Posts in Category: butterflies and insects
Triple Treat: Song Sparrow, Katydid, Lady Bug?
What we have here, I think, is a triple treat. The Song Sparrow is eating a Katydid, who in turn had just captured some kind of beetle in the larger Lady Bug family. The food chain in action! I have provided a link under the image (click it) so that you can view the image at larger size of blow it up. Be warned. It was taken at full zoom on the Canon SX40HS and with the 2x digital tel-converter function, so there is a limit to the detail available. Still an interesting image I think.
As above, Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. f5.8 @ 1/320th @ ISO 160. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Sawfly on Blazing Star
Continuing the theme of bugs on buds and blooms, here we have an Northern Sawfly on Northern Blazing Star, again from my photoprowl to the Kennebunk Plains last Saturday. Blazing Star is a thistle like flower, and begins life as a tightly furled bud that has to remind you of artichokes 🙂 if only artichokes were purple. I like the contrast of the bug with its hard bright striped shell, and the emerging softness of the flower, but what really makes the image work, I think, is the bokeh…that lovely pattern of greeny yellow out of focus behind the flower. That is the advantage of an extreme telephoto macro…this shot is at 1680mm equivalent field of view…though the actual focal length is a more reasonable 150mm.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. As above. f5.8 @ 1/400th @ ISO 125. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Pearly Crescent on Sunflower
Sometimes you just have to be fast (as well as in the right place at the right time). I saw this Pearly Crescent fluttering around and thought to myself, even though I have lots of pics of Pearly Crescents, if it lands on that Sunflower I will take the shot. It did, and my camera was half way up. I had to back off on the zoom for the framing. I got the shot only a second before the butterfly moved on. Sometimes you just have to be fast.
This is another shot from my Saturday, electric scooter powered, photoprowl at the Kennebunk Plains. The Sunflowers were growing wild down at the pond on Nature Conservancy property on the back edge of the Plains, where I also found a few dragonflies.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 856mm equivalent field of view. f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 100. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
White-faced Meadowhawk, Factory to Pasture Pond
The last week or so, White-faced Meadowhawks have been protecting territory along the edge of Factory to Pasture Pond. There are quite a few there, each male with its 5 feet of brush and shoreline. They get into little tiffs where territories touch…the males facing off in aggressive spiral flights, almost too fast for the eye to follow.
The Meadowhawks are smaller members of the larger Skimmer family and there are quite a few possible in Southern Maine. The White-faced is one of three bright red Meadowhawks, which differ primarily in the color of the face. The Cherry-faced has a slight red tinge to the face, while the Ruby tends toward a tan color. Other than that they are pretty hard to tell apart. I suspect I have a shot of a Cherry in amongst my White-faced shots, as I remember seeing a darker face, but I have not found it yet 🙂 It is certainly not among the images I have processed so far.
Second image is the female of the species, and what all the fuss is about among the males.
Then we have one from above, and one side on. The last shot was taken along the edge of the pond that is forested, so the Meadowhawks seem to establish territory even in taller trees.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. Shots at 1240 and 1680mm equivalent field of view using the full optical zoom, and either 1.5x or 2x digital tel-converter function. f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 800, 320, 320, and 100.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Eastern Pondhawk, Roger’s Pond, Kennebunk ME
I first saw an Eastern Pondhawk in New Jersey, while doing my informal photographic Big Day in conjunction with the World Series of Birding (see my Google+ post). It was a female and I immediately decided it was my new favorite dragonfly. I have caught two glimpses of a female here in Maine, both at Roger’s Pond. One landed at my feet last week, but I could not get the camera on it before it was driven off by the very aggressive Blue Dashers patrolling the shore.
This fellow was on the other side of the pond a few days later, and it was not until I got the images home and had my books out that I realized that it is the male Eastern Pondhawk. Very different! And certainly beautiful in its own way, if more subtle than the female. (Further research has shown that this is an immature male, which complicates the picture. The full adult male would lack the aqua shading, though it would retain the green face.)
In flight, and in good light, the apple-green face is very striking, though the dragon needs to be perched to appreciate the subtle slide from aqua to salty blue on the body.
