Friday afternoon animal snaps

I usually end the week (a long one this time!) with a kitty, but three readers sent in nice animal photos, so I’ll post those instead.  But the cats will come out tomorrow: bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow there’ll be cats.

First, reader Pete Moulton sent a lovely but grisly scene from nature (click all photos to enlarge):

I’ve attached a photo of a colorful, but ferocious, insect by way of example. This one is an Apiomerus flaviventris, popularly known as a yellow-bellied bee assassin, and, yes, it’s captured a bee, which it’s injecting with the venom that liquefies the bee’s internal organs. The venom is also active against human tissues, and assassin bug (Reduviidae) bites are exceptionally painful.

I asked Pete for the photo information, just in case tech-minded readers wanted to know:

The equipment was all Canon: a T1i body in aperture-priority mode and 100-400mm image-stabilized lens (not my preferred close-up arrangement, but it was really a birding trip), with a +2 diopter screwed onto the front of the lens. Photo taken about 18 inches from the subject at 235mm focal length. The EXIF data say the exposure was F/16 at 1/320 second and ISO 400.

And from reader Adrian, an orca (killer whale) breaching, with the note:

 I did some whale watching for a day and was lucky enough to get within a respectful distance of a pod of orcas.  Stunning stuff.  Truly the best part of the trip. Hearing these animals surface to take a breath was really impressive.  Our guide was great as well and gave us a nice potted history of cetacean evolution that would have made you proud.

I have a terrible little camera – no zoom lens, but still managed to bag the following shots quite by blind luck.  Both were taken in an around the San Juan islands close to the Canadian / US border.

Finally, owls are rapidly becoming (next to cats, of course) the Official Website Vertebrate™.  Here’s a shot from reader John (I’ve cropped his photo a bit to show off the owl):

My Eastern Screech Owl isn’t as good as the National Geographic one featured on WEIT recently, but it’s better than most of my attempts.

As you know, these are hard to see, but we’ve seen several owls here in Denver, CO.  I was walking my dog one evening and heard it above me in a tree — a soft, descending trill.  I was able to locate a bump on a branch against the evening sky.  But by the time I returned with my camera he had already left for his night-hunting.

Next night I found him in exactly the same spot, and sent my son back for the camera.  While he held a flashlight, I snapped a few shots.  I was surprised the owl didn’t fly away, but the flashlight didn’t appear to bother him much.

He’s in the same tree most times I pass by — even in the day — not in any sort of nest or hole, but just on a cross-branch as close to the trunk as he can get.