Tag: Olympus 60mm f2.8 macro

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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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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Early mining bee

Daniel GreenwoodLeave a comment

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

After 17 years, a small miracle

Daniel Greenwood10 Comments

In 2008 I took an interest in growing things.

After eating an apple one evening I decided to copy what my dad was always doing, and plant some seeds. I potted a couple of apple pips in compost and left them on the windowsill.

The pips began to grow into little seedlings. I was astonished, these pips just had to drop into some soil and trees grew.

There’s no doubt to me that this experience, along with time spent under a hawthorn and small willow tree in my parents’ garden as a child, helped me to learn to love trees. It’s the dynamism, the strength, the age, the ability to grow from seemingly nothing we could survive on.

The apple tree matured, was re-potted, and was eventually delivered to me by my parents in 2018 when I moved to Sussex. It’s about 2 metres tall and just sits in its pot, not really doing much, putting out leaves, letting the seasons come and go.

As far as I’ve known, this tree will never flower or produce fruit. That’s all I’ve ever read or been told. It needs to be grafted with some other apple, ready to produce fruit.

I blogged about the tree in 2021 as part of 30 Days Macro, when bees nectared from the leaves after they became curled up by farming ants(?) and drenched in aphid honeydew.

And so… the other morning I was sitting in my garden enjoying the spring sounds, smells, and sights of new flowers. I stood up and turned to go back inside when I saw a pink flower on the apple tree.

I couldn’t believe my eyes.

17 years of nothing, and then these bright pink and white petals appear.

It made me think of the passing of time, of all that’s happened, where I am in life. It reminded me of where the tree came from, that my dad’s annual sowing of seeds had inspired me to even consider putting that pip in the little pot of compost.

Will it produce fruit? I don’t know, I don’t actually eat apples anymore (too acidic)! I don’t even know what type of apple it is.

But it felt like a signal – life can surprise you – that trees are resilient, dynamic, and beautiful.

Thanks for reading.

Spring 2025 arrives

Daniel Greenwood2 Comments

Five years ago we were facing up to the Covid-19 lockdowns. In response to the stay-at-home orders I began a weekly macro blog, an assignment from the gods? No, just our Supreme Leader at the time Boris Johnson and his better half in Public Health Chris Whitty.

While I can’t promise weekly blogs due to work and life commitments, it’s definitely time to dust off the macro lens after its winter slumber and step out into the garden to see what’s happening!

As ever, there’s far more going on than you might think. I also think it’s important that we look at and try to understand invertebrates when this misinformation is coming from the leader of the country (I know it could be worse, but get your facts straight, folks).

We depend on nature and our ecosystems and their wildlife for our food, clean water, fresh air and function. Wildlife has a right to exist and the world does not revolve around our species.

The snails are roosting in our front porch. My wife was wondering if they might be too hot there, as the paint’s white and it can get quite sweltry in there.

It looks to me like something is going on with the shells and they may be roosting to grow their shells. It’s not something I know much about. Please let me know in the comments if you have any info 🙂

We have some nice pansies my wife planted out by our front door. You can see the bee drive-in here with the dark landing marks and the brush of hairs to ensure the pollen of other pansies are retrieved from a visiting bee.

The broom plant flowers in a subtle way, these little yellow petals appearing from the red sepals.

This is a common little fly that seems to stand around on leaves and petals for ages!

Their eyes are very cool, and I enjoyed the single spot in their wings as well. These flowers are some saxifrages my wife bought from the garden centre.

In January on a cold Saturday afternoon I laid or ‘plashed’ the hazel shrub I had planted out in our hedge. It’s a little hedge, but the usual shrub that made up the hedge has died back so I needed to take action. It’s so pleasing (‘pleaching’?) to see the hazel respond so well and new shoots to appear from the lain-down stems.

I also uprooted a sapling that a squirrel had cached as a seed, which is doing well. I planted this out around the time of frosts, which shows hazel’s hardiness. I did know that was the case, but it’s nice to see it come through.

The normal hedge I mentioned is this Skimmia japonica. It’s good for pollinators, no doubt. But it doesn’t seem to last well without pruning.

It was abuzz with drone flies as spring really began to arrive in mid-late March.

These drone flies (Eristalis) are probably the most common winged-insect in our garden at the moment. They’re quite funny I think.