As I say, the female, which I finally caught in camera a few days ago, is very different. I was actually on my scooter circling the pond when I saw her on a reed. I was off the scooter and camera in hand as fast as I could go. Even so, I had only seconds to get on her before the Blue Dashers drove her away again, and I never got as close as I would have liked. Still.
Together, the Eastern Pondhawks are one of the more interesting pairings. If you saw them mating, or otherwise together in the same frame, you might suspect they were two different species. It apparently works for them though 🙂
(It appears that both Male and Female Eastern Pondhawks are actually green. Even males start out green. The blue on the male is a waxy, powdery coating, called pruinosity, which develops on a lot of dragonflies as they mature, covering the true colors underneath.)
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. All at 1680mm equivalent (using the 2x digital tel-converter function). f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 125 (male), and 1/1000th @ ISO 400 (female).
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Ebony Jewelwing, Emmon’s Preserve. Happy Sunday!
I have been enjoying getting out most days on Froggy the Scoot (my frog-green electric scooter) on short lunch-hour and after-work photoprowls and dragonfly hunts, but some places are just beyond the range of the batteries in Froggy. Emmon’s Preserve, along the Batson River beyond Cape Porpoise (and managed by the Kennebunkport Land Trust) is just such a place. At something over 8 miles one way, it has to wait for a Saturday when I have a car available (rare in these days of driving-to-work daughters). It takes some planning.
I did manage a pilgrimage to Emmon’s yesterday, in hopes of finding the Ebony Jewelwings in flight, though it is a few weeks earlier than I photographed them there last year. The Batson flows down through mixed forest over a series ledges…little waterfalls and rapids…alternating with deep pools in the Preserve, so it is ideal Jewelwing habitat, and indeed, the male Ebonys put in an appearance soon after I arrived, as the sun worked its way through early clouds and the branches of the overhanging trees. Oddly I did not see a single female yet. I will get back there in the next few weeks to try to video some of the mating behavior.
There are few damselfies so striking as the Ebony Jewelwing. Jewelwings are large (comparatively speaking) broad-winged members of the Odonata family (damsel- and dragonflies), and carry their intensely colored wings vertically above the body most often when perched. They fly much more like butterflies than dragonflies, with a lot of flop and flutter, in short flights from perch to perch, and in even shorter flights as they flycatch from perches. It takes a lot of mosquitoes to keep a a hunting Jewelwing in flight, and, all things considered, I am very much on the side of the Jewelwings. 🙂
In the Ebony, the large black wings that give them their name are spectacular, but no more so than the metallic body flashing in the sun, most often an intense emerald, but sometimes, in certain lights, electric blue.
There is a level of intensity to the green that the camera just does not catch…though some of the shots from yesterday come as close as I have come.
Since the Ebony Jewelwings tend to return to favored perches even after flycatching it is easy to come back from Emmon’s, as I did, with way too many images…but they are, I think, worth the effort…even when it involves planning around drive-to-work daughters.
And for the Sunday thought: While I certainly see evidence that some process similar to that described by evolutionists is operating in nature, it will never be enough, to me, to explain the Ebony Jewelwing.
The Ebony Jewelwing is just too much fun…too whimsical, too utterly beautiful in such unlikely ways…for me to believe that it is the result of any process that is based on random chance and natural selection, no matter how long you give the process to work. I mean, for a simple little mosquito eating machine, or even organism, the Ebony Jewelwing is certainly overly ornate, well beyond any idea of practical functionality…delightful in a way that requires intelligence and a larger view of existence to appreciate, or even to imagine…or that is the way I see it.
I don’t need to go to nature for evidence that there is a creator (though I enjoy doing so)…the knowledge that there is a creator, and one who is loving all we are and all we know into existence, is inescapable in a relationship with Christ…but if I did need more evidence, then the Ebony Jewelwing would be pretty much enough, all by itself, for me. Happy Sunday!
