Category: Macro

Articles, ideas and observations focused around my macro photography. Photos are usually taken in my garden.

Austrian Alps: up and down Schafberg

Daniel GreenwoodLeave a comment

Schafberg, Salzkammergut, Austria, June 2025

Welcome to a big blog of sunny alpine images, from my walking highlight of the year so far. Down we go!

My wife and I travelled by train to the Austrian Alps this summer, and we took one more train to reach the top of Schafberg (1782m) – the Schafbergbahn.

The images here are in chronological order as we descended, trying not to be too distracted as we picked our way down through the rocky tracks. I would recommend using at least one walking pole while doing this walk because it is so steep. The walk was nearly 8 miles and took us about 5 hours (because I stop a lot to take photos).

To the south-west you can see the high peaks of the Dachstein range (3600m), an area we haven’t explored yet.

The dramatic peak of Spinnerin seen from the top of Schafberg

This walk is simply heading down the main (uneven and steep) paths to Wolfgangsee, ending up at St. Gilgen. You can do this as a daytrip from Salzburg, but you need to get the boat to the train station.

You can stay on Schafberg for the night in the hotel, or you can just have lunch and enjoy the views.

You’ll have to get approval from the alpine choughs though, they rule the roost up there.

The first inverts I noticed were these hoverflies (probably droneflies) feeding on this brassica.

This willow shrub was growing out of one of the viewpoints (see below), and had lots of insects waiting for their close up. This is a saw-fly.

This chrome beetle is in the Genus Chrysolina.

This is one of the Cercopis froghoppers.

To put these pics in context, here’s me taking the photos above!

And a video to show some of the lakes to the north.

I love scorpion-flies and this photo nicely shows the faux-stinger on the insect’s tail. This landed on my wife’s arm, as with the images below.

This is one of those tiny solitary wasps, possibly a gall-wasp.

Globeflower is a common occurrence in the Alps.

Mountain pine is like a shrub dotted around the alpine grasslands.

The limestone can be seen where the grasslands can’t grow. Thankfully the decline wasn’t as steep as this on the main path, but it wasn’t that far off.

The butterflies were not as numerous as they were lower down on Zwölferhorn, but there were a good number of fritillaries. iNaturalist is suggesting this is pearl-bordered frit.

On the rocky outcrops of the path the flowers were a-bloomin’. This is kidney-vetch, unless I’m mistaken.

Silvery-yarrow is a new species for me.

Globe flowers are a group I remember well from the Swiss Alps, they are probably more of a spring species than in mid-June. Not to be confused with the buttercup globeflower seen above.

I think this is rock thyme, which looks a lot like ground-ivy.

The views are spectacular along this part of the walk, so it’s a matter of looking at the plants and butterflies around your feet, and the vistas beyond, without tripping up!

The train meets you as the steepest stretch of the walk comes to an end. The gradient is nicely illustrated here.

You pass the Gasthof Schafberg-Alpe which is not in use at the moment. It’s the site of the station before the top of Schafberg. You can jump out here and walk up, or get the train back down. We continued on to St. Gilgen, down through the woods.

The ground levels out here and the walking is gentler for a time. The views are some of the most awe-inspiring I’ve encountered.

There are a number of wooden huts in this part of the walk, which make for helpful foreground subjects, with Dachstein in the distance.

As per my previous Austrian Alps post, the only orchids on show were early-purples.

The meadows were looking mighty fine.

It’s at this point that you can see how far you’ve come (literally) as the path then moves into woodland.

The shade was welcome, but it was very steep and winding.

This is probably another pearl-bordered frit, feeding on a plant I actually have in my garden here but that grows wild in the mountains – perennial cornflower.

Don’t worry you can’t get poisoned through your screen. This is deadly nightshade, also known as henbane, growing in the woods below Schafberg.

Now, this is the biggest orchid I’ve ever seen. My foot in the image on the right should show just how tall this is – knee-height. Does anyone know what on earth is happening here – is it some kind of hybrid?

This is an out-of-focus phone pic but it’s a species I don’t see often – spiked rampion.

