Long weekend in Southeastern Maine! First time exploring the area.
Rachel Carson National Refuge
Goose Rocks Beach, Cape Porpoise
Wells Jetty
This was tough…wasn’t easy to take photographs I was happy with. Ended up with a lot of longer exposure photos of the waves, the birds, and the waves and birds together. Not sure how good they will look to other people!
Trying to capture the movement of the birds as they swayed up and down the beach with the waves:
A flock of birds in motion:
Bonus Tiger Beetle
This lovely Cicindela sexguttata, Six-spotted Tiger Beetle, was waiting to welcome us home when we got back. Definitely has sustained quite a bit of damage, but lovely nonetheless.
Crickets = Gryllidae. Is this one Nemobius sylvestris?
Pisaurina mira
Poecilus chalcites in Carabidae
Androchirus erythropus in Tenebrionidae? Not great. Capnochroa fuliginosa? Not perfect.
Strongylium tenuicolle or S. terminatum look best.
Xylopinus or Haplandres, Alobates pensylvanicus, less so.
Probably Maladera castanea
Euparthenos nobilis
Looks similar, but not identical, to Agonopterix robiniella, Four-Dotted Agonopterix (a grass miner moth). Less similar to Acleris forskaleana, Hairnet Acleris.
Two weeks at Keuka Lake in upstate New York! Pretty much all the photos were taken on the property of the house we stayed in, itself. Some woods, some leafy plants, some flowers.
Hemiptera
Beautiful Reduviidae nymph, probably Zelus luridus, and prey.
Woolly aphid, Eriosomatinae, perhaps Eriosoma?
Acanthocephala:
Reduviidae, Phymata pennsylvanicus. And the beetle is Typocerus velutinus.
This has to be the world’s laziest ambush bug, and the world’s most oblivious beetle. They stood there in this proximity for at least ten minutes.
Coleoptera
Is it in Carabidae? I don’t see a match.
Is it a Curculionid? The size of the spots on the pronotum don’t seem to match. The antenna is unusual for Curculionidae, but seems to match that best. Cryptorhynchinae? Entiminae?
Maybe something like Otiorhynchus sulcatus? That actually looks perfect, I’m happy with that ID.
Sumitrosis inaequalis
Chrysomelidae, Galerucinae, Trirhabda. Not sure what species.
Cleridae, Enoclerus nigripes.
Diptera
Syrphidae, Toxomerus geminatus.
Calliphoridae? Wing venation details would be useful, note the straight-ish vein. Maybe Lucilia sp.? I really know so little about Diptera.
Dolichopodidae. Condylostylus is the most usual genus to classify them into.
I’m hesitant to even guess Anthyomyiidae, because it’s such a long shot and a I’m not really basing it on anything concrete.
Love these Condylostylus, assuming that’s the correct Dolichopodidae.
Not a clue.
Dolichopodidae.
Hymenoptera
Ichneumonidae? There are some Pimplinae that look a bit like this.
Encyrtidae, but maybe Eupelmidae instead?
Polistes fuscatus, in Vespidae.
Trypoxylon. Distinguished from Pemphredoninae by the little notch protruding into the eye at the middle level.
Vespidae. Polistes dominula.
Pompilidae? Priocnemis? Auplopos? Both Priocnemis and Auplopus have been suggested by people who know more than I do.
Further Pimplinae?
Halictidae. Augochlora pura?
Halictidae. Looks like Halictus.
Carpenter bee, Ceratina? I would guess subgenus Zadontomerus.
Augochlora pura.
Perhaps Apoidea –> Crabronidae, such as Crabronina –> Ectemnius or Crabro? Alternatively, Crabronidae –> Philanthus (beewolf)? I think Ectemnius or Crabro or something similar are the best match.
