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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
01-21-2015, 09:37 AM
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Here in Georgia we have the Gulf Fritillary, also a beauty. Their caterpillars eat passion flower plants, both the leaves and the fruit. With the vines growing around our mailbox we have butterfly "ranch" most of the summer.:lol:
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
11-11-2014, 02:25 PM
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Excellent shot! I Googled the critter and discovered that the caterpillars feed on Virginia Creeper, as I'd suspected. For those unfamiliar with V Creeper, it is a vine, with typically 5 leaflets in palmate form, leaflets perhaps 3 to 5 inches long, notched edges, dentate is the term I think. Note that the occasional 3 leaflet leaf does somewhat resemble Poison Ivy/Oak. Purple berries, the leaves turn a lovely red in the fall. If you plant it, know that it can become invasive, climbing fences, walls, houses .... but doing no damage to the surface, unlike ivy. Really a nice plant, in its place! I wish I could introduce the Sphinx to our crop of Creeper....:)
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
09-19-2013, 02:26 PM
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Audubon does good work. Yeah, as I grow older I discover that there seem to distinct anomalies in local gravity, evidenced when I have to get up.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
08-16-2013, 09:21 AM
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Great shots! In the "didn't have my camera with me" department, just the other day I saw a Fritillary butterfly in the act of laying an egg. Tiny pale green thing, about the size of a grain of sand. The egg, not the Fritillary!
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
02-10-2013, 03:27 PM
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I'm establishing a bee hive this spring! This should be an interesting photo source. I wonder how easy it is to use the viewfinder through a bee veil....
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
12-05-2012, 03:04 PM
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I once found a mantis egg case, put in a mason jar and foolishly brought indoors, where I forgot about it for several weeks. When I remembered and looked in there were a few happy, fat mantids, and a host of body parts of their former brothers and sisters.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
11-16-2012, 03:40 PM
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No, stings I find a nuisance. When I had a hive some years ago I was stung only 5 or 6 times in the 18 months I had the hive. Sadly when my marriage went sour and I was thrown out of the house my soon to be ex-wive ingnored the hive, and my Little Ladies flew the coop, literally.
Happily honeybees are unlikely to sting unless provoked, although the Africanized strains are more "provokeable." The sterile female worker bee's stinger is barbed, so it cannot be withdrawn from the person or whatever being stung, thus the sting is fatal to the bee. Drones, the male bee, have no stinger. Queens, however, can sting repeatedly, but they rarely leave the hive after the nuptial flight, or if swarming. Truly the female is the deadlier of the species.
Now swarming. If you see a large mass of bees on a tree limb fear not. Unless poked at they won't attack. Marvel from a safe distance, and call your County Extension or Agricultural Office for the name of a beekeeper who can safely corral the swarm. Bees pollinate a large proportion of our foodstuffs and we are faced with the thus far inexplicable death of many bee colonies, so a swarm of bees is a vital resource.
I doubt I'll be able to harvest much honey the first season, but after that it should be Sweeeeet!
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
11-13-2012, 01:36 PM
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My plan is to set up a bee hive in my backyard, so I hope to be able to post some shots of the domestic life of the Queen and her ladies. Hives are fascinating, plus you can get some honey! Let's not speak of the cost per pint of the honey....
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
10-17-2012, 01:22 PM
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Handsome fella isn't he? We get them here in Georgia, and I remember as a kid in Virginia carefully tying a thread around the joint between the thorax and the abdomen and, voila! a flying pet! At least for a little while.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
09-30-2012, 08:29 AM
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Great shots! The mantis is probably a female with her abdomen distended with soon to be laid eggs. The egg mass resembles a expansive foam insulating material, light brown in color, and often encircles a twig. The young, hundreds of them, resemble the adults and busily begin hunting and feeding, often on each other. Ah, the family life of the mantis family! Daddy often eaten by Mommy after mating, and the kiddies eat each other! Monsters in the back yard.
If you find such an egg mass, know that if you bring it indoors to a heated space, they will probably hatch in your house! I speak from experience. Keep the egg mass in the refrigerator until spring, and then you can loose them on an unsuspecting world in your garden.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
09-17-2012, 10:38 AM
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Ewww..... These bad boys aren't quite as nasty as yellow jackets, but.... A long lens is always a good idea with wasps, and a chilly day will slow them down. BTW, mud daubers, the folk who build the tubular nests from clay, seem pretty mellow. I don't worry if they build by my back door, but paper wasps gotta go.
Some mud daubers build lovely little clay "pots" about 3/8 to 1/2 inch in diameter. I'd love to see one under construction.
As far as the paper wasps which build large, gray spherical nests, observe from afar! The onset of cold weather kills the colony, save for a few survivors who then start over come spring. I imagine they hide out in crevices, etc out of the weather.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
09-15-2012, 05:03 PM
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Wonderful shot! Ever watch a mantis catch and devour its prey? We don't need movies like Alien to furnish real examples of the other. As you may know, the female mantis often devours her mate after she is fertilized.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
09-13-2012, 09:58 AM
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No insects, except peripherally. I strolled out to check the mail and paused to enjoy "my" fritilary butterflies enjoying the tall zinnias surrounding the mailbox. As I stood there a hummingbird zoomed in and sampled two or three flowers. The tiny beauty was no more than two feet from me, and not at all worried. A female rubythroat, I think. I could swear she winked at me!:)
And of course, I had left my K-5 in the house. And so it goes....
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
08-27-2012, 06:43 AM
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The Fritilarys here in Jonesboro also like our zinnias. They make a wonderful show. Good shots, BTW.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
08-06-2012, 02:01 PM
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The Tennessee Aquarium has added a butterfly "room." The Aquarium is really worth a visit; I much prefer it to the Georgia Aquarium here in Atlanta.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
08-06-2012, 09:37 AM
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So I've noticed. Is this because the gardens can then have a year-round supply by using tropical species? Calloway Gardens in Georgia in winter wouldn't have much luck with our native Swallowtails, for example. Or is there another reason.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
07-30-2012, 01:02 PM
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Bill -
The flight shots are really remarkable! How many outtakes were there, if I may ask? With a manual focus lens, did you use catch focus and hold the release down until the camera released the shutter? A few details, please.
I've felt lucky to catch a dragon at rest, let alone in flight. Wowzer! I'll have to fire up my K10d and have at it again.
Canon/Nikon fanboyz, eat your hearts out.
The other day while leaving a parking lot at about 10 mph a dragon fly "paced" me about 6 inches above my hood and 1 foot from my windshield. I wonder if the reflections on my - for once - shiny car looked like water. Of course I couldn't watch the dragon closely, since I was driving.
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