Category: Insects

It’s a Darner but Darned if I Know Which

Thanks to hurting my foot yesterday, I’m trying to stay off of it as much as I can.  Bad for me, but good for my blog fans because this means a few more opportunities to get some posts out.  Yesterday’s entry focused on one of the many inhabitants in/around our local ponds.  Keeping with that theme, figured I’d go ahead and throw out another member of the pond community – the Dragonfly.

I have been amassing quite the dragonfly collection and a number of them have been featured in various posts (link here, here, here and here).  I know for a fact there are a few more I was able to get in the tin while out in the Nevada mountains.   I’ve stated this in about every single post on these insects but it is ALWAYS a given – identifying these often colorful winged creatures is damn near impossible.  I firmly believe this is more of an issue with the reference tools available on the web (and iPad) than it is a general comment about identification.  Every site that could be located by Google was scoured for any identifying features that would properly classify this dragonfly.   Clearly it has light blue markings on a deep purple base.  A very nice palette by the way if you are looking for a team color scheme.  It also has the unique club/tendril end to the abdomen that one would think is sufficient to track it down.  Of course, that would be just too easy now wouldn’t it.  About the only thing that could really be said with some certainty is you are likely staring at a Darner.  That is all fine and dandy, but WHICH ONE!

It did help to be able to focus on the Darner group but the web kept offering up conflicting images or bad descriptions and or photos.

The Bug Guide offered up this example of a Variable Darner (link here).  The color match is pretty close at least on the turquoise side, but doesn’t really have the deep purple look in the base.   The Dragonfly Whisperer actually provided a nice comparison of two potential dragonflies – particularly one he calls the Happy Face Darner (Paddle Tailed Darner) and the other being a Shadow Darner (link here).  Based on that information the best candidate appears to be the Shadow Darner.    Not to be outdone, the Land that Ugly Forgot (link here) which simply refers to it as a blue dragonfly – not exactly the most helpful reference but some nice pictures none the less (note, I have that red one in the tin as well).  Steve Rottenborn (link here) had a sample of Variable Darners but again it looks like the Happy Face ones from above as well as the previous Variable reference – see, I told you it was hard.    Next up the New Jersey Dragonfly site (link here) which offers up a Canada Darner that doesn’t look that far off from the Variables.  Ugh.  Not to be out done, the Sonic site (link here) refer to a similar looking examples as .. wait for it … California Darners – looks like a Variable to me!  Since we are on a role, how about some more Variables at the Utah site (link here).

Let’s take another look at mine.

Personally, the Shadow Darner seems to be the closest match.  Not emotionally tied to that decision in any way beyond having spent a heck of a lot of time trying to track it down.  Does look like the all red one I have is going to be easier to identify once those get processed in .. say about 6 to 8 months.  That’s all for now folks – getting warm out now so see you at the pond!

That Ain’t No Fish

Having just committed myself to another Half Marathon thought it would be good to get a post out before training takes over ALL my free time.  This will be the earliest in the race season I’ve run this distance.  Usually I build over the course of the season starting with the 5Ker’s moving to the 15K, back to the 7mi and THEN prepare for the final two halfs of the year.  Decided to short change that process a little and simply start with the 13.1.  No, I didn’t go crazy – umm, that may be up for debate.  Regardless, there is a reason and we’ll leave it at that.  The downside is it means there wasn’t really an off season this year as I continued to run through the winter months (yes, even outside when the temps actually got about 20).  Hoping the body holds together!

Oops, enough about my self-inflicted torture, let’s get to the post shall we.

I almost titled this post as Live and Let Die but that will make more sense later in the post.  Thought it would be fun to fall back on the memories when Globull Warming allowed me to go outside and spend time on the porch for more than 3 minutes at a time.  Take a look at this find

Creeeeepy.  I can honestly say this is the first time I’ve seen such a creature.  Definite concerns as to whether it could inflict harm on me or not.  It was definitely scary looking with the wings folded, but when I saw it with the wings spread I took an extra step back and got my wits before going in with the Macro again – looking through that glass puts you right up close and personal.

Hit the jump unless you don’t want to see the up close shots (but at least you’ll learn what it is!)

