Committing Insecticide

Like I've said before, if you're inclined to shoot some bugs with your camera Toronto can be a tough place. Most of the parks are sprayed regularly, and if they weren't we'd be up to our eyebrows in mosquitoes.

But one bug you're sure to find everywhere, and I do mean everywhere, is the soldier beetle. There are billions and billions of them, including the two pictured here. I have yet to go anywhere in the city where I don't find them.

If you've got a little point and shoot camera you can actually shoot bugs pretty well because smaller cameras have great depth-of-field, crucial for little critters. A small camera can also be great when it comes to getting into cramped spaces at weird angles. You will need to practice holding your camera very still. Don't be afraid to use your flash.

Click to enlarge these pics. They are bugs, after all. They're small.

Ants Aren't Gentlemen

So I stole the title for this post from P.G. Wodehouse. I did toy with the idea of some sort of complex joke based around the idea of the ant and the grasshopper and the tortoise and the hare, except I was going to substitute a snail for the tortoise. It never quite worked though.

I started down this failed joke path because in the course of its travels the ant above stumbled into a snail. Or over a snail. Several times.



These other two pictures are a little disorienting because the ant hung around checking out the snail for a few minutes and the snail moved during that time - though not very far. I don't think the snail was happy about the encounter at all. What ant species is this exactly? Feel free to figure it out if you can.

As with almost all the macros you see here, I shot this with a Nikkor 300mm f4 and a PN-11 extension tube. I also handheld a flash which almost always helps for insects.

A Moth Welcome to Eat My Clothes

In keeping with our recent spate of bug shots, here's the quite beautiful Ctenucha virginica, also known as a Virginia Ctenucha.


These are daytime moths that can be found from Virginia (hence the name) all the way up through Ontario and parts west. This one was within a stone's throw of the East Don River. Click on the photograph to enlarge this guy, because he looks pretty cool.

What Bees Do in the Nighttime

I thought I'd add in some racy material to drive up my google ranking. So I've got you here now and you're wondering, waiting with bated breath to find out just what is it exactly that bees do in the nighttime. Well, the wait's over. I'll tell you.

They sleep.

Whew. Thank goodness you don't let the kids read this. Anyhow, bees are hard to get a good shot of because they're well...busy as bees. They move about constantly when they're on flowers, searching for pollen and scooping it up, antennae flitting about all over when they're not actually flying. I was able to get a nice, crisp shot of this bee because she (and it's almost certainly a she) is sleeping, just clinging to this spot on a flower stalk. You can often catch bees in this state early in the morning, so that's the best time to get a good shot of them. It also seems to me, with only anecdotal evidence, that there are more bees lying around like this after a heavy dew. Perhaps it makes them groggy.