Readers’ wildlife photos

These pictures were taken a couple summers ago in area parks in Michigan, which is where I live.

To begin, can readers spot the moth in this picture? You may have to enlarge the photo to help find it, but it is in plain sight. Only please do not give away the location! Let others have fun trying to find it. A different picture of the same moth is farther down.

Next is a pair of young Promethea moth larvae (Callosamia promethea). I’ve been finding good numbers of these giant silk moth caterpillars, although the youngsters shown here were only about the size of rice grains. If they survive, they will grow into large and strikingly beautiful caterpillars, and the adults are one of our largest moths. You can see pictures of these stages at the link.

Next are some damselflies. Damselflies that are called “bluets” belong to a few very large genera of narrow-winged damselflies, but not all bluets are blue, and not all blue damselflies are bluets. So when I take a picture of a narrow-winged damselfly, I usually don’t know if it’s a bluet or something else until after a long struggle with various field guides. Fortunately, I have an online friend who is quite good at these things, and he has helped me out a lot. So… this first one is the taiga bluet (Coenagrion resolutum), and at least it is sort of blue.

Following that is a blue-ringed dancer (Argia sedula), which is not a bluet even though it looks like it should be. Narrow-winged damselflies are tricky!

Next up is a stilt-legged fly (Rainieria antennaepes). These are always entertaining to watch as they march up and down on their leaf (they are reluctant to leave it), waving their cute little white feet out in front of them. This display is thought to signal to their kind, and maybe to also mimic the various ichneumon wasps that have white banded antennae. I always get a kick out of just watching these flies.

This other fly is one of our marsh flies, Euthycera arcuata. I don’t see this species very often, so I was very glad to find one that stuck around for pictures. A thing I’d recently learned about marsh flies is that their larvae prey on snails.

The katydid nymph shown in the next picture is a round-headed katydid (Amblycorypha sp.). These don’t occur in my area, but about two hours’ drive south of me they become pretty common along woodland trails. I will have pictures of adults to show later. These large and beautiful insects are distinctly chill about being approached and closely photographed.

Next is a lean looking male harvestman, Leiobunum calcar, and the picture is a stack from a few hand held pictures. Photography for focus stacking does not always need to be a fussy procedure with lots of pictures and perfect stillness. One can just try to hold still, and move the focus ring on the lens a smidge for each picture. If there are some artifacts from parallax shifts (there certainly was with this one), then that often can be fixed later in Photoshop or whatever.

And finally, where is the same moth shown in the first picture, although this picture is definitely “over-cooked” in post-processing. It is a walnut sphinx moth, Amorpha juglandis. I would have never seen it on the forest floor, which is where I found it, except that it was moving!

Thanks for looking!