Bay flowers promise so much, but they are quite modest really. I am hoping this provides some decent nectar for any invertebrate that needs it.

I spotted this little crab spider hanging out on one of my thermal t-shirts. It’s probably Misumena vatia, the most common of the crab spiders.

A cat monument in our garden in memory of our cat Kaiser who loved this spot in the flowerbed. The wolf spiders also love this spot because it gets so warm. The white stone of the cat is even warmer than the surrounding soil. I think this may be a male and a female wolf spider, with the male the smaller of the two, with the palps (dark spots at the front of its head, in the cat’s eye!).

The fence next to the cat monument was a helpful basking spot for the first nursery web spider I’ve seen so far this year.

The flowering of our magnolia is short and sharp, but these globular flowers are a delight. Magnolias are very old trees in evolutionary terms, and here’s to another year under their belts.

Thanks for reading.

Macro

My 2024 in photography

Daniel Greenwood6 Comments

Another year completed and lessons learned. Creatively I have found a balance with my equipment and the actual process of photography. I’m into my 6th year of working with Micro Four Thirds cameras and lenses, giving more space to enjoy the process of gathering photos – walking – because the equipment is light.

Cameras used include Olympus EM-5 Mark III, Oly EM-1 Mark III, Olympus TG-6 Tough compact camera, and Pixel 7a phone camera.

These photos should show the range of things I like to take pics of – not just mushrooms! 😂

With the privileges available to me – health, location, resources, freedom of expression – here are my photographic highlights of 2024:

January

I did a couple of long walks in Sussex at the beginning of the year, exploring some new locations around the South Downs. I visited St. Botolphs church for the first time, one of Sussex’s special ones among thousands of already significant churches. Last year I set up a gallery for my fledging church photographs project which can be viewed here.

February

This felt like the moment of the light returning after the dark winter months. The Downs at Amberley are my gateway to the South Downs, and walking here is always worth the gentle climb.

March

In March I visited Dublin for a weekend and took in the sights along the great river Liffey.

For a friend’s birthday we spent the weekend in York, which gave me a chance to take some compact camera pics of a few of the oak timber framed buildings. I’ve added a gallery for my ‘Oak Timbers’ project here.

April

I got married in April so there wasn’t time for much beyond the odd local walk. I was trying out my new Pixel 7a, bought because of its value and reported image quality. The camera is spectacular, I just wish it wasn’t a G**gle product. I blogged about it here.

May

Ah, memories. In May we went on our honeymoon to Austria and Switzerland, all by train. You may be sick of reading about that! I am definitely not sick of blogging about it though!

This was one of those one-off photos experiences. Thankfully the weather held and we saw the mountains in much of their glory.

June

A bit of a lost month for photography because I started (yet another) new job and had to settle into a new routine. The highlight was probably these sawfly larvae which ate through some of the leaves on my gooseberry. Blog here.

July

“July, July, it never seemed so strange”, as the Decemberists sang. I caught Covid and didn’t really get back to normal for 3 months afterwards (Vitamin D is very important, people). My macro work was reduced by the evil contagion but I did find some nice bugs near home to share.

August

I managed to pap some pretty fine inverts in August, with this beautiful ichneumon wasp seen in my garden. I’ve not got anywhere near enough out of my Olympus EM-1 Mark iii and 60mm macro, but this showed just how good Micro Four Thirds cameras are for macro.

Another strongpoint for M43 cameras is that they can ‘stack’ images internally, something now copied by the big hitters. This is a composite of about 10 photos the camera has laced together to ensure the depth of field covers a deeper focus range. It means more of the, rather gruesome, subject can be seen in detail.

September

In September I made my first ever visit to the iconic sea stacks at Downpatrick Head on the North Mayo Coast in Ireland. Mayo has an international dark skies designation so I was able to mess around with the Milky Way. But for the astro photo I haven’t processed these images yet so here are a couple of phone photos.

October

As I have lamented on my Fungi Friday blog, 2024 was not the best mushroom season. But there are always things to find out there. I found this knocked over fly agaric, which was in perfect condition, ready for its portrait.

November

Autumn is a time for Dartmoor for me and my wife, and despite colds we managed some walks onto the moors in the National Park. We found an amazing array of waxcaps, like the crimsons above, which you can see in full on Fungi Friday.

On the last day of November I hiked with my South Downs amigo from Ditchling into the mist. This is the much-photographed Ditchling dew pond, shrouded in mist.

