Zooming – July 2016

Instead of making collages from clips of images – I’m doing Zooming past the 30x my camera will do with its lens. It will do up to 120x although it is essentially in-camera cropping because it is utilizing the resolution of the sensor rather than the lens. At 120x the images sometimes begin to look like an impressionist painting with a softer focus – but they can also show a lot more detail than the eye can see. It is easier to get good results with a monopod (I dislike the bulk of a tripod although I might try it more frequently. I picked 8 of my favorite zoomed images from the past few weeks.

I like to be well back from insects so that my camera does not influence their behavior. I once had a praying mantis jump on my camera! So using the zoom to capture the milkweed tussock moth caterpillars was my preference. They are about only about a half inch long.

Reaching back into the overgrowth along a path if often not a good idea: too many plants with thorns (like these wine berries) and poison ivy. Standing back and using the zoom to get the picture is the way to go!

I didn’t want to chance getting the web these caterpillars were creating on the front of my camera by getting close…and zooming worked very well.

I’m sure this bug would have flown away if I’d tries to get close. I also like that the background is still there but out of focus. The flower is chicory; it was about the same diameter as a quarter.

Aphids! The white ones are an earlier stage than the yellow ones. They do move around so zooming rather than getting close is my preference.

This seed stalk of a pokeweed was back in the waste high brush – glad I didn’t have to push my way thought it to get this image. I liked the pink and green. Later the seeds will be a deep purple.

This tiger swallowtail is enjoying a nectar snack! He would have flown away had I been close at all.

This is a max zoom photograph of a swallowtail wings. There is a fine line between nature photography and abstract art!

Ten Days of Little Celebrations – July 2016

Our July has been hot….a very summery month. My celebrations included.

Fireworks – but on July 9^th rather than on the 4^th. It was just when our local community held their event. We did buy a watermelon to enjoy on the 4^th of July – a typical food for summer celebrations.

“The Mother Nature” Award – I was so pleased to be recognized by the Howard County Conservancy for my volunteering with them. The contents of the goody bag (artisan bread and strawberry jam) was part of my little celebrations for about a week!

Photography with campers -  I’ve just finished 2 days of nature photography sessions with campers aged 5-12…and I am celebrating their photographs. I’m glad I’ve made it through the 2 very hot days too. Blog posts about the experience to come in the next few weeks.

Green Heron – I always celebrate seeing a bird in the wild that I don’t see very often…the green heron at Kenilworth is a good example. It was certainly the highpoint of that visit to the gardens.

Butterfly outreach – I volunteered to assist with butterfly outreach to 4 Montessori schools this month…one of which my daughter attended 20 years ago! I celebrated that the school is still going strong, much the same as it was when my daughter attended and the wonderful interaction with the children that are there now. They were all very interested in learning about butterflies.

Indoors, staying cool – We’ve had some very hot days recently and I celebrated most of them staying indoors with air conditioning – glad that I didn’t need to do anything outside!

Milkweed tussock caterpillars – Since I have quite a crop of these caterpillars at my house I have been able to photography them a lot this season. I’ll be doing an update soon since they are now even bigger than they were when I posted about them earlier this month.

Kitchen flooring – We have started the process to replace the flooring in our kitchen. It is 25 years old and needs to be done. I celebrated that my husband and I agreed easily on what we wanted and the materials have been ordered.

Carrot cake and Zucchini bread – This is two celebrations. I am using the bounty from my CSA to bake. I love having one of these for breakfast these days so the ‘celebration’ continues for more than just the day that I back. And I have bags of shredded zucchini in the freezer to make more!

Insects in our Garden

A few days ago was out working in our garden by 7 AM – pulling weeds and cutting spent flower stalks in our flower beds…but I got sidetracked observing insects. The first I noticed were on the skeleton of a milkweed plant. The milkweed tussock caterpillars had eaten all the leaves leaving only the stem and the larger veins of the leaves. They had started crawling over to the bush next to the stem. It seemed like there were hundreds of caterpillars.

After I finished some work, I went inside to clean up and recover from heat. I started wondering if the caterpillars would find the other milkweed plants that were about 5 feet away from the one they had consumed. I went to check at 9 and they had indeed found another plant! I continued to check periodically throughout the day. The gradually spread to 3 more plants. Sometimes they would appear very active and other times they would be resting underneath a leave that was still whole. When they ate, individuals worked on the leaf from the top and the bottom. It was a mass feeding frenzy.

The next surprise came the following morning. I went outside and found that the caterpillars had been active overnight and seemed to be larger. When I went back to check an hour later – more than half of them were not anywhere on the milkweed and I watched as more of them dropped off the plants. It was time for them to go roaming in the leaf litter!

On one of the checks of the caterpillars, I noticed some insects on a blazing start that was in bloom. They were tiny – about a quarter inch. The yellow and black insect is a syrphid or hoverfly.

There were two other insects on the plant but they stayed down in the flowers so much that it was hard to get a good identification.

Maybe some kind of bee?

The two types of insects did interact a little…did not seem to like the other being nearby.

I was very pleased with the performance of my camera (Canon PowerShot SX710HS) and the monopod’s contribution to stabilizing the camera to get clear images.