7/10/2012: Common Whitetail
According to Dragonflies and Damselflies of the East by Dennis Paulson, the Common Whitetail lives up to its name…it is both common and widespread across the US, and it certainly has a white tail. I have seen it briefly and from afar at the Dragon Ponds down in the river marsh here in Maine, and then close up in Virginia by a pond on a gulf course at the resort my company was using for a training. It was real treat to find two males disputing over the little Arrowroot pond between Roger’s Pond and the Mousam River…a pond the size of a bathtub…and a female laying eggs in a corner. Great afternoon light and effective perches made for my first really good shots of the bug.
They call that effect on the abdomen (tail) of the dragonfly pruinosity, from the Latin for “frost”…as in “frosted with a white powder”. It happens to many species of dragonflies on various parts of their bodies, but is most pronounced here on the Whitetail.
And then we have the female ovapositing…laying eggs in the water. She bounded up and down in one spot, striking the surface with her abdomen over and over. The final image is of the male in a somewhat defensive posture. There was, as I said, another male attempting to dislodge this one from the pond. This one seemed to be protecting the female from the other male as she did her thing.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1240 and 1680mm equivalent fields of view. f5.8 @ 1/500 to !/1000th sec. @ ISO 125-200. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
7/4/2012: Twelve-spotted Skimmers, Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens
Happy 4th of July to you all.
You may have noticed that I am going through a dragonfly phase(or more properly, an odonata phase, since I am equally interested in damselflies). Though I had taken a few dragonfly images before, I mark a particular photograph of a Twelve-spotted Skimmer taken at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens almost exactly a year ago as the beginning of the phase.
Yesterday my wife and I took a trip back to the CMBC (it is somewhat of an anniversary tradition), and there were hundreds of Twelve-spotted Skimmers patrolling the ponds and the walks of the gardens. The TsS is a spectacular dragon at any time, but turn a hundred of them loose in a world-class botanical garden on a bright summer day and you do get some pretty interesting photo ops!
The lead two images are the male (I saw only three females the whole day). The following image is the female, and the third is a female in flight, as she deposited eggs in the water of one of the ornamental pools. The blur to her right is a male diving on her. Then a head on shot of a perched female.
Some of the males were showing their age. You can see the nick out of the edge of the wing in the 7th shot and evidently the 8th is the survivor of a bird attack. Still, I could not resist him on the furled iris.
And last but not least, two shots of unusual poses: on a giant rose blossom, and decorating the Hillside 8 sign.
Finally I can’t resist adding this dragonfly…not a Twelve-spotted Skimmer as near as I can tell…but impressive none the less. It has a 6 foot wing-span and is mounted about 10 feet from the ground at the Azalea gardens. The avid dragonfly collector can take it home (well, can have it shipped home) for only $14,000.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. Various combinations of zoom and digital tel-converter for equivalent fields of view from 840mm to 1680mm. f5.8 at ISOs ranging from 100 to 320 and shutter speeds from 1/100th to 1/1000th.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
7/1/2012: The Dragon Ponds. Happy Sunday!
As I have mentioned before, the Kennebunk Bridle Path is an old, abandoned trolley line that runs from Kennebunk to Kennebunkport within site of the Mousam River…a reminder of a gentler age of tourism in the Kennebunks. Today it runs through large sections of Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge and Kennebunk Land Trust Conservation lands. It is mostly used by joggers, bicyclist, and dog walkers, but it provides easy access to some very rich habitat along the river for those of us interested in such things.
Since discovering the joy of watching dragon- and damselflies, almost exactly a year ago this week, I have a new reason to explore the Bridle Path. On either side of where it crosses Route 9 near the Mousam bridge, it runs through marshland with lots of small ponds and pools. It takes a very high tide to flood the marsh (though it happens on occasion) so the water in these ponds and pools is mostly fresh. And they are surrounded by marsh grass standing in a few inches to a foot of water on a very spongy bed. Along the rise of the Bridle Trail, and in the forest edge behind the marsh, larger bushes and small trees provide perches. It is an ideal dragon- and damselfly hatchery, and provides the emergent adults with an excellent hunting ground. Now that I am paying attention, I have seen dozens of species there already this spring and summer.
