animals, insect, macro, photography, wildlife

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #252: What’s bugging you?

This week, Donna is challenging us with a topic, a bit harder to understand without having read the introducing full post.

Over time, I also took photographs of insects, although I’m not one of those guys crawling through the meadows and forests with their macros lenses and macro flashlights. Nonetheless, many bees and especially butterflies began an eternal life after being captured by my camera’s sensor. But, today, I try to avoid these and introduce you to some other creatures I captured in our garden.

For a couple of years, we have a mortar barrel in our garden. Initially, it was used to transport some gravel from the building materials store. After that, the barrel stood around empty but it collected some rain. When another store offered some water plants, my wife bought some water lilies among others. This body of water equipped with perfect landing grounds is a very welcomed water supply for many, many flying insects. They come during summer to collect water, just like the wasp below.

Even many birds, squirrels, and cats use this water against their thirst. 

Unfortunately, other animals like i.e. hedgehogs can’t benefit, because they can’t climb up there. So, we decided to create a small pond with about 250l of water but the water level is close below ground level with a shallow waterfront to offer not only safe water access but also an area where birds can have a bath.

Surprisingly, this pond got populated by some surprising animals the next spring: alpine newts.

These amphibians need bodies of water for their eggs and their larvae grow in the water. the adults leave the water in summer to make their living by hunting insects at night. The next spring, they come back into the pond to work on the next generation.

The pond is also attracting some dragonflies. Up to now, I only noticed large red damsels and azur maidens, and none of the big dragonflies. But, I hope some of them also choose the pond in the future.

A few years ago, I found these extraordinary caterpillars in our garden:

sycamore (Acronicta aceris) / Ahorneule

 

Orgyia antiqua, the rusty tussock moth or vapourer (Orgyia antiqua) / Schlehen-Bürstenspinner, Schlehenspinner oder Kleine Bürstenspinner

or this real bug:

geringelte Mordwanze (Rhynocoris annulatus) / I was unable to find their English name, if any

Here is another bug. I found him in the fall before last. They were attracted by the already-dried lavender blossoms.

Pyrrhocoridae on lavender / Feuerwanze

These guys used to hover above our forsythia a couple of years ago. It was a really tough job to capture at least one of them.

Bombylius major / Wollschweber

 

This was a very lucky find. Over centuries, cockchafers were so many, that it was common to cook them i.e. as a soup or serve them roasted. Nowadays, they are rare and this was the first living one ever I saw. Their larvae live 12 years in the soil until the beetle comes out of the ground to fly up to the next big tree to find a mate. This is a male with his antennas folded. Males have bigger antennas than females, but the females live a few weeks longer to spread their eggs.

 

And at last, I have a really creepy one for you: Pterophorus pentadactyla

Federgeistchen (Pterophorus pentadactyla)

 

When talking about creepy insects, I can’t avoid presenting at least one spider.

I was photographing the blossoms of our lilac by using a ladder when I noticed some strange fine lines in the image on the back of my camera. Because of the regularity of these fine lines, I supposed, my lens were broken. But, everything seemed fine on the first hand. So I went to my computer to check the images on the computer screen and recognized, I captured a tiny spider web by accident without having seen it with my bare eye. so, I went back and tried to find that blossom again where I not only found the web but also the tiny Araniella cucurbitina, sometimes called the “cucumber green spider”

cucumber spider on lilac (Araniella cucurbitina) / Kürbisspinne

When digging through your archive, it’s likely you find more images than expected.  These challenges are a very good opportunity to walk through your archive and see your images from a different perspective. Those of you following me for some time can easily see, this is not my usual style. It’s different

As usual, click on the images to enlarge them.

Thanks, Donna for this wonderful opportunity to show some images not that common.

Maybe, I inspired you to dig in your archive and find some images, you can publish your images on your blog and set a link to Amy’s inspiration post. Don’t forget to tag it with LENS-ARTIST, so we can find it.

Take care!

animals, bird, nature, photo-of-the-day, photography, wildlife

Throwback Thursday: puffin

Since my first visit of Iceland, I’m following the Icelandic news online (the English version of course 😁). Earlier this week, I read a news initially published by ruv.is about the Atlantic puffin.

These cute birds only come to land for breeding and Iceland is the breeding home for about 40% of the worldwide population. Two years ago, I already published a similar post focussing on the enormous decrease of the puffin population. Now they state, the population decided by 70% since 1995!😳😩😡

According to the news, the vanishing of their food is the primary reason for the decline. I already wrote about it. Thus, I simply ask you to follow this link and read the second and third paragraphs.

Take care!

 

animals, bird, nature, photo-of-the-day, photography, wildlife

Throwback Thursday: Eurasian hoopoe

Eurasian hoopoe (Upupa epops) / Wiedehopf

Each year in spring I see images on Instagram with this small bird. It’s quite rare here although they are common in Europe (except Great Britain and Scandinavia)  and Asia. You can even find them in Africa. The European part of the population is migratory. They fly south over winter because they can’t find insects to feed themselves during winter.  In Germany, you can find them only in certain areas. 

For a long, I had them on my bucket list and I’m really happy to finally met one of them. 

We, humans, try to get rid of vermins by spraying poisons over the fields. But, poison has side effects: the fruits take in portions of the poison and beneficial insects are also harmed. With the death of insects, insect-eating animals like these beautiful birds are also affected. 

Make your garden attractive to insect-eating animals. They help to protect your harvest.

Take care!

 

animals, mammal, nature, photo-of-the-day, photography, plants, wildlife

Monochrome Monday 9-32

 

 

Take care!

 

<ad>

Excire has started its Christmas Promotion. 
Anyone who purchases Excire Foto between December 16th, 2022, and January 6th, 2023 will receive the Excire Analytics extension as a gift (worth 39€).
Excire Analytics is a great added value for your customers. By using it they can gain exciting insights into their photographic work. 

Retrieving the gift is simple: instead of Excire Foto, simply add the Excire Foto + Excire Analytics bundle to their shopping cart with a reduced price of 99€ instead of 129€.

If you want to purchase both Excire Foto and Excire Search add the complete Excire Collection to your shopping cart with a reduced price of 169€ instead of 189€. The Excire Collection consists of Excire Foto, Excire Search, and Excire Analytics.

But that’s not all: With the code Excire79 you can get Excire Foto or Excire Search for only 79€ instead of 99€. Of course without Excire Analytics. This promotion also runs until January 6th, 2023. The code can be used when ordering in the shop.

The same is valid for the US shop! Simply replace the € by $ 😁

</ad>

 

animals, bird, nature, photo-of-the-day, photography, wildlife

Wordless Wednesday: starling

common starling or European starling (Sturnus vulgaris) / Star aka Gemeiner Star

<ad>

I’m in a hurry, but I want to share some information with you.  With the discount code “Excirefire30” your customers can get a 30% discount on all products in the Excire shop. The code is valid from November 21st until December 4th, 2022.

You don’t know, what Excire is? No problem. It’s the perfect solution for finding images in your archive. Excire Foto helps you find the searched images without manually tagging the images. Tags are set by the AI. Excire Foto analyses your images by content and colors. In the past, I published a review. Although the review was for version 1.0, it’s still a good starting point. The latest version can even find duplicates and much more. Give it a try. There’s a free demo available to test all features with your own images. Try it and be amazed.

</ad>

Take care!