This past sorting task was overdue and required me to slog through 2,000 images, and the earliest image was still just May 2nd – less than a month. Now you understand why I keep talking about a photo backlog, and these only added to it…
I can’t recall the exact circumstances for this one, but we’ve noticed that if the wood ducks (Aix sponsa) get suspicious, they’ll occasionally take a perch in the trees on Duck Island to keep an eye on things, which is what this female is doing. The Girlfriend was stunned and delighted to find that ducks can actually perch in trees, or at least wood ducks can. It’s definitely infrequent.
Growing up, we always called these little guys, “sweat bees,” though as I got into arthropod photography I figured this was one of those nonsense colloquialisms – turns out, that’s what they’re called (Subfamily Halictinae, and I’m not going to try and get any closer than that from this photo.) I found this one dangling from a single web strand attached to a spinner on our back porch, no spider in sight, and occasionally it would attempt to fly off and just zoom in circles. Don’t ask me how this occurs.
While outside waiting for something to fly over again (I forget what,) I did a focus test on a commercial liner passing high overhead, and liked the effect. The contrail made it clear where the plane was, which is good, because even at high magnification it virtually disappeared in the atmospheric scatter, along with the color matching the sky. Some of those spots are indeed navigation lights, though the nose point I suspect is simply a reflection of the sun.
As much as this one appears squashed, it’s just trying to sleep – the Carolina anoles (Anolis carolinensis) are quite fond of sleeping between the decorative frame of the back door and the screening therein. never realizing that this neither hides them nor conserves their body heat. But the girth of this one leads me to believe that it’s a pregnant female.
And another entry in the “Which one works better?” survey:
The one above, or the one below?
Same pic, just cropped differently. It was late afternoon and the background trees were already shrouded in shadow, though the sun was backlighting the dragonfly. This version makes it clear that some minuscule insects (or perhaps just dust or pollen) were also cruising through the frame, leaving little star streaks.
That’s a few more down. Getting there…