I took this shot with my 180mm macro while I was trying to get close enough to the ducks.  They were very friendly, but I was asking too much to get that close to them.  I’m sure if I was patient and sat there for awhile one of them would have come close, but this is the only shot of the bunch I didn’t delete.

I had thought for sure that insects would be going crazy that day.  After all, it was the first somewhat warm day after a long cold spell.  Alas, I couldn’t find much of anything short of a few pill bugs and harvestmen that didn’t stay still.

The end result was I wound up with this millipede.  I kind of liked how it rolled up so I did a crop without much of the background.

I’m not sure if the crop really helps here though.  What do you think?

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We watched the ducks for about a half hour.  I didn’t get any shots that I am particularly crazy about, but it was interesting watching them.

From watching them I learned that each pair of ducks seems to have a territory.  Generally the territory is defined by some natural obstacles – such as a fallen tree or some branches.  When another duck (particularly a male) enters this territory the other male will slowly glide towards it.  Most of the time, the intruder responds by backing off and leaving the duck’s territory.  However, once in awhile they start fighting.

In this shot, I tried playing with the reflection of the bird.  I did this in a number of shots, but none of them came out as well as I hoped, which is OK.  After watching the ducks for awhile and failing to get a shot whenever they took off or started fighting, I took out the macro lens and looked around for what I could find.

  I found this harvestman on a leaf and discussed it in an earlier post.  Harvestmen are always great to photograph as they sit still for the camera.  What many people do not know about them is they are not spiders.  While they are arachnids, they are in a different order than spiders – kind of like scorpions.

While finding things for another macro photographer to shoot, I came across this woodlouse and couldn’t resist taking a few shots of it.  They are one of the easiest subjects to find and many of them are also very patient for the camera.  Other names for the woodlouse include roly-poly, pillbug, and sowbug.  This is actually a sowbug I believe, as it did not roll into a ball as pillbugs do.

One of my favorite subjects by far to photograph is the springtail.  Tey are so tiny that few people know what they look like up close and they are often very interesting insects to look at.  I recently found a used book at the bookstore with a first chapter on springtails.  I hope to have time to read it soon so I can blog more about the collembola family soon.

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