I had a nice half hour or so of macro photography this afternoon, despite the blowing gale and sporadic sun! In a relatively sheltered spot I spotted a male orange tip patrolling, feeding and sun bathing around the garlic mustard. A bit further along I spotted 4 large red damselflies as I walked along the…
Last weekend I was on a Forest School Course with the excellent people at EarthcraftUK in Blean Woods. There are a number of wood ant nests in the area and in a lunch break I found a line of them heading up a tree, but it was midday and they were very active and very…
A few photos from last Autumn. Some migrant hawker dragonfly in flight shots. Can’t wait to have another crack at these. And a slow worm.
I had another attempt at the ‘meet the neighbours’ style wildlife photography, which involves photographing your subject on a completely white background. I tried it first on a Rhantus Diving beetle in one of my aquariums. I also tried it with a water stick insect. Then a few close ups with a normal background
Back in June, I came across this Giant Horsefly (Tabanus sp.) They lay their eggs on pond margins where their larvae live. I photographed a larva last year. I got a head on shot too. They thankfully (for us) tend to leave humans alone and tend bite horses and cows.
A few shots of a darter dragonfly nymph (Sympetrum sp.) I took back in July with my photographic aquarium set up:
Yesterday I had a aquarium photography session. A 4mm long emperor dragonfly nymph turned up with this rather nice striped colouration. I have only seen this colouration once before, again it was an emperor, but that one was over a cm if memory serves. The one yesterday let me get one good side on shot.…
Some more photos from the aquarium set up in October, this time of a Southern Hawker (Aeshna cyanea) dragonfly nymph.
A couple of Pond creature photos, taken with my aquarium set up a while back. Both of these are under 1cm long and required the use of extension tubes for grater magnification. First up this Haliplus water beetle larva. And a couple of phantom midge larvae close ups
Some photos using my aquarium set up. One of the few species of the small dytiscid (diving) beetles you can identify without a microscope is Hyphydrus ovatus Unfortunately, like all small dytiscids, they don’t sit and pose for long, and it took my quite a while to get these photos of this 5mm long beetle.…