December

The weather in December was very grey and damp, and all the Christmas demands gave me only one meaningful walk – to Pulborough Brooks in West Sussex.

Thanks for all your support in 2024 and wishing you peace and happiness in 2025.

Midsummer buglife 🪲

Daniel Greenwood5 Comments

Warnham Local Nature Reserve, West Sussex, July 2024

I was making my first meaningful trip out to a wild space after being ill with Covid, to see if I could concentrate enough on taking some macro pics. Thankfully there were some very docile bugs pleading for their close up. Here you go, team.

I’ve missed a lot of the macro season this year, what has probably been one of the ‘worst’ summers in this part of England. Lots of rain, quite cool, clear lack of insects. I’m only just getting over brain fog so not able to compute how worrying the insect declines are right now. It seems that approving the use of bee-killing pesticides without appropriate risk assessment doesn’t help.

I was fortunate to spot this cinnamon bug nectaring in the flowerhead of a Michaelmas daisy within a few minutes of my visit to Warnham Local Nature Reserve. I love how this pollinating beetles get so covered by the pollen. It’s a bit like me after eating a choc ice.

Though flies are feared and reviled for their connections with unpleasant organic matter in this world, some of them are very interesting to look at. Many of them also tend to be pollinators. It’s not all about the bees. This fly is probably Nowickia ferox, which feeds on flowers. Moth fans – look away now. Their larvae develop in the dark arches moth.

Dock bugs are a common sight in southern England, especially in flowery grasslands and meadows. They are very easy to photograph – they’re like the mushrooms of the insect world, slow moving, if at all. How trusting.

Elsewhere, this mid-summer period is one of hoverflies, many which looked very similar to the untrained eye (this one) but which can be nice subjects among the flowers of hogweed and other umbellifers.

I was pleased with this photo of a dancefly as it nectared on some ailing hogweed flowers. That is one heck of a proboscis. The light is very soft and the background is a serene green.

Over the years (I’ve been using a dedicated macro lens since 2014) I’ve learned about species behaviour, and how a little bit of knowledge can really help you to find wildlife. In terms of invertebrates, I remember a blog written about fenceposts and how they were a good place to find roosting insects. This is solid advice.

During this visit, in the forefront of my mind was a past, failed attempt to photograph a robberfly where it sat on a handrail. On that same handrail I didn’t find a robberfly, but instead my mother and father-in-law, which was also nice. But, that wasn’t the end of the story…

Turning to head home, realising how fatigued I was, and lacking in normal, basic levels of energy, I spotted something. A robberfly was sat on a different handrail! It’s so pleasing to have this sense of validation for my fencepost knowledge.

In the world of wasps, we are of course in the throes of the UK Media Silly Season (despite there being a General Election, potential dictatorship in the US, and far-right riots across the UK!) and wasps are in the news. Interestingly the mwin story is, where are they?

iNaturalist users think the wasp above is a German wasp. What you can see is the wasp gathering wood shavings for a nest. But that wasn’t the only wasp I saw.

July and August are good months to see the iconic ichneumon wasps. I absolutely love them, an interest which was deepened by reading The Snoring Bird (I recommend it). I wasn’t fast enough for this ichneumon to really get a strong pic, but this will do.

Even worse was this attempt to photograph one of the Gasteruption ichneumons. People, I am just too short for plants that want to grow this tall. I do enjoy the bokeh here though (circular light in the background). Take that, full-frame cameras!

So, all in all a decent showing for a fatigued individual.

Thanks for reading.

Photos taken with Olympus EM1 Mark III and 60mm f2.8 macro lens, edited in Lightroom.

Macro

Macro Monday: the mourning bee

Daniel Greenwood6 Comments

In this post: garden bees, extension tubes and woodland lichens

The ‘Stay at Home’ message has ended in England but I’ve learned my lessons in this pandemic year. Macro is a time-consuming activity and the less time spent travelling means more time spent honing the skill and having a good time!

One person whose photos and work ethic I really admire is Penny Metal. Penny’s work is focused on a small park in Peckham, south-east London. She photographs species I would never have imagined possible in Inner London, where green space is a rarity.

The lesson for me here is: keep it local, have faith and you never know what you might achieve. From one of Penny’s accounts last week I saw a mourning bee and a comment that they were abundant.