So I have taken to calling one particularly rich area, where a small stream runs through the marsh and under the Bridle Path, the dragon ponds. “I am off on my scooter to the dragon ponds,” I say to my wife, and she knows just where I will be. It is 2.2 miles one way (with a quarter mile walk at the end), so it is an easy ride on Froggy the Scoot. (I can ever ride right to the pools along the Path, but mostly I walk in from Route 9.) Froggy (due to the neon green color), is seen here parked by the ponds yesterday (which are, believe me, out there in the grass). I actually bought Froggy the Scoot to be able to get to the ponds more often.
The lead photo is a female Widow Skimmer. I have seen the female several times now, but I have yet to find a male.
By far the most abundant dragonfly in the Ponds is the Seaside Dragonlet. This is a tiny dragonfly by dragonfly standards…most individuals are less than inch long. They perch a lot, compared to other dragons, so they are relatively easy to photograph. This is a female, and a male and female in tandem follows.
There are also damselflies. The most common, by far, is Eastern Forktail. What we have in the next photo is a closely related Citrine Forktail, the first I have seen at the Dragon Ponds.
Next we have a Four-spotted Skimmer, almost as common as the Seaside Dragonlets, and certainly the most common of the bigger dragons.
And I will follow that with another Skimmer, this time the Twelve-spotted Skimmer. They have emerged within the past few days, and are already present in some numbers.
The real prize yesterday, though I don’t yet have a fully satisfying image, was several Halloween Pennants Painted Skimmers patrolling the marsh (Ed note: still learning!). These are strong flyers, very orange in the sun, who rarely perch, so I spent about a hour and a half watching and waiting. I had given up several times and tried to get back on Froggy the Scoot to go home, only to have one fly tantalizing close and tempt me back to the edge of the marsh. One did finally perch within photo range…but by then the wind was up and the dragonfly picked such a high perch in the marsh grasses that, with the wind wiping the grass, it might almost as well have still been flying. Still…it is a magnificent dragon!
All this in a few hours at the Dragon Ponds.
And for the Sunday thought. As I stood watching the Halloween Pennants Painted Skimmers patrolling, following a relatively predictable pattern over the marsh, always out of reach, I found my self willing them to perch! I came as far as muttering it under my breath like an incantation. “Perch. Please perch.” “Go on. Perch right there!” “Please.”
I was not under any illusion that my plea would effect the dragonflies, even if I spoke out-loud. Dragonflies clearly have business of their own which has nothing to do with me or my desire to photograph them. I will admit to getting very wet feet trying to reach a pool in the marsh were they seemed to congregate at one point, but chasing dragonflies on the wing is even more futile that asking them to perch.
No, I know who I am addressing. My mutters are not a plea to the dragonflies, but a prayer to the spirit that moves in both them and me. I am asking for a blessing, plain and simple, knowing I don’t deserve one and that I can’t earn it no matter how patient I am. Dragonflies will fly, unless, of course, they perch. When this one did, and I finally got the camera to focus on it while it clung to the waving grass, and I shot of a few bursts of images, it was purely a gift, and I was impossibly thankful.
It made my day. It sustained me when Froggy the Scoot ran out of battery half way home. it kept a smile on my face while I sweated the scooter up the final little hill and across the yard. It blossomed to an irrepressible grin when I got the images up on the laptop and saw I had a few keepers.
I know I am blessed to have the Dragon Ponds within reach. I have been especially blessed by a perching Halloween Pennant Painted Skimmers. It is not world peace, or an end to hunger, I know, but it makes me happy, hopeful, full of quiet joy. This is, I think, a good thing. Happy Sunday from the Dragon Ponds.
6/30/2012: Dark Female Seaside Dragonlet
This is the first day of a few days of vacation and I am clearly all discombobulated. I have been to the dragon ponds down by the river twice already on my scooter, and processed images in between, but I have not posted my Pic 4 Today. Here goes.
This is a dark form, female Seaside Dragonlet. I have posted the more common orange tiger striped variety before, but this one is so nicely posed I could not resist.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1680mm equivalent field of view (840 optical zoom plus 2x digital tel-converter function). f5.8 @ 1/320th @ ISO 200.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.