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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
07-19-2020, 05:50 AM
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Yes, exactly!
In our Illinois oak-hickory forests, we have three principal vines, which all can grow far up into the canopy trees: Virginia Creeper, Poison Ivy, Wild Grape (Vitis riparia and perhaps other species). That's the place to grow your berries, if you want your seeds distributed by air! Arboreal mammals--like raccoons, opossums, maybe squirrels--probably take some of these fruits when they grow near branches that can support them. Some of the fruits will fall to the ground, of course, and be taken by any scavenger that finds them, as well, but for the most part these vines are bird food factories. And so there's something you can be 99% sure about: Wherever you see one of those vines growing, a bird pooped there!
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
07-18-2020, 07:16 PM
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So far as I know most wild animals don't get dermatitis from poison Ivy the way humans do, and then over a hundred forty species of birds eat the poison ivy berries, and then distribute its seeds in their droppings. I find that I mainly am afflicted with the poison Ivy rash when I've been trying to pull it up in my yard. ;)
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
07-18-2020, 11:15 AM
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Dogbane is one of those plants I have to try to clear from my pasture, though there are lots of other places around my place it can grow. I've read that eating very little dogbane can kill a goat. Goats can eat all kinds of things that a lot of other farm critters would leave alone, but a few things can be deadly to them.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
09-04-2019, 07:19 AM
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The Scolia dubia, it should be mentioned, is no relation to that cartoon dog, the Scoobia doobia.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
08-22-2019, 07:00 PM
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I've never seen mantis look that tired before.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
07-28-2019, 05:37 PM
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Yellow Swallowtail pollenating Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum virginianum)
RMC Tokina F/5.6 100-300mm + K10D
Image cropped.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
07-16-2019, 08:42 AM
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A few members of the Buffalo Gnat swarm around me making bokeh of themselves in the sky of the picture I was taking:
Minolta Hi-Matic AF2-M early AF auto-exposure point-n-shoot + expired Kodacolor 400 shot at iso 250.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
12-27-2018, 06:21 AM
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What a lovely fashion accessory!
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
10-28-2018, 02:36 AM
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I like the bokeh on this one, too.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
09-05-2018, 11:52 AM
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Zinnia with butterflies that a someone here will recognize by name. As only the near edge of the petals are in sharp focus, both butterflies are on the verge of sliding back into the bokeh zone. The rear butterfly hopped on just as I was pressing the shutter button.
K10D at iso200
Nikkor-Q f4 200mm at f5.6
Nikon Pk-3 27.5mm extension tube
(no mount mod, just scrunched on a well as possible)
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
08-20-2018, 11:36 AM
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Among the other Monarchs, it's known as a "tough guy"!
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
06-16-2018, 08:09 AM
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Not personally owning the insects I've taken pictures of, I post in this thread.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
10-31-2017, 07:23 AM
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Of course, any one study, finding certain factors having less of a role in the study area, doesn't mean that those factors might not be the important causes of insect species decline in other localities. For example, some places are afflicted terribly with a single invasive species that reduces food plant diversity insects depend on and others are less so afflicted. If that isn't a major factor in a study area, the affect of that kind of invasion simply is not measured in the study. I does not mean it's not a problem elsewhere.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
10-30-2017, 03:26 PM
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We used to see a lot of kingbirds on our place, but the old the 6-acre oldfield the loved to hunt around has grown up in shrubs, and I think they liked the open country more. We've go a phoebe nesting each year somewhere close to the front porch each year now.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
10-30-2017, 12:30 PM
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The loss in insectivorous fauna, like amphibians, must be partially attributable to the loss of insects, as well.
The increase in some alien insect species, like Japanese beetles squeezing into people's houses, will keep most people from noticing the loss of many other insect species' numbers.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
09-18-2017, 03:29 PM
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The north end of a wasp going south.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
09-12-2017, 12:11 PM
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A little follow-up for the thread on the Leatherwing Soldier Beetle, which Aslyfox photographed so well (see a few posts earlier). We continued discussion about their being more likely pollen thieves than pollinators in a Private Message exchange. Not wishing to think of them as all bad, I managed to find a webpage showing one of them with pollinia, the little structures connected in pairs like saddlebags which milkweed pollen comes in, clasped on its legs. It doesn't look like he's eating that pollen, and if he visits enough other milkweed blossoms after that one, the pollen sacks will get caught in the trap-like slits the flowers have for them. So at least one flower species can outsmart the Leatherwing beetle at pollination time.
Here's the link showing the picture of the Leatherwing with Pollinia. --
Leatherwing beetle with milkweed pollinia - Chauliognathus marginatus - BugGuide.Net
Here's another link showing a great many different insect species participating in milkweed pollination, a fun thing to watch for while out hunting insects with a camera! --
Insects Carrying Milkweed Pollinia |
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
09-11-2017, 06:20 PM
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Clean-shaven, hmmm? Well, maybe the flowers they visit make enough surplus pollen, for the pollinators who also eat pollen, that these pollen theives don't really make much difference. Ants are nectar thieves, and don't do much pollinating (mainly because they don't fly), but I don't think they take enough nectar (most of the time) to reduce what's available to the pollinators visiting flowers for nectar.
Now I'm going to have to look at one of those soldier beetles with a magnifying glass to see if I can see anyplace pollen can and does stick to.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
09-11-2017, 05:58 PM
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Interesting! I see those critters all the time, probably because we have a fair about of Showy Goldenrod around.
For a bit of perspective, keep in mind that bumble bees collect prodigious amounts of pollen as food for themselves and their offspring, but in the process a fair amount of pollen sticks to the bumblebee, instead of going into its pollen sacks. In visiting other flowers, to collect more pollen for food, they also transfer pollen stuck to them to the stamens of other flowers, so the flowers still win in the bargain. Probably the same applies to the Goldenrod Leatherwing -- sure it eats some of the pollen, but it also transfers pollen from plant to plant.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
08-30-2017, 05:46 AM
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 Originally posted by Aslyfox  first attempt ever to photograph a grass hopper
this guy, at the Topeka Zoo and Conservation Center [ on a relatively cool day } didn't move at all for minutes
only the last has been cropped and pp I've read of refrigeration being used to slow down insects for scientific illustration photography of them in labs.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
08-26-2017, 11:21 AM
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Tiny heavily-pollen-loaded bee on a miniature cornflower.
This is a 5-mpx crop out of my K10D's 10-mpx original image, with very slight additional post-processing. Not the best framing and the colors are almost jarring. Still it was a promising shot from my first test images with my just acquired SMC Pentax-F 35-105mm.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
11-17-2016, 10:27 AM
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Bark beetle tunnels on a piece of firewood. (Sorry the beetles aren't there. They've moved on to another job site.)
(K10D + Helios 44-2 2/58 + 10mm Miida tube extender)
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