Each year, when spiderworts (Tradescantia sp) start blooming in our backyard prairie garden, I wander out to take photos of the hover flies that seem particularly attracted to the flowers. The tradition continued this week and I have a nice crop of fly photos to share, including a goofy one at the end of the post.

In bigger news, I got a couple advance copies of my new book in the mail yesterday! The book contains a dozen essays and a few other notes on the square meter photography project I did back in 2018, along with more than 100 photos taken exclusively within that square meter of prairie. It sounds like books will start shipping during early June, so if you happened to have pre-ordered the book, you shouldn’t have too much longer to wait. I’m really happy with the way it turned out and I hope you’ll like it too.

Now, back to hover flies… Here are some more shots from this morning.

The fly in the above photo was using its legs to wipe pollen off its face while swiveling its head around. Not long after this photo, I got another shot mid-swivel, catching the blur of the moving head. Later, as I browsed through the photos on my computer, I enjoyed the sequence of those two photos (twisted head and mid-swivel), along with another with the head in its more typical position.

In fact, I may have giggled a little because it almost looked like the fly was using its legs to twist its head. My mind wondered what it would look like if the fly could actually screw its head all the way off (and back on, of course). Because I had time on my hands, I created a photo series and edited the last frame to make it look like that actually happened. It made me happy – maybe you’ll find it funny too. If not, just ignore this last photo and enjoy the others…

Happy Weekend!