Readers’ wildlife photos

Mark Sturtevant has returned with some excellent arthropod photos. Mark’s caption and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them. Note that his stacking method is time-consuming; the third picture, he says, took “weeks,” and he’s still not finished.

Here is another set of local insect pictures, all manual focus stacks from either a staged setting from where I live in eastern Michigan, or at a local park.

The first was a visitor at the porch light. This beetle is a female stag beetle (Dorcus parallelus), and I was surprised about the ID because it was barely an inch long. Males of this species have mandibles only slightly larger than those in females:

The next picture is a Longhorn Beetle, Astyleiopus variegatus:

Next is a scene of symbiotic interactions between aphids and ants, where the aphids bribe the ants into protecting them by producing sugary secretions. The ants appear to be New York Carpenter Ants (Camponotus novaeboracensis), and I don’t know why they are called that since the species has a very wide range in the U.S. They are here tending aphids of an unknown species on a thistle plant. This picture is in a way impossible since an extreme macro picture like this cannot have much depth of focus, and it is also impossible to extend focus by conventional focus stacking since ants never sit still. So I’ve been spending weeks extending the depth of this picture from bits and pieces of several pictures. I am still not done doing this, but Mark needs a break so out it goes, into the public:

Dragonflies are next. These too are quick manual focus stacks but with a telephoto lens. Probably my favorite field for photographing dragons is a two hour drive away, but it is worth it because there is a field that is swarming with many species, including species that I don’t see elsewhere.

The first of these is a Common Green Darner Anax junius, which is a common species but what was exciting for me was that this is a male. Females land. Females are so easy to photograph that I usually don’t even bother. But males? No. Males fly pretty much all day, and I seldom get a chance with them:

But the best reason to visit the “dragonfly field” are its Clubtail dragonflies (Family Gomphidae). The main flight season for Clubtails is June, so that is when I make a point to visit the dragonfly field where there are ten documented species from this family. I have photographed all but two from there. Clubtail dragonflies tend to be marked in yellow and black, and they have a thickened end on their abdomen. But not all species have this color scheme, and some are more ‘club-tailed’ than others. A couple things to like about them as a group are the many species, and their reliability for perching on or near the ground. This is in stark contrast to certain other dragonflies (i.e., male Green Darners!)

The first of these are some of the ‘big-club’ Clubtails, and we start with a Midland Clubtail (Gomphurus fraternus):

The next is the impressively clubbed Cobra Clubtail (Gomphurus vastus):

And here is another one, the Skillet Clubtail (Gomphurus ventricosus), which is perched on Poison Ivy. Just to make things interesting, much of the ground cover in the dragonfly field is Poison Ivy. You should not even touch this stuff:

Do you see the differences in the above three species? Me neither! But upon close comparison, there are small differences in their markings that can be discerned. Most of the time when I am out there, I don’t know what big club species I am photographing.

Not all Gomphids are like the above. Here is a Lancet Clubtail (Phanogomphus exilis), which is probably the most common Gomphid in this park:

And here is an example of a very different dragonfly in the clubtail family, the Rusty Snaketail (Ophiogomphus rupinsulensis). There is another species of snaketail in the field, but it is rare and I have yet to see it. Just another reason to make the drive every June:

Now all of the above species of dragonflies are under 2” in length, so considerably shorter than your little finger. But dragonfly field hosts the largest Clubtail in the U.S. called the Dragonhunter (Hagenius brevistylus), which is about 3.5” long — the length of your index finger.

Does that still seem small? I promise if you see one you will stop and stare. Everyone does, because in the field they look big. The Dragonhunter is not even the largest of our dragonflies but they are probably the heaviest. Dragonhunters get their common name from their habit of eating other dragonflies. Admittedly, most dragonflies do that, but Dragonhunters seem to have a reputation for it. Even though I have seen many dozens by now, they always get my undivided attention when one goes cruising by: