A few moments with a bird-turd weevil

Jun12

I spent some time this evening photographing this very cool-looking weevil, Cryptorhynchus lapathi, AKA the Poplar and Willow Borer. I found it clinging to a bridge in Hastings Park looking very much like a dried bird poop.

Weevils (Curculionidae) are widely held to be the cutest beetles, and this one was no exception. Something about their snout and beady little eyes makes them adorable. That’s what I think anyhow. You be the judge.

“I don’t always bore into trees, but when I do, it is a poplar or willow”.

“Just kidding! I always bore into trees!”

How not to make money off a viral story

Jun12

In September of last year, I was contacted by Ephraim Ragasa, a student at the University of Florida for permission to use a photo I took of Psorophora ciliata, the Gallinipper mosquito. These large mosquitoes are surely one of the largest blood-feeding mosquitoes in North America, and it is quite a shock when they come around looking for blood.

Ephraim wanted to use the photo for a Featured Creatures article, a common assignment for students in the Entomology and Nematology Department at UF. Since that time, for whatever reason, the media has picked up on this and spun it into a story of “Giant Mosquitoes Invading Florida!” or some other such tripe.

The photo has been copied and reproduced at least a hundred times since then, being used by news media, in pest control websites and on blogs. Only Deborah Netburn, a journalist with the L.A. Times has contacted me for permission to use the photo. She turned out a very nice article, with the scientific name spelled correctly and the facts straight. I was happy to help her.

For the others, many did not credit me, I certainly have not seen any payment, and frankly it pisses me off that everyone except me is making money off my image.

It turns out that the copyright notice on the UF website is nebulous and seems to imply free usage rights for “educational purposes”, so I guess it is down to me that the photo does not give me any income, although the pest control companies will be receiving an invoice for their uncredited and illegal commercial usage.

Anyway, all of these issues been covered extensively and in much better detail by Alex Wild, someone who makes his living from photography, but speaking as a student who is having trouble paying tuition, I lift my middle finger at the unethical commercial exploiters of copyrighted work. So there.

Update: The Hastings Park Eagle agrees with me:

Happy accident

Jun11

IMG_9464-4

I was off shooting in Hastings Park this evening, using the Monster Macro Rig and having a good time shooting immature insects. Everything was working as advertised, and I got a few decent shots of caterpillars, sawfly larvae and a nymphal seed bug. The beauty of this rig is that the background and subject are both lit at a tiny aperture, making motion irrelevant and achieving the look a tripod shot might.

Then the batteries in the subject light died just as I was shooting a damselfly…

IMG_9483-2

Although it was not the shot I intended, I am pretty pleased with the result! This is the type of thing that gives me just the boost I need. Maybe I will try a series of silhouettes next.

Highlights from the Wild Research Butterfly Workshop

Jun8

Today I helped out with a Wild Research workshop on the BC Butterfly Atlas and citizen science at UBC Botanical Garden. Here are a few of the memorable pics.

not a butterfly! An Arctiid moth!

Painted Lady

Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui, Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae)

A White-crowned Sparrow sings his heart out!

A Halictid, likely in the genus Agapostemon.

It gets exciting!

Mourning Cloak (Nympahlis antiopa, Nympahidae)

Did I ever mention we have European Fire Ants (Myrmica rubra) in Vancouver now?

Weekend Expedition 20: Creatures of an urban pond

Jun3

Yesterday I dragged out the Micro Aquaria and a dollar store net to see what I could find in the pond at Hastings Park. This little park is a bit of an oasis for me, featuring a real live pond, some nice vegetation, and an eagle’s nest across the street. It was actually a bit less seething with life than I’d hoped*, but there was quite a bit to keep me occupied for a few hours.

The damselflies were abundant and quite pretty.

I was interested that the black and white striping is actually banding on the tracheae.

This one nears eclosion, with well-developed wing buds.

A lovely backswimmer! Note how the dorsal surface faces down and is light colored, while the ventral surface is dark and faces up.

A water boatman at rest on the bottom. You can see the “plastron” bubble on the ventral portion of the abdomen that is the gas exchange structure employed by this insect.

At the end of the day, I think I really need to refine my techniques for aquatic photography. There are some people who can do it really well; for an example, check out Jan Hamrsky’s photostream. I really miss the saturation and clarity you get with the air-to lens interface. I will work on this over the summer, in between the thesis, grant and job search…Keep posted, and I will keep posting!

* I did find a waterscorpion, bit of course this was far too large for my aquaria!

An overly-cooperative model?

May24

I found this beautiful gravid female Phidippus johnsoni hanging motionless, upside-down from a grass stem this morning. She had all the hallmarks of envenomation by a spider wasp (Pompilidae). She was unresponsive, had extremely limited movement upon prodding, and was basically dead to the world. Being such a large animal, it is possible the wasp was unable to drag the spider to her burrow, or perhaps I interrupted while the female wasp was scouting the terrain ahead. Anyway, I took some photos with this suddenly very easy to work with subject, and then returned her to her stem of grass. Perhaps the wasp will retrieve it, and if not it will make a good meal for someone!