Now, I’ve only ever seen this bee in rural Surrey near to Box Hill (for those who don’t know, Box Hill is probably the closest SE England will get to a mountain and is a hugely popular place). It seems Penny was capturing a trend – mourning bees were perhaps having a good spring.

And then, on one afternoon last week I encountered this bee in my garden. Mourning bees are parasitic on hairy-footed flower bees, a species my garden is very popular with. I was delighted to witness it feeding on the shrub I can never recall the name of.

That afternoon felt like a watershed moment. Though we have gone from 24 degrees Celsius one week to sub-zero the next, the spring bees are now on the scene. The above is a red mason bee (Osmia rufa), the first I’ve seen this year.

There were more bees, most of whom were not willing to be featured on this blog. To which I would say: whatevs.

This weevil seemed to think it was having a Lion King moment. I’m here for it.

And this yellow dung-fly. It may spend its days cavorting on cow pats, but if you’re willing to pose for a pic for me like this, I don’t care what you get up to.

Away from my garden hedge, I’ve finally bought some decent extension tubes. This is to give better magnification for my macro lens and peer even further into the wild world.

Needless to say, it’s not easy. The woods are not great at the moment, after hot and then very cold weather, the wildlife is a bit baffled. In my local Narnia I tested my new kit out on these Cladonia cup lichens. A nice person on iNaturalist identified this as Cladonia polydactyla. The red tips were so small they could not be seen without a macro lens and the extension tubes. Hopefully it’s a decent start to years of the greatest lichen images the world has ever known.

Let’s hope so.

Thanks for reading.

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Macro Monday: pollen gains

Daniel Greenwood3 Comments

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Macro Monday 6th July 2020

Cooler temperatures greeted us this week after the recent heatwave. The gusting winds didn’t go away, though, and that makes it tricky for macro. The constant blowing sways the plants where the insects are, meaning that the number of photos you’ll get in focus will be far fewer than if it was still. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try, though.

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Though our small garden isn’t up on a hill, it’s beginning to feel rather exposed where it sits in the Arun valley in urban West Sussex. I’m open to letting more of the shrubs grow to create wind buffers, not that it will make a huge different. One of the buffers is this ornamental hedge (which, after 6 months I still haven’t checked the name of in a garden centre). I found this ladybird in a state of metamorphosis, shifting from larva to adult ladybird. You can see its shell appearing from the skin of the larva, like superman minus the phonebox and slower.

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In the raspberry patch I found a solitary wasp. My insect guide gives nothing close to a resemblence to any species.

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The most popular plant in the garden now is this mallow. Lots of different species are foraging from it, to the point where I know an insect has been there because of those massive pollen grains. This is a red-tailed bumblebee, as you can probably imagine.

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I’ve noticed this ichneumon wasp (one of over 2500 species in the UK) spending a lot of time flitting over the flower buds. I presume it is using that needle-like ovipositer to lay its eggs. It has a beautiful chrome-blue eye. Again it has a pollen grain on its shoulder.

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This is another yellow-faced bee that I haven’t managed to identify. I love how papery the petals of the mallow appear here.

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The wool carder bees are still busy in good numbers on the lamb’s ears. This plant has been a revelation this year. At most I’ve counted 5 wool carder bees and this week I saw 3. They seem to be more at ease with me now (if that’s a thing, probably not) and don’t fly a mile when I sit next to the plant to get photos. They also allow me to get much closer than I could back in May.

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They are really attractive bees. What interests me is that they aren’t at all interested in the mallow but only the lamb’s ears and a foxglove which has popped up nearby.

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The lamb’s ears continue to be a perch for lots of different insects. I would say this is a common froghopper.

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The hot weather really has killed part of the lawn but I don’t care. I haven’t even cut it since April! One thing I have noticed is that our yellow-legged mining bee friends have begun to proliferate further into the other living areas of the grass.

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This was one of those cooler days, so perhaps this bee didn’t quite have the energy to get going just yet. Or perhaps it was just wondering what a giant was doing pointing a camera into their doorway.

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On my way back into the house one lunchtime I found a moth fluttering around at the door. I didn’t think much of it with my normal human eyesight but the photograph shows up something far more beautiful. The (undiffused) flash exposes the carpet-like patterns of the scales, with a hint of tiger stripes to the wing tips. It reminds me of curtains closed in a living room.

Thanks for reading.

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