All My Blogs

Pale swallowtail butterfly in my garden, taken with my iPhone 15 Pro. Like most insects (except true flies), butterflies have four wings.  Although they appear to only have two, each side is actually equipped with a pair.  You can see it more clearly on the butterfly I photographed a few years ago while visiting Palm Springs. Checkerspot butterfly photographed in 2023.  Notice there are four wings. The forewings are the most important in flight; the hindwings are less important and can take a moderate amount of damage before rendering a butterfly flightless.  Many butterflies, like the swallowtails, have small projections coming off the rear wings that can be sacrificed to help facilitate escape from a predator. While a butterfly may be able to fly with less than 50% of its original wing area, a more important consideration is a balance between both sides.  If the hindwings are both totally removed, a butterfly may still be able to fly.  However, if the lef...

Possibly Athous haemorrhoidalis  - a native of Europe now established in parts of BC I have always enjoyed finding click beetles.  They are small, harmless, and have a fascinating display when they are turned upside down - they flick themselves into the air with an audible "click."   The larvae of click beetles are wireworms.  Like all beetle larvae, they are grubs.  These look similar to ground beetle larvae but without the front jaws, and they have a curled end to their abdomen.  You can find examples of the adult and larval forms here . The click beetle adults themselves are not a problem.  It's the wireworm larvae that cause damage.  They are soil-dwelling grubs that feed on the seeds, roots, and tubers of plants.  Many of them are pests of crops, especially on the prairies.  I have wireworm damage in my vegetable garden, where my potatoes and carrots have holes drilled in them.  If you want to see an example of wireworm da...

Canadian tiger swallowtail butterfly, Leduc, Alberta. Although I love good prime telephotos, the truth is that they can be a little limiting, literally.  The minimal focus point is often five or six feet away.  Not a problem with birds, as they rarely ever get that close to you, but it is a different story with my more diminutive subjects.   I recently acquired a Nikon Z 180-600 mm zoom lens.  I have been shooting a lot with it lately, exploring its features and enjoying the slightly longer reach it has over my 500 prime.  It has a similar shortcoming (pun intended), in that its minimum focus point is almost eight feet away at 600 mm.  However, when zoomed in at 180 mm, the focus distance decreases to just over four feet. According to Nikon, the reproduction ratio of the lens remains the same throughout its entire zoom range.  Now, I take exception to that fact because the distances and the zoom values don't align.  At 180 mm, the minimum foc...

Kathryn, Charles, Taylor, Landon, Jennifer, April, and Eric.  Dogs:  Murphy and Randy. Jennifer and her two children, Taylor and Landon, are Dell's child and grandchildren.  Although he has been gone now for some 17 years, his presence is felt through them and the remainder of his family.   We had a whirlwind visit this weekend as Jennifer and her kids came to visit and stayed overnight for two evenings.  We played cards, went to the beach, and reconnected.  It has probably been eight years since I saw them - a lifetime in a child - and it was wonderful spending time together. Neither Kathryn nor I are related to any members of the Silk clan, and yet my connection to them runs deep.  Friendships that span both time and distance have allowed us to remain connected on some level.  My own family is both distant and unengaged.  It's nice to feel the acceptance that comes with family, even if you aren't part of one.  Sitting around the t...

Bottom:  A group of 19 goslings cared for by 3 adults. Center:   Before their swim, the goslings were resting in the shade of a tree.  Top right:  The rest of the parents were on the other side of the Leduc Reservoir preening and enjoying a quiet moment. It turns out that humans aren't the only ones that drop their kids off at day care and spend the day doing something else.   Called a crèche or nursery group, this communal behaviour frees members of a community to get to the business of survival, which in this case seems to be preening.  With humans, it usually means going off to work, but the idea is the same.  Survival comes in all forms. The wild is much less hospitable.  The geese living in human communities rarely have to worry about predation, have plenty of food, and are near various forms of shelter should the worst come.  In the wild, they have to forage for food, avoid predators or gang up against them, or find/make shelter....

Photographed with extension tubes, a 105 mm macro lens, and a macro flash. I have enjoyed making macro photos for over 40 years now, first with my Nikon FE2 and 55 mm macro lens and later with my Nikon D-series cameras, 105 mm macro lens, and SB200 macro flashes.  Somewhere along the way, I discovered that adding an extension tube to my 105 and using a crop-sensor camera added to the system's magnification. I recently switched over to a mirrorless system, so my camera of choice for macro is a crop-sensor Zfc body and Nikon's Z105 mm lens.  I also use extension tubes, about 25 mm, which allows me to focus a bit closer.  Of course, this means that I can't focus at infinity anymore, but I can live with that, as I rarely need it when my mind is set on macro mode.  Of course, I can always pull the extension tubes off if I'm in a pinch. Although you can do macro photography without a flash, my best photos are done with a dedicated macro flash.  There are lots of them ...