This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘All about bugs.’ See more responses here.
Also posted for Becky’s Squares: Seven. See more responses here.
The bugs in the next gallery were all on the same Monstera leaf, which had accumulated falling flowers from a palm tree.
The idea of The Numbers Game is to enter a number into the search bar of your computer and then post a selection of the photos that turn up. This week’s number is 132.
You can see more responses here.
I was photographing bees on a tree heliotrope in Kawaihae when I saw this fly. It’s a new one for me, so I was happy to get decent photos and to be able to identify it afterwards.
This is a Feather-legged Fly (Trichopoda pennipes). It’s one of those flies which lays its eggs on host bugs, such as leaf-footed bugs and stink bugs. On hatching, the larvae make for the bug’s interior and develop safely within. The end product is a new fly and a dead bug. Because some of the bugs it uses as hosts are crop pests, it’s considered a beneficial insect.
The bottom photo shows why it got its name!
On a recent walk at Upolu, the wind was very light, an unusual occurrence in that area. As I walked past the cattle pasture, I got a long stare from this one. But it turned out, irritating as I can be, the flies were a greater bother. The whole herd was engaged in some vigorous tail swishing to very little effect. Luckily the winds returned the next day and most of the flies were blown away.
A fly rests on a Mamane flower.
There are many things to like about this orchid. It’s a beautiful flower. It’s an epiphyte, growing on the trunk of a tree. It hosts a small hover fly, which I didn’t notice at the time. And it has a handy tag attached, identifying what it is, which I also didn’t see until later.
There’s an interesting story about the discovery of this flower here.
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Let’s Get Small.’ See more responses here.
Sorry to start off (above) with spiders, for those with aversions to them, but this one is very small. It’s a tiny female Hawaiian Garden Spider, probably no more than a quarter-inch across, though if it survives, it will grow to be as big as the other one in the photo.
In the gallery below, a Seven-spotted Ladybug putters about in some very green leaves. Another spider, this time a jumping spider no bigger than the little one at the top, has jumped a moth bigger than itself. Finally, what I think is a hover fly pretending to be a wasp with its black and yellow markings.
Finally, a Camponotus variegatus ant or carpenter ant. Next, a bee collecting pollen on an agave attenuata. Note the tiny aphids sharing the flower. And finally ants and aphids on the leaf of a Hawaiian Crown Flower. In this symbiotic relationship, the aphids produce sweet goodies for the ants to eat and the ants provide protection against the aphids’ predators.
Heading down for my walk at Upolu, I saw this cow on the loose. This isn’t an uncommon occurrence, but the main road is a mile up the hill and the escapees rarely get that far.
This one gave me a suspicious look as she passed. Perhaps she was trying to get rid of the ever-present cluster of flies on her back!
Graham's Island 