All For Show
May 31st, 2011
I was near the parking lot at Jack Pine Trail when I encountered this beautiful and fierce-looking insect:
Keep in mind I don't have a macro lens. This isn't a magnification of some tiny mite. It was over an inch long. It was creeping on an old, lichen-encrusted stump and adjacent rock, and I went crazy trying to get a good, sharp and well-lit photo, firing the shutter repeatedly everytime it went into a patch of sunlight.
When it left the stump and flew towards me, I stood stock-still, because honestly, who wants to tangle with something that looks like that? I regret it now because my subject then flew off while I wasn't looking.
Come to find out (thanks to Christine Hanrahan, a local expert) it's a harmless cranefly! Genus ctenophora, likely ctenophora dorsalis, a wasp mimic. That long, pointed, upcurved tail, by which I feared getting stung, was nothing but an ovipositor. Which means it was a female, and given where she was and how she was behaving, I likely caught her in the process of laying eggs, or at least, searching for a place to lay eggs.
I never got quite the shot I wanted, so I hope to cross paths with this species again someday.
May 31st, 2011
I was near the parking lot at Jack Pine Trail when I encountered this beautiful and fierce-looking insect:
Keep in mind I don't have a macro lens. This isn't a magnification of some tiny mite. It was over an inch long. It was creeping on an old, lichen-encrusted stump and adjacent rock, and I went crazy trying to get a good, sharp and well-lit photo, firing the shutter repeatedly everytime it went into a patch of sunlight.
When it left the stump and flew towards me, I stood stock-still, because honestly, who wants to tangle with something that looks like that? I regret it now because my subject then flew off while I wasn't looking.
Come to find out (thanks to Christine Hanrahan, a local expert) it's a harmless cranefly! Genus ctenophora, likely ctenophora dorsalis, a wasp mimic. That long, pointed, upcurved tail, by which I feared getting stung, was nothing but an ovipositor. Which means it was a female, and given where she was and how she was behaving, I likely caught her in the process of laying eggs, or at least, searching for a place to lay eggs.
I never got quite the shot I wanted, so I hope to cross paths with this species again someday.
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Mike
May 31st, 2011 at 8:58 pm
Neat! Impressive little beastie!
ilanikhan
June 1st, 2011 at 7:13 am
it's freaky looking, and I think the shots you got are awesome!