Tag Archives: close-up photo

Photo of the Week – January 29, 2015

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Ok, I admit it – I’m a sucker for crab spiders.

A crab spider on Flodman's thistle (Cirsium flodmanii) at the Helzer family prairie.

A crab spider on Flodman’s thistle (Cirsium flodmanii) at the Helzer family prairie.  July 2014.

As much as I enjoy looking at prairie flowers, I enjoy them even more when there’s a crab spider lying in wait among their petals.  I must have more than a hundred photos of crab spiders on flowers, but when the lighting is good and I see those long hairy legs and cute little face… I just can’t help myself!

Do you suppose I need some kind of intervention?

“Hi, my name is Chris Helzer and I really like crab spiders.”  (Hi Chris…)

“It’s been three weeks since I last photographed a crab spider…”  (Applause)

Photo of the Week – December 11, 2014

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For no particular reason, here are two unrelated photos from the same day.  Both photographs were taken on September 28, 2014 at our family prairie south of Aurora, Nebraska.  I wish I could come up with a pithy and informative way to link the two together, or to a larger theme or lesson.  I can’t.  I just like the photos.  I hope you do too.

A katydid on stiff goldenrod. Frequent readers of The Prairie Ecologist will remember that you can distinguish a katydid from a grasshopper by its very long antenna.

A katydid on stiff goldenrod. Frequent readers of The Prairie Ecologist will remember that you can distinguish a katydid from a grasshopper by its very long antenna.

 

Stiff goldenrod seeds resting on the leaf beneath the seedhead they dropped from.

Stiff goldenrod seeds resting on the leaf beneath the seedhead from which they dropped.