Distinguishing Crabro from similar genera (Crossecerus, Ectemnius, and Lestica)(3): Recurrent vein ending before distal third of submarginal cell Ocelli forming a low triangle Lacking orbital foveae (sharp groove along inner eye margin) Males front tibiae distinctly expanded
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Distinguishing Ectemnius from similar genera (Crabro, Crossecerus, and Lestica)(3): Recurrent vein ending in distal third of submarginal cell Ocelli forming a low triangle Lacking orbital foveae (sharp groove along inner eye margin) Upper frons evenly punctate
Identified as Cerceris in Solitary Wasps Forum, Facebook
Cerceris in Crabronidae.
Spiders
Platycryptus undatus, tan jumping spider, Salticidae.
Theridiidae spider, what’s the prey? A robber fly, I believe.
An amazing hike. Ethan Pond to Zeeland Falls, Zeecliff, Thoreau Falls, and more. Three wonderful days, even if one of them was all Tropical Storm Elsa all day all the time. Some photos (without people, as always 🙂 ).
I’ve been posting a *lot* of flowing water photos. This set is a twist on that genre that I’ve never really seen done before.
My issue with a lot of time exposure photos of flowing water is that they’re a long enough exposure to completely smooth out the flow, creating an illusion of utter calmness, but hiding the vitality and boisterousness of the flow. The little droplets playing around are what cause this, but they don’t usually come out in a photo — the eye can register smaller details that hide from most cameras. This has to be recorded by the right shutter time: too slow, as mentioned, smooths everything out, while too fast freezes everything. I want a sort of impressionistic feel to the photos, where you can recognize individual elements but also see that they’re in motion. Showing motion isn’t always easy in a still photo!
As mentioned, I recently bought a Laowa 24mm macro probe lens. This has a few unique properties: it’s a macro lens that can focus with a few millimeters of the subject; it’s very narrow; it’s waterproof. I decided to try to take closeup photos of the stream, and especially places where the smooth, laminar flow becomes chaotic and turbulent. It may be useful (or not) to realize that these are mostly Straight Out Of Camera photos.
In addition, when I take this kind of photo, I especially like to establish an “anchor” in the photo: something that clearly belongs to the solid world, to play off the time exposure, so the photo lands in the zone somewhere between representative and abstract.
There ended up being so many possible photos it was difficult to choose. It seemed almost blasphemous to discard so many, as if rejecting nature’s creativity, but there’s only so much space!
Let’s see if these photos are successful! Let’s start off with a view of the area I took most of the photos, to provide some context while you see the more abstract ones. In that little snap, there lie worlds.
This one was taken completely underwater, of the bubbles in the turbulence under the surface:
My first nighttime blacklighting for moths — mercury vapor lamp shining on a bedsheet. So many moth photos, and I can’t identify them very well, so I’m going to concentrate on non-moths.
Diptera
Limoniid crane fly?
Look at all the mites:
Toxomerus marginatus hanky-panky:
Hemiptera
Amphiaretus obscuriceps, a pirate bug. Introduced from Asia, first record in USA 1983.
Could by Gyponana.
My guess is Meadow Spittlebug, Philaenus spumarius.
Neuroptera
Probably a brown lacewing. Neuroptera –> Hemerobiidae. Perhaps Hemerobius?
Coleoptera
I think this is a rove beetle, Staphylinidae.
Carabidae, ground beetle.
Podabrus in Cantharidae?
Stenolophus lineola, in Carbidae.
Maybe –maybe! – Paratenetus in Tenebrionidae.
Dystiscid, I think:
Hydrochus genus, in Hydrophilidae. A new family for me!
Perhaps Phyllophaga, in Scarabaeidae? In other news, I’ve discovered that I’ve been spelling it wrong all this time. I *think* legs like this are found in Scarabaeidae.
Another Dystiscid?
Trichoptera
Caddisfly:
Corydalidae
Gorgeous fishfly
Hymenoptera
Ophion?
Another Ophion? This one was smaller?
Lepidoptera
Okay, *some* moths. But really, there were so many, and I’m so bad at identifying them, it’s tough to choose other than by aesthetics.
a little wild 