Insects
I sit on the deck ready to get shots of zipper spiders, dragonflies and whatever other insects, birds and beasts come to visit the various foliage around the deck. — for some reason, Laurie got all excited and took cell phone photos of me with my big ten inch lens ready to shoot. Take a listen to “Big Ten Inch” by Bull Moose Jackson.
Bella Roma put out a nice bloom that was a little rough around the edges. A Pearl Crescent butterfly was hanging out on a dandelion. A silky cosmos posed in a sea of green, while a peach scarab and bee shared a bloom of a purple butterfly bush. Lastly, a vine dangles in front of a dahlia.
Up close and personal, this cucumber beetle larvae looks like a hyper-spiny ankylosaurus or other prehistoric creature. I don’t know what type of wasp is on the brown eyed Susan, but it’s quite colorful. The last photo is purple cosmos backlit in the early morning light.
Baby Blue Grosbeak took his first flight out of the black bamboo and fluttered over to a sunflower. Daddy Blue Grosbeak hopped around near where baby had flown concerned about the paparazzo sneaking up on Baby Blue. Mama Blue Grosbeak fluttered around in the bamboo, but would not come out into the open. I got up close to Baby Blue, got some photos before he flew off into our giant Dr. Huey rose bush that made his papa and mama very happy.
The temperatures on Saturday and Sunday were much cooler, only getting up to 80º F, so the birds and the bees were actively foraging on our abundance of plants that are either in bloom or going to seed.
The hummingbird moth seems to flutter its wings in slightly different patterns from the ghost images of its buzzing wings.
Better known as a Camel Spider, the Sun Scorpion seems to be something between a spider and scorpion, but it’s neither. They are solpugids, of which there are 50 species in the southwestern US. This one was in the catio and about 1 1/2 inches long, but they commonly reach 6 inches in length and can supposedly run at speeds up to 10 mph. They eat insects, small lizards, beetles and scorpions that they catch and kill with their jaws, as they are non-venomous.
A blue damselfly landed close to me, and I noticed it was eating an ant when I got it in focus under my macro lens.
A sweet stag beetle…
This six inch long centipede which may be everything that nightmares are made of scurried out of the drain when I got in the shower this morning. But I think the art was me, completely naked, doing macro shots of a wet centipede in the bathtub. Since he couldn’t scurry around as much because he was wet, he made defensive gestures by raising his rear prongs into striking position as I got the lens close to him. After I finished photographing him, I scooped him up and put him outside where he can find roly poly bugs and other pests to eat.
Off Center & Not Even 