Continue reading That Ain’t No Fish

12 Spots Check – That Was Easy … Ugh

Since I am a glutton for pain, figured I might as well make it two dragons in a row.  If you recall from the last post (link here), the pain part comes during the identification process.  In truth, they are such fun to photograph that the effort to identify them is a small price to pay.  If you can get them to stand still long enough you can usually pull of pretty impressive shots.

These dragonflies were also taken at the Jubilee State Park pond on one of those days when the birds decided to stay indoors in the cool air conditioning.  Never want to waste a day out in the field so anything with wings will due.  Case in point the two dragons featured here.  This particular shot .. which you will notice produced the two following shots .. came out nice from a texture perspective.  You kind of lose it from the base shot, but when you zoom in a bit it really produces a nice overall effect – not to mention the color palette with the dragon coordinated quite well.

So this is where it became interesting.  The obvious characteristic is the wing spots.  The body is a common brown and the eyes are not as unique as the previous Dragonhunter.  However, the fact that both of these have exactly 12 spots on their transparent wings was enough to go hunting on the web.  That hunt produced results immediately.  Turns out there is a Dragonfly named Twelve-Spotted Skimmer.  Taking you way back, a Widow Skimmer had made its presence known on the blog before (link here).  The first reference link was the Montana Field Guide (link here).  Their reference image was a little troubling in that it had white spots on the wings along with the darker spots.  As you can see, my specimen had nothing of the sort – just black spots.  That just means another validation with or friends over at Wikipedia (link here).  That produced a similar image labeled the male, however, they had another reference shot of the female and NO WHITE SPOTS!

Hit the jump to see some pics of the male .. and just maybe a correction.

Continue reading 12 Spots Check – That Was Easy … Ugh

Fly Dragonhunter Fly

Thought I’d go with a Dragonfly post for today since I’m still trying to give you a break from the barrage of birds you had to put up with last month.  Trust me, there are plenty more to come from our feathered friends but in due time.  Until then, let’s take a look at a subject that has a tendency to drive me completely bonkers when trying to identify them.

You would think that a creature with so many unique colors and distinct features would be a breeze when it comes to determining what it is.   Instead, I liken it to trying to trying to identify a specific type of Sparrow.  Countless hours are spent interrogating the web for any clear cut way to label them.   Too bad I can’t show you the number of tabs I have open on my browser right now – there must be close to thirty of them in all each providing  a close reference shot or pointing to a guided ID site.  Pretty sure this is the same troubles I had with identifying the previous set of Dragonflies (link here).  Guessing I gave up then since there was no identification there.  It was a different Dragonfly for sure so that would not have helped me much. My consensus at this time from all the references is this creature is a Dragonhunter.  Greg Lasley’s site (link here) had a sample which comes pretty close.  The coloring in his showed definite yellow on the bottom – hoping it is just the angle that makes mine look a little darker.

Then there is the problem with apparently everyone making up their own names for them.  I first found the Insect Identification site which referred to them as Western Flying Adder (link here).  Based on that I was searching high and low for a Western Flying Addr which just produced a bunch of snakes until I found a reference on What’s That Bug site where the moderator calls into question the name (link here).  Then we have the Illinois Butterfly site (link here) that has a similar picture that is labeled as an Arrowhead Spiketail.  This prompted an hour of tracking down that name until I took a close look at the yellow markings on the top of the body near the head and decided that was different.  Oh and of course on the same website they have a picture of a Lancet Clubtail (link here) which looks damn close as well.  Sigh, why is this so hard?  Decided to spend some more time there and did find their specimen for a Dragonhunter (link here). which again looks like the best reference.  A quick check of our friends over at Wikipedia list the Dragonhunter and then state is is sometime called a Black Clubtail or a Black Dragon.  Unbelievable.  I will say the region map at the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center (link here) was pretty sparse in our area, but unless someone has other opinions I’m going with the Dragonhunter Dragonfly.  A pretty cool name actually.

Talk about work.  If they weren’t so cool to photograph I’d probably just throw in the towel and focus on the frogs at the pond instead.

