Bugs and Berries

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The intensity of fall colors surround the pond, manifesting in the foliage, berries, and even the bugs.

Bittersweet is a favorite of mine, not just for its vivid red and yellow, but for the little drama that is expressed with the peeling away of the yellow shell.

I’ve been told that it’s the first frost that causes the shell to strip back from the inner berry. In the image below I see frost damage in the black of the leaves, but truly, that’s a guess. Please enlarge this photo for full appreciation. (Click on it, then after viewing, click on the back arrow to return to the post.) Hiding midst the chocolate brown of the surrounding evergreen trunks and the entwining vines they host, these three red berries are an striking contrast.

The photo below marks a progressive step in my photography. The well achieved focus of the black dotted bug, which is not much more that one-quarter inch in length, was neither luck nor skill, but instinct. I had my camera on the bee when in a sliver of a second, motion caught my eye. With the camera and me working as one, attention shifted left and, click, the D40 performed beautifully, refocusing (it was set at auto) and showing us this little beauty, which was gone by the time I moved the camera from my eye to see it for real. This is another photo that is best seen enlarged. The bug is a Spotted Cucumber Beetle.

Anyone who takes pictures of dragonflies appreciates that nearly all varieties of them sit still and pose for the shutter bug. However, more than a counter challenge to their cooperation, is managing to achieve an image that does justice to the intricate netting of all four wings while simultaneously holding the streamline body in focus. I chose the shot below (of a Half-banded Toper couple) from perhaps twenty-five, which I took from various vantage points in an attempt to minimize background distraction, maximize the focus of the body and all eight wings, and produce variety in the background color – blue against the water, green against the far shoreline of the pond. In the end, I preferred the blue. This mating couple held their pose as I, in yoga-like pose, worked intently at this shot. All that said, it’s just okay. I’ll keep working at my skill here. (Or, perhaps I’ll invest in the 400 lens.)

Now about the couple…they are really stuck on each other. They not only sit in pose like this, but fly in the same posture. I don’t like to wonder if the under-fly is actually alive. It doesn’t move a wing. It just hangs in frozen suspension. Hmmm… But see its little arms gripping? The couple zips around the pond going from plant to plant stopping, I presume, for leaf nibbling. But again I wonder, why does only the upright one get to eat?

In shape and color the little beauty below most resembles the Nine-spotted Ladybug Beetle. Watching it poke around the parameters of this leaf took me back to the wonder of my childhood.

I’m not quite understanding berries. I thought they arrived in summer – kind of like fruit and in the form of such common things as the strawberry, blueberry, raspberry, and blackberry. But I have photos from all the seasons but winter that show berries of all varieties. I love to take pictures of them. Maybe there are fruit berries and blossom berries. Maybe what I show below is a blossom berry. In any event, to my eye, the color of the leaves competes with the red berries for attention.

In no way does the picture below reveal the action of the moment. This caterpillar may as well have been a pioneer crossing the Rockies for all the effort it mustered to cross a two foot stretch of lawn. Up, over, and around, up, over, and through – it hauled itself with great determination and dexterity.

There’s lots going on at the pond.

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