wildlife photography – Brennah's Backyard

Clearwing Moths

A couple of unusual and interesting moths in my area are the closely related hummingbird and snowberry clearwing moths. Both fly during the daytime, and hover in front of flowers they visit in a way that resembles a hummingbird sipping nectar. They also (as their name implies) both have large clear patches on their wings.

When I first spotted one of these moths (years ago now) I identified it as a snowberry clearwing. After that I began to assume all the large, clear winged moths I saw were the snowberry clearwing, but recently, going through and trying to identify various things I’d photographed, I realized I couldn’t remember what the difference between the two species was. I looked them up again, and realized that I’ve actually seen and photographed both (and there are actually a couple more less common species I haven’t seen).

The most obvious difference between the two species is that the snowberry clearwing has a black stripe running through the white patch on the head and ‘chest’ that meets the front pair of legs, which are also black, while on the hummingbird clearwing that patch and the front pair of legs are all consistently white. There are some subtle differences in the wings of the two species, but otherwise, both show a fair amount of variety in their colors and markings.

Though I think I’ve seen the snowberry clearwing most often, the best pictures I’ve gotten yet are of the hummingbird clearwing. But whichever species they are, they’re always beautiful and fun to see.

Hummingbird clearwing foraging on bee balm

Snowberry clearwing on oregano flowers. This is one of my older photos but it shows the stripe quite well.

Mysterious Tiny Holes

I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to all the tiny holes in the sand around the seasonal pond area until little flickers of movement inside the holes caught my attention. (For some sense of scale in the photo, what looks like little pebbles are grains of sand.) They were only ever in my peripheral vision; whatever creature I was seeing was apparently very fast and skittish.

Unable to see properly what kept darting back into the holes, I eventually resorted to crouching over ones I’d seen recent movement in with my camera and holding very still… and waiting. I had to have my camera focused on the spot they would emerge before they came out as any tiny movement would cause them to disappear. After a bit of patience (and physical discomfort) I managed to get a couple clear shots of the heads of the creatures poking out of the hole… but they didn’t look like anything I recognized.

I thought they might be the immature form of some insect, but it took me quite a bit of searching before I managed to find something that looked similar… a tiger beetle larva! I don’t know how to tell what species of tiger beetle just from the head of the larvae, but it is quite likely that these were bronzed tiger beetle larvae, because I’d seen quite a few adults of that species in the same spot earlier that spring.

The other interesting thing about looking up pictures of the larvae was that I realized that it was just the head and thorax that is so well developed at this stage, and the rest of the body looks more grub-like. I had thought, looking at them in my pictures, that they looked like little ambush predators with those large mandibles (added to the fact that they didn’t ever seem to come all the way out of their burrows), and it turns out that’s exactly what they are. They pop out and grab passing insects (or other small animals), which is also why their front end is so much more developed at that stage. (The adults are predators too, but they chase down their prey.)

‘Very fast and skittish’ is also a pretty good description of adult tiger beetles, and this is usually the easiest angle to get of them… but I actually like how well it shows off the beetle’s markings!

Wasp Watching

The past year turned out to be a good one for getting wasp photos for me, particularly this past August. When the first of the goldenrod started to bloom these plants turned into magnets for pollinators of all sorts, but I particularly noticed a lot of wasps, not just in numbers of individuals, but in diversity of species as well.

Before that, wasps had been congregating on the spotted horse mint / spotted bee balm (both common names for monarda punctata) in the pollinator garden by the house. I was having fun seeing how many different kinds I could spot as well as just appreciating their many different shapes and colors… but as I realized going through them later, even some very similar looking ones turned out to be different species.

I wanted to show off in this post some of the wasp variety I’ve been able to photograph through the years, though of course what I’ve managed to photograph is just a tiny sampling of what exists (there are some truly wild looking wasps out there, of which I’ve managed to photograph only a few). Also some of these photos are ones I’m more satisfied with than others.

The northern paper wasp (polistes fuscatus) has a significant amount of variety packed into one species. Their varied colors and markings make them fun subjects, plus I was starting to notice what seemed to be the same individuals hanging out on the same flower patches each day when I was doing really regular wasp walks.

This is a type of oak gall wasp laying eggs in an oak bud. Oaks are hosts to an impressive number of gall wasps, as well as other gall making insects which is part of why oaks are considered such important members of their ecosystems.

five banded thynnid wasp on flat-topped goldenrod

The common name of this wasp is the gold-marked thread-waisted wasp (which sounds more like a description of the wasp than a name… but at least it’s an accurate description!) These are certainly interesting looking creatures, but I’m not particularly happy with most of the pictures of them I have so far. Fortunately they don’t seem to be a rare species so hopefully I’ll be able to get some better pictures at some point.

grass carrying wasp on flat-topped goldenrod

This tachytes wasp (a genus known as sand-loving or green-eyed wasps) was quite mesmerizing, with both the green eyes and silvery stripes on the wasp’s abdomen being very shiny and reflective. The stripes even seemed to change color depending on the angle and lighting. These were also fast moving wasps, which probably exaggerated the reflective characteristics and made the wasp seem to shimmer in the sun. It also made it that much trickier to get good photos…

The four-toothed mason wasp is a fairly common species, and I’ve photographed them before, but this particular little guy gave me the opportunity to get the best pictures I have of this species.

The same wasp (I have quite a few pictures of him).

bald faced hornet enjoying the goldenrod.

This wasp was so tiny you might assume it’s a fruit fly if you see one… and this isn’t even as tiny as wasps get!

