Posts Tagged ‘nature study’
Long-legged fly
Long-legged flies are tiny, brightly colored, and common. You find them on broad-leaved plants looking around for smaller flies to lunch on:
Some are iridescent green like this one, some are orange/red. One of the crowd of interesting bugs you can find on a milkweed or blackberry leaf in midsummer.
Filed under: Macro, Nature, nature study | 3 Comments
Tags: Insects, Macro, Nature, nature study
Green Lacewing
Pretty and delicate, they have transparent wings and golden eyes. Very common, there are hundreds of them flying around now:
They are also flighty, they take off at the slightest disturbance. They aren’t flies, they are in the insect order Neuroptera along with antlions.
Filed under: Insects, Macro | 2 Comments
Tags: Insects, Macro, nature study
Foamflower
A portrait of a common wildflower in the northeast:
The spring leafing out is becoming complete. Maples are in full leaf, grass is up, the oaks are greening up. There are lots of butterfly species flying now – today I saw three species of elfin, American Lady, Spring Azure, Juvenal’s Duskywing, Pearl Crescent, American Copper, suphurs, [...]
Filed under: Flowers, Macro, Nature | 2 Comments
Tags: Flowers, Macro, nature study, spring, wildflowers
Starflowers
Other than witch hazel, spring wildflowers are still weeks away. Here’s a wildflower from last year, starflower (Trientalis borealis):
Starflower blooms in the deep woods, under the canopy. In my area, they are a May wildflower. Last year I found a wooded hillside with hundreds of them, and madeimages of groups of flowers like this one. [...]
Filed under: Flowers, Macro, Photography, Plants, nature study | 6 Comments
Tags: Flowers, nature study, Photography, spring, wildflowers
Spring yellow (Witch hazel)
Witch hazel is a shrub that blooms in early spring. The flowers are tiny tufts of yellow with ribbon-like petals. When they first flower, the petals are just a couple centimeters long.
I believe it’s a native species. In my town, someone planted it at the entrances to several conservation land sites. It’s a visual sign [...]
Filed under: Flowers, Macro, Photography, nature study | 3 Comments
Tags: abstract, Flowers, Macro, nature study, spring
Ice Crystals
When the temperature is around 5 to 10 degrees F, feathery ice crystals form on the banks and branches next to flowing streams. This is a high magnification closeup of a few ice strands, just a few millimeters wide:
I have images of full crystals for another post. This is approximately 4x magnification.
Filed under: Macro, Nature, Photos, art, nature study | 3 Comments
Tags: ice crystals, Macro, Nature, nature study, Photography
Leafhopper
There are still a few bugs left – here’s a leafhopper taken on a cool windy morning recently:
Such a colorful little insect (about 5mm). I’m amazed there was any sharpness at all the way it was blowing around.
Filed under: Insects, Macro, Nature, Photography, Photos, nature study | 5 Comments
Tags: Insects, Macro, Nature, nature study, Photography
Light and shadow
A backlit leaf in morning sunlight:
The edge details and the shadow borderline caught my eye. That morning a couple of weeks ago was the first frost around here, just a little in low lying areas. Tonight will be a hard frost, it’s going below freezing – and the beginning of the brown season. Today I [...]
Filed under: Macro, Nature, Photography, Photos, nature study | 2 Comments
Tags: art, nature study, Plants
Foxtails and dragonfly
The companion image to the previous one, taken the same evening:
Chasing after this meadowhawk (Sympetrum species) is what made me lose signt of the neat little bug in the last post. The insect season is tailing off quickly – there are a lot fewer insects out now, we’ve had our first frost.
Filed under: Insects, Macro, Nature, Photography, Photos, nature study | 1 Comment
Tags: Insects, Macro, Nature, nature study, Photos
Ichneumon wasp
This female ichneumon wasp is huge – the body is an inch long, the tail two or three inches:
(I’m now offering a print of this wasp at a special price.)
It’s almost four inches long. The long tail is used to drill eggs into trees – the eggs hatch into larva that parasitize other insects. This [...]
Filed under: Insects, Macro, Nature, Photography, Photos, nature study | 6 Comments
Tags: Insects, Macro, Nature, nature study, Photography
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