Posts in Category: butterflies and insects
Fritillery in Flight
This is one of those chance shots that just happens when photographing butterflies. I could not have planned it. If this were taken in the US, this would be a Great Spangled Fritillery. This however was taken in a small Park in the Seewinkel region of Austria in a tub of cultivated flowers. It might be a Queen of Spain Fritillery. Those who know better, please correct me.
Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. 600mm equivalent. Shutter preferred. Processed in Snapseed and Photo Editor by dev.macgyver on my tablet.
Eastern Forktail. Happy Sunday!
I leave this afternoon for a week of travel in Germany, Austria, and maybe a day in Hungary, so these posts may be erratic over the next few days. It is hard to predict how much wifi I will have, and I can not afford a lot of data on my phone. We shall see. I hope to have abundant photo ops, but it is mainly a business and birding trip (or maybe I should say a “business of birding” trip).
This is an immature female Eastern Forktail. Eastern Forktails are among the earliest Odonata to fly in the spring, and they are certainly all the action around the ponds in Kennebunk right now. I am wondering if a few overwinter, or migrate in early in the spring from locations where they can overwinter, since I am seeing fully pruniose females along with the immatures and the males. I do not think they have been flying long enough here to have developed the degree of pruniosity that I am seeing. ?
Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. 600mm equivalent. Shutter preferred. 1 /640th @ ISO 250 @ f6.7. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet.
And for the Sunday Thought. I gave at least a few moments extra thought to what image I wanted to leave you with as I start my European adventure. Something homey? Something particularly Maineish? And in the end, I am not sure why this image is appropriate. It just felt right. It speaks to me. I hope it speaks to you. And that is, at its best, what photography does. It communicates at a non-verbal level, without the need for words…for analysis…almost, one might say, without the need for reason. Vision to vision. My vision to your vision. Pure and simple. In that sense, is it, somehow, more of a spiritual communication? Of course, I am ignoring all the technical apperatus…camera…software…etc…and the considerable technique involved in producing the image. Certainly, on some level, the process of photography is as complex as reasoned argument, or certainly as complex as day to day discourse. Perhaps it is not that photography is a more spiritual medium…it is that, too often, we forget that any communication is spiritual. My spirit to your spirit. Pure and simple. Happy Sunday!
And do watch for whatever I am able to post from Europe.
Mourning Cloak
While at Emmons Preserve in Kennebunkport over the weekend hunting early dragonflies, I was visited by a Mourning Cloak butterfly. Litterally. It came down the path and flew around my head several times. I think it even settled on my hat for a second. But, of course, it was off through the trees before I could get a shot of it. On the way back to car, after shooting some HDR at the stream-side on the Batson River, I had my eye out for it, and, sure enough, it’s shadow crossed my line of sight just about where I had encountered it before. This time it did settle in full sun, and I was able to work my way close enough for some decent shots.
This individual is well worn already this spring, which leads me to think it is a butterfly that overwintered. Mourning Cloaks, according the the experts, hibernate in clusters in tree cavities and under loose bark, and live a full 11 to 12 months, so the bugs we see in the spring are last summer’s flight, just weakening from their long winter’s nap. It gives them the jump on true migrants in the north.
Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. 600mm equivalent. Shutter preferred. 1 /640th @ ISO 640 @ f6.7. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet.
Springtime Darner
The is nothing quite like the excitement of your first Odonata sighting of the spring! Dragonfly on the wing!
Okay. I get it. Not everyone shares my enthusiasm for dragonflies and damselflies, but still, you must have some empathy with a seasonal first…the first Robin in the yard…the first crocus…Lilacs blooming…the first bike ride of the spring…opening day at the golf club? Something must tickle your seasonal nose like the first sneeze of hay fever season! For me, these past few years, it has been the awakening of the Odonates. I haunt the ponds and pools where I have seen them past summers, hoping against hope, that the water is finally warm enought, that the hours of sunlight long enough, so that some brave nymph will crawl out of the water and transform into a full flying dragon or damsel. Yesterday, a visit to the warm, sunlit meadows along the Boston River at Emmons Preserve in rural Kennebunkport had its rewards. I saw three dragons on the wing…got decent photos of two…and both of those were new bugs for me! It does not get much better than that!
