Tag Archives: close-up photo

Photo of the Week – August 3, 2012

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Still on the Niobrara Valley Preserve theme today, but not really strongly fire-related this time.

Leaf cutter bee (Megachile sp.) on plains sunflower (Helianthus petiolarus). The Nature Conservancy’s Niobrara Valley Preserve, Nebraska.  Click on the photo for a sharper look at it.

No, this isn’t some voracious predator waiting to ambush some hapless pollinator insect…it IS a pollinator insect.  More specifically, it’s a female leaf cutter bee.  I found her hanging out on an annual sunflower blossum in the early morning.  I’m not sure if she was warming up or resting or both?

Thanks to Mike Arduser for identifying the bee.  He guessed that it’s probably Megachile fortis – a specialist pollinator on sunflowers.

Upon Closer Inspection

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This weekend, our family visited my in-laws in Sarpy County (south of Omaha).  While we were there, I grabbed a couple hours of photography time during an evening and morning when the wind was nearly calm.  In the evening, I poked around a little prairie planting in the yard.  The next morning I walked a grassy cropfield edge. 

From a distance, neither area looked like it had much going on. Very few flowers were in bloom, and there wasn’t much obvious insect activity.  As always happens with prairies, though, there’s always much more than meets the eye – sometimes you just have to get down on your knees and look for it.  I took some of my favorite photos from those couple hours and made them into a brief slideshow.

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I’m not sure how this slideshow will work for those of you getting this post by email.  If it doesn’t play correctly, click on the title of the post at the top of your email to go to the actual post, and that should fix it.