On a fallen tree across the track I found a nice collection of wolf’s milk slime mould. I was too tired to pop them.

We arrived in the village of Winkl and soon we were among hay meadows.

This brown-black carpenter ant was poised on a fencepost, perfect for a pic. There were a couple higher up on Schafberg, so it must have been one of their ‘flying-ant days’ as we say in England.

Another species that I only see when in Europe is this buck’s-beard, growing at the roadside.

Having descended to the shore of Wolfgangsee, there were these lovely willow-leaved yellow oxeyes growing at the edge of the path.

To end, I was quite tired by this point and wondered what on earth was happening. This is a mix of phone pics and mirrorless camera pics, of the scene of a dead horsefly being eaten by a cinnamon bug. If you look more closely you can see a red mite on the head of the bug, so the mite is the winner!

Thanks for reading.

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Austrian Alps: wildflowers on Zwölferhorn

Daniel Greenwood2 Comments

Zwölferhorn (1522m), Salzkammergut, Austria, June 2025

In mid-June my wife and I visited the Austrian Alps for the second year in a row. We took the cable car from the village of St. Gilgen (featured in the opening scenes of The Sound of Music) to the 1500m heights of Zwölferhorn, so named because according to shepherds down the years the sun sits atop the peak at 12noon (zwölf) everyday.

The views from the top are magnificent, as you would expect from the Austrian Alps, though a bit hazy on this hot day in the Salzkammergut.

Part of the allure of this place in spring-early summer is the wildflowers high in the mountains.

To the south and west the mountains seem to run forever. South-east of here is the famous Hallstatt and the Dachstein Massif, which I will include some long-range images of in an Austrian Alps post to follow.

A view into Salzkammergut

These mountains have been managed in the same way for many hundreds of years – though there were probably fewer trees in the past – which has led to a rich diversity of flowers and their dependent invertebrates. We saw an abundance of both when visiting this time.

The sloping meadows were ‘littered’ with early purple orchids (Orchis mascula). We kept to the paths at all times for both safety as they were steep, and so as not to damage the grasslands. Having a camera in these places doesn’t give me a divine right to trample stuff!

Some of the orchids up close. Early-purple was the only species we saw.

This is hoary plantain (Plantago media) which gave a nice focal point to the alpine meadows.

I was intrigued by this daisy (Asters) as there were signs for arnica in the area. On iNaturalist it’s been identified as willow-leaved yellow oxeye.

This came out a bit out of focus in the wind – it’s the ‘Sussex flower’ of the chalk Downs, round-headed rampion.

This is a new species for me, the slender Scotch burnet moth! Apparently they are native to Britain and much of Europe, and managing to nectar at the same time as mating, impressive.

This photo made me laugh (I’ll explain). I was trying to get the honey bee and the green metallic beetle on the top in focus at the same time, so much so that I didn’t even see the second beetle lower down on the flower, which is actually in focus. This is knapweed, but I’m not sure if it’s a montane species or a variant to the common one.

While this is not a well-focused pic, it does enough to show you what is probably a duke of burgundy butterfly. In the UK it’s recovering but very rare.

The number of butterflies, day-flying moths, bees and hoverflies up here was a sight to behold. It was impossible to photograph anywhere near a reasonable percentage of all the things with wings. There were tens of fast-flying hummingbird hawkmoths on the wing, but getting photos of them would have resulted in falling down off the mountain. Also, we heard a cuckoo up here, which is quite late in the season for them.

The most common butterfly was the small tortoiseshell, another one I know from home. Insert obligatory remark about how it’s not so common anymore! Isn’t it gorgeous?

And to finish, there’s nothing more enjoyable in life than the sight of an unusual hoverfly. This was a new species for me, named on iNaturalist as the white-barred peat hoverfly. That would have been my second guess after Robocop hoverfly.

Here are some landscape images to see out this post of a wonderful walk and afternoon in the Austrian Alps. All taken with a macro lens!

Thanks for reading, Grüß Gott!

