that I have yet to see anywhere else.

I went back yesterday on my lunch-hour scooter prowl, and there was a second Halloween Pennant…this time in better light and closer, perching on the tallest stalks left in the mowed margin of the pond instead of on rushes out in the water. I know it is a second specimen because the first I saw was slightly worn…with an obvious notch out of one wing, and the colors somewhat faded. Yesterday’s bug was fresh and spectacular. What more could any odonatate ask for. (Yes, in my secret life, I an the Odonatator! 🙂

Canon SX50HS at 2400mm equivalent. Program with -1/3 EV exposure compensation. Hand-held of course. Transferred to my Samsung Galaxy S4 via the RavPower WiFi disk and card reader, and then processed in PicSay Pro. (I am getting ramped up to spend two weeks in Europe without my laptop.)

 

 

Dragonfly fake-out!

For my last field trip of the Potholes and Prairies Birding Festival in Carrington North Dakota, I went with a small van and a few people to explore the very edge of the drift prairies where they meet the Missouri Coteau…the terminal moraine of the last round of glaciers to scrub the area.  They call the uplands there Hawk’s Nest Ridge, and it is a unique habitat in North Dakota: A tall hill or small mountain covered in Burr Oak forest. Until European settlers arrived on the prairies of North Dakota any trees were restricted to the deeper river valleys, right along the water…and the only real forest was found on the top of Missouri Coteau…where the Burr Oaks grow.

I was totally delighted to come to an open glade in the Burr Oaks and find it full of dragonflies. I can honestly say I have never seen as many of one species in any one place at any one time. There must have been a hundred of these bright golden, fair sized dragons working the bushes and low growth at the edge of the trees. There were also two Common Green Darners patrolling, and bunches of damsels and dancers in the grass. There was no hope for a shot of the Darners, but I tracked down a couple of the big golden guys who posed just long enough for some photography. I was excited. I was convinced that I was seeing something new to me.

So I got back to the hotel and processed the images in Lightroom. Still excited. Then I began to try to id the bugs. Oh. On closer look they were just Four Spotted Skimmers, one of the most abundant dragons around my home in southern Maine…the first dragon I photographed in Maine this year…and one that I have hundreds of images of already.

I was a little let down, I will admit. There in the clearing in the Burr Oak forest up on Hawk’s Nest Ridge the Missouri Coteau of North Dakota, with the skimmers all around me in the bright sunlight, I thought I really had something new. Four-spotted Skimmers! Who knew.

At the same time, having seen them in that number and in that light, I will never look at a Four-spotted Skimmer quite the same way again. They are a work of art, no matter how common.

Canon SX50HS with my usual tweaks to Program. 1800mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 640. Processed in Lightroom.

Red-saddlebags At Last!

I have photographed Black Saddlebags in both Texas and Maine, and I have one really bad photo of a Carolina Saddlebags from my Kennebunk dragon pond this summer, but my ambition for this trip to south Texas and New Mexico was to find and photograph a Red Saddlebags. They don’t get as far north as Maine and a friend who posted a pic from NM said the last record for the upper Rio Grande Valley is sometime in September, so my only real hope was Texas.

My first day in Harlingen I got out to Estero Llano Grande World Birding Center…which is rapidly becoming one of my favorite places for birding, bugging, and photography…and, sure enough, there were a smattering of Red Saddlebags among the abundant Blacks. I had, however, about given up on getting one to sit still for a photo when I found a little reed tip out by Grebe Marsh where one was returning with fair frequency. I watched it for fifteen minutes, missing it every time…it was in touch-and-go mode…but I made note of the location to check on my way back to the visitor center.

And there it was, on my way back, on the same reed tip…and this time it sat while I got a few shots, and then returned twice to the same perch for more shots at different angles. I was so blessed!

The perch was high, above eye-level, so the angle is not great…but still…a Red Saddlebags!

It, like the Blacks it was flying with, was a well worn bug…likely a migrant from further north mating one last time on its final journey south. (Some of the Blacks were tattered enough for me to believe I might have photographed the same bug a few months ago in Maine.)

Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. 1800mm equivalent field of view.  f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 400. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.

6/28/2012: 4-Spotted Skimmer Head-on ;-)

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Though I am still in Virginia, we will drop back to my last trip down to the dragon ponds on the  Kennebunk Bridle Path for this Four-Spotted Skimmer head-on shot. Shooting in full zoom plus digital tel-converter gives the shot interesting bokah.

Canon SX40HS in Program with – 1/3EV exposure compensation. 1680mm equivalent field of view. f5.8 @1/400th @ ISO 100.

Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.

6/27/2012: Orange Bluets in Tandem

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I am still in Virginia at the Virginia Crossings Wyndham Resort doing the corporate retreat. This is another find from my little photoprowel down by the golf course ponds. This is a pre- or post-mating tandem pair of Orange Bluets. There are many Bluets damselflies in North America, and most of them are a bold electric blue…or at least the males are. The Orange is clearly a member of the family despite its color. The male could be mistaken for many of the females of other species, and but none are quite as aggressively orange! Electric orange? It must be the height of breeding for Oranges, since tandem pairs outnumbered single damselflies.

Canon SX40HS in Program with – 1 /3EV exposure compensation. 1680mm equivalent field of view. f5.8 @ 1/60th @ ISO 800. Because the evening light was low I set the ISO manually to get workable shutter-speeds…and even then the Canon image-stabilization was stretched to its limits at such high magnification. This image begins to break down at larger viewing sizes, but it is a fun image on your average monitor or laptop. 🙂

Processed on my Xoom Android Tablet in PicSay Pro for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.

11/7/2011: Female Green Darner (green variety)

It is Macro Monday on Google+ so I will return to Irvine California for another dragonfly shot. This is a female Green Darner of the green variety (most common…there is a blue variety which I also photographed, but I will save that for another Macro Monday 🙂 This was taken with the Canon SX40HS at full optical zoom plus 2x digital tel-converter for the equivalent field of view of a 1680mm lens…from about 6 feet, handheld. This is a fun camera!

Pulling back a bit to see the whole bug, we have a second shot from the same distance using only the optical zoom for 840mm equivalent.

The Green Darner is one of the largest North American dragonflies and, in my opinion, a stunning bug!

1) f5.8 @ 1/400th @ ISO 100 and 2) f5.8 @ 1/500th @ ISO 100. Program with iContrast. –1/3EV exposure compensation.

Processed for Intensity and Sharpness in Lightroom.

8/9/2011: Bee on a Blanket

Nothing says high summer like bumble bees in the Blanket Flower in the sun. And, of course, the bee adds interest to what would otherwise be just another portrait of a flower…not that a Blanket Flower portrait would be without interest in itself…I love the range of reds and oranges. Taken in our yard one morning last week.

This is a telephoto macro, taken in the Nikon Coolpix P500’s Close Up mode with the zoom setting overridden to 320mm equivalent field of view. The reach is good when working with bees, as I am somewhat allergic, but it also offers better separation from the background. With a small sensor camera you need all the background help you can get.

f5.5 @ 1/400th @ ISO 160. Close Up Mode.

Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.

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