Sunday Sawfly: Inspired by Thrifty Thursday

 One of the benefits of the long, long days around the Summer Solstice at a northern latitude such as Edmonton's is that even when the weather is miserable most of the day, a hour or two of sunshine may peak through the clouds. That may not happen this rainy Saturday, but it did during yesterday's downpours and the cool conditions were a good time to get close to some bugs. Below is the original (reduced in size for posting) image of one such shot and above my best attempt at making it interesting. The sawfly is possibly Pristiphora appendiculata (Hartig)(=rufipes Lepeletier) - the Small Gooseberry Sawfly which my wife caught ovipositing for a previous posting.

I'm not much of a bug photographer - just an upper mid-range point-and-shoot (Lumix DMZ FZ28) documentor of the Home Bug Garden. The good pictures you see here are usually from my wife's Nikon D-70 DSRL - old, but reliable body with an even older lens (60 mm AF MicroNikkor 1:2.8) and SB-21 Speedlight flash. However, one of the web's best photographers of arthropods, Myrmecos, has started a weekly series called Thrifty Thursdays on using under $500 equipment to take interesting photos of insects. This has made me feel that I should be doing a better job and this is my first attempt to deal with the cluttered background problem highlighted in the linked post. Below is what I think is a less successful effort, but for some reason I like the clutter in the upper right - makes the fly seem to be seeking shelter in the pansy from the messiness of the world.

 

Oh well, it's down to a drizzle for the moment. Time to climb the ladder and clear the gutters of those nasty sticky spruce bud caps.