The bugs are back in town! (Part II)
I had to finish yesterday’s blog due to a FlickR outage (they host the pictures for the blog), so continuing with the story I was amazed with how many bugs were out. I picked up the lid on one of the trash cans in the back of our yard and noticed a stink bug. This is a shot after I had moved it to a leaf.
At first I was rather excited because as I prodded it to move to the leaf I smelled something curious. Had the stink bug actually fired at me? After all, it is well known that stink bugs defend themselves through a foul smelling mixture that they spray at potential attackers. I then heard my neighbor cussing that something he had opened really stunk, which culled the excitement. A closer sniff of the bug revealed that it was not the stink bug itself. Perhaps it did spray, but I couldn’t smell it.
I then moved the stink bug to a primrose that I felt was more photogenic.
It didn’t seem enthralled to be there and soon took off.
I let it go, knowing that it certainly will not be the last stink bug I photograph this year. I always enjoy photographing them due to their bright green color and interesting eyes. The next time though I think I’ll try finding a leaf that matches the color as close as possible and try some photographs on it. I’m not sure the strong colors of the flower really helped the shot in this case.
Another interesting episode came with an ant that I found crawling in one of our recycle bins. It took off when I tried to photograph it and crawled into the bin. I watched it for a bit until it came to the very edge of the recycle bin and we stared at each other for about a minute.
I’m not sure of the species. It did not appear to be a carpenter ant, but I didn’t get a good enough shot of the entire body to be able to identify it.
Finally, I did not have too much luck with the flies that day - who were a bit skittish, but I did manage to get one fly. Interestingly it was wingless - though I’m not sure why.
Why this particular fly did not have wings will have to go in my mystery bin.
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Tags: ant, backyard, fly, insect, macro, photography, stink bug