Bumbling Along

I knew when I started my holidays that it would probably not be my busiest posting period as I've been having a bit of an inspirational drought of late. However, 5 weeks into my holidays and this my first post is a little bit less than even I expected. Chalk it up to computer failure (computer died on the first day of holidays, replacement took over two weeks to arrive), computer reconfiguration (took several days to get it set back up to my liking), briefly out of town, then helping a friend re-roof his garage. Along with the new computer comes new software, and the newest version of Photoshop is taking a bit of getting used to compared with the relatively old version I had been using.

I finally took the camera out yesterday, not really because I was feeling inspired but thinking that I ought to at least make the effort. Most of what I captured was, predictably crap, but I did get one or two shots that aren't bad. They're not exactly what I'd like to be posting at the moment, but it's what I've got so it'll have to do.

Here's the first one.

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Pollen Collection

This is another shot from Roberts Bank from quite a while back. The yellow flowers in this shot are just a few of a very large colony. As it turns out they drop pollen like crazy which I discovered after getting this shot - I'd pushed my way into the midst of them and once back on the path I found myself covered in pollen stains which could not be brushed off. Worth it though, I think.

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The Approach

I spent some time one afternoon with my macro lens working on just one large colony of wild pea. Over the course of things I was able to distinguish at last 6 different types of bee/wasp working the blossoms, and another two varieties on immediately adjacent plants. I didn't manage to get satisfactory pictures of all of them, though I did try. After a while I gave up trying to get them all - some you just couldn't get close to - and instead spent some time trying to capture the ones I could get close to in flight.

It's not as easy as you might think... Having said that, this shot isn't bad, though a little faster shutter would have been nice so as to capture more of the wings.

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Busy as a...

I've been humming and hawing over this one for a couple of days, trying to decide if I should post it or go back and re-work it from scratch. In the end, laziness has won out and I've posted it as first processed. I think the yellow is a little too vibrant, which is odd, since I didn't do much to the yellow other than try to preserve as much as possible; the blown out areas were all in the flower petals. Thanks to the RAW file format, I was able to tone down the blown petals without causing damage to any other important parts of the image, but somehow the result was a very intense yellow (at least on my monitor).

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Butterfly World #4

I think this'll be the last of the pictures from Butterfly world that I'll post. It's that one that I like the best...

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Butterfly World #3

This is probably my least favourite of the shots from this group that I'll post. While it's looking better after processing, the colour is still off a bit and the focus was less than optimal. I've included it here because it's the best shot of this particular butterfly and I wanted to show a bit of the (limited) variety available at Butterfly World.

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Butterfly World #2

I suppose if I had paid a bit more attention I could tell you what species of butterfly this is (or any of the others that I'll post). But truth is I didn't spend any of my time at Butterfly World looking for that sort of information. Most of it was spent trying to spot them and then get the best vantage for a shot without scaring them away.

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Imported Insects

Visited Butterfly World in Coombs this past weekend, where the variety of butterflies flittering about was rather limited. Even so, I did manage to get a few decent shots, a few of which I'll post over the next couple of days.

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Brown on Green

This makes two posts in a row that aren't birds. Don't expect the trend to continue...

This was an extremely aggressive butterfly: I watched it repeatedly chase away dragonflies which were quite a bit larger, and even a couple of birds (song sparrows). Not exactly sure what it was protecting, maybe it just got up on the wrong side of the bed in the morning and hadn't had any coffee yet... Whatever the reason, it's one tough little beasty!

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Wait a sec, that's not a bird!

Well, I said that all I had to draw from was bird shots, which was true when I wrote it. Then yesterday I stumbled - almost literally - across this guy having a nap, hanging off the grass about 8 inches off the ground. I quickly swapped lenses so that I had the macro on and lay down on the ground to get a nice straight-on shot with the camera partially supported on the ground.

I was lying right on top of a red ant nest, of course.

After just a couple of shots (to be sure that I'd have one that would be good) it was time to get up and away from the ants. Just as well, as he started twitching/vibrating just after that; about 30 seconds later he took off. The twitchy/vibrating thing was interesting to watch - it looked very much like an old propeller plane starting up with cold engines, a little rough at first, not firing on all cylinders, but getting smoother as the engine warmed up and the oil started to flow.

As usual I've had a challenge getting the colour/brightness/tone to come out accurately. Might have been less of a challenge if I didn't use Photoshop to process, but I wanted to mute the background and you just can't do that with any other program. The dragonfly as you see it here is pretty close to what I had in Photoshop (which was very accurate to what I shot), except that the colours here aren't quite as vibrant (at no time did I fiddle with the saturation - it really was this colourfull).

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Low-Carb Diet Run Amok

I know. Another bug picture, and more specifically, another bee/wasp. At least I'm now trying to pair each insect posting with some non-insect content.

As for this guy, they're quite a good size. In fact, they're about 2½ to 3 times the length of the last bee (Newbie), which is significant, since they were the ones that that butt-head bee was trying to pick a fight with. And they outnumbered it about 10-1!

One of the other neat things about this variety is the smaller-than-a-toothpick portion of the body, which, it turns out, is very flexible even though it looks quite rigid.

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Newbie

This is a two-fer day. I should have, and could have posted something new every day this past week, what with my back-log of images. But, for whatever reason, I just didn't get around to posting anything until now (I've been processing pictures all evening).

This was a "new" type of bee that I spotted the other day. Not new, of course, but a first for me, and I've seen quite a variety (though I don't have decent pictures of all of them). This one is fairly unique - at least I've seen very little else that could be mistaken for this type.

It's fairly aggressive bee, trying to pick a fight with any other bees - of any variety - that it sees. Not sure if this is a characteristic of this species, or if this one was just being a butt-head...

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The Beast Within

On Wednesday, taking advantage of the last day of my mini holiday, I decided to take advantage of the unexpected sunshine and drop by QE Park to check out the flowers. There were, of course, very few blooming flowers just yet - it is officially still winter after all.

Crocuses, however, don't care that it's still winter. And apparently, neither do some types of bees. I found this guy, apparently drunk on pollen, or perhaps just taking a nap, inside the bloom. At first I thought it was dead, as it wasn't moving at all (bonus for me - much easier to photograph!) but after poking it once or twice it started to react to my approaching finger, which I figured meant it was time to leave it alone.

[Yes, I know it's only been a couple of pictures since the last purple & white crocus shot, but this one was has a bee and was taken from about 8 inches, rather than 4 feet.]

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