Couple of Cute Bugs

From the Cuyahoga Valley Photographic Society photowalk at the Pine Valley trailhead in Kendall Hills. Sometimes I forget how lucky it is to have a National Park right in my own back yard.

Anyway, this shiny little bug is a dogbane beetle. Round, polished, and rainbow metallic.

 

And a katydid on ironweed. There's more antennae there than bug.

The Pine Hollow trailhead is nothing much to look at during the day or evening, but on the right kind of morning, the sun catches the mist rising from Kendall Lake, and the puffy popcorn clouds, and transform the hills. Now if only I could catch that in the camera...

Ironweed Field

Up at 5 am and out the door at 6 to shoot bugs in the Ironweed Field off Akron-Peninsula Rd. I was out there for three hours without much to show for it, but it was a pleasant way to spend the morning.

And here are the bugs:

A sleepy bee..

 A snoozing praying mantis,  with a little buddy...

And the liveliest critter off the day, a slug spiraling around a stem.

Brecksville Prairie, Part 2

The photos I submitted for the Photo Society critique:

Milkweed - love that the color of the leaf mid-rib echoes the color of the buds.

The place was buzzing with bees - this one is just waking up.

No idea what this bug is. Jim suggested arranging the bug so he followed the curve of the flower. Yup, touch the bug. Mmmm hmmm. I'll be doing that, with a twig or a piece of grass. Silly phobia, isn't it?

This swamp mallow and its companion bug did not make the cut for my critique submissions. The flower is a little battered and there was too much depth of field. Used Lightroom's masking brush to unsharpen the background, so the depth of field looks shallower.

CVPS Photowalk at Herrick Fen, September 24

You'd have no idea Herrick Fen was even there - you drive down a rutted lane past piles of construction waste, a cool farm, then along what appears to be a very much past its prime soybean field, and into a tiny parking lot. The fen has a nice board walk through a marsh then a path up a bit of a hill. We were there early, rain gear in hand. Lots of water drops, torpid bugs, and misty vistas.

Aster

Mysterious caterpillar

Tickseed, and my favorite shot of the day.

One of seven million kinds of stinkbugs.

Teasel. I like the little threads caught in its spines.

P365, Way Behind

I've been keeping up with shooting, but not with posting. And it's almost the holidays.  So today we're going to rock through the rest of September. Hang on!

A very gloomy Sept. 10th. Below, New Guinea impatiens on the lower deck, 9/12.

The first page of my art journal. Lord alone knows why it came out so pink. The lighter areas are just white sketchbook paper. 9/13

Below is my favorite of this batch, apples in the evening sun. Great color and shadows, kind of Dutch painterly. 9/14.

Below: 9/15 a plate from our trip to Greenfield Village a couple years ago; 9/16, chocolate chip cookies - don't know what I do without the KitchenAid mixer; 9/17, two versions of mums from the front yard. I like the bleached out, old fashioned-looking one the best.

Guess who, asleep in my lap. He loves a good lap in colder weather. 9/19.

9/20, Doe, giving me the beady eyeball. She was in the woods next the the gym's parking lot.She has two fawns, and by early November, had collected a bunch of buddies.

An adequate sunset from the back deck, 9/21; then lady bug at one of the neighborhood ponds, 9/22.

More mums, BJ's Club, 9/23.

First time I've found a preying mantis in my yard, 9/24. And, surprise, a rainy 9/25 of the upper deck.

Much better sunset, 9/26. September's weather was pretty glum, but we did get some great clouds and sunsets. 

Above, 9/27, shiny (expensive) new breaks. Just rolled over 100,000 miles on the Honda, and it's still running well. Below, reflections in one of the ponds, 9/28. The swans are now hanging out at this one. The geese must not like the swans, because they haven't been at this pond for a while. 

Garden beds at Stan Hywet, 9/30. It was, yes, raining for Ohio Mart. The crowd was light and the shopping great - even got some Christmas shopping done.

One more post, and September will be done. How the heck did I get a month and a half behind?

Back Yard Spiders

Spiders are not the most attractive bugs, but they do hold still long enough to get their pictures taken. This one is Cross Orb Weaver.

And this is a Banded Argiope. Smaller than the one's I've seen in the fields along the Cuyahoga, but big for a garden spider.

8/22.

Project 365 Catch-up

A little behind on project 365, so I'm going to do a couple of catch-up posts.

Thursday, 7/14, Akron Zoo Members' Night. The tiger was restless, probably late for dinner, pretty thrilling to see her running through Tiger Valley.

7/15: Had a lot of trouble with the full moon - couldn't see to focus. Two days later, I realized the viewfinder diopter was messed up. Durr...

7/16: Do I look pleased with my iPad? Oh yeah!! The Apple Store is geek heaven, a giant shiny uber cool toy box. The iPad is fun - it's light, does a lot of stuff, and, yes, it's pretty. I am obsessed.

7/17: Homemade vanilla ice cream with fresh strawberries. Heaven!

The last three are from 7/19: The technique above is called "shooting through" because the focus is on the background, so the foreground is blurred.

Mysterious bug on the slider screen.

Last one - a geranium slowly unfolding. They have such graceful forms.

More Macro: 07/04/11

These were shot with the 20 mm extenstion tube and a Sigma 17 - 70mm lens and manual focus. It's really hard to get a sharp focus - between hand holding and the breeze, it's amazing anything is sharp.

New strawberry with the fading petals still visible.

This is another syrphid fly, a drone fly. The big, googly eyes are the "not a bee" giveaway. If you didn't look closely, though, at first you'd think it was a bee. I did.

Nemesis - and on Grandma's peonies! Did you know these rats are scarab beetles? They are pretty, but if they go after the sweet gum again, they may be doomed.

Spotted lady beetle - they like pollen in addition to garden pests, and the daylilies are full of pollen (I was kind of annoyed, thinking it was chewing holes in the lilies, but BugGuide.net said it's a good bug).

Here's the link to BugGuide, have fun: http://bugguide.net/node/view/15740

And yesterday's P365 shots, the cherries Chuck brought home for today's cookout with my family.

They were really good!

Syrphid Fly

Took a little research, but BugGuide.net help key out this guy, a Syrphid Fly. He/She was on one of the shrubs in the backyard this evening. Love the metallic back.