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Wasps vs. spiders

Daniel Greenwood2 Comments

Saturday 31st May felt like a passing of the seasons, with spring departing and summer arriving. That could be seen in the invertebrate world, with more summer species out there in my garden.

This post is generally wasps and spiders, with some lovely little bees to calm you down afterwards.

As ever, some of these things are so ridiculously small that without magnification (in my case a macro lens) you (I) wouldn’t necessarily see them.

I should have known it was going to be a good photography day when this little jumping spider appeared in my kitchen sink! The light was rubbish so I’ve had to draw out the shadows and ‘de-noise’ these photos a bit. I’m unsure of the exact species, but I do get an apparently uncommon oak jumping spider in my garden/near the house sometimes, and this may be one.

While we’re on spiders, here’s a wasp – a spider-hunting wasp! I’ve learned that sitting down on the grass by a shrub for 15 minutes isn’t just a forest-bathing exercise, it’s also a good way to allow the life to move around you. One fence post was being explored by this very busy spider-hunter. And then, something amazing happened.

On a vacant fencepost (that’s just how I consider them now) a spider appeared at the top. The spider-hunting wasp saw their moment and burst onto the post, but missed the spider by milliseconds!

The spider-hunting wasps paralyse their prey and then carry them away to a cache. It’s pretty grizzly, but if you think that wasps have been in existence for over 100million years, and spiders, gosh, they’ve been around for over 300million (humans 200k and unlikely to make 1million at this rate), it’s something that’s been going on for a long time. If you’re annoyed about one species of wasp bothering you, imagine how spiders felt when 100million years later a spider-hunting wasp evolves from nowhere!

This is around the time when I begin to notice the very tiny yellow-faced bees (Hylaeus). I’m happy to identify them to that level, and don’t really take it any further.

And here we have some of the ‘best’ images I’ve taken this year. This yellow-faced bee is probably less than 4mm in length. Here it’s nectaring on the stamens of a cultivated garden hypericum. This was grown from a cutting taken from my grandmother-in-law’s garden and is a very good plant for pollinators, though it does need maintaining. I love the way the bee uses the stamen a bit like an Elvis impersonator on a standing microphone. Ah-huh-huh.

Here’s a bumblebee for scale!

I don’t think I’ve seen as many honey bees as in recent years, but there was a glut of them around May. There are reports of problems in the U.S. this year (bit of an understatement, considering who’s running things there).

This solitary bee was visiting the flag iris in our little pond. I do enjoy the bee’s sideways escape. Not sure of the species, might be one of the Andrena mining bees.

I will now make like this bee and leave it there. Thanks for reading.

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Aphids watch out! 👽

Daniel Greenwood1 Comment

I’m posting garden macro photos from the 17th and 30th May. I have some really interesting photos from the 31st but that is probably more than one post in itself.

There are a couple of intriguing species I encountered in my garden between mid-late May, one of the very best times to look for our tiny invertebrate friends in this part of the world.

These are by no means great images (I would need extension tubes to increase the magnification) but the species may be an interesting type of wasp. It might be an aphid wasp, which is a group of wasps I haven’t heard of or seen before (there are thousands, even in the nature-depleted UK).

I’ve posted about aphids this year, and have noticed just how good a year they’re having. I listened to this episode of the Food Programme last week on the subject of potatoes, and didn’t realise aphids could trouble potato farmers. Perhaps they need to start gardening for aphid wasps!

We have a tiny pond which supports frogs and is planted with native aquatic plants. One of those plants is flag iris, which the bigger bees love. I enjoy seeing the bees climb through the yellow petals to nectar on the stamens. This bee is probably in the megachile group, perhaps one of the leafcutter species. Someone on iNaturalist suggests it’s a mason bee, so I’m not sure.

I like how leafcutters are in their own world. They often appear after the red mason bees and hairy-footed flower bees have gone, but they seem like they’ve always been there, so focused are they on their leafcutting tasks.

Another welcome sight in the bee world (it’s so much more than honeybees!) are the wool carder bees. I planted this stachys (or lambs ears) for the WCBs in 2020, and they immediately arrived.

