CalevPhoto

The Hoverfly

Most of us are very familiar with the hoverfly.  Their flight patterns are very recognizable and have flustered generations of photographers attempting to get one in flight.  As they stay in the same place for short periods of time, it is very tempting to try to get a picture of one in flight.  This photographer was tempting by one over the weekend.  Alas, the hoverfly one and I wound up with all of one out of focus picture that was quickly deleted.  Still, I managed  to get a few half way decent ones of the hoverfly landed.

I don’t like the white background at all in this shot, but I had to take what the fly provided.  I tried photographing another two other hoverflies in more photogenic areas but none of the shots turned out.  Note that whenever taking insects on a white background, make sure to dial up the MT-24EX a stop or two.  Otherwise the picture will show up as too dark due to the metering in the camera.  This picture is close to the brightness of the original, but previous shots I took were too dark.

After reading a bit though, I never knew how beneficial these flies truly are.

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Nature’s pretend soldiers

Recently, the rain stopped for long enough that I had enough time to get out and take some shots. Even though the weather was less than ideal, I have taken shots in my backyard long enough that I have a good idea where to find interesting things. On the wall of my shed, I was pleased to find a solitary leafhopper. It was a bit high up so it was tricky getting shots of it but I managed to get a few frames before it flew away.

I’ve always rather liked leafhoppers. Many of the insects here are rather drab, but leafhoppers are remarkably beautiful – particularly when photographed from the side. However, I have had a tremendously difficult time trying to get a good shot of one from the side. Given that this one was on the shed rather than on a leaf (which I could accidentally bump), I tried getting side shots.

When I uploaded the pictures onto my machine, however, I was rather bummed that I didn’t get the angles I was hoping for. I was ready to delete the shots when I noticed something peculiar. Can you see it?

Yup, on the back of it we have a little army guy! There’s a light green face in the center with a straight mouth and two eyes and above the face is a rounded army helmet! Perhaps this is nature’s attempt at mimicry. The next time some human goes to squash this bug – he’ll mistake it for an army soldier and not squash it! Actually, I’m sure this is a natural defense, though I doubt that humans are the intended target. Perhaps the intent is to make the insect look larger, though I suspect the goal is to make a potential predator think it is looking back at it.  In this case a further away shot would probably contain the clue – but I did not take one from further away (the MP-E 65 is a close-up lens).

Here’s another shot of it with a bit of the side view.

Here it looks like the army soldier is wrapped up in a sleeping bag (the wings are the bag). One final shot of this peculiar phenomenon.

You have to hand it to nature when it has such a sense of humor.