July 16, 2011

How quickly the summer can sweep by, with no thought to the idle passing of time through photography! Fostering dogs, keeping busy with work, home improvement projects and Colorado's apparent recent fascination with severe rainstorms and Seattle-like weather have all conspired to fill the days! Fun, and slightly wet, activities to be sure, but it is good to sneak back out and visit with the smaller residents of this planet!

The gardens at the Westminster Butterfly Pavilion have really come along nicely (helped quite a bit, no doubt, by the interesting spate of moisture currently enjoying an extended stay) and offer numerous opportunities to photograph a host of invertebrates!

I was able to finally track down a great little milkweed beetle in the garden, and got this rather nifty shot of his mouthparts (look at that sharp cutting portion for munching through the tough milkweed leaf).

Here is another good view of our little milkweed beetle (Tetraopes tetrophthalmus), showing the pretty cool bisection of the eye by the antenna!

The ubiquitous harvestman makes a regular appearance throughout the garden. We can be pretty confident of capturing harvestman, aphids and bees every single visit.

I managed to sneak up a rather amorous pair of striped cucumber beetles. I think that the smaller male is on top and the larger female is resting on the leaf. Ah...le parfum doux l'amour!

While few insects visit the rather poisonous milkweed beyond our previous friend the milkweed beetle (and, of course, the monarch butterfly), bees certainly provide their timeless and critical pollination skills!

Here's a nice shot of a Rocky Mountain Bee Plant (Cleome serrulata) just as a local namesake arrives on the scene to take advantage of the full gorgeous blooms.

A neat shot of a honeybee in mid-flight, heading towards the beautiful flowers of the Rocky Mountain Bee Plant. I really like how the wings are a vivid blur as the bee motors along in search of pollen.

Clearly, the summer has been a bit rough on this young lady, as evidenced by the rather tattered condition of her wings. I am still amazed at how bee's eyes are so furry!

Just as I was preparing to head indoors to teach a photography class, I managed to snag a final photo of this little fly with amazing green eyes and really nifty markings on the wings. Perhaps a deer fly?

May 22, 2011

If you live in Colorado, you may have noticed that we are apparently enjoying Seattle-like weather these days. Long periods of rain with brief bouts of hail, followed by more rain. As a result of this quite wet spring is the grand influx of dandelions in my back yard. Not only do I have wonderful patches of bright cheerful yellow flowers, along with the very busy bee population, but I have the perfect subjects on which to try out new macro lenses! Thus, while generally we try to really focus on the more buggy aspects of Colorado nature, today I thought I would take a short break and celebrate the marvelous symmetry of that often over-look and frequently (and perhaps unjustly) cursed visitor to everyone's lawn.

I absolutely love how getting in close to nature often reveals some pretty incredible and rather nifty details. Such as the cool little barbs on dandelion seed heads. Not only are they quite cleverly designed to catch the slightest breeze, but the also have a handy backup plan in the form of catchy little arrow-like sticky ends.

I have always been fascinated by the structure of flowers, especially now that I have the macro equipment that allows me to really get in close and see the inner harmony of seed and petal, stem and leaf!

When you get in really, really close, I think that dandelion seed heads have an almost bucky ball appearance. One can just imagine building a series of tiny geodesic domes!

May 06, 2011

Ah, the heady time of spring. Trees heavily ladened with flowers, the growing hum and buzz of bees, life erupting from the very soil beneath our feet! Finally, we have returned to the garden to greet whom, or what, ever might be visiting now that the cold chill of winter has bid us a fond farewell. Not only do we see increasing activity including bees and spiders, but we see the debris of the past year as the earth slowly reclaims its own.

Like the bleached bones of some great animal, the desiccated exoskeleton of a common woodlouse slowly gives up its nutrients. Better known as "roly poly," or "pillbug," these familiar visitors to Colorado gardens are actually born as minute white offspring.

With the continued high winds of spring, we had very little luck finding insects to photograph around the flowers and shrubs of the garden. However, the soil yielded a rich bounty of last year's visitors (or at least their cast off sheddings as it were). I managed to locate this rather interesting millipede husk, just one of several insect bodies that had manage to survive in spite of snow and rain.

One of the best finds of the day was an almost intact bumblebee. The beautiful orange and yellow stripped body can be seen gently glowing through one of the wings in this rather nifty shot.

Those of you who have noted my previous posts will remember that jumping spiders rank high on my list of favorite invertebrates. Not only are they some of the tiniest of spiders, but they often sport some of the most incredible colors of any spiders I've photographed (at least currently). This little fellow, for example, exhibited bright yellow legs close to the body.

Here are a couple of very close shots of yet another woodlouse that did not make it through early spring. I was especially fascinated by the intricate pattern on the exeskeleton as well as the fine hairs that sprouted from each leg.

This is just a fun shot of a young harvestman on concrete. I've tweaked up the contract so that you can actually see him (her?), but initially the camouflage was actually pretty good!

Digging around a bit in the wood chips and dirt, I managed to come across this very cool molt from a small spider. I love how you can see down into each leg as well as the depression which would contain the sternum. Imagine if we, like spiders, needed to molt every so often as we grew!!

The one lone bee that actually cooperated with me during the morning's shoot. Sticking her head right into the grape hyacinth flower, she has started her busy morning early and provided a fine shot to a very happy, and satisfied, photographer!