macro photography – Page 2 – Brennah's Backyard

Harvestmen

A harvestman on elderflowers. This one had especially interesting markings.

I am quite fond of harvestmen (aka daddy long legs). I’m not exactly sure why I like them so much; the best way I’ve managed to describe it is that they just seem like peaceful little forest spirits… although they’re not found only in the woods, but they do seem particularly plentiful there. So, I suppose, much like the woods, they are a calming presence. Getting good photos of them, though, is a bit tricky. It isn’t that they are uncooperative (they’re actually probably more cooperative than most creatures), but super close up pictures of them tend to look pretty awkward with their legs mostly not in the frame, and they like to hang out in fairly dim places, making it hard for their colors and markings to be visible. I am now finally building up a small collection of harvestman photos that I like.

A harvestman on a mossy patch on a fallen tree

Despite being pretty common, easy to find creatures, not many people seem to know what harvestmen are; they are often called spiders, but, though they are arachnids, they belong to their own group. (They’re actually thought to be more closely related to scorpions.) The name ‘harvestmen’ refers to the order opiliones, which is a pretty general category. (For example, butterflies and moths are an order, and beetles are another order. And so are spiders.) So, not surprisingly, there are lots of different kinds of harvestmen. They come in many different sizes, shapes, and colors and have a variety of diets and habits. The harvestmen in these photos are only a tiny fraction of their variety.

Although harvestmen look similar to spiders, they don’t have two distinctly separate body segments as spiders do. They also don’t produce silk or venom. Instead of venom carrying fangs, they have a pair of tiny pincer like claws. (I’ve actually seen them carrying things with these claws, though I haven’t gotten a good look at the claws themselves as they’re tucked under the harvestman’s body.) They also use their second pair of legs (from front) as feelers and I’d noticed them probing around with them (and also that that pair of legs is often extra long) before I was able to find information about it.

Harvestman on a hydrangea flower cluster

I’m always happy to see these little guys even if I don’t end up taking pictures of them, but I do hope I’m able to get better at photographing them.

Hidden Patterns

I like being able to figure out interesting ways to photograph familiar subjects that shows them in a much different way than people are used to seeing them (usually in a way that draws attention to something I’ve noticed about them). These photos are a good example of that concept:

If you weren’t able to figure it out, these are veins on the ‘wings’ of maple seeds (which are technically called samaras). The samara in the second to last photo is the oldest; the green between the veins is actually the background because that one was pretty translucent. These were all cropped at least slightly which gives them a nice abstract look, but I also liked some of them uncropped too.

Details of a Grape Leaf

Here is a photo I took of a young grape leaf. I think what had originally attracted me to photographing this particular leaf was the sun shining through it, highlighting the leaf veins. But in the end, I actually preferred this shot from the front, instead of the ones with the light coming through the leaf. There are lots of interesting little details in this photo, like the tiny hairs on the midrib (and some of the more major leaf veins) and the veins that form an almost perfect pentagon… which is why I decided to include this close up cropped version as well.

A Jumping Spider Goes Hunting

A jumping spider with a fly (larger then the spider) hanging in midair

I was out with my camera one day and I spotted this little jumping spider with an impressively large catch (a green bottle fly, I think). Jumping spiders are active little hunters; they do not build webs and wait for prey to get trapped, they search out and pounce on their prey. In this case, by the time I spotted them both the fly and the spider were suspended in midair by a strand of the spider’s silk (which they use as a safety line when they leap off of things) and spinning wildly. I’m not sure if the spider managed to pounce on the fly in midair or if the fly took off right after being pounced on.

This was the first picture in the series, when the spider and fly were still spinning. I was using a relatively fast shutter speed, but you can still see the motion blur from the spinning. I think it makes for an interesting action shot, though.

After subduing the fly, the spider reeled it up the silk thread.

First Butterflies of Spring

There are a couple of fairly common woodland butterflies that I usually start to see right around this time of year: the comma butterfly and the mourning cloak butterfly. It should be a bit of a toss-up which I see first since they start to appear at roughly the same time. In practice, it seems like I usually spot the mourning cloak first. This year was no exception to that; I spotted my first mourning cloak on the 21st (I didn’t have my camera with me at the time, though), and I haven’t spotted a comma yet.

The two species are relatively closely related and have a similar strategy that allows them to be present super early in the spring; both overwinter as adults and can feed on tree sap so they aren’t dependent on flowers blooming to be active.