Great black digger wasp on swamp milkweed.

This mason wasp (euodynerus crypticus) may not have a common name, and there doesn’t seem to be much information about them out there. What little I was able to find piqued my interest, though; apparently it may be a social wasp, which I hadn’t heard of in the mason wasp family before. In any case, this species was regularly visiting the spotted bee balm, so I got to see them regularly for a little while.

Some sort of ichneumon wasp on the back of my hand. I found this wasp halfway through December!

Many species of solitary wasps, like this rusty spider wasp, specialize in hunting a specific type of prey that they will cache in a nest for their offspring. In the case of spider wasps, they specialize (as their name implies) in hunting spiders. I noticed one of these wasps hanging around the entrance to the garage one day, and then she disappeared into the garage for a while and I lost track of her, only to later spot her dragging a huge spider out!

Black giant ichneumon wasp on a dead tree.

four-banded stink bug wasp excavating a nest in sand. This wasp is also named for what they specialize in hunting.

Great black digger wasp on spotted bee balm.

A close up of the black giant ichneumon wasp. These wasp are a challenge to photograph because they’re just so long. They don’t fit in the frame well.

Myzinum maculatum is another wasp that doesn’t seem to have a common name, but they are closely related to the other thynnid wasps in this post.

Common thread-waisted wasp. I think this wasp had an injured wing, sadly.

Great golden digger wasp on spotted bee balm.

Four banded stink bug wasp on flat-topped goldenrod.

I found this cuckoo wasp at a local park. When I’ve seen cuckoo wasps before they’ve been pretty skittish, so I was happy to finally find one that was cooperative!

This picture shows the cuckoo wasp (the same one from the previous picture) between my knuckles, which shows how small this one was.

I’m looking forward to seeing what kinds of wasps I can find this year!

Bluebird and Dogwood Berries

Here is a series of photos I took shortly before I went to New Mexico of a bluebird doing acrobatics to reach some dogwood berries. This series is definitely an improvement over the last time I tried to photograph a bird eating dogwood berries (which was shortly after I got the telephoto lens and was still getting a feel for it). Though all these photos are cropped at least a little, I think it’s cool to be able to see some of the poses of a bird foraging for berries since they usually move a bit too fast to be able to see what they’re doing.

Last Aster Standing

Back in 2021 we started some native wildflowers from seeds. Since they are perennials they didn’t really fill out until the next year, though a few plants produced a scattering of flowers in their first year. One of of the species we planted was the aromatic aster. I chose it because it was supposed to be an especially late blooming and drought tolerant species (we’re mostly in a wetland, but had one dry area to plant) and by early November of last year it was the last aster still blooming. (To be fair, the most exuberantly blooming plant was in a favorable spot for soaking up late day warmth, and nicely mulched, which does help extend the growing season.) It was also one of the last few flowers blooming in general, so not surprisingly, it attracted the attention of all the remaining pollinators and concentrated them in a small patch of flowers. In particular, the asters were covered in bumble bees.

It was pretty easy to get some good pictures of the bumble bees since there were a whole bunch of them and they didn’t seem at all concerned about having a camera right next to them.

So many bees concentrated together in this patch sometimes led to bees foraging in close quarters…

These two got a little too close, and are trying to fend each other off here.

This little halictus bee also wasn’t too comfortable with having a big bumble bee wandering up behind him.

Another halictus bee resting on a flower. She hung out on this flower for quite a while.

There were a couple of drone flies hanging out in the midst of all the bees. Drone flies are a type of hover fly, also known as flower flies (and both names are quite accurate).

After the encounter with the bumble bee this halictus bee decided to groom himself and have a little rest, giving me a particularly good opportunity to take his portrait.

There were a few of these tiny, colorful agapostemon bees darting around. They’re tricky to photograph because they’re fast, but I noticed they would pause and rest every once and a while, so I managed to get a couple nice pictures of them.

A Wren and a Moth

I saw this little house wren at a nearby park last summer. Looking through my telephoto lens I was able to see the impressively large moth the bird was carrying. As I watched, the wren flew down from the tree and landed next to one of the metal posts that was marking out the parking area, and went inside (they were at least partially hollow). I could see the movement of chicks inside the post as the wren fed the moth to one of them.

Sleepy Squirrel

This fox squirrel I photographed this spring fell asleep while I was taking pictures…

Spotted Sandpiper

This little sandpiper landed not too far from me while I was out with my camera one day. I didn’t immediately recognize this as a species I’d seen before because it looks quite a bit different from the last one I photographed:

This is a photo of a sandpiper I took last summer, shortly after getting my telephoto lens.

When I went to identify my more recent sighting, I realized the markings suggested a young spotted sandpiper, and then I noticed the patch of downy fluff on the back of the neck of the bird in my photos… So the bird must have just molted into proper feathers and not quite shed all the fluffy chick down yet.

This photo shows the downy patch particularly well, but it was visible in almost all the photos.

The young sandpiper was also making some fairly exaggerated bobbing motions while probing around for food, which also turned out to be characteristic of the spotted sandpiper.

Sandpipers are shorebirds, so they forage around the edges of bodies of water. It’s good to be able to provide a bit of habitat for them, and nice of this youngster to provide me with a good clear view.

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.

The Blue Jay

This spring while out in the woods I noticed a blue jay watching me from a branch nearby. The jay’s idle curiosity gave me a generous opportunity to get some photos (I think I even had to switch lenses). I wouldn’t be surprised if this particular bird recognized me as a regular visitor to the woods.