Tag: nursery web spider

Macro Monday: the macro ninja

Daniel Greenwood2 Comments

Last year we installed a pond in our garden. It’s nothing special, just an old washbasin bought from an antique shop sitting on the patio. It has flag iris, some figwort and other aquatic plants bought from the garden centre. I noticed a couple of weeks ago the first resident of the pond, a water beetle zipping around the underwater vegetation. I didn’t get enough of a look to identify it, not that I would have done much there anyway.

One morning I spotted a downy feather resting on the pond’s surface with some drops of dew sitting on it. Looking closely the feather’s fibres were like lightning bolts or fungal hyphae spreading out across the surface of the water. I was crouched down over the pond to the point that the postman didn’t see me and got a fright:

‘You scared the living daylights out of me there, Dan, you’re like a ninja!’

New Instagram handle: Macro Ninja.

Hairy-footed flower bees have continued their territorial dominance of my garden. The male bees are a flippin’ nightmare to photograph, the image above took a lot of channeling my inner ‘macro ninja’ to approach before it flew away.

In the past two weeks the all-black females have appeared and are now being followed by the male bees as their pairing routines develop. Above is an archive image from a few years ago.

Another sign of my rustiness is this sighting of a queen wasp visiting the small hedge. She was nectaring on flowers of the-plant-I-can-never-remember-the-name-of. I have posted quote a lot in the past year about wasps, I love them. A user on iNaturalist identified this as a common wasp queen, Vespula vulgaris.
The same plant was supporting both more species and the non-sensical notion that non-native plants or animals have no place on These Great Isles. This was perhaps the second or third marmalade hoverfly I have seen in the garden this year. They are a nice entry into the world of hovers and are super common.

An example of why bright sunlight isn’t good for macro photography can be seen in Exhibit Z, above. This was fly does have an orange beard though which was something I hadn’t noticed until I drove up the shadows bar in the editing software.

The nursery web spiders were basking once more in their spring way. They are lovely spiders and I think could probably help more people to partially overcome any fears they may have. This was an interesting article (with a clickbait title) on spiders being pushed into civilisation by floods in Australia. And then there was this about the discovery of a depiction of a spider god in Peru. I wish people revered invertebrates in the way they did birds and mammals. Also, fungi.

Finally, a sign of spring’s imminent arrival is this bunch of guelder rose flower buds. Enjoy these spring days if you’re living in the Northern Hemisphere, they’re gone before you know it.

Thanks for reading.

Photos taken with Olympus E-M5 MIII and 60mm f2.8 macro lens.

More macro

Macro Monday: a spring inkling

Daniel Greenwood4 Comments

Macro Monday 8th February 2021

The other day I saw a baffling tweet from someone angry that people were declaring ‘spring is here’. The person mansplained February and told people to ‘get your head down’. For me, observing even the most minute hint of spring in midwinter is a real cause for hope, especially in a pandemic. For me it’s the vixen’s glass-shattering bark in January, a sign that foxes are mating, and that cubs will soon be playing in the railway sidings among primroses and (in British urban environs) Spanish bluebells.

The seasons are not chunks of meat separated out through the year. I think it’s important we notice and appreciate the smaller things. They can teach us about our changing world.

Now to the macro. Last week we had one day of glorious sunshine, amongst what has otherwise been a grey sky shutdown. My personal relationship with direct sun is getting more complicated, with skin that burns within minutes without protection. This is the kind of weak winter sunlight I can get behind, or in front of?

On that sunny day I popped into my garden for just 10 minutes to catch some of those gentler rays and see what was stirring in the wild micro-world.

This fly was not bothered at all by my presence. I think it’s something like a yellow dung fly.

Revisiting one of the best patches for spiders and other inverts in my garden, I found this nursery web spider basking on the petal of a winter hellebore. They remind me of early spring, the time of lesser celandines.

On a nearby foxglove leaf was another spider. This is a species of wolf spider which is commonly found in this little patch. My spider knowledge is basic, but I would say these two species are common in urban areas.

Finally, it was nice to see some genuine larger fungi growing. This is maybe turkey tail or smokey bracket, a small polypore nonetheless. It’s growing on a small stump left from a tree of a former owner. I’m glad it’s there!

Thanks for reading.

More macro

Photos taken with Olympus E-M5 Mark III & 60mm f2.8 macro lens

Further reading

Salmon egg slime mould 🐟

This is not a fungi post. If it’s anything, it’s probably closer to animals. It also may exhibit signs of memory despite not having a brain. Sounds like you’re in the right place.

Winter oyster mushrooms 🍄

A walk around a wet woodland reserve where the river ran free of its banks, merging among poplars like something from prehistory (i.e. no Internet).