Is That What's Bugging You, Bunky?
I lurves me some bugs. If you don’t, please stop here.
My late bride called me the Saint Francis of Bugs. I like most bugs. I’m not particularly eager to kill things. The exception is bloodsuckers like mosquitoes and ticks; those I kill but usually after they get me first, so it’s legit self-defense.
I don’t have much truck with bugs that are disease vectors, but I am down with most others. My son is an arachnophobe, so when a spider is discovered, I am sent for to gently remove her to a more welcoming environment. My son learned at my knee that “the spider is your friend.” Yeah, well, YOURS maybe!
Humans make up only about 0.01% of Earth’s biomass, yet we think we’re all that.
Of the 550 gigatons of biomass carbon on Earth, animals make up about two gigatons, with insects comprising half of that and fish taking up another 0.7 gigatons. Everything else, including mammals, birds, nematodes, and mollusks are roughly 0.3 gigatons, with humans weighing in at 0.06 gigatons. — The research appears in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Trigger warning: there are creepy crawlies here, in living color, including spiders.
The Common House Centipede (is your [exquisite] friend).
I flipped on the light, and she (?) was on the backsplash of the bathroom sink, frozen, on the principle that if she didn’t move, I could not see her. This is how I often find them, immobile like fawns but usually in an impossible place to photograph. This one was better positioned than usual. I raced to get my camera with my favorite Sony/ZEISS Vario-Tessar 16–70mm f/4, coupled in a 10mm extension tube, and she was still there. These were handheld at ISO 6400, noise mitigated in Topaz DeNoise AI.
I love centipedes’ coloring and banding. I find them beautiful and graceful in the way they flow, moving at astonishing speed. They are the cheetahs of bugs (yes, I know, arachnids). They are efficient predators, adapted to taking down bugs many times their size. Don’t kill them or we gits rain.
Giant Asian Longhorn Beetle, invasive but friendly.
Critter dropped out of the sky onto my hand in Trenton, New Jersey, said hello, walked around tasting my skin a bit, then hoisted sail and flew away. My then camera was a Nikon Coolpix with handy onboard closeup capability.
Indian Meal Moth…maybe (or not).
There is no reason I can determine why I should get meal moths. I have no food sources, yet they pop up now and then, all of them looking so much alike they may be the same moth except when I see two of them. They are laggardly beasts that hang for sometimes days, usually upside down, on the surfaces in my bathroom (of all places). The upturned abdomen is common. I have seen as many as four at one time. I root for the centipedes to get them but they never seem to.
Skippers on Marigolds.
Skippers are classified as butterflies, although that wasn’t always the case. They have their antennae clubs hooked backward like a crochet hook, while butterflies have club-like tips to their antennae. Spreadwing skippers tend to hold both pairs of their wings flat, in a single plane, and folded up.
Perfectly Adapted Camouflage
That bit of “bark” on the left is a butterfly. My then-brand-new Sony FE 70–300mm was perfect for capturing this critter. I detected movement out of the corner of my eye. It landed on this gnarly multicolored tree and effectively disappeared. If I hadn’t seen it land, I’d never have seen it at all. If it weren’t for the feelers, it’s just not there. (I have no idea of the species, and I have tried to find out. Anybody?)
The Peacock Fly is Not a Robber Fly!
Did you know that? I did not know that.
When I made this picture, I assumed this was a robber fly. I have photographed many of them as they are common, but when editing the image, I started having doubts. Some things are missing here that are common to robber flies, such as a prominent humped thorax. This eye is very intriguing, and I have never seen a robber fly with striped eyes. I searched and found this is a peacock fly, specifically a tephritid fruit fly.
Peacock flies, in the family Tephritidae, are named for the banded, spotted, intricately patterned, and often brightly colored wings of many species. The front half of the bodies usually have noticeable, upright bristles. — Missouri Dep’t of Conservation.
The bead of nectar on her mouth may be a gift from a hopeful suitor!
Touch-and-Go Landing — Monarch Butterfly.
Technically, this shot breaks a slew of well-known “rules.” Principally, it is centered in full, undiluted, direct sun coming from dead overhead (tch tch tch).
I think one reason it works is the harshness of the light; it picks out every scale on the creature’s wings. It’s one of the sharpest pictures I’ve ever made, and it was a one-off, sheer luck. I was shooting flowers in open shade to my right using my Sony FE 70–300mm when I caught the movement to my left. I swiveled and fired, relying on the camera and lens’s superb automation. I got one shot. My sudden movement startled the critter, and off s/he went, touch-and-go. Serendipity-doo-dah-day.
Monarch Caterpiggle Munching Milkweed.
Munch enough mellow mouthwatering milkweed, you too can grow up to be… A MONARCH! (It’s good to be the king.)
Rolling in the mud, an undersized ladybug.
This little one just appeared out of nowhere in my indoor workspace. Wherever she had been was dirty. She buzzed around trying to find the exit. I trapped her to put her in my white set with constant LED arrays. She began crawling toward the edge as I photographed. I trapped her again, took her upstairs, and released her with the suggestion she needed a bath.
I didn’t know they came this small.
I was puttering about in my tabletop “studio” set when some motion caught my attention. It looked only a scoche bigger than the period at the end of this sentence, but it was moving, not hopping, but legging it across the white drop. I coaxed it into a shallow tray, grabbed my camera with “Big Mickey” — MeiKe 85mm f/2.8 prime Macro lens that magnifies to 1.5X — and rigged up my two radio-triggered Godox flashes.
I guesstimated her (him?) around 1mm, including legs. I’m sure it’s a jumper, but it seemed content to wander about exploring the tray. The “flying” shot is illusory; it (she?) was only climbing the rim. Finished with our session, I released her inside as I have read that indoor spiders don’t do well outdoors and vice versa.
For the techies (all of us, to an extent, are tetched), here’s one setup with flashes.
I hope you have enjoyed my buggy pals. Thanks for reading and looking. 😉👍