Regular readers of this blog may recognise this species from previous posts, who just couldn’t keep out of this week’s post. I used to look like this. These may be an orange-vented mason bee.

This capsid or mirid bug was chilling in the hedge, as they often do.

And finally, those trusty honey lilies were looking their best in the evening light, as their flowering period drew to a close.

Next week we’ll see out May with some pretty epic wasp vs. spider scenes and miniscule bees.

Thanks for reading.

Macro

Tiny bees everywhere

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On 16th May there were lots of small bees to be found in my garden, but more of them later.

This was one of the first sightings of a small purple and gold, or mint moth.

Taking macro photos in gardens introduced me to the capsid bugs. This is one. I’ve seen lots of one species in the hedge this year, they are quite ‘alien’-looking in the sci-fi sense.

Now to the bees. I spotted what I thought was a blue mason bee on the fence, but instead it may be a different mason bee. Compared with the red mason bees, this species, whatever it is, appears later in the spring and lasts longer until the summer.

I love the light in these pics, and it’s all au naturale. Someone on iNaturalist has suggested this is one of the leafcutter bees.

This bee is potentially a little blue carpenter bee. I enjoy the background colours of the rose above…

…and the yellow and cream of the honeysuckle. Backgrounds in macro can make a very big impact on the photo. This is a species of sweat bee.

Finally, I didn’t get this little wasp in focus, but I like these brief encounters with random wasps. It reminds me that there is still huge biological diversity in the UK and the world does not revolve around us.

Thanks for reading.

Macro

Bumbling up

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Onto the 15th May 2025, when the bumblebees were beginning to increase as the workers emerged. But we won’t begin there.

The path to my house is overhung by a self-seeded willow sapling (probably to the annoyance of the postman). One morning I noticed the twigs held a cluster of aphids, tended to by ants.

The ants are probably farming the aphids by providing them with a degree of protection and harvesting the honeydew they excrete. These are probably willow bark aphids but my insect book says there are over 600 species in the UK and many are very hard to identify!

Elsewhere on the willow this little caterpillar was chomping away.

I think this is the same species but I’m not sure what it is. Caterpillars are not a strong area for me.

Moving onto bees, I spotted this bee that had been predated by a crab spider (probably Misumena vatia). I am wondering if this might be a cuckoo bumblebee, a kind of mimic that is in fact solitary and raids bumblebee nests, rather than being part of the community. The second photo is from some time later when the spider had moved their prey around.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the Sicilian honey lilies that have been flowering in my garden. The bumblebees were out in force among these flowers. They seemed to find it a bit difficult to access the flowers from below, but they were foraging en masse. This is one of the first times I’ve used the high speed shutter option on my camera, and it has provided excellent results. I’m not sure of the species, another area I need to brush up on, along with the aphids.

This spider is pregnant, you can see the egg sack. I think it’s a fox spider.

Thanks for reading.

Macro

Mason bees closing doors

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Around 9th May 2025 the red mason bees were working to seal their little chambers shut, as can be seen below.

2024 was a better year for these solitary bees in my garden, with far fewer in 2025. Their numbers will naturally rise and fall over the years. They’re important pollinators, especially in agriculture, so helping them has a wider societal impact for people who desire it.

In the first of the hotter spells each year I begin to notice these small bees. They’re usually sunning themselves on the edges of ceramic pots, wooden sleepers or fences. I am fairly sure this is a blue mason bee. They are quite skittish but do often return to the same perch if they can see that you’re not an immediate threat.

Elsewhere in the order hymenoptera (bees, wasps and ants) I saw this unusual-looking winged-insect hiding in the leaf shade. I’ve had to edit this a bit to bring the shadows out, but it’s a species of sawfly. It seems to have two antennae in the shadow, but for the life of me I can only see one!

I noticed the first swollen-thighed beetle of the year perched on the burgeoning fennel leaves.

