Critters are coming out of the woodwork (only an idiom, thank goodness) - a little dragonfly (about 2 inches long) has been showing up and very accommodatingly posing while I fiddle with focus, shooting and checking if it will blow up nicely. Here it is with the flash illuminating the wings into iridescence. The second is the same dragonfly in red - you can see the little rectangular red streaks on the end of each wing - and the third is the same dragonfly but with last light bringing out a nearly imperceptible reddish color. It turns out that the red version is the male and the orange one the female!
Click on any picture to enlarge it. Click again to REALLY enlarge it.
The next one i did not take. It comes from a website called zen through a lens. I did not take it because the insect drifted in on the air, dipped its tail into the water (as do dragonflies and crane flies and mosquitoes) and raised up gently and floated over to the asters on the far side. Really. It suddenly disappeared. I felt "I am the luckiest person in the world to have seen this". It was phenomenal. Almost invisible. By the time i got around closer it could no longer be seen. You have no idea how magical it was. Maybe this picture will give you some idea.
The next pics are of a 3/8 inch long candy-striped leafhopper. They like to move about to the other side of the stem so you won't see them - very sneaky. So focusing on them is a royal pain. At least you can see the teeth on his leaping leg. I don't usually show people this, but i so enjoyed painting this subject, so the third picture is of a watercolor based on the second one.
Oh! I cribbed this last picture from the end of the August 24 letter - it didn't make it into the Aug 24 blog but here it is again with a couple appended. These are most of the winter's survivors. The next picture shows Goldilocks the day before he disappeared. He was floating listlessly after lunch and so I had a premonition and took a picture of him. He had the long flowing fins and tail of his parents, Seymour and Audrey, and was the last of all their offspring. The third shows one of the two little black fish that survived - as predicted, his fins and tail are beginning to gleam gold.
Here are a few of the many baby fish that had a good start - too bad their parents will eat anything small enough. You can see that they are smaller than tadpoles. The second picture shows one of the two little black fish that survived - as predicted, his fins and tail are beginning to gleam gold.
Happy weekend!
Bugguide.net is a wonderful resource. If you find a picture of something unknown to you, I'd love to see it , but also try your hand at identifying it at Bugguide.net:
