a little wild

More photos from the backyard.

From 20150920_backyard

Candy-striped leafhoppers always put on a show:

From 20150920_backyard

Syrphidae:

From 20150920_backyard

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

From 20150920_backyard

Not a very clean eater, is it?

From 20150920_backyard

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

From 20150919_backyard

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

From 20150919_backyard

Dreaming of fat and juicy flies, perhaps:

From 20150919_backyard

An ambush bug (Phymatinae):

From 20150919_backyard

Candy-striped leafhopper, Graphocephala coccinea:

From 20150919_backyard

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.

From 20150907_moose_hill

This is dragonfly season!

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.

From 20150907_moose_hill

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

From 20150907_moose_hill

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.]

From 20150907_moose_hill

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.

From 20150830_king_phillips_rock

Even more macro abstracts:

From 20150830_king_phillips_rock

A large-ish group of deer:

From 20150830_king_phillips_rock

And some of the dragonflies I promised:

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.

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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From 201507_hawaii_nature

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.

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.

From 201507_hawaii_nature

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

This photo is at the Thurston Lava Tube.

From 201507_hawaii_nature

On the Kilauea Iki trail:

From 201507_hawaii_nature

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

From 201507_hawaii_nature

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

From 201507_hawaii_nature

Black Sand Beach, still on Hawaii:

From 201507_hawaii_nature

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

From 201507_hawaii_nature

I already warned you about the long exposures:

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.

From 201507_hawaii_nature

The beach at the end of the trail.

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.

From 201507_hawaii_nature

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).

From 201507_hawaii_nature

And here’s a frigate bird:

From 201507_hawaii_nature

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

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.

From 201507_hawaii_nature

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

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.

From 20150705_moose_hill

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

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

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

From 20150705_moose_hill

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.

From 20150702_devils_rock

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

From 20150702_devils_rock

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?

From 20150702_devils_rock

A good test for the night mode of my Sony A33. Venus and Jupiter were about 1/3 of a degree apart.

From 20150630_conjunction

On June 23rd, we had some fantastic weather (it was fantastic because nobody got hurt and there was no damage). We saw plenty of action, and some conical clouds that did not touch the ground; but a couple of towns over, in Wrentham, there was a documented tornado at around 6 pm. Sunset, around 8:30, was spectacular.

This is a good time to remind everyone that I try to minimize the photo processing on my photos, because in the end I want to go back to nature and see the patterns where they live. This particular set has no post-processing at all. (An exception, of course, is black and white photos, where I feel justified in playing with the contrast — it’s an honest form of lying.)

From 20150623_after_tornado

Cast the photo black and white, crank up the contrast, and pray for atmosphere:

From 20150620_king_phillips

Love Odonates! Especially love to get them flying, which is tough.

From 20150620_king_phillips

It was a big day for beetles, too:

From 20150620_king_phillips

Ground beetle? Tiger beetle? This seems an awkward angle:

From 20150620_king_phillips

This is genus Calosoma, ground beetles (Carabidae). Looking at this shell with and without flash was interesting — see where the color comes from?

From 20150620_king_phillips

What a gorgeous scarab beetle (June bug, Phyllophaga nebulosa?).

I turned over a rock, and saw a sowbug killer spider (Dysderidae); in fact, I’ve pretty much only seen these spiders when I look under rocks. Also some interesting unidentified ants.

And finally, plenty of very mysterious insect signs:Note that in this next photo, the twigs were only on top and did not pass through the leaf. Perhaps from the bagworm, Psychidae.A very shiny egg sac for somebody:This is the cocoon of a parasitic wasp. There is a shrivelled caterpillar somewhere in this mess that has been eaten away by the wasp larvae.