This is the Springtime Darner (appropriately named 🙂 . I had some difficulty identifying it as it looks like a Mosaic Darner…but is in a totally different part of the book. It is also a tendril…a freshly emerged bug…so it’s blue abdominal spots are not as blue as they will be tomorrow. (Visually, they were bluer than in the photo.)
These are also among my first dragonfly shots with my new wildlife rig…the Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. That is 600mm equivalent that I can push to 1200mm using the Digital Tel-converter in the camera, as I did here. I am used to the much longer zoom on the Canon SX50HS, which started at 1200mm optical, with digital extension to 1800 and 2400mm equivalents. Still, I am hoping the increased image quality of the larger sensor in the Olympus Micro-four-thirds camera will more than make up for the extra effort of getting closer (when I can get closer). I am certainly happy with this shot.
1/640th @ ISO 640 @ f7.1. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet.
Spider Web in the Morning: Happy Sunday!
A week ago I was in Arcata California. This is from Saturday morning there, after a night of gentle rain and a misty dawn. The spider webs at Arcata Marsh Nature Center were spectacularly jeweled and drapped the bushes in webs of refracted light. I could not resist framing a few with the long end of the 600mm equivalent zoom on the Olympus OM-D E-M10, and then, this morning, collaging three into this composite image.
And for the Sunday Thought: It seems like it ought to be something about transcience and fragile beauty…considering both the fragility of the webs and how temporary the jeweling of the moisture is. These webs, if they survive the morning, will be next to invisible once the moisture drys off the strands. They will go back to being the efficient insect traps they were intended to be.
But I am not feeling either transient or fragile (relatively speaking) this morning. That Saturday I was. I was suffering my first real experience of the full discomfort of acid reflux, and thought I might be having a heart attack…and I was certainly feeling my vunerabiliy, and every moment of my age. I felt like one of those webs…my moments of life like the beads of moisture hung suspended on a fragile web of being. I am considerably better now. Once I figured out what was happening to me, and started on Prilosec OTC and Zantac, the effects began to moderate, and and have receeded to memory now (though I do have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow morning just for reasurrance). I have lost the fragile, suspended feeling.
Now, when I look at these webs I see strength…astounding strength. I see a miracle of engineering in the service of life that comes close to defying the laws of physics. I see beauty in the way the light is collected, focused, in each bead of moisture…how together they turn the dim light of the misty morning into something to wonder at. And I am perfectly willing to see my life as one of those webs…my precious moments strung on a intricate network of intelligence, each strand the ample strength of a faith in the living God. Come breeze and blow. Come sun and dry. You can not erase the wonder of the misty dawn, caught in dew on a spider’s web. You can not erase me. Not because of who I am, but because of who God is! It is good to be alive today. Sunday. Happy Sunday!
California Darners!
It is still, possibly, weeks before the first real Dragonfly hatch in Southern Maine. I will get out to check the ponds today. I did, however, get my first dragonfly fix of the season in California this past week with this pair of what I make to be California Darners from Arcata Marsh Wildlife Center. Fine specimens and the first test of my new camera rig on dragonflies. I think it might work : )
Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. 600mm equivalent. At least 2 of these use the 2x digital extender for 1200mm equivalent field of view. Shutter preferred. 1/800th @ f6.7 @ various ISO. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet. Assembled in Pixlr Express.
Giant Sulphur
We will drop back a few weeks to my trip to the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival. The trouble with November is that I get to go to two of my favorite places for photography…the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas and Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico…and when you consider that both these trips closely follow a few days in Cape May, New Jersey during fall migration…well, the images just kind of pile up. It is part of my photographic discipline to process as I go. It is a very rare day when I have not selected and edited and uploaded the images I want to keep from that day’s shooting, but then there they are, on Google+ at least, and often on Smugmug as well, waiting for their moment in the sun when I post them publically. Of course only one in ten actually gets posted. In November and on into December (when I generally do not travel), I have to make a conscious effort to go back and pick up the more outstanding images from the previous trips.
This shot is from the National Butterfly Center south of Mission Texas. It is a Giant Sulpher butterfly hanging on Turks Cap. The Turks Cap is a native species in Texas, and goes by many other names…Wax Mallow, Mexican Apple, Bleeding Heart…etc. I like the shot in part because of the tiny beads of moisture on the flower (it was early in the day), and the way the brightly lit flower and bug are set off against the dark background. And, against all odds, it is correctly exposed! The Giant and other Sulphurs are among the hardest butterflies to photograph in the sun as the yellow will often block up completely and all detail will be lost.
