CalevPhoto

What are these ants doing?

While taking pictures last week, I came across several ants traveling along the stem of a bush. I tried to get a good shot of one crawling along the thin limbs, but I just couldn’t get a good shot.  After some time, I became curious about what they were doing.  When I took a closer look, I was even more puzzled.

I have some suspicions about what was going on, but the truth is I don’t really know.  There were several of these “bumps” on the bush and the ants were traveling from one to the other.  There were perhaps five ants in total that I saw.

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Mysteries come, mysteries go with the Canon 5D Mark II

One of the things I am getting the biggest kick about with the 5D Mark II is the resolution of the shots.  Very often when paired with my MP-E 65 I see things that I would never have been able to notice.  In some cases they answer questions I had always wondered about.  In other cases they bring up new questions.

Mystery solved: How to harvestmen climb?

Here you can see a closeup of two of the legs of the harvestman.  On the ends of each leg are claws.  They obviously use these claws to grasp onto things.  This shot was taken around 3x magnification and is blown up 150%.

Of course, with each mystery solved a new mystery comes along.  This harvestman was found on a fallen leaf.  Therefore the new mystery is – what are those things coming out of the leaf?  My guess is they are some kind of mold or fungus, but I truly do not know.

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The mystery of the strange beetle larva revisited

Some time ago, I blogged about a strange beetle larva that I had found.  It is clearly the larva of something – probably a beetle.  However, I still have no idea what it is.

Interestingly enough, I have only found this critter in one place – close to one of the ponds near my office.  I have never found one by my house or in any of the parks.  Therefore, my suspicion is that – while obviously not aquatic – whatever this grows up into prefers to be near water.

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A Curious Case of Midges

Every winter, approximately at this time, I notice that midges start collecting on our shed outside.  My suspicion is that this is for mating, and that there is something about the shed that the midges like.  Last weekend I decided to see what I could find outside and to no great surprise I found a few midges on our barn.

I didn’t bother photographing them for very long because there weren’t that many of them, I already have a number of photographs of midges, and there weren’t any midges in really great photographic position.

Nevertheless, that didn’t prevent several mysteries from cropping up.

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The Mystery of the Six Legged Spider

This weekend I took a brief opportunity to look at what I could find outside.  The weather has been cold here and we recently got over a snowstorm, so I wasn’t too optimistic.  In addition, it started raining soon after I got out so I didn’t have much time to take any pictures.

I did manage to find this tiny spider though on my kids’ slide.

This spider was incredibly tiny – requiring 5x magnification from my MP-E 65 to get this shot.  After downloading the shot, I looked through some of my books to attempt to get an ID – but after some investigation I can 100% say I have no idea what type of spider this is.

When my wife looked at the picture, she picked out an obvious mystery.  It only has six legs.

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The mystery of the white lacewing

Very often as I follow the insects and other small creatures in my backyard, I come across a mystery.  These aren’t truly mysteries, as I’m sure someone knows the answer, but in my research I am unable to find an answer as to why things are.

Take for example, this lacewing that I found recently in my backyard.

This lacewing appears to be dead.  It has grown pale white and has some ‘stuff’ on it.  In cases like this, I do not know truly what has happened but I can comment on what I have observed. Continue Reading…

The mysterious beetle solved?

I mentioned in a previous post that I found a strange new insect when photographing this weekend.  I picked up a bag of dirt and found some interesting things underneath to shoot.  As I was above to coax a millipede onto a white sheet of paper, I noticed something tiny moving in the dirt.  I zoomed to 5x on my MP-E 65 and took several shots in an attempt to capture it.  Unfortunately none of them turned out as well as I would have hoped, but I received two shots that were decent enough to attempt identification.

I looked through my Audobon field guide to no avail.  The bug just didn’t appear to be there.  So I got out my huge hardcover book on insects and slowly went through the hundreds of shots, hoping for a match.  After some time, I may have found a match.  This appears to be a spider beetle – family Anobiidae, subfamily Ptininae.  Here’s another shot of it.

Unfortunately the shots I found in the book and those on the web have so far not provided an exact match.  I suspect this may be because my book covers only insects in eastern North America.  For some reason, I have noticed that many books seem to discount the western half of the United States.  Perhaps this may be because they don’t want to dedicate large portions of a book to insects that only exist in one geographic area.  I remember as a young child being dismayed after seeing an interesting animal in a guide book only to find that it only lives in the West.  Still, this makes it even more difficult for us in the Puget Sound.  Though we share many insects with the East, we also have a number of our own which don’t seem to be covered in many guide books.  Even the Audobon guide, which supposedly covers the entire country, tends not to cover insects particular to this region.

Therefore my current theory is that this is indeed a spider beetle, but is either a less common species or a species isolated to this part of the country.

Even still, though this remains a bit of a mystery it is always exciting finding and learning about new creatures in my backyard.