You can see in this shot, there is something not quite right about how she is holding her legs…

This shows how big the jumper was!

First Robber Flies of the season!

May23

This morning, on another dog walk at Mt. Tolmie, I came upon my first Robber Fly of the year. It was perched on a closed Camas bloom, which wasn’t very pleasing, so I nudged it onto some other substrates. Because it was a cool and wet day, the robber obliged and did not flee. I do not know what species it is, but it looks to be a small male Laphria, which are known as the “Bee-like Robber Flies”. The Robber Flies )Family Asilidae) are some of my favourites, as they are often showy, have spectacular predation behaviour and can turn their heads to track flying prey!

After shooting the fly on several different backgrounds, I put him on an oak twig, figuring it would be a good place to catch the sun and warm up. To my surprise, a second male robber was perched on the very next twig! Please enjoy the following pictures responsibly, and if you have a fly-gasm, try to muffle yourself if you are in public.

Of course the robbers were not the only flies out there:

relatives of the Asilidae are the Empidae, or Dance Flies.

a wet Calliphorid

A Tipulid in the grass

On the subject of Tipulids, check out this spectacular male Tiger Crane Fly I found yesterday!

Wednesday morning walk in a Garry Oak Meadow

May22

Snakefly

This morning I again took Maggie (the dog) to Mt. Tolmie, a great Garry Oak meadow ecosystem. Of course, I brought along my camera. I was not disappointed with the subjects!

Snakeflies seem to be especially abundant in this park

A Philodromid (Running Crab Spider). Genus Tibellus?

A beautiful Northern Alligator Lizard

Northern Alligator Lizard

another beautiful Selatosomus edwardsi

This is a moth of the genus Adela, but I am unsure what species it is. .

In Victoria!

May17

I am back in my real hometown: Victoria, BC, looking after my mom’s dog Maggie while my mom makes a trip to the Rockies. Because I am getting out twice a day with the dog, and sometimes can be persuaded to go out shooting with my brother, there is a good chance I will get some decent photo opportunities. Here is some of what I got yesterday.

Aedes togoi, an introduced mosquito from Japan, was first discovered in Victoria by my entomology professor Richard Ring. This one was hanging out at Cattle Point adjacent to the rock pools where it breeds.

Selatosomus edwardsi, a very pretty Click Beetle. I have found them previously in Victoria.

A moth peeking out to see if it is safe

Good day for a crow, bad day for a crab

I don’t always find jumping spiders in the high intertidal zone, but when I do, there are barnacles nearby.

Camas, once a staple food of some Salish people, is still abundant around Victoria, and is quite beautiful this time of year.

A male Running Crab Spider, Philodromus dispar.

Out catching snakes with my brother! Photo by Colin McCann.

A very pretty Pterphorid (Plume Moth).

This male Anna’s Hummingbird was defending a territory from a blackberry cane.

He really is lovely! Last year I found a nesting female.

A big mess of earwig nymphs!

Another of the hummingbird! I can’t resist!

A bald eagle launches from Cattle Point.

Cheapskate Tuesday 16: Shooting a cat for equality!

May14

Jasmine has just made mincemeat of intolerance!

Say a group of ignorant people by the name of the Australian Christian Lobby were doing their utmost to prevent some of their fellow Australians from being able to legally marry the person of their choice. If this was the case, you might want to bring attention to the backward thinking of this group by a bit of poking fun at them, as humour is a great weapon deployed against bigotry and intolerance.

Well, as you might have guessed, this is not really a hypothetical. A group of quick-thinking Australian ladies found that the Australian Christian Lobby, while registering the domain www.acl.org, neglected to register the domain “australianchristianlobby.org”. This was a good teaching moment, and the website for the Australian Cat Ladies was born. Their group seeks to fight intolerance, and promote cats.

I cannot stand self-righetous bigotry masquerading as “family values”, so I thought the Cat Ladies’ coup was just great, and quickly sent off an application to join them. As a newly-minted Australian Cat Lady, I wanted to produce some visual material that might appeal to them to feature on their website. Inspired by their logo, the idea of the kitty rainbow flag shoot was born. I asked our friends Tanya and Mike if they would consider lending a hand (and a cat) to the effort.

After feasting like royalty on a great risotto Mike and Tanya made, we set to work. Jasmine, the little cat shown in these photos, is a Bengal (which is not a cheap cat to purchase, although they will work for cheap for catnip).

Anyway, here you go: the lighting diagram for what we did, followed by the shots!

We had to use two diffusers to get even lighting across the flag, as the flag itself was thin and quite translucent. It might be easier to just shoot a green background and add the flag afterward, but this time we shot it as is.

Here is Mike setting up the second diffuser. Photo by Tanya!

The major challenges of this shoot were balancing the lights and following the quick moving Jasmine. I may try to re-shoot this, or something similar (insects maybe?). I believe in the rights of all people to live their lives as they see fit, and if my photography can do some good, I am glad of it. I hope you enjoy the shots, and if you are inspired by this, please do stop by the Australian Cat Ladies website to show them your support.