Janet Brien's photos with the keyword: wasp

Hi everyone! I hope everyone is having a wonderful rest of your weekend! I haven't been able to get to my trip notes yet, so I'm posting another picture from our property. :) Fall is Here! As October marches towards November, the leaves are turning every shade of the rainbow and falling from the trees in ever-greater numbers. Steve and I have been oohing and ahhing over the amazing show whenever we're out and are hoping for a fall photography adventure in if we can fit it in between his projects. Behold the Colorful, Odd Cynipid Wasp Gall One might notice that a few leaves--especially from Oaks--have something strange attached to them. These 1/4"-1"globes are perfectly round in shape, hollow and semi-translucent when held up to the sun . Upon closer examination, there will be a small hole somewhere around the lightly fuzzy ball. What a curious thing! Whatever could it be? This is a wasp gall! There are several species of wasps which lay their eggs in specific trees or other plants. When the larvae hatch and begin eating the plant's leaves, stems or branches, they also exude specialized growth hormones. These hormones cause rapid growth in the shape of a ball or lump of some sort depending on the species of gall wasp. The larvae sit inside this gall, which grows around them and provides protection and nutrients while they mature over the next few months. Eventually they will nibble their way out of the gall as fully-grown adults and fly away! Although they are technically parasites, they rarely do any harm to the host plant and leave only the empty galls as their calling cards. Our property is the home to many types of wasp galls and I think this type- Cynips mirabilis ---is my favorite, though the other species are very interesting and photogenic too! If you would like to know more about some of the different types of wasp galls, here's an informative web page for you: Wasp Galls For more pictures that include images of the various wasps and a lot more information, take a peek at this: In-Depth Article About Gall Wasps of Southern Oregon Explored on 10/26/20; highest placement #1.

I was tickled to find False Sunflowers growing in one of the gardens that Steve and I visited during the garden tour a few years ago in Ashland. These flowers are so bright and cheery, and this one also happened to have a very cool wasp crawling around on it!

One of the coolest things about having a garden are all of the insects that come to visit. Of course there were plenty of pests, but lots of beneficial insects as well. Wasps don't spread much pollen, but they do a little bit, and they certainly are fun to observe and photograph! This one spent a lot of time slowly crawling around this fallen morning glory blossom before finally flying away.

I found this male Northern Paper Wasp on some Goldenrod blossoms growing in my garden. It was content to stare at me curiously as I stared back taking pictures! :) Thanks to Leapfrog (Art) for helping me figure out what kind of wasp this is! :)

1 more picture above in a note! :) The other night I got up to use the bathroom in the dark, and on the way out, I kicked something with my foot. I turned the light on and found this awesome looking wasp. It must have found its way into the house and died, but I thought it was too pretty to just toss in the trash. Before I took pictures, I washed the dust off as best as I could, and when I looked at the images, I realized it still had droplets of water on it! I decided to turn this into a textured piece, and I had so much fun with this picture that I made the other one into a textured piece as well! :) Thanks to Jerry Jones for Notaclue 1 and Fire Damage 10-21-09 TOTD # 87 From Wiki: The blue mud dauber is a metallic blue species of mud dauber wasp that preys primarily on black widow spiders. It does not build a nest, but uses nests abandoned by other mud dauber wasps. Like other mud daubers, it is rarely aggressive. If you would like to know more about this beautiful wasp, I found a fascinating page about this wasp here: Bug Eric's Wasp Wednesday: Blue Mud Dauber

I was amazed at the beauty of this wasp, and I was so happy to capture the iridescent colors in this image. I had no idea a wasp could be so pretty! Thanks to Jerry Jones for October Square Set # 11 and Sunrise

Today I was going to feature a prickly flower called a Spikeweed for my 365, but as I left the house, I saw this wasp on a leaf in a very aggressive stance, its wings held out rigidly as it stood its ground. I wondered where its nest was but I wasn't about to go looking around too closely! I had to set my ISO up quite high on this image and wasn't sure I'd be able to remove all the noise, but as you can see, Topaz DeNoise comes through yet again! Gautama Buddha or Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha, also called Sakyamuni, was a sage from the ancient Shakya republic, on whose teachings Buddhism was founded. He is also referred to as "the Buddha" or simply as "Buddha." Wikipedia: Buddha Explored on July 10, 2013. Highest placement, page 1 (#20). Explored on Flickr on Jul 9, 2013. Highest placement: #112.

This image was photographed on my property in Southern Oregon in July, 2011

Wasp gall found on an oak tree

This was the first picture I took of this wasp, perching protectively on her newly built nest. She allowed me to approach to within 6" of her before she finally flew off while I took the rest of my pictures.

Finding tiny wasp eggs inside this new nest was a wonderful surprise, and I was able to get this picture to share! Hooray! :)

I had a whole set of apertures to choose from for this image, and decided that a little crispness at the front half was just right. As a macro photographer, I've learned that taking sets of many apertures of each subject helps to ensure that I'll get at least one, if not a handful, of nice choices to pick from and a higher probability that I'll get the desired depth of field.

What a beautiful, warm day it was today! I went out this afternoon to look for some neat images, and I didn't have to go far! I've been meaning to take a picture of a yellow wildflower that grows here, called Desert Parsley, and while I was getting various angles, I heard a loud buzzing. Hmm...bumble bee? I looked and saw something land nearby. Oh wow, I thought to myself as I spotted the insect...it was a paper wasp, and it was perched on a brand new nest attached to a dead star thistle stem. There was a time in my life when seeing this wasp would make me scream and run away. But I'm not afraid anymore and I knew that if I moved slowly, I'd be able to take lots of pictures and it would likely just fly away if it got nervous. And that's what happened! :) I got two really nice pictures of this female wasp, and when it moved away, I got lots of great pictures of its new nest, and then I discovered that some of the cells had eggs inside! Fantastic!

I was wandering around in our meadow a few mornings ago when I saw this lovely wasp hanging out on this blade of grass. I usually see these gathering nectar and pollen on various flowers around our property, and they are quite skittish and hard to get pictures of, so I was delighted to get this image! :)