The Good and the Bad of Big Glass Depth of Field

Greetings all! I am finally getting back on my feet after the month from hell. Once all the adrenaline and excitement wore off from the race and party I started realizing what a toll it all took on my body. Even with my customary week off relaxing (yep, no running, and no work on Project Auuunoold) I still couldn’t shake the aches and pains. The next week started and I was beginning to get concerned. Figured I’d start the rebuilding process this week … back on the core to get the body fixed up and stretched and a little biking for cardio is starting to work their magic. Still not ready to run yet but due time, due time. In the meantime, thought I’d toss out a quick post.

Tonight’s topic is that very tricky subject of Depth of Field (DoF). To be honest, this is one of those photography topics I am trying to get a better understanding of – primarily because I’m constantly fighting it out in the field especially with the Beast. My quick and dirty definition of DoF is the measurement of how much distance will be in focus (sharp) for a given set of exposure, glass and camera specs. I still have a lot of learning to do on this subject so there will not be any expert advice here – I’ll certainly come back on this subject once I get read up on it some more. The good, or the bad depending on your point of view, is that you can see the effect pretty easily.

Take a look at some shots from a shoot Linda and I took back in July. We were out at Jubilee and due to lack of birds was spending my time on anything else I could find that had wings.

So there I was with my standard birding setup which consists of the Beast (200-400mm) coupled with the 1.4 Tele on the D7000 (1.5 crop sensor).  These shots were taken at around the 3.6 to 3.8 m range hand held… and people wonder why I continually workout.  These dragonflies were all over the place darting to and fro so I decided to get a little small subject focusing practice in.  When the subject is smaller than the central focus region, the glass tends to walk a lot, especially the long glass.  So there I stood happily shooting away.  That happiness lasted until I got home and started assessing the output.  Notice anything glaring wrong with the first shot?

The right wings are nice and crispy, but what the hell is up with the left side?  Was that particular wing moving at the time … doubtful, they tend to move both sets of wings in unison from what I have experienced and the 16oo ISO would have compensated for that anyway.  The problem is in the focus parameters.   My depth of field is not encompassing the full thickness of the subject.

I was fighting the glass to keep it on target and firing away on fast multi-shot so there were plenty of other examples to explore.  Hit the jump to see more examples of DoF.

Continue reading The Good and the Bad of Big Glass Depth of Field

Pleasantly Planned Luck

Jumping back to the photography related posts for this entry. If you spend any time on my little off ramp here, you have probably noticed that a large portion of my time behind the glass is spent shooting wildlife – particularly my feathered friends and the larger mammals when the opportunity arises. In truth, I actually take a lot of pictures of different subjects but generally keep those to myself unless there is something unique (leopard moths) or creepy about them (think arachnids). Every once in awhile I’ll go crazy and take a picture of a perfectly still mountain or lonely tree. These choice shots I tend to leave for my wife because that is her domain and I wouldn’t want to intrude on that or we might get into competition on who has better focus principles, who has better mastery of composition or grasps the concepts of light. Everybody knows I’m not really one for competition especially when it comes between a husband and wife. Unfortunately, a certain someone has started creeping out of “her” ummm let’s go with “their” comfort zone…. maybe taking big game shots and pitting them against other wildlife shots. I’m fine with that, of course, just saying…

So today, I decided to branch out a little myself just to mix it up a little bit around here. Linda and I were out at Jubilee Park, once again checking out what the park had to offer for photo ops. The birds have been a little scarce the last few times we were there forcing me to look a little closer to ground for interesting subjects. This led me to a clump of purple wildflowers filled with activity.

As the norm these days, the D7000 was supporting both the Beast and 1.4 Tele (I need to give this one a cool name too).  What better time than to get a little practice in on using big glass on smalls.  For those who have not tried this, to characterize it as a difficult is a huge understatement.  It is hard enough trying to get a bird tack sharp while hand holding glass this heavy, but to accomplish this on a subject that is smaller than the central focus can drive you crazy.  Looking at it from a different perspective, the better you get at this level, the better you will get a pictures that matter… I mean pictures of birds – yes birds.  There is definitely one major advantage of larger glass in this arena – at open aperture it throws the background into silky smooth bliss.  A nice benefit over having to fight the extremely tight depth of field.  You can get a feel for just how tight that is in the next shot.

