A beautiful, short, sad story from Avalus.
Last year, I photographed bumblebees on lavender. This year, it was much less frequented but still abuzz with all kinds of bees. You can really see how much less insects are around.
A Year Later. ©Avalus, all rights reserved
Sometimes a bumblebee lands, drinks a bit, and then flies off again like a little helicopter. Not these two though. They both took their time, going around the flower systematically in a circle, drinking as much as they can. And just when I was taking the pictures, one of them decided to take off.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
Nuff said.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
I nearly missed her, despite her substantial size, so well does her color blend in with the sunflower stalks and leaves.
I remember that as a child I caught one of these in bare hand and it bit me rather painfully.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
Nightjar is here to share her beautiful, monthly photos of the light in her world.
©Nightjar,all rights reserved
Last year I have shown you bright yellow crab spider who was munching on bees. This year I did not see a grown-up one, only this one little baby. Still white, slightly translucent and tiny, about the size of a pinhead. Sorry for a bit blurry pictures, but the little bugger did not stop, it kept wandering about and performing strange gymnastics. And I have forgotten to take my monopod with me, so this is shot completely freehand.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
Of course. But not as many as I would like, unfortunately.
Our neighbor had beehives in her garden – her brother in law was a beekeeper. But he died a few years ago and none of his two sons took over. And thus bees disappear from the landscape, one old beekeeper dying at a time
And even solitary bees are becoming distressingly rare as they are increasingly more deprived of suitable food sources due to excessive rapeseed cultivation in our country because rapeseed brings biggest profits to the corporate oligarchs ruling our agriculture. Rapeseed all around is for bees about as healthy as nothing but dry bread and water is for humans.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
Not sure what these are doing there, but they sure do like them sunflowers, the green and fuzzy parts especially.
Funny thing is that I get the best results with macro photography with my cheapo macro lens that I have build from a magnifying glass, paper tube and a thread reduction ring for lenses. But all pictures made with it have significant chromatic aberration. Someday I will write about how to correct it in Photoshop. The first photo in this post is ideal for that.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
Yellowjackets are lousy pollinators. From a gardening point of view they are pests. They scavenge and steal and eat whatever they find and sometimes destroy. In this particular case, I have caught one munching on the stem. The wasp has bitten into it and probably munched on the sap. It definitively was not just cooling off its heels in the shade, her mandibles were moving and she took her time on that spot.
What the ones on the leaves were doing I have no idea, but I never saw one even near the blossoms.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
L.M. Budgen. Episodes of Insect Life. London, Reeve, Benham, and Reeve, 1849.
via: The Internet Archive
Nightjar has sent us her monthly look at the light conditions in her world and, as always, the photos are fabulous. Enjoy.
©Nightjar,all rights reserved
Clarence M. Weed. Insects and Insecticides. A practical Manual concerning noxious insects and the methods of preventing their injuries. Published by the author Hanover, New Jersey, 1891.
via: The Biodiversity Heritage Library, where you can view the entire book.
When watering my citruses today, a movement caught my eye in one of the bowls. A tiny black parasitic wasp in a struggle with a spider twice its size. I did not have my camera with me and of course, I could not go and get it, so I snapped at least a few pictures with my phone. I assume the wasp has won and laid the spider aside for afters because it has left it lay there all limp and motionless, danced around a bit and then left.
Pictures below the fold – content warning spiders and predation.