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:
or this real bug:
Here is another bug. I found him in the fall before last. They were attracted by the already-dried lavender blossoms.
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.
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
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”
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!
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