With its needle-like leaves, wild asparagus looks like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree -- a conifer so spindly it's surprising it doesn't fall over. At the end of summer, the little red berries hung all over it like ornaments reveal it as a flowering plant.
I had just gotten set up to take a picture of this Eastern Amberwing when he flew up from the horsetail he was sitting on and settled on another one closer to me. Then he raised his wings as I clicked the shutter.
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I take a lot of pictures of insects on goldenrod -- mostly because goldenrod attracts a lot of insects, but also because I like green and yellow. What I don't like is the way the tall, top-heavy flowers tremble in every breeze. Sometimes, when the wind just won't stop, I resort to holding the camera in one hand so I can stabilize the plant with the other one. Of course the camera shakes more, but image stabilization helps with that, whereas it can't do anything about subject motion, so I think I wind up ahead. Pollinators are usually too absorbed in their work to notice what I'm doing. Unfortunately this one did take exception to me, so I only got one shot, handheld with one hand at 1/30 of a second, before it dropped off the flower into the grass. That shot had no business working at all, but sometimes I get lucky.
Gray-Headed Coneflowers must be really juicy in late July. All these little brown stink bugs (Euschistus sp., I think) were crowding onto them while ignoring everything else on the prairie. I only found one on another plant.
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Most Bluet damselflies are blue and black and hard to tell apart -- in some cases it takes a microscope. Orange Bluets start out with the same color scheme, but turn a beautiful bright orange at maturity. Females sometimes remain blue, but more often become green or yellow; the one in this mating wheel is in mid-transition.
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I still think of Sympetrum vicinum as the Yellow-Legged Meadowhawk, because that's what it was called in the first dragonfly field guide I ever owned. In 2004 the Common Names Committee of the Dragonfly Society of the Americas decided the old name was too confusing, because as vicinum matures it changes from yellow to red, and the legs become reddish brown. The whole idea of having a committee that establishes official common names seems bizarre to me, but since most of these names were made up by the DSA in the first place and are no older than 1978 -- and since the old name really is kind of confusing -- I go along with it when I remember.
The new name reflects the fact that Sympetrum vicinum is an unusually cold-tolerant species. In Minnesota, if we don't get a hard frost, they can still be flying in November. It's very possible to see them perching near autumn leaves. But by the time the leaves have changed colors, so has the Autumn Meadowhawk -- it should be red, not bright yellow. Actually I took these photos in July and the leaves in the background are just dying.
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I took this photo from a hilltop at Murphy-Hanrehan with a panoramic view of prairie restoration ringed by trees. I'm no longer willing to change to a wider lens in the field because I have enough dust on my sensor already, so I looked for an interesting slice that the 100mm macro lens could capture.
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This bee fly really liked Rough Blazing Star. It started at the lowest flower, worked its way up the spike to the top, flew off, then came back and did the same route over and over. At the time I wasn't sure if I was seeing one fly or a succession of them, but the slightly damaged wingtips visible in several photos convinces me they're all of the same individual.
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This species is also known as the Variable Dancer because southern individuals have brown or black wings. In Minnesota we have only the clear-winged subspecies, Argia fumipennis violacea.
I saw my first non-migrant dragonflies of the year on May 10th at Murphy-Hanrehan Park Reserve. This is early, though not quite as early as the warm spring had led me to hope. Emergence may only be a week or so ahead of schedule.
I only saw one of these Spiny Baskettails, but luckily he perched long enough for me to get this photo.
Last week Pamela and I went to Crow-Hassan Park Reserve, near the City of St. Michael. Odonate activity was minimal -- a few Eastern Forktail damselflies and a patrolling Green Darner or two -- but the lakeside was covered with Eastern Tailed-Blue butterflies sucking up nutrients from the mud. Most of them were too wary to let me get close, but this one was very intent on licking its pebble.
I'm terrible at identifying trees and shrubs even when they're fully leafed out, but from the red stems, I guess this is Siberian Dogwood.
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Winter always leaves a few of last year's flowers stanidng in the fields. This one I think is an aster.
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This Marsh Bluet caught my eye because of a patch of red that didn't belong. The camera revealed the little round water mites on the underside of its abdomen.
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This is some kind of stink bug -- maybe Podisus sp., but I'm not sure; there seem to be a lot of little brownish stink bugs in the world.
