Zooming – October 2016

I got a new camera this month and have been doing some experiments with the increase optical zoom (that also translates to increased digital zoom. I’m sharing some of my favorites in the Zooming post for this month. There were two pictures of milkweed bugs from early and late in the month. There are at least 4 instars of the insects in the ‘leaf’ picture and fewer in the second picture. Maybe it is getting late enough in the season that there are not new milkweed bugs hatching from eggs.

I like the zoom for photographing insects because I like not disturbing them. It’s even more important for insects that sting like the bee on the asters

Or the wasp that seems to be looking underneath the milkweed leaf.

Sometimes it just works better because the insect will fly away more quickly if I get too close – like this bumble bee.

Sometimes there are items that catch my eye because they seem to be spotlighted – like this fall leaf stuck in other vegetation that seems to glow in the morning sunlight.

One morning before I was scheduled to hike with first graders I heard a noise high in the tree above me and I finally spotted the noise maker – a squirrel gnawing on a black walnut; it takes a lot of work to get the nut inside.

I don’t photograph my cats very often. They don’t like cameras….but staying further away and using the zoom was effective – once.

Zooming – September 2016

I already did a zooming post earlier this month focused totally on insects --- but there have been so many other good shots that I couldn’t resist another for this month with more than insects in the mix. I am getting a new camera soon so this might be the last set of images with the 30x in optics and digital up to 120x. Let’s start with some plants: crabapples against a clear blue sky. Most of the leaves have already fallen from the tree but I looked around to find some fruit with a leaf nearby.

A flower with its petals still in tubes. Soon they would flatten into more normal looking petals.

A cloud of pink flowers.

Lots of pollen.

Milkweed seeds on the verge of blowing away.

The long central stalk of the hibiscus flower.

And a mushroom that was greenish underneath.

Back to some animals…..this chipmunk had very full cheek pouches. It was probably collecting food to be stored away for winter.

A skipper sunning itself among the dew drops on a large flower.

A bee so focused on the flower that it doesn’t notice my son-in-law’s camera trying to get a close shot (upper left corner). I prefer using the zoom!

A molting bird…maybe a grackle?

A dragonfly.

Zooming – August 2016

Like last month – I selected images this month where I used the zoom on my camera past the 30x that the lenses do. The digital zoom goes to 120x. I’m often surprised by what I am able to ‘see’ via the camera.

For example – the green eye of this Cabbage White Butterfly on blooming mint. It misses being a great picture because of the errant piece of grass and the other mint plants in the foreground…but it works for identification. Speed is important when trying to photograph anything that can move (like insects) so I opt to get some kind of picture rather than a perfect one!

Black eyed susans from early in August. These three seemed to go together – further back in the garden so zooming was the only way to photograph them without stepping on other flowers. I like the curly petals of the one in the foreground.

Early in August the trees looked like we were going to have an early fall. This is a zoomed shot of the tulip poplar from my office window – across our backyard. Now most of the leaves that were yellow have fallen and there don’t seem to be many new ones – yet.

The sycamore keeps getting new leaves all through the season while the other leaves keep getting larger and larger. This is a new leaf that I took from my office window. I like the blurred background behind the leaf that comes with the lens focusing on the leaf.

Sometimes I like to use the zoom to get my shadow out of the picture. This is a mature seed pod on a sweet bay magnolia (at the Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant Farm).

In the Honors Garden at Mt. Pleasant Farm, the algae mat at the edge of the water feature was attractive to bees.

It also was a good place to look for small plants. I like the red edges of these small leaves. I was able to stand comfortably on the walkway to take my pictures rather than leaning over the small pond.

Birds are easier to photograph if I can stand further away. This male goldfinch was tearing a zinna flower growing on my deck apart with a vengeance.

Sometimes the flowers themselves are my topic. I liked the curves of the petals and the black background in this zoomed image.

The butterfly has not clue I was even around. Using the zoom on the camera is a great way to see insects better than you can with just your eyes.

What about this fly on a milkweed leaf? I was surprised by the red eyes.

 Took two pictures of an insect pollinating a chicory flower. The color on the head and thorax seemed to glitter in the sunlight! But the pictures are not quite good enough to key out what it is.

That’s enough….I may have gone overboard for the zooming post this month but I had so many images to choose from!

Insects in our Garden

A few days ago was out working in our garden by 7 AM – pulling weeds and cutting spent flower stalks in our flower beds…but I got sidetracked observing insects. The first I noticed were on the skeleton of a milkweed plant. The milkweed tussock caterpillars had eaten all the leaves leaving only the stem and the larger veins of the leaves. They had started crawling over to the bush next to the stem. It seemed like there were hundreds of caterpillars.

After I finished some work, I went inside to clean up and recover from heat. I started wondering if the caterpillars would find the other milkweed plants that were about 5 feet away from the one they had consumed. I went to check at 9 and they had indeed found another plant! I continued to check periodically throughout the day. The gradually spread to 3 more plants. Sometimes they would appear very active and other times they would be resting underneath a leave that was still whole. When they ate, individuals worked on the leaf from the top and the bottom. It was a mass feeding frenzy.

The next surprise came the following morning. I went outside and found that the caterpillars had been active overnight and seemed to be larger. When I went back to check an hour later – more than half of them were not anywhere on the milkweed and I watched as more of them dropped off the plants. It was time for them to go roaming in the leaf litter!

On one of the checks of the caterpillars, I noticed some insects on a blazing start that was in bloom. They were tiny – about a quarter inch. The yellow and black insect is a syrphid or hoverfly.

There were two other insects on the plant but they stayed down in the flowers so much that it was hard to get a good identification.

Maybe some kind of bee?

The two types of insects did interact a little…did not seem to like the other being nearby.

I was very pleased with the performance of my camera (Canon PowerShot SX710HS) and the monopod’s contribution to stabilizing the camera to get clear images.