Taking into account the size of the bee, you can extrapolate that to the size of the flower.  Notice how the back half of the flower is fading out of focus – probably looking at a couple of inches of play at best.  Now comes the tradeoff in the field.  Do you continue the fight to keep the center focus exactly where you need it and compensate for the likely drift of the focus and any inherent movement of the subjects or do you buy yourself some contingency by stepping the Aperture down (higher f# but in truth it is inverted).  There are tradeoffs whatever decision you make, but in truth all of us amateurs have a great debt of gratitude to the inventors of digital media – I would hate to even think about the bill for developing the number of shots we actually took that day.  In my mind, the right decision is to do both – experiment, learn and hit that magical delete key on the less than perfect.

Hit the jump to continue the discussion

Continue reading Pleasantly Planned Luck

A Giant Leopard Came By My House Today

It was a little bit scary around here last week.  Linda came back into the house and informed me there was something worth checking out on the porch.  To her credit, she is usually dead on when it comes to knowing what types of things intrigue me enough to go and take a gander.  This was no exception.  Before you jump to any conclusions, Linda is not out there really looking for fodder for my blog.  The truth is she is out there keeping an eagle eye out for anything that might be slithering around.  It is a relief when she comes back in and calmly tells me to go check out something, otherwise all hell breaks loose and off I go to get the hoe.  Otherwise it’s a quick trip to the kitchen to get the macro mounted camera to capture the moment.  This was one of those times.  Turns out a Leopard had made its way to our humble dwelling.  This was not just any old leopard, this was a GIANT leopard.

Okay, so it wasn’t one of the cats… otherwise that might have been the end of this blog unless I was able to make it back to the AR in time.  Nope, this was actually the Giant Leopard Moth and to the best of my recollection the first time I’ve ever witnessed one around here.  When it comes to moths, these have to rank right up there with the coolest.  As you can tell, they are predominantly snow white with the traditional leopard print dominating their markings.  What turned out to be difficult to capture was the brilliant blue detail in the legs and along their undersides. After taking a number of pictures from its resting spot under our porch, I decided to delicately try to relocate it for some better angles.  I usually hate to mess with insects out of fear of injuring them and I know that even small contact with their delicate wings can lead to loss of flight causing an imminent demise.  In this case I spent 15 minutes slowly bringing a piece of mulch in contact with the legs and worked the stick into place whenever it shifted its legs.  Slowly it made its way onto the stick and I lifted it out to a resting place on top of the stoop.  To the moth’s credit it was pretty docile and really didn’t mind all the hoopla with the camera.  It basically just sat there and twiddled the antennas (is that the right plural?.. might be antennae).   In the new position, I could capture the top markings much better.

Hit the jump to see a few more shots of our visitor

Continue reading A Giant Leopard Came By My House Today

Night Dwellers Part 3 – The Big, The Hairy and The Scary

So last post we brought out the big guns and showed you what the 200-400 Beast is capable of pulling in.  To contrast that, I figured I’d go all the way in the opposite direction and feature the 105 Macro glass for this post.  And the best picture opportunity for the Macro is?.. you guessed it, my porch.  Continuing the Night Dweller themed posts (here, here and here), I bring you the latest set of arachnids found late at night out here in the Midwest country.  Thanks to our toy poodles we often have the opportunity to check out the creatures that visit our house late at night.  As of late, the spiders look like they’ve been on a steroid kick resulting in some rather large specimens.  One night I stumbled on this huge spider and ran for the camera.

It always creeps me out a bit when looking through the macro glass.  The unassisted viewing reveals enough features to make your heart skip a beat, but add the full blown macro magnifications and it’s like you’re staring at creature from a bad B-Horror movie.  So there I was laying the ground taking pictures of this spider when a large moth dropped out of nowhere in striking distance from a natural predator.

This might get very interesting.  Both subjects remained very still which might have been due to my presence potentially interfering in the survival of the fittest experiment.  The small macro depth made it difficult to get both creatures in focus but it did create a nice effect.  (Yes, I had to manually fix the moth due to pet eye, but for my first attempt ever at it Photoshop it turned out pretty good).  After about 10 shots, there still wasn’t any movement between the two.  It reminded me of an Old West quick-draw, each waiting for the other to flinch.  Low and behold, another visitor showed up to take part.

