Tag Archives: insect

Bees at Work

The Puget Sound area is currently abloom. Everywhere you look there are flowers. It is quite beautiful. We haven’t seen too many hummingbirds on our feeder recently and it’s not hard to see why when they have so many places to feed right now. We have some blooms in our front yard too and this means the bees are visiting. I decided to try and use the macro lens to get some shots of them. My lens is a Tokina unit. I bought it for the negative scanning process for which it worked well. However, the focusing drive is not fantastic and it hunts a bit when I use it for things other than manual mode. However, it is still worth a shot. Here are a couple of bee shots from the yard. I can’t go anywhere so I may as well shoot at home!

Caterpillar Convention

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If you don’t like bugs, this post isn’t for you. While up in the Cascades, we saw this web full of caterpillars. I don’t know the purpose of them being together in these numbers. Perhaps they are all recently hatched (is that the right term for a caterpillar) and have yet to go on their way or maybe there is another reason. Either way, there were a lot of them in one place. If you are a caterpillar predator, I wonder why this was not seen as a buffet?

Busy Bees

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The rhododendrons at Meerkerk Gardens weren’t only attracting the people to visit. It was awash with bees. The flowers were heaven for these insects and they were on so many of the plants. The sound of buzzing was a constant accompaniment. It was also interesting to see the different types of bee. Some plants had large, fuzzy bees while others had a thinner and shinier species. Clearly, the bees are very specific about which plant is their favorite.

This Thing is Too Big

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This wasp was hanging around on one of the towers when I was at Hyakuri. It was a rather meaty looking wasp and I figured it would not be a good thing to get on the wrong side of. Wasps have a reputation for being bad tempered things and, whether this is true or not, I was keen to avoid finding out how this one felt. I gave it a wide berth just to be sure. Bees may be cute and useful but wasps just seem like they are going to bring trouble.

Butterflies Everywhere!

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We took a wander through the butterfly enclosure at Woodland Park Zoo. These enclosures require a fair bit of care on the part of the visitor. They briefed you as you went in what to watch for. Double doors are at the entrance and exit to stop the butterflies escaping (or at least keep them in the entrance hall if they do manage to sneak out). You must watch carefully for them. They will land on you and your stuff but they will often be resting on the ground. Treading on one will not be considered cool!

I will state right now that I didn’t make much effort to photograph a butterfly in flight. They are rather fast movers as you quickly discover if you try to photograph them while airborne. I have tried this before and I wasn’t going to frustrate myself again. Instead I settled for a few shots of the stationary versions. I assure you that they were real and alive – this was not a staged creation for me.

Flowers and Bees

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Taking a hike through the hills, sometimes the opportunity to stop and look at stuff is rather welcome. I was looking at a flower when I saw a bee busily doing what bees do. I figured a quick shot was in order. Some of the other flowers looked pretty cool too. I have no idea what these flowers are. I thought they looked like bluebells but, since they aren’t blue, maybe they are purplebells?