Annual Cicada

I noticed a cicada in the front-yard blue spruce not long after its final molt September 8.

(iPhone 7)

(iPhone 7)

(Nikon with 55-300mm zoom lens)

(Nikon with 100mm macro lens)

Recent Bugs

A fly? A bee? I put less effort into identifying the types of some insects than I used to because there are flies that look like bees, bees that look like flies, flies that look like wasps, and I don't know what else. As for species, sometimes it seems as though one has to count the hairs on a leg to decide.

eastern yellowjacket wasp on lovage

 A northern paper wasp, maybe. Many photos show them with stripes, but this photo matches one in an ODNR publication which says, "This is our most common native paper wasp, but is highly variable and can be mistaken for several different species. Further, recent studies have revealed two previously unrecognized species nearly identical to the Northern Paper Wasp." Also, an Iowa State U. website says, "... the separation of P. fuscatus from related species remains the greatest taxonomic problem of the northeastern Vespidae fauna." What did I write in the first photo's caption?

cabbage white butterfly, I think. This would have been a fantastic shot if only the butterfly were in focus.

Leaf-footed bug. I focused on the eggs, which look like barrels lined-up end-to-end. The party is on a porch screen.

leaf-footed bug nymphs

black swallowtail caterpillar on dill

Gary Shandling

 For some reason, my first thought was Gary Shandling.

Who's in there?

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.

 

Praying Mantis

I tried to make a composite image of a gecko, and that was a failure. A composite chameleon was simpler and better. Since then, I tried to make a macro composite of a cicada exoskeleton.

That proved to be beyond me. Keeping the antennas and hairs while adding in-focus legs was difficult. Also, as the focus changes, elements of the image appear to move. An out-of-focus leg is smeared wider than the same leg that in focus, so when I put the in-focus leg on top of the out-of-focus leg, the leg ended up with a tan halo. If I included part of the background (a window screen), that didn't work because the screen's wires from different pictures didn't line up. A solid-color background would help.

There are tools that make this kind of thing easier. A camera can be mounted on a focus rail. Then, after an initial focus, a picture is taken, and the camera is moved a small, measured distance before the next picture is taken. That has the effect of changing the focus at consistent intervals without touching the camera. Then, after taking tens of pictures, focus-stacking software, as it's called, takes all the pictures and makes one image with everything in focus. I don't know how seriously I want to pursue this, and I'm a cheapskate, so I'm not buying anything. Yet.

I decided to stop trying to make composite images, until the missing gardener pointed-out a praying (could be "preying," no?) mantis.

I thought I might be able to make a composite of the mantis's body because it doesn't have a lot of projections. I started with the head and "neck" and worked my way back. That turned out okay, but I decided to make another composite starting at the other end, and that's what you see here. I used five shots.

It's not bad, especially at a smaller size. There are lines across the plant stems, and other artifacts are visible at a larger size.

Here are five pictures.