Parastic Fly (Pyrgota undata)

This amazing looking creature is a large member of the fly family, but with a with a unusual life cycle. Flying mostly at night, they will chase june beetles in the air and while in flight, lay a single egg on the beetle. 


Imagine this thing chasing you with graspers out, ready to grab on.



parastic fly (Pyrgota undata) in flight


The egg will shortly hatch and the larva will drill into the beetle. Once inside they begin to feast until the beetle is dead.



parastic fly (Pyrgota undata) portrait

Colorful Wasp (Sphex habenus)

Wasps are noted for their reproductive sculduggery. Most depend upon a host insect of another species, and they engage in various forms of kidnapping and poisoning to make this happen. The host is usually kept alive in a state of paralysis until newly hatched young are hungry and ready to eat. There are a thousand variations of this tale, and the complexity involved can be astounding. It is the stuff of horror films.


From IMDB entry for Ridley Scott's ALIEN movie:  The alien's habit of laying eggs in the chest (which later burst out) was inspired by spider wasps, which are said to lay their eggs "in the abdomen of spiders." This image gave Dan O'Bannon nightmares, which he used to create the story. But spider wasps (pompilidae) lay eggs on their prey, not inside them, after which the wasp maggots simply snack on the sting-paralyzed spiders. O'Bannon may instead have been thinking of either ichneumon wasps or braconid wasps. The ichneumon drills a single egg into a wood-boring beetle larva, whereas braconids inject eggs inside certain caterpillars. Both result in fatal hatch-outs more alike to O'Bannon's alien.


This particular wasp is known for going after katydid nymphs. It is large and colorful with a painful sting.



colorful male wasp (Sphex habenus) (Family Sphecidae)

Ornate Ichneumon Wasp (Thyreodon sp.)

This wasp was huge with beautiful orange antennae and orange striping on the abdomen. What really caught my eye was the violet iridescence of the wings. I'm not sure what these would look like under ultraviolet light (the spectrum that many insects see the world in), but the wings look mostly black until the light hits the surface just so.


ornate ichneumon wasp (Thyreodon sp.) with iridescent wings

Black And Yellow Mud Dauber Wasp (Sceliphron caementarium)

Wasps are often gangly, delicate looking creatures. Why they have the thread thin stalk leading to the abdomen is mysterious, but there is a whole group called "thread waisted wasps". While wasps will kill other insects to feed their young, it is not unusual for them to nectar on flowers like a bee.


Below a mud dauber wasp takes off from a salt heliotrope flower.


black and yellow mud dauber wasp (Sceliphron caementarium)

Bat Skeleton

I photographed this bat skeleton some time ago, but the image sat in my cataloging folder until I could get the post processing done.

Bats are such delicate creatures, and yet so beautifully put together. Their evolution is slowly being revealed by the fossil record and genetics.



I was hoping to illustrate the delicate nature of the skeleton, and yet show the dynamic flexibility of a flying mammal. I'm not so sure I was successful, and the tiny wing bones made the whole process very challenging. It will have to do for now.



This bat is a different species than the skeleton, but has a similar build. No matter what I tried, I could not come close to the elegance of a live flying bat that is shown here.

Red Saddlebags Dragonfly (Tramea onusta)

These dragonflies are deceptive in flight. When I first spied one at the Brackenridge Field Lab, I didn't recognize it as a dragonfly until I got a second look. The curious red markings on the wings make it look like a large fly with red wings until the transparent part of the wings are perceived – then suddenly a dragonfly appears.



This quality is not immediately apparent in this image, but place one against a bright blue Texas sky and your eyes can be fooled. This photo took all day to get.

Winter Kill

It has been a stormy and cold winter along the coast. I can't be sure if it was the hard time of year, or disease that killed this juvenile, bull elk – but it does not appear that a predator killed it.



Now it is time for the scavengers. When I arrived, it was obvious that they had already started to feast on the carcass. Probably coyotes and raccoons at night, and hawks and eagles by day. In between hail storms, I set-up three, motion-sensing cameras in the muck and mud around the elk to photograph the scavengers.



It will be interesting to see what the cameras record.

Stay tuned.

Unexpected - A Flash Of Virescent Color

For nearly three years I have been on a quest to photograph the virescent green metallic bee. They are not particularly uncommon, but they are small and quick - and despite my unusual attention to the small denizens of the insect world, I have only caught glimpses of them.

I had hoped to catch a photo of the tiny creature with my high-speed camera system - which requires considerable planning and time. Good fortune smiled upon me, however, in the middle of an assignment to photograph honey bees.



So I had all of the complex equipment that I use to take high-speed images set-up and ready to go when I spied the magnificent emerald flash of a green metallic bee among a field of flowers buzzing with insects.



I continue to find it remarkable how life on such a small scale can be so vibrant and intense.



This bee also reminds me of an even smaller insect that I photographed last year - the cuckoo wasp. This little insect has an intensely green exoskeleton that is also extremely thick and tough. It must be durable because part of its life cycle requires it to sneak into the heart of a bee hive and hijack a larval cell for its own use. If it is discovered, it will need a thick hide to survive the attacking bees.

Chasing Bats In The Ochocos

All last week I was out working with the Forest Service and BLM bat survey teams in the Ochoco National Forest.


The bat crew at work.

Bats are very fast, nocturnal flyers that can be seen all around the northwest at dusk, but determining species can be very, very challenging. The biologists that specialize in bats will typically catch a few bats, measure ears and wing arm length, record their vocalizations and do their best to determine species. The bat is released a few minutes later. They will collect this information for years to try and identify population trends, and measure how healthy bat colonies are.

Photographing bats can be quite challenging as well, but between the capture and the recording of data, I will spend a few minutes to try and photograph the bat, and if I am lucky - I can get a cool photo or two. The detail I am able to record of the bats in flight can actually help researchers identify the bat species, and the biologists use the images as part of their reports and published literature.


A western long-eared bat (Myotis evotis)


Yuma myotis

In the time exposure image below, a light is temporarily placed on the bat so that researchers can record the high-frequency calls of the bat. The light will fall off in a few minutes.