The first thing that came to mind was the Mexican standoff from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.  Unlike the Eastwood show, only one of these competitors had a loaded gun in terms of a bite and venom.  Now I am officially way beyond the  field depth for an eye level view so I moved up higher in an attempt to bring a little more focus into the shot.  The Opilione (or as we call them around here – Daddy Long Legs)  and Moth are still on the wrong end of this fight for survival, unless they can team up – maybe the moth does a 360 maneuver to land on top of the spider while the Harvestmen (another common name for the Opilione) pokes the spider’s eyes out with its long legs.  Although this might be more difficult that choreographed since the Harvestmen can’t make out images with their eyes and thus have to use the second set of legs as antennae to navigate the world.  Come for the pictures leave with trivia – what a deal!

By the way, I generally try to provide some reference for size since the macro has the ability to distort reality.  There was no way I was going to stick my finger in that mess.  Instead I tried to get the old standby penny visual in, but even that proved difficult due to my reluctance to get real close to the wolf spider.  Here is the best I could do … sorry!

I have a lot more pictures of our eight legged friends after the jump (if you dare)- most of them have the more traditional macro shots showing them up close and personal.

Continue reading Night Dwellers Part 3 – The Big, The Hairy and The Scary

The Bruce Lee of the Insect World

I’ve been wanting to get this post out of the way for awhile now and it turns out that this is an opportune time based on the fact I need one more post to make my quota and it was a difficult time accomplishing this since my wife and I have been on vacation for the last week.  Note as you are reading this we should already be safe and sound back in boring Illinois.  More about our trip in an upcoming post, but for right now it’s Enter the Dragon time.

I have always wanted to know exactly how these creatures got such a scary name especially since they are quite colorful and quite frankly have never bothered me in the least regardless of the situation or proximity.  Maybe it is some nod to the Chinese celebration dragons that are definitely colorful.  Or possibly someone felt such a delicate animal needed a strong name to help it survive.  This would be the same concept I use in naming our toy poodles – who are named after mythological gods if you are curious (nobody wants to mess with the three headed dog that guards the gates of hell).  This particular set of images came as a side project while my dogs were running in an agility show at the State Fairgrounds in Springfield IL.  Basically those days go like this.  Up at the crack of dawn, drive to agility location, set up all the crates and tents, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, get up for 30 seconds while your dog runs, sit, sit, sit … you get the picture.  It makes for a pretty long day so given the chance I’ll try to drift off and entertain myself with photographing odd things or playing on the Internet.  These shots are the result of this boredom.  The fairgrounds has a nice arrangement of outdoor flowers which I noticed on my way to get some food with my parents.  That warranted a trip back with the trusty macro.  A lot of nice pictures came out of that shoot which will eventually make their way to the blog.

hit the jump to see a couple more pictures of this dragonfly

Continue reading The Bruce Lee of the Insect World

I Hope It is Worth It

First off, Happy Birthday Ron!

Okay, we’re down to the final hour with all the marbles on the line.  Let’s do a quick check 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, …. 5…. oh crap, I’m down a post.  What to do, what to do.  Actually, there are no worries, I have been loading up my SmugMug site with a ton of pictures.  One of my recent favorites is a set of macro shots I took on our porch a few months ago.  I was was walking on the porch one sunny day when one of the more interesting insects decided to take a stroll on my siding.

Probably out of the insects I come upon around here, the praying mantis is the one that fascinates me the most (the stick bug comes in a close second).  From a photographer’s perspective, they have a nice vibrant color and a ton of cool features that pop out nicely under the macro lens.  They have a number of dynamic features ranging from the hook like feet, highly articulated legs and fine hairs running along the edges.  The best part of working with these specimens is that they are fairly docile and do not tend to panic at the presence of a camera glass shoved close to their face.  Speaking of which, this one was practically posing for the glass.

In case you are wondering, in this particular shot he is gnawing on his own foot.  Check out the creepy pupils.  They can track just about anywhere around the eye bulb and basically remained on me the entire time, regardless of what position or angle the camera was in.  Here is another on of the face with the pupils transitioned up to the top of the head.  Based on nature’s law, typically, animals with such range of vision are considered the prey where the more forward fixed animals fall in the predator range.  By that rule, one would think the mantis was somewhat docile, but the male mantis probably has a different opinion of that seeing as how the the female rips the cranium off of him after mating.

hit the jump for more shots!

Continue reading I Hope It is Worth It