A marsh is a great place to be in the summer, so long as you don’t mind the humidity and biting/stinging insects swarming all over the place. Personally I am not a fan of the humidity but it is more than worth tolerating in order to enjoy the biting/stinging insects and the plants they feed off of, like the Canada Lilys pictured above. All photos are from a recent hike on the Great Marsh trail in the Indiana Dunes National Park.
Queen Anne’s Lace has a very photogenic structure to it’s flower. It pays to explore it from multiple perspectives, head on being one of my favorites due its symmetries.When Queen Anne’s Lace is in full bloom it has a tiny red flower in the very center. This little spot of red is one of the features which distinguish it from the very similar Poison Sumac, which is quite a nasty plant. Placing the camera almost level with the flower and setting a fast aperture allows you to create a narrow band where the image is in focus.Although this trail has plenty of hard biting Deer Flys, this Flower Fly just slurps up nectar from wild flowers. Look close at the head (you can click on the image to view it full size) and you can see the extended proboscis which appears like a long snout.This beetle has beautiful metallic greens and blues, complemented by a splash of red.Here we see 5 caterpillar or maybe moth larvae munching on this leaf. I have no idea if these are considered to be good caterpillars or destructive ones.Something you will find in abundance in a marsh are Slugs. Tall grasses and reeds abound in marshes, including the horsetail that surround the puffy seed head of some other plant.While there are certainly lots of stingy things in marshes, the big old Bumble Bee is not one of them. They have no stinger. They are also incredibly difficult to photograph because they are in constant motion. Even when feeding on a flower they are in a constant state of frantic motion. Maybe they are just on a permanent sugar high from all that nectar they drink.And finally, we have a genuine stingy type. Wasps appear scary, but as long as you are not bothering them they have no interest in stinging you. They only use their stingers for hunting and self-defense.
I never gave much thought to flys before I started noticing them in my photographs of wildflowers. Always thought of them as biting, garbage eating pests. But it turns out that they are actually quite beautiful creatures, and there are more different types of flys than I had ever imagined. Over 150,000 species which have been cataloged. And the annoying types are very much in the minority.
These days I flys are one of my favorite photographic subjects. I am starting to know when and where to look for them. I have even begun practicing photographing them in flight, which is quite challenging, but a lot of fun. All of these flys were observed and photographed along the Great Marsh trail in the Indiana Dunes National Park.
I said most varieties of fly are not the annoying kind, but I will start off with a common Deer Fly. Large, black and they bite. But when viewed up close like this I still find them to be fascinating creatures.Quite possibly another Deer Fly, but not at all certain about that. I love the head on this one. The deep maroon eyes with the whitish bands between them are quite striking.I have no idea what type of fly this is, but the brown pattern on the tan eyes is stunning.Based on the eyes and the pattern of markings on the body I suspect that this is a “Flower Fly”, of the subfamily Eristalinae. They eat nectar and are important pollinators, hence the name Flower Fly. They are one of my favorites.Another type of Flower Fly is the Hoverfly. They have the ability to hover like like bees and are frequently found feeding on the nectar of wildflowers.Another Hoverfly. I came across this one early in the day when the air was still cool. It remained stationary long enough for me to position my camera directly in front of it.Many Flower Flys have evolved to mimic Bees and Hornets. In fact it can sometimes be very hard to tell them apart. Another Bee mimicking Flower Fly. I was able to position my camera almost directly above this one which allowed me to get the entire span of the wings in focus. The lines and colors are wonderful.This is one of my favorite photo sequences. At the time I was just taking multiple shots to maximize my chances of getting one that was in good focus. Turned out that all three were in focus and when viewed one after the other it looks like this fly was doing push-ups!