Canon SX50HS in Program with -1/3rd EV exposure compensation and iContrast. ISO 250 @ 1/1000th @ f6.5. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Red-bordered Pixie
Though the best known US colony of Red-bordered Pixie butterflies might be next to the Burger King in Edinberg Texas, I came across a few at the National Butterfly Center. One was an orange-fringed and very worn specimen, but two were full reds, and appeared quite fresh. This one was tucked back in the foliage high in a small tree. Not the best light but it is such a spectacular bug!
Pixies are Metalmarks though they appear quite atypical for the family. They are only found in South Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley floodplain. Finding the few I found at the NBC was one of the highlights of my visit to the gardens…one of the highlights of my visit to the Valley in fact.
Canon SX50HS in Program with – 1/3rd EV exposure compensation and iContrast. 1800mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Texas Wasp Moth: Happy Sunday!
I first saw this creature at the National Butterfly Center among the butterflies that also frequent the Mist Bush. This shot is from the butterfly gardens at the Bentsen Rio Grande State Park World Birding Center Visitor Center. I thought it was a wasp. It looks like a wasp, but like no wasp I have seen. A wasp in fancy dress? Art deco wasp? Clown wasp? Like maybe a wasp from somewhere far south of the border where they are not afraid to flash bright colors? A tropicana wasp? Take another look.
And then, while researching the White-tipped Black Moth that I also photographed at the NBC, using some photo keys to moths of the Rio Grande Valley, I found that there are moths that do not look my idea of a moth at all. When it came to identifying this bug, I thought of those odd moths I had seen, and typed “wasp like moth Rio Grande” into a Google search. Texas Wasp Moth came right up on top.
What an outrageous creature! I mean, look at those disco booties and the way too colorful feet…and what what is with the matching orange and black stripes? Then consider the totally unnecessary white accents, and the frivolous bright yellow tips on the antennas? Who designed this thing? 🙂
Canon SX50HS in Program with -1/3rd EV exposure compensation and iContrast. 1800mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
And for the Sunday Thought: Well we are already started on it. Who designed this thing? Who has sufficient whimsy? Who has that kind of sense of humor…because I know this bug makes me laugh. And the fact that it is not even a wasp at all, but a harmless moth in an over-the-top costume, well that just caps it. I might have trouble getting by the stinging wasp thing, but as a moth, this is just a wonderful, amazing, delightful creature. Or that is what I think.
And of course I know, rationally, that it was not designed for my amusement or delight. But that whole beleaving, faith-based, seeing-wonders, wonderfilled side of me has to suspect that it was designed for someone’s amusement and delight. It is such a good joke! Too good a joke to have happened without intent. A lovely joke! A joke created and delivered with love. A living joke, that can only have come from the heart and the mind…from the loving intent of the creator of life. Or that is what I think. And thinking that makes me happy. I enjoy being able to share the joke…the delight…the wonder…the whimsy of the Texas Wasp Moth…with its author…and with you.
Now come on…doesn’t this non-wasp bug just make you simile! That is a good thing. Or that is what I think. 🙂
Happy Sunday!
Bordered Patch, with bling!
Of the 8 Snouts in tropical America, the American Snout is the only Snout that occurs regularly in the US, mainly along the border with Mexico, but it has been reported as far north as Southern Canada. They go through periodic explosions, keyed to the cycle of drought and wet in the Southwest and southern Texas. I don’t know if this was an explosion year, but there were certainly Snouts everywhere in the Rio Grande Valley in the highest numbers I have seen in my 10 years of visiting there in November. I am talking about 6 of every 10 butterflies you looked at were Snouts. 🙂
Embarrassment! This is not an American Snout at all. I was photographing Snouts in the Bush below and just assumed this was the underside. It is in fact a Bordered Patch. Which of course has its own interesting story. Paint my face red. 🙁
This shot is from just after the National Butterfly Center gardens opened for the day at 8 AM…before the sun crept up over the sheltering belt of tall trees to the south-east to warm and dry the vegetation. If you look closely you will see that the butterfly is still covered with dew…tiny drops of water like jewels…the bling from my title. I took a lot of pictures of Bordered Patches this trip, and this is my favorite.
Canon SX50HS in Program with -1/3rd EV exposure compensation and iContrast. 1800mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.