In taking a few pics of this honeysuckle I noticed that there appear to be little sticky nibs on the flowers. I’m wondering if this is to trap pollen when bees visit, or potentially to snare invertebrates in the carnivorous sense. I can’t find anything online about that, but I now know just how invasive it is in North America.

And finally, the trusty Stachys was close to flowering by the 9th May. It looks very cosy and comfy here, ready for the wool carder bees. What I didn’t know about this plant (known as woolly hedgenettle) is that it’s native to Armenia, Iran and Turkey. I bet it has some very cool insects feeding on it there.

Thanks for reading.

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Sicilian honey lilies

Daniel Greenwood2 Comments

May has been a very productive month for macro photos for me, especially in my garden. These photos were taken on 8th May 2025 in that town garden in West Sussex.

We have a flowerbed for growing berries that is also home to these unusual alliums (honey garlic or Sicilian honey lily). On the 8th May they were just beginning to unseal themselves, releasing the flower heads. I have bee-heavy photos of this plant to share of the following days, and this spring has made me realise just how attractive this allium is for bees. The bumblebees can’t get enough! Stay tuned.

The oaks were in full-leaf by this point, this sapling somewhere between the red, yellow and green.

I don’t know what this invertebrate is or was, but I’ve seen it over the years attached to the stems of broom (which had such a good year in 2025). I am guessing it’s a species of moth that has pupated into an adult moth, and that this is the chrysalis. #NoMothExpert.

I think this may actually be the same early mining bee I posted about last week! Not sure.

I really like this photo of a fly (no ID yet). I wonder if that’s some kind of sugary solution on the berries. I enjoy the fly’s awkward splaying between fruit. Why not?

The light was working against me here as our friend was on the underside of a leaf. This is one of the Issus planthoppers. It doesn’t look like it, but the head is in focus.

And finally, the starlings were still feeding the nestlings at this point, quite an tiring time for them. They are one of my favourite birds, but are in serious decline (51% between 1995 and 2016) due to habitat loss and historic use of pesticides. You can help them by not using things like Roundup (glyphosate), by putting out fresh water for them to drink/bathe in, and potentially putting up a nestbox if you can.

Thanks for reading.

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Sainfoin and snails on Box Hill

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Box Hill, Surrey, May 2025

Last week I made an evening return to a landscape that is well-represented on this blog – the North Downs.

I had a lens with me that focuses very closely, though it wasn’t a proper macro lens.

When we topped the mighty Hill I noticed a couple of patches of sainfoin out on the slopes. It’s such a beautiful plant, a member of the pea family, at home on chalk downland. It was popular with bumblebees as you can see above.

The evening light was reaching into the woodland along the North Downs Way, catching the leaves of black bryony. This plant will always trigger in me memories of a child eating its poisonous berries in the woodland where I worked. He was fine, so not sure what happened there.

These huge Roman snails were out in good numbers along the footpaths.

We saw a few deer. This one was up on one of the slopes.

The light was beautiful.

The walk passes a beautiful church in the village of Mickleham.

Thanks for reading

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Early mining bee

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The bees are out in force at the moment, so I’m taking a lot more photos. Posts will now be one per day of photos, as there are too many in a week now to cram into one post! You may not care about this.

Early one morning before work I noticed a little bee resting on some raspberry leaves in my garden. I grabbed my camera from the house and got some photos. It was early and the temps were low so the bee wasn’t very energised. It may have spent the night there. This is probably early mining bee, which is one of the more common species in SE England from what I know.

Now then, I think these are scale insects (Coccoidea) in different stages. They’re attached to the stems of plants and also the leaves. Apparently they cause problems in coffee plantations – not a problem for me. Not only do I not drink coffee, it would be impossible to grow it in my garden.

Our frogs have been enjoying the basin pond, as per a recent post. It’s tough for them right now, we’re experiencing extremely dry conditions in southern England and are ‘on track for the driest spring on record‘.

The apple flower I waited 17 years for is producing an apple!

Elsewhere the red currants and gooseberries are well on their way.

The magnificent blooms of the broom have now gone to their typical seed pods.

Thanks for reading