Posts in Category: wasp
Hairstreak photobombed by Yellowjacket! Happy Sunday.
Coral Hairstreak Butterfly and Yellowjacket Wasp, Day Brook Pond, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, W. Kennebunk ME
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
This might be one of those Instagram or Facebook celebrity photo bomb shots 🙂 The Choral Hairstreak was busy with the Meadowsweet blossoms and I was busy taking it’s pic, when this Yellowjacket buzzed in from the left. The Yellowjacket was after smaller prey lower in the flower cluster, but it looked for an instant like it might go for the Hairstreak. Talk about being in the right place at the right time!
And I had already had a great morning at the pond. This shot was right next to the car in the parking area. I had already put my camera bag in the car and was looking forward to cranking up the AC…but the Hairstreak right there beside me was irresistible, so I dug the camera out again. And you just never know what God is going to provide when you open your eyes and turn them on nature. I am, based frequent experiences of this kind, always ready to be blessed when I turn my attention outward, with or without my camera lens.
In a week of news from the Republican Convention and the presidential campaign, I need this kind of experience to remind me that the world is not nearly as dark as the politicians portray it. In fact, for the generous eye, the world is as bright as it has ever been…and that is bright indeed. Yes there are pockets of darkness…always have been and always will be while human beings exploit each other…where greed and self-interest rule the human heart…but that is not, no matter what you hear from the podium or the pulpit, the norm. The norm is generosity and light. The norm is grace. The norm is love. That is because light, grace, and love…generosity…is the nature of the God who creates all we know and all we are…who lives in all we know and is the true being of all we are. For people my age, i can say that the world is a brighter place today than it was when we were children. Safer, saner, with more people who walk in love…less want, more openness, more fairness, more inclusiveness. And yes the actions and effects of those who are motivated by greed…the stingy eyed…is often on display in today’s “bad news is good news” media world…but that does not mean we have to give the darkness, or those who peddle it in whatever from, power over our lives. God is good…in God there is no shadow or turning…and we get to live in the world we choose. Open your eyes wide in generosity…and be the light in this world we are intended to be. Happy Sunday!
Blue-green Cricket Hunter (?) Wasp
Blue-green Cricket Hunter Wasp? Laudholm Farms, Wells ME
I believe this amazing creature, only a little over a half inch long, might be a Blue-green Cricket Hunter Wasp. It could also be a Blue-green Mud Wasp. I have not been able to find any images via a Google search that have the white spot between the wings or the white section in the particularly long antenna. If it is not one of the species mentioned above, it is certainly a close relative. I found it while photographing Bittersweet at the Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farms a few days ago. This is a collage of three shots.
Sony Alpha NEX 5T with 16-50mm zoom @ 140mm equivalent field of view (2x Clear Image Zoom). Processed in Lightroom and assembled in Coolage.
Pelecinid Wasp is strange all over!
Pelecinid Wasp, Day Brook Pond, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, Maine
It has been at least a year, and it may have been two, since I encountered a Pelecinid Wasp. My first sighting was at Emmons Preserve in Kennebunkport. This one came from Day Brook Pond on the Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area. I was surprised to see it fly across the path in front of me and land in a small birch at the edge of the forest…but there is no mistaking this very strange bug with its extended abdomen trailing out behind a body with such small wings that it seems totally impossible that the thing could fly. The long abdomen is used to inject eggs into scarab beetle larvae while they are still underground. Close up, the hind legs feature strange bulges, which have no apparent use. Stranger still, almost all Pelecinid Wasps seen or collected in North America are females. Males, with a shorter, swollen abdomen, only account for 4% of sightings. It is possible that female wasps develop from unfertilized eggs…and that would make them very strange indeed, as insects just do not do that. But then, if that is case…why are there any males at all? Strange. The Pelecinid is strange all over.
Sony HX90V at about 1400mm equivalent field of view (using Clear Image digital Zoom). 1/250th @ ISO 400 @ f6.4. Processed in Lightroom.
Life Bug!
Since beginning to photograph dragonflies seriously a few years ago, I have become much more aware of all insects…wasps, bees, and beetles will catch my eye and bring the camera into play. I am sure I have seen many new bugs in the past year, but most were wasps and bees and beetles that I might have looked at hundreds of times in the past and never given a second look. This bug however stopped me in my tracks. Not only had I never seen it…I had never seen anything remotely like it! Life Bug for sure.
Taken at Emmons Preserve in Kennebunkport ME.
It turns out it is an American Pelecinid, a wasp relative, and a female at that. Though females are apparently fairly common in late summer across a range that stretches from Central America up into Canada, males (with shorter abdomen) are so rare that it is assumed they are not needed for reproduction (which begs the question: why are there any males at all?). That ferocious looking abdomen is in fact pretty harmless…no sting…and the bug itself is not aggressive. No bother at all unless you are a scarab grub larve, in which case you could become a unwilling host to Pelecinid eggs.
Sony HX400V at 2400mm equivalent field of view. ISO 80 @ 1/250th @ f6.3. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet.
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!
Strange Beauty. Happy Sunday!
Or maybe the beauty of the strange. This Great Golden Digger Wasp was one of many insects enjoying the thistle blooms yesterday at my local dragonfly ponds. It is certainly interesting for its contrasting color alone. And then the textures: furry and hard and gossamer wings. And the form. Those huge black eyes, the waving antennas, and that unlikely waist. None of it is conventionally beautiful, but the sum is certainly eye-catchingly compelling.
I did not always see the beauty in wasps. I am coming to it though, through my study of dragonflies and damselflies. After two years with the Odonata, now I look closely at every bug!
Canon SX50HS. Program with my usual modifications. 1800mm equivalent field if view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ISO 500. Processed in Lightroom.
And for the Sunday thought. In order to see the beauty of the Great Golden Digger Wasp you have to get beyond the fact that it is a bug. And a wasp at that. For many humans that is simply too much to ask. Our horror of the creepy crawlies is too deep-seated. And any wasp is seem as a potential threat. And I mean, let’s face it: The Great Golden Digger Wasp is just so strange…so alien…so very other. The eyes alone are the stuff of nightmares. And yet I am convinced that being able to see the beauty of this creature is a spiritual “step in the right direction.” It is an act of insight that prepares us to see the beauty in each other…which is, of course, a spiritual necessity. (And sometimes that is no harder than seeing the beauty in this wasp.) On a deeper level it prepares us for the realization that all that lives is beautiful because it lives…because it is an expression of the one creative life that lives all creatures…another expression of the loving life that creates us all.
So take another look at the Great Golden Digger Wasp. Seeing its beauty is a small step, but it is a step in the right direction.