Wallydraigle
Banned
It's been a couple weeks so I figured I would post a few insect photos, for your entertainment. You can see some of my other photos and read about the equipment I'm using in my last thread. I've been making good use of my new 1x-5x macro lens. With this lens I can fill a photograph with an object only a couple millimeters long. The drawbacks are that it is almost impossible to hold still enough to use it handheld at full magnification, and with its tiny effective apperture the subject must be very well lit. Even full sunlight is not enough sometimes. But whatever.
I took this photo just this morning. It is the nymph of a species of pentatomid. Stinkbugs are also pentatomids, and you can see the similarities. Keep in mind that this is an immature specimen, and it is in the ~2mm range. The aphid it is feeding on is only a fraction of a mm in length. I tracked it for a half hour before I cold get a shot like that. I probably should have backed off so I wouldln't have cut off its foot and antenna, but I didn't have much time before it went on the move again. The only cropping I did was to make it a 3:4 form factor so I could use it as wallpaper.
This spider is something on the order of 2-3mm, counting legs. The little thrip, or louse, or whatever it is that it's eating was barely visible to the nekkid eye. I could see the spider was moving its mouthparts, but I couldn't even tell it had a prey item til I saw it through the lens. You can't see it in the little compressed version I posted, but in the original file you can see the thrip's individual coumpound eyes. Very cool.
It's not really doing anything, but it looks cool anyway.
This saddleback caterpillar is pretty cool. The part you're seeing is actually its butt. If you look closely you will even notice a fecal pellet, if you go for that kind of thing. They developed in such a way that the butt looks like the head, and the head looks like the butt. The spines are poisonous, and I guess it looks very intimidating to a tiny predator.
Another caterpillar, it eats oak leaves.
I've got a neat leaf hopper, and some more spiders eating stuff, and some more caterpillars, but I'll save it for another time. Let me know what you think.
I took this photo just this morning. It is the nymph of a species of pentatomid. Stinkbugs are also pentatomids, and you can see the similarities. Keep in mind that this is an immature specimen, and it is in the ~2mm range. The aphid it is feeding on is only a fraction of a mm in length. I tracked it for a half hour before I cold get a shot like that. I probably should have backed off so I wouldln't have cut off its foot and antenna, but I didn't have much time before it went on the move again. The only cropping I did was to make it a 3:4 form factor so I could use it as wallpaper.
This spider is something on the order of 2-3mm, counting legs. The little thrip, or louse, or whatever it is that it's eating was barely visible to the nekkid eye. I could see the spider was moving its mouthparts, but I couldn't even tell it had a prey item til I saw it through the lens. You can't see it in the little compressed version I posted, but in the original file you can see the thrip's individual coumpound eyes. Very cool.
It's not really doing anything, but it looks cool anyway.
This saddleback caterpillar is pretty cool. The part you're seeing is actually its butt. If you look closely you will even notice a fecal pellet, if you go for that kind of thing. They developed in such a way that the butt looks like the head, and the head looks like the butt. The spines are poisonous, and I guess it looks very intimidating to a tiny predator.
Another caterpillar, it eats oak leaves.
I've got a neat leaf hopper, and some more spiders eating stuff, and some more caterpillars, but I'll save it for another time. Let me know what you think.
