Posts in Category: butterflies and insects
Summer Azure
The Milkweed Meadow at the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve at Laudholm Farm is now dominated by Goldenrod, and will be until the Milkweed pods burst this fall. And it seems there is nothing quite like Goldenrod for attracting a wide variety of insects. This Summer Azure Butterfly was uncharacteristically cooperative, well above ground level and sitting still for long enough for some macro shots.
Sony HX400V. About 70mm equivalent field of view. Macro. Program with Program Shift. ISO 80 @ 1/250th @ f4.5. Processed in Handy Photo on my tablet. Cropped slightly for scale and composition.
Blazing Star Visitation. Happy Sunday!
I went again to the Kennebunk Plains yesterday to check the Blazing Star bloom. It is not much more advanced though we had a couple of sunny days at the end of the week. I leave for a week in Tucson on Tuesday, and hopefully it will not be past when I get back. I did manage to catch a number of Insect visitors on the blossoms that were showing…Wood Nymph and Sulphur butterflies and a Skipper, as well as innumerable Bumblebees, and this Flower Crab Spider.
The last Flower Crab Spider I found was white. My references say that the females can change from white to yellow for better camouflage depending on the flower they are using as a hunting perch. I am certain there is actually no thought involved, but clearly whatever automatic mechanism that controls the color change was totally confused by the intense Purple of the Blazing Star. 🙂
Sony HX400V. 60mm equivalent field of view. Macro. ISO 80 @ 1/400th @ f6.3. I used program shift for greater depth of field since the flower was moving in the wind and precise focus was difficult. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet.
And for the Sunday Thought: I did a little poking around on the Web in reflecting on why this spider might be so yellow and found that most insects have much more limited color vision than we do, and those that have similar vision to ours actually see higher into the ultraviolet. So, in fact, I have no idea how a bright yellow Spider on purple Blazing Star looks to any of the spider’s prey. It might be perfect camouflage. We humans tend to assume, until we are reminded otherwise, that our own vision of the world is the only one. Even among our own species that is demonstratably erroneous. It is safe to say that no two creatures see the world exactly alike. We are enriched by both what is common to our vision and, if we allow ourselves to be, by what is different. The common vision can be a good indication of truth. If we all agree on something it must be actual and true, right? Except when it isn’t. And that is where our differences come in. Our differences point to aspects of the truth which none of us see clearly. Literally point to. It is sometimes possible to sense the unseen truth they are pointing if we look at enough of them and take each one seriously as a pointer.
This is nowhere more true than in Religion. Most of what we know, or at least what we can say, about the spirit falls in the “pointing at the truth” category. And that is where we most need to value our differences. I am confident that there is only one spirit and one truth, one spiritual reality. None of us see it clearly, but taking our differences as pointers, we can perhaps more perfectly sense the truth that embraces us all.
It will never be as obvious as a yellow Spider on a purple Blazing Star, but then it does not have to be. 🙂
Sunflowering Bumblebee
I posted a shot yesterday on my Facebook and Google+ accounts from this series. I went out yesterday afternoon to cover my bicycle as a storm was about to hit us and found the newly blossomed Sunflowers by the back deck full of Bumblebees. Back in for the camera!
I am loving the macro ability of the Sony HX400V. I can get to 6cm at 85mm equivalent and to 3cm at 50mm equivalent. That makes for some very effective macros! This shot is at about 75mm equivalent. It gave me enough distance to work the Bee and the scale I wanted. 🙂 The Sony also makes Program shift just about as easy as it can be. There is a control wheel under your thumb which, in Program, controls the shift. That allows me to fine tune the aperture for depth of field in my macros and landscapes.
ISO 80 @ 1/250th @ f4. Processed in Handy Photo on my tablet.
Another Great Spangled Fritillery
This Fritillery had such a dark mantle that, while photographing it, I was convinced that it was another species…on mature reflection though, and after some Web research, I am pretty sure it is just another Great Spangled. As though “just” could ever describe a Great Spangled! Again this is in the meadows at Emmons Preserve, but in the upper meadow this time. There were more typical GSFs, with much lighter mantles, in the lower meadow on this day. The Knapweed is just about finished for this year…only a few blossoms left…so these might also be the last of the Great Spangled Fritilleries.
Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. 1200mm equivalent (2x digital extender). Processed in Snapseed on my tablet. Assembled in Pixlr Express.
Swallowtail on Cone Flower. Happy Sunday!
There are Tiger Swallowtails everywhere this year. I see them in meadows feeding on Milkweed and flitting through the trees on unknown missions in the deep forest. I see them at Laudholm Farm, Emmons Preserve, Saco Heath, Old Falls Pond, the Waterboro Barrens, and the Kennebunk Plains. I have seen several in our yard, and actually photographed one on our apple blossoms. I almost thought we were going to get out of the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens without seeing one, but one final turn around the Garden of the Senses and the great lawn after lunch turned up a lovely specimen feeding in a stand of purple Cone Flower.
Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. 600mm equivalent. Shutter preferred. 1/500th @ ISO 200 @ f7.1. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet. Cropped for scale and composition.
And for the Sunday Thought: Comparatively speaking we do not have a lot of Butterflies in New England (compared say, to South Texas)…especially big showy butterflies like the Swallowtail. There are summers when a single sighting would be exciting. This year we have Swallowtails in abundance. I have no idea why, and I don’t even know how to begin to speculate. 🙂 But I am, of course, happy to see them, and I will undoubtedly photograph every one that will sit even remotely still for me. And I will give thanks. I know, year to year, on average, it is our most common big Butterfly. In fact nothing else in New England comes close to its size. So, common or not, every single one is a blessing. Even in a year of abundance, any day with a Swallowtail in it is more blessed than a day without. I have cherrios for breakfast every morning in the warm days of summer (oatmeal in the winter), but that does not mean I should forget to be thankful for cherrios any morning. A day with cherrios in it is always more blessed than a day without. And we do good to remember that. No matter how common the Swallowtails are this summer.
Yellow-jacket on Lantana
You do not see a lot of Lantana growing in Maine. It is a plant I associate with the Southwest and southern California where it is popular in Gardens for its bold color and for its attractiveness to butterflies. At the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens they had it growing in huge planters which I assume they move inside during the winter. I stopped for a macro of the flowers. The Yellow-jacket (Common Wasp) is a bonus.
Sony Alpha NEX 3N with ZEISS Touit 50mm f2.8 macro. ISO 200 @ 1/320th @ f11. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet. Anyone who appreciates macros would have to love this lens!
Bee for Thursday
I mentioned in an earlier post that there were more insects at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens on our visit Monday than I had seen before…especially bees…and especially Bumble Bees. They were everywhere. After a few shots with one in the frame, I began to collect them on different flowers.
Sony Alpha NEX 3N with the ZEISS Touit 50mm macro. ISO 200 @ 1/160th @ f10. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet.
Any perch
My wife and I spent the better part of the day at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay Maine yesterday. It is something we have done several times now on or around our anniversary. The CMBG is a treasure, the unlikely result of the ongoing efforts of a group of dedicated people in Boothbay. They have assembled a world class collection of plants in beautifully landscaped settings that always provides a day of pleasure when we visit. We were a few weeks later this year than in past visits and it was interesting to see the difference that few weeks made in what was blooming, and what was not.
A highlight of this trip was the number of insects. There were bees, mostly Bumble, everywhere, and squadrons of Twelve-spotted Skimmer Dragonflies. crickets. Wasps. Several other Odonata. Etc. It sometimes seemed difficult to photograph flowers without catching a bug in the frame. 🙂
This image is, of course, an unusual juxtaposition. Dragonflies, like the Blue Dasher here, are predators and do not generally visit flowers. That is not to say they will not settle on one if it presents itself as a likely perch for hunting. This stand of salmon colored Day Lilies was along the bank above an ornamental pond where many dragonflies were patrolling. And the Blue Dasher is not the only dragon I caught perched among the blooms.
Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. 380mm equivalent. Shutter preferred. 1/500th @ ISO 320 @ f8. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet.
Calico in Obelisk Posture
Well, almost in full Obelisk posture…but then this is Maine, and even in mid-summer, the sun is never straight up. The theory, with some lababoritory testing to back it, is that pointing the abdomen at the sun like an Obelisk and raising the wings helps to avoid overheating on hot days by limiting exposure to the direct rays of the sun. The behavior has been observed in most dragonflies that hunt from a perch. This a a little Calico Pennant which I found out on the shores of Kennebunk Plains Pond on our hottest day so far. Note that in this position the dark patches on the Calico’s wings also provide shade for the thorax.
Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. 600mm equivalent. Shutter preferred. 1/500th @ ISO 250 @ f7.1. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet.
Hoverfly in Grass Pink Orchid
Last Thursday I attended a program on dragonflies and butterflies at the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve at Laudholm Farm in Wells, Maine. We netted a few interesting moths and butterflies…including a Snowberry Clearwing Moth…and after the program I wandered down to the boardwalk through the mini-bog that my wife Carol discovered earlier this summer. I had gotten good photos of the Grass Pink Orchids there earlier in the week, but I wanted to try for better shots of the Pink Pagonia, the other common bog orchid in Southern Maine. Still I could not resist a few more shots of Grass Pink…especially when I caught this Hoverfly visiting. There seem to be several species of Hoverfly here in Southern Maine…or else the species is very variable in size. I see all sizes, from very tiny (smaller than this one), to big brutes that over in openings and over trails in the forest 2/3rs the size of a Bumble Bee.
Sony Alpha NEX 5T with the ZEISS Touit 50mm f2.8 macro. Aperture preferred at f11 for depth of field. 1/250th @ ISO 100. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet. Cropped slightly for scale and composition.