Mourning cloak butterfly — This mourning cloak butterfly was basking in a patch of sunshine in the woods which might be part of why I was able to creep up on it. Their distinctive colors and markings make them pretty unmistakable.

Comma butterfly on willow catkins — This comma butterfly is perched on one of its host plants (plants their caterpillars develop on), willow.

Wildlife Photography Requires Patience…

It occurred to me that in one of my last posts ‘Life in a Dead Tree’, I described the bees I found nesting in the tree, and included the best photo I’d managed to take of one of them, which wasn’t very good. I knew at the time that it wasn’t particularly good, but decided it was better than nothing. That didn’t stop me from trying to get a better one next time their nesting season came around. It took me over a month of attempting whenever the weather seemed good for bees to be active, but I finally managed to get the photos I was after. And some of my ‘failed’ attempts were actually kind of cool in their own right.

nest hole of an augochlora sweat bee with bee antennae poking out — At the time I took this picture, I wasn’t sure whether to be amused or disappointed that only the bee’s antennae were visible… I did not have a proper picture of these bees nesting yet, and the bee seemed to have no intention of coming out the rest of the way. It is kind of cute though, and now I can properly enjoy it knowing I eventually succeeded in photographing these bees.

nest hole of an augochlora sweat bee surrounded by wood dust — This is the nest of the bee I waited for for quite a while (in a not very comfortable position) to come out of her nest. All she ever did was poke her antennae out a bit. I spotted this nest thanks to all the ‘sawdust’ piled around the entrance from recent excavations. All you can really see of the bee in this photo is a tiny glint of green in the hole.

native bee excavating a nest in a log — This is not the species of bee I was after, but it was my first decent photo of a bee emerging from a nest in a log. It isn’t quite as sharp as my next set of pictures, but it does show the bee actively excavating her nest (you can see the chewed up wood in her mandibles) which I think is pretty cool.

Augochlora sweat bee at the entrance to her nest — My first clear shot of an augochlora bee exiting her nest!

Augochlora sweat bee on a mossy log — Another bee scoping out a log. I don’t know if she had a nest here, or if she was looking for a spot to build her nest, but she looked pretty next to the yellow-green moss. Her genus name, augochlora, actually translates to ‘gold-green’.

Great Lobelia in Winter

Earlier this winter I spotted some interesting looking structures on an old dried lobelia plant. They were pretty tiny, so, as I frequently do, I brought out my macro lens to photograph them and get a better look.

part of great lobelia seed capsule — The ‘interesting structures’ on the lobelia

They turned out to be the skeleton of the part of the plant that holds the seed capsules. I realized this when I managed to find one that was still holding on to a capsule.

Great lobelia seed capsule — Great lobelia with seed capsule.

In summer, great lobelia has distinctively shaped blueish-purple flowers. In winter it is very much just one more dried plant stem unless you look very closely!

Life on a Dead Tree

There is a particular fallen tree in the woods that I visit frequently, because there is usually something interesting to see there. When it was still standing, I identified it as a wild cherry, and although I’ve seen others, this one was the largest.

wild black cherry tree (Prunus serotina) — The wild cherry tree when it was still standing

A while after the tree fell, I started to notice a lot of different mushrooms growing on it, and I started to make a habit of checking on it to see if there were any particularly photogenic mushrooms there while I was out taking pictures in the woods.

This spring while out in the woods taking pictures of the various wildflowers and trying to determine what kind of pollinators they were providing for, I noticed new interesting things happening with the downed cherry. At first I noticed the metallic green bees darting around the dark, scaly bark. Then I saw something green and shiny, but it wasn’t a bee…

A six-spotted tiger beetle (cicindela sexguttata)

Even though tiger beetles have a bit of a reputation for being hard to photograph, I found the little green sweat bees to be much more difficult, at least in the circumstances the fallen tree offered. They were attracted to the dead tree as a nesting site and I would see them darting around the wood, but almost anytime they landed, they would immediately disappear into the tiny holes in the wood that were the entrances to their nests.

I’m sure there are more creatures than just the ones I noticed making use of the dead tree as habitat, and I’ll continue to notice more as I keep on visiting the tree.

A toad that was sheltering under the bark of the tree

A seedling growing from a crack in the bark. I don’t know if this is a good place for this seedling to be growing, but I thought it was interesting.

