Summer Insects

Here are some insects from last July and August.

great spangled fritillary (June)

Japanese beetle on hyssop (focus stack of 4 images)

large milkweed bug on milkweed (focus stack of 6 images)

male ebony jewelwing, a damselfly

northeastern hammertail, a robber fly (focus stack of 5 images)

Is it just me, or does this ant have transparent rings in its abdomen? (focus stack of 2 images)

immature large milkweed bug on milkweed (focus stack of 5 images)

twice-stabbed stink bugs on hyssop (focus stack of 4 images)

Zethus spinipes, a wasp, on celosia

Franklin Park Conservatory Butterflies

The missing gardener gave me a ticket to the Franklin Park Conservatory for use when the weather is crummy. I had reason to vacate the house Monday, so I used the ticket then. The Conservatory hosts butterflies for about three months early in the year.

I was bummed that tripods are not allowed--how could I get good macro shots of butterflies without one? It turned out that the rule is good. Some of the paths are quite narrow, and using a tripod would have been difficult and rude. As it was, my shots with a telephoto lens were better than many of those with the macro lens.

Blue morpho (macro). I focused on the head, and the wings aren't very sharp.

Blue morphos are rather famous for their electric blue wings, but their closed wings are beautiful, too.

blue morpho

It looks like the butterflies were Photoshopped-in, but they were really there, flying.

Postman, I think. If I'd had my wits and noticed the nifty red edge of the leaf when I took the shot, I might have framed the photo differently (I cropped it to get what you see).

As with some other animals, butterfly identification can be hard. There was a sign with a bunch of butterflies and their common and scientific names, but I did not see this one. (Also, only open wings are shown.) The only one with red and white on its wings was a postman. At home, a search for "postman butterfly" included pictures that matched both what's on the sign and the above. I found what some random person wrote on Facebook articles in Nature, a reference in PubMed, and a website devoted to the Heliconius genus. This one is a postman, a regional variation, a hybrid, a mimic, or ...

A postman, I guess

I couldn't identify this butterfly. Heck, it could be a postman.

Sometimes, the more I look at a picture the better it gets. I thought the one above was ho-hum. The butterfly is turned away, after all. Then I thought it was decently framed, with nearly all the green bowl included. The orange is sort of a contrast to the green, and, for once, I included more than just the animal. It grew on me. Viewing pictures on a large monitor helps me change my mind, too.

 

Uncertain (macro). Possibly a giant swallowtail in its former life.

 

Two zoos in four days

I visited Toledo Saturday and Columbus Tuesday.

A reticulated giraffe at the feeding station. The Columbus Zoo also has Masai giraffes.

 

The reticulated giraffe awaits a treat from a zoo visitor. (Columbus Zoo)

Borealis was born last December. (Toledo Zoo)

Crystal contemplates playing with a ball. She's Borealis's mom. (Toledo Zoo)

Cobalt poison dart frogs. They literally played leapfrog in the Toledo Zoo's new tropical greenhouse.

A tropical butterfly (Toledo Zoo)

Cheetah. The Columbus Zoo has about a dozen.

A wood thrush landed a couple of feet away from me in the Columbus Zoo's songbird aviary.

A chestnut-breasted malkoha in the Toledo Zoo's pheasantry

Wild at the zoo

In addition to exhibited animals, zoos have uninvited guests. All photos are from the Columbus Zoo except as noted.

fox squirrel (Toledo Zoo)

Ma or Pa goose supervises the kids (2018).

Canada gosling (2019)

A great blue heron in the trumpeter swan pond

A gull, species unknown, in the parking lot

A bee flies to its next flower.

A butterfly? A moth?