a little wild   (a small slice of wildlife)

It is a sin to miss a beautiful fall day in New England. We went to Stony Brook Massachusetts Audubon Sanctuary in Norfolk: trees, water, birds and the late evening sun.

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From 20151017_stony_brook

From 20151017_stony_brook

From 20151017_stony_brook

From 20151017_stony_brook

From 20151017_stony_brook

From 20151017_stony_brook

Even the ducks know when it’s time to go.

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From 20151017_stony_brook

From 20151017_stony_brook

From 20151017_stony_brook

From 20151017_stony_brook

We booked a weekend in Vermont, but were afraid the foliage would be past peak. A surprise for us, the colors were nothing but spectacular.

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From 20151010_stowe_gs

Leaf, bark and stone

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From 20151010_stowe_gs

A rockface that I was obsessed with:

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From 20151010_stowe_gs

From 20151010_stowe_gs

From near the top of Mt. Mansfield:

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From 20151010_stowe_gs

From 20151010_stowe_gs

Ninigret Park in Rhode Island

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A little experimental: I took a longer exposure of the previous scene (1/3 second) while it was very windy, to get a wavy effect. Enhanced the color curve a bit, but no other editing.

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Praying Mantises are fierce predators. I can’t but help notice, however, that they look like complete goofballs.

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From 20150927_ninigret

At Ninigret Beach, there were a lot of birds.

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From 20150927_ninigret

From 20150927_ninigret

We saw a wasp either laying eggs in a grasshopper, or dragging it back to its burrow to feed the babies. It was identified on BugGuide as Prionyx:

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From 20150927_ninigret

More photos from the backyard.

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Candy-striped leafhoppers always put on a show:

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Syrphidae:

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Araneid orb weaver (genus Araneus? Neoscona? Not sure).

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Not a very clean eater, is it?

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You don’t have to go far to see interesting things.

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Not a very good photo, but it seems to me to be an ant-mimic spider. Perhaps Synemosyna formica, in Salticidae.

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From 20150919_backyard

Dreaming of fat and juicy flies, perhaps:

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An ambush bug (Phymatinae):

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Candy-striped leafhopper, Graphocephala coccinea:

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Haven’t had a lot of good insect photos lately, but as always, I’ve enjoyed the search. I don’t fish, so this is my substitute: an excuse to go outdoors and enjoy my time.

This is maybe a sweat bee. I have been trying hard to get good photos of sweat bees, cuckoo wasps or jewel wasps, without a lot of success. This is as good as I have got so far, but it doesn’t really do justice to the iridescent colors.

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From 20150907_moose_hill

This is dragonfly season!

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From 20150907_moose_hill

I’m not sure what the significance of the “tail-up” pose is. Some seem to believe that it has to do with regulating temperature through sun exposure.

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Underneath a rock. Perhaps Amaurobiidae? If so, I would expect to see spinnerets.

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Cute little fly outside my house. Perhaps genus Chlorops, but I Am Not An Expert. [Edit: identified by Kai Beck on the Facebook Entomology group, as Lauxaniidae, but Drosophila was also mentioned as a possibility.]

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I hadn’t gone out for a walk in the woods for much too long, so it was time. There were a lot of dragonflies, but I couldn’t get close enough to them to use the macro; the zoom would have to do.

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From 20150830_king_phillips_rock

From 20150830_king_phillips_rock

Even more macro abstracts:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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From 20150830_king_phillips_rock

From 20150830_king_phillips_rock

From 20150830_king_phillips_rock

A large-ish group of deer:

 

 

 

 

 

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From 20150830_king_phillips_rock

From 20150830_king_phillips_rock

And some of the dragonflies I promised:

 

 

 

 

 

 

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From 20150830_king_phillips_rock

Manini Beach, Hawaii

This was a small beach that was pretty popular with the locals. The kids loved the little cove.

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From 201507_hawaii_nature

I’ve been doing a lot of hand-held long exposures. And I’m not going to apologize.

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This is a Gasteracantha spider. I don’t know if the small one is a male, or if it’s a kleptoparasite such as Argyrodes.

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From 201507_hawaii_nature

From 201507_hawaii_nature

I took this photo of the spider on the Big Island. Then I came home and examined it: it’s a recluse spider, the Mediterranean Recluse Spider.

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Volcano National Park is one of the most remarkable places on Earth. Really.

This photo is at the Thurston Lava Tube.

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On the Kilauea Iki trail:

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From 201507_hawaii_nature

From 201507_hawaii_nature

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The Chain of Craters Road is breathtaking from start to finish.

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From 201507_hawaii_nature

From 201507_hawaii_nature

From 201507_hawaii_nature

From 201507_hawaii_nature

From 201507_hawaii_nature

From 201507_hawaii_nature

These photos are on the petroglyphs trail off the Chain of Craters Road.

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From 201507_hawaii_nature

From 201507_hawaii_nature

From 201507_hawaii_nature

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Black Sand Beach, still on Hawaii:

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From 201507_hawaii_nature

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The Na Pali Coast trail in Kaua’i must be one of the most beautiful hikes in the world.

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From 201507_hawaii_nature

From 201507_hawaii_nature

From 201507_hawaii_nature

I already warned you about the long exposures:

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From 201507_hawaii_nature

The morning golden glow was great for photographing the land, but I found that a higher sun brought out the ocean colors.

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From 201507_hawaii_nature

From 201507_hawaii_nature

The beach at the end of the trail.

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From 201507_hawaii_nature

The overlaying of the fern over the flower is deliberate. I was trying to show that it’s okay to be green and there’s more to life than pretty flowers, but not sure if that worked in the photograph.

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Here’s a wasp that I found on the trail.  Family Eumeninae (Potter wasps, genus perhaps Delta, credits to the Facebook Entomology group for identification).

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And here’s a frigate bird:

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See, here’s the problem. I’ve already exhausted my superlatives, and now we come to the Waimea Canyon.

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From 201507_hawaii_nature

From 201507_hawaii_nature

I’m not sure what birds these are. That didn’t stop us from admiring how dramatic they looked wheeling in the canyon, or how much fun they seemed to be having.

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I’ve been effusive so far. So let me simply say that view from the Kalalau viewpoint in Waimea Canyon is the single most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen (for the sake of personal safety, I’m excepting the first time I saw my wife and my son).

A heartstopping drop, into a green and earth valley with dappled cloud shadow. Beyond that, cerulean blue with flecks of waves.

From 201507_hawaii_nature

From 201507_hawaii_nature

From 201507_hawaii_nature

From 201507_hawaii_nature

From 201507_hawaii_nature

From 201507_hawaii_nature

I improvised a new macro photography rig (more on this later) and wanted to test it out. I had about half an hour to spend at Moose Hill Mass Audubon. The macro photography worked great, and there were some insects I found absolutely gorgeous.

This fly was beautiful, from the strange abdomen to the bizarre bulbs to the plume antenna. Best guess: Ceratopoginidae.

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This fly had eyes of the purest ruby red. Love it.

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From 20150705_moose_hill

What a beetle. This probably is the Net Winged Beetle, family Lycidae. According to this source not too much is known about it. And yes, the bright coloring is aposematism. On the other hand, I’m not certain how to distinguish this from a glowworm, which is also a possibility.

From 20150705_moose_hill

From 20150705_moose_hill

A rather startling dash of color (no editing, by the way):

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Again, half an hour to spare at Devil’s Rock while my son had guitar lessons.

Do flies have leks? The four flies on the same plant would seem to be trying to mate. I’d love to know the answer.

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Looks to my (amateur) eyes to be a fungus beetle:

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This Robber fly is from the genus Laphria, I believe. Pretty much every time I see a Robber fly, it has prey. They have to be really successful hunters. Or maybe I only see them when they land, which is what they do after they capture a meal.

From 20150702_devils_rock

I found a web full of baby spiders, newly hatched. They were too young to have pigmentation, so they had a ghostly apparition, brought out because the flash also gave them a dark background. Not sure what kind, but the eye pattern is visible in this photo. Perhaps Linyphiidae?

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