Let Me In

A Crane Fly - Daddy Long Legs - waited patiently on the outside of the front door giving plenty of time to set up the 350D with bellows to catch a series of shots of its underside. Nine photos of varying focus points were processed by CombineZP to make one stacked picture.



There are quite a few Crane Flies appearing at the moment, later in the year than I normally see them though different types do appear at different times of the year.

Macro on Monday - Guess What

First last week's puzzle picture alongside the full view of the object:

  

Yes Keith - you were correct. It was a close shot of a conker (the seed of the Horse Chestnut tree) which was well dried up having been on my shelf for quite a while. Sorry Glo if I mislead you. All I was hinting at was the 'mellow fruitfulness' in general.

On to today's new puzzle picture.



Clue: Does this really grow in occidental gardens?
Answer next Monday.

Friday at the Flicks (Chaffinch, Coal Tit, Magpies)

Some birds don't let a bit of rain get in the way of eating. This Chaffinch spent most of its time just waiting for a space at the feeders.



As usual at this time of the year the Coal Tits are gathering as many black sunflower seeds as possible to bury as they build up their winter store. (No sound on this one)



One for sorrow
Two for joy
Three for a girl
Four for a boy
Five for a secret never to be told
Magpie



I have removed the general seed feeders for a while and moved the Goldfinch feeders to a different part of the garden. A few days ago I saw what looked like a Greenfinch suffering from finch disease so I want to make sure it doesn't spread quickly through the visiting population. There are still peanut and fat ball feeders as the finches rarely, if ever, visit those.

Have a great weekend watching the antics of the wildlife around you.

Adonis Ladybird and Other Insects

A large Ivy bush next to the front gate is swarming with insects at the moment. Among the species noticed were a couple of very small ladybirds. On searching they turned out to be Adonis Ladybirds. They are 4 to 5mm long and quite slim.



There were plenty of small wasps but I wasn't in a hurry to hold the Lumix camera a couple of inches away from them. Quite a rare sight in my garden was a small number of bees. Normally I only see bumble bees. So far I haven't been able to identify this one.



Sat in the middle of the largest orb web I have ever seen was this Garden Orb Spider, a real Humpty Dumpty of a body with a tiny head. The web was about 20 inches (50cm) across. The spider itself has beautiful markings. Size probably a little less than 20mm.




I was very pleased that this 40+mm  parasitic wasp was on the outside of the kitchen window.



Good job the 'tail' is an ovipositor and not a sting!  I think it is an Ichneumon Wasp.

Shield Bug

A Shield Bug landed on the kitchen window and hung around long enough to get a couple of photos.





I usually see just one a year and so far each one has been different. This at 10 to 12mm body length was the largest that has visited. It appears to be a Hawthorn Shieldbug, Acanthosoma haemorrhoidale


Hint: 
For yesterday's puzzle picture - think 'season of mists and mellow fruitfulness'.

Macro on Monday - Guess What

In response to hundreds (three actually, but who's counting) of requests for some puzzle macro or micro photos of objects this is the first. Some, like this one, will be taken with the 350D fitted with bellows to get closer shots. Others will be taken through the microscope with a DCM510 microscope camera. As in one of my favourite bygone radio programmes objects may be animal, vegetable or mineral in origin.

This should be relatively easy to recognise -



The full object will be revealed next Monday along with a new puzzle picture. No prizes for guessing correctly, except an honourable mention next week.

A Closer Look

Quite some time ago I bought one of the plastic USB microscopes hoping to get some reasonable micro photos. Unfortunately the results were disappointing not least being the annoying way the program provided with it changed to a low resolution monitor screen and moved all my desktop icons about. Also the plastic would stick and jump when focussing, very frustrating. Oh well, you get what you pay for!

Later I bought a used optical microscope hoping to use the same technique as  Phil for some of his excellent shots on his blog Beyond the Human Eye. That is to use a digital camera in place of the eyepiece of the microscope. No joy here. I just could not get the idea to work.

Finally I bought a USB microscope camera which fits in the top of the microscope in place of the eyepiece. Once again I was disappointed with the results. The 5 megapixel camera worked just fine but the depth of field was extremely limited so I packed everything away.

Can you see where this is leading? Enter the program CombineZP. I decided to try again. Not brilliant photos but a vast improvement on past experience. All I could find on scouring the garden yesterday was a discarded feather so I had a go to see what I could see.

First the setup - microscope with USB camera sticking out of the top.


I used my bright LED lamp as light source. I think the camera works about the same as a 10x optical eyepiece so this first photo is at 40x magnification.


Now at 100x magnification


Finally at what is probably 400x magnification.


Each of the above was made with a pile of nine individual photos each focussed slightly differently and processed using the program CombineZP. To give an idea this is one of the nine taken for the 100x magnification showing how quickly parts of the view go out of focus. No further processing of the photos except cropping to remove a small extra reflected area the program adds to the edge of each.


Now I have to experiment more with the lighting as this is quite critical in obtaining clear photos but at last it is worth persevering with my investment.