Stop Playing with Your Food!!

[best appreciated at full size against black]

We are so incredibly fortunate to live on 26 acres in the beautiful countryside of southern Oregon. It's a dream come true for me, something I've wanted all my life. However, when you put a macro lens on a camera, suddenly it seems like 10 sqiare feet is as large as an acre...that means that when I'm nosing around our property for pictures, our 26 acres is more like 113 acres!! Well, it certainly seems like it, there's just no end to the possibilities!!

Now that it's warm, there are insects EVERYWHERE. I'm hoping to get lots of great pictures in the coming months, and I took this one just the other day! Here we have a flower fly, who is standing on a buttercup petal. He just got finished getting a meal of nectar and still has a mouth full! SWALLOW, you silly fly!! :D

By the way, while writing up this information, it occurred to me that I've never actually SEEN buttercup nectar before. So...I looked it up! I found a very fascinating page by a gentleman named Brian Johnston, who took many extreme close-ups of three different buttercup flowers and gives a wonderful, easy-to-understand lesson about its anatomy, all the way to the microscopic level! Have you ever seen pollen grains at a microscopic level? You will really enjoy the pictures and learning more about these lovely little flowers! A Close-up View of Three Buttercups

This image was taken in April, 2012.