Bee Hunt

I spent a large portion of the warmest day of the year thus far trying to find a particular bee. The bee I was looking for (colletes, probably colletes inaequalis) was one that I’d seen regularly in the spring and was often one of the first bees I’d find, but last year, I didn’t see any. I wasn’t sure if it was because they weren’t around, or if I just wasn’t looking at the right times. I did eventually spot some, but for some reason, they seem more skittish than I remember them being. Also complicating matters, the willows I was searching for them on have grown a bit too tall for me to see all the catkins well, and I noticed a hover fly with strangely similar coloration to these bees all over the willow catkins, making it hard to tell at a glance if the little flash of silver and black I was seeing should be followed. Makes me wonder if the flies are mimicking the colletes bees, though… they certainly look like they could be, but these bees aren’t exactly intimidating, so why mimic them specifically?

Hover fly (syrphid) on willow catkin — Hover fly on willow catkin

In the end, I found that some of the bees were visiting the flowering winter crops in the hoophouse and I managed to catch a couple on their way out. The bee in the picture pretty much flew into my hand and I took the opportunity to hang on to him just long enough to get my camera ready.

Mining bee (andrena) — And for one last look-alike, here is a mining bee (an andrena species) on a willow catkin.

Honey Bees in March

For honey bee colonies that have made it through the winter, the month of March can still be a difficult and risky time. Especially towards the beginning of the month, there isn’t much of anything for them to forage on. Despite that hinderance, the bees are busily expanding their brood rearing operation. The colony’s growing new generation requires more resources than what the relatively small (and all fully grown) winter generation needed. If the colony was successful the previous season, this should be no problem; their stores of honey and pollen would be adequate for the job.

Honey bee foraging on flowers from our winter crops — Honey bee grooming pollen off of her antennae, to be collected in her pollen baskets.

But in the case of my colonies, which were started late last year, and then faced a weirdly early start to winter, they were a bit short on pollen, which is especially important for their developing brood. The warmth of spring also came fairly early this year, and so there was plenty of time before anything was blooming outside for the bees to be out and about, looking for something to feed their brood.

honey bee with pollen on tokyo bekana flowers — Honey bee gathering pollen from Tokyo bekana flowers. Tokyo bekana is a very mild green in the mustard family that we grow during the winter.

Meanwhile in the hoophouse many of the winter crops were starting to bolt (produce their flowers), and the warmer temperatures meant that the louvres were open most of the time… So before long, the bees discovered it and were flying in through the louvres to gather pollen from the bolting winter crops. This would have been just fine, if they were able to find their way back out. Unfortunately, although they were very clever about navigating their way in, when they decide it is time to return to the hive, they tend to try to fly towards the sun, rather than retracing their path. I guess maybe they need to orient themselves for a while before they can pick out their route home? However it works, the result was that with just the louvres open, most of them couldn’t find their way out, and with the sides also opened up, some of them still found themselves stuck in the corners. (Bumble bees don’t have this problem… they seem to be extremely good navigators. They’ll fly into a corner occasionally, but usually after trying unsuccessfully to escape for a minute they just go off and try another way.)

Honey bees foraging on flowers from our winter crops

My response to this was to gather flowers from the bolting plants and arrange them in what I hoped would be a tempting display not too far from the hives (but also not too close, because that can lead to robbing, sometimes) and to catch bees that got in the hoophouse and brush them out of the corners.

Honey bees foraging on flowers from our winter crops

The bees seemed to appreciate having a nearby patch of flowers to forage on, but some of them would still start flying into the hoophouse on the warmest days. One day toward the end of March, I noticed very few bees getting into the hoophouse despite it being a warm sunny day, and there were fewer on the patch by the hives. Finally, something else was flowering for them… but what was it? I didn’t see them on the hazelnut catkins that were just starting to open. Hazelnuts are wind pollinated and offer only pollen, which they would have gone for if something wasn’t offering them a better deal. It turned out to be the silver maples back in the woods.

Silver maple flower (I don’t have pictures of the bees on the flowers because most of the flowers were way up above what I could reach, and I actually had to trek quite a ways just to find a tree with a low hanging branch with flowers I could photograph. The bees, meanwhile, probably don’t find it worth their while to come down there much when most of the flowers are up high.)

So now, as more things join the silver maples (willows are also starting to open their catkins now), the colonies will start to grow, and turn their attention toward their next season, which is the swarming season.

Pollen dusted honey bee hanging from a willow catkin