Native Drone Fly

As promised, here is a speckled-eyed Native Drone Fly. It makes a droning noise like a bee. It’s a type of hoverfly and I don’t recall photographing this one before now.

Eristalinus punctulatus: Native Drone Fly

The pretty star-shaped flowers bloom on a succulent in my yard.

The wing veining is beautiful.

We have a Native Golden Drone Fly – with golden stripes instead of the grey.

Those huge eyes are not particularly attractive! Apparently some drone flies have striped eyes, instead of speckles.

Images taken with the Nikon D3000, in guide mode.

Thanks for looking. Have a good day. 🙂

Bees & Bugs, Flowers

Sunny insects

I breathed a big sigh of relief this morning when I got my Nikon D3000 to work in the Guide Mode after I selected single release for the shutter.

Obviously I have done something to the settings which will not reset with the reset button. It might have something to do with white balance as the EXIF data on the photos I took today reported it was doing something unexpected.

You may recall that my troubles began when I began my adventurous experimenting with manual settings.

Anyway, I had a bit of a snap-happy time and then had a hard time choosing what to share. I settled on these as they reflect my mood – sunny, with fuzzy edges.

These lovely flowers are borne on a tree in my neighbour’s yard. I love the play of light and shadow on the insect and the little flowers.

I cropped the bee from a larger image and it’s heavily sharpened using GIMP. I’m including the featured image again – I love the tendril/leaf thing at the lower edge.

Tomorrow, I’ll show you a speckled-eyed drone hoverfly.

Thanks for looking. Do have a good week! 🙂

Other Stuff

A leafy walk

All the trees have lush foliage this spring. Any grass left unattended has grown above fence lines. The first of my red roses were as big as bread-and-butter plates, even though I never feed them, are prune badly, and must be over 20 years old. Different varieties of clovers are flowering in pretty clumps when one takes time to notice. The yellow cape-weed daisies are thinning. The bee numbers are picking up. Walking outdoors among all the greenery is delightful.