Drone Fly

Spent a happy hour in the Sunshine photographing the insects attracted to my Buddleia bush which was coming in to full flower. One flying insect I spotted behaved like a hoverfly but looked like a bee. What caught my eye was the size of its eyes which wrap round a large portion of its head:



Fortunately a quick Google for hoverfly brought up a matching picture of this creature which turned out to be a Drone Fly. So called because they imitate a drone bee (the male hive bee).





All photos taken with the Nikon Coolpix S9050, usually around four or five inches from the subject.

BTW, don't go getting the idea it's always sunny here. I tend to be a fair weather photographer and as I write this it has been raining for the past seven hours and is forecast to go on for many more hours.

A Zebra in my Garden

No - not a large four legged stripy horse but a 7mm eight legged predator. Yesterday the Sun finally showed its face about 3pm. As I opened the back door to the garage I just spotted a movement on the wall. There was this tiny striped spider. I dashed in, collected the camera, screwed the +4 close up lens on and hurried back. At first I though it had disappeared but eventually I found it again.

From album

This is one of a group of jumping spiders. They do not spin a web. Instead they slowly stalk their prey and when ready to pounce they attach a thread to the surface they are on and leap to catch the next meal. If they miss then the thread enables them to return to the spot they started from. Their prey is other small spiders and insects much their own diminutive 7mm or sometimes larger.



Though jumping spiders have six eyes two of them are large and forward facing. This gives them good stereoscopic vision to judge distances.



It is easy to see why it is called the Zebra Spider (Salticus scenicus) though as a leaping predator I think I would have called it a tiger spider. Either way it has beautiful marking for such a small creature.



As I spent quite a while watching and photographing the spider I was impressed with the speed it could move. Though it stayed pretty well in one place every now and then it would spin through 180 degrees in a fraction of a second.

I could see it was holding something but it wasn't until I cropped and enlarged the pictures I could see it was making a meal of what appears to be an even smaller spider. Even with the +4 close up lens the spider occupied only a tiny fraction of the picture frame.

The only other insect (I know - a spider isn't an insect) about was this Plume Moth, the first I have noticed this year.



Fascinating the way they roll or fold up their wings.

Today, once the Sun burned off the early morning fog, has been gorgeous. While I was waiting at the bottom of the garden hoping to get some shots of the birds bathing in the waterfall a drone fly insisted in hovering in front of me. So that was what I ended up photographing in the hope it would be happy and go pester someone else.





Such long legs compared with the rest of the body. Large compound eyes as well. The green background is actually the lawn out of focus. Believe me it looks far better out of focus than in real life!