depscribe's photos with the keyword: 105mm f2.8 Micro-Nikkor with TC-14A teleconverter

This little guy was about an eighth-inch long. No idea whether it eats plants or other bugs.

This is a rare and unusual organism -- a non-fungus plant that doesn't use chlorophyll for its nourishment. Instead, this herbaceous plant lives as a parasite on certain fungi which in turn live on the rotting remains of certain trees. They grow up to about eight inches tall. And that is indeed a flower. Its scientific name is Monotropa uniflora .

If you look closely under his head, you'll see the long, sharp proboscis folded next to its body. When it finds an insect (or other creature -- big ones have been known to devour small vertebrates) it wants to eat, it stabs the hapless prey with its proboscis, injects a poisonous, painful, and digestive fluid, and then uses it like a straw to suck out the prey's now liquified innards. It is a true bug.

Bombus perplexus , known as the confusing, perplexing, or cuckoo bumble bee, is common in my experience to this one small flower garden. So I'll keep photographing it until I get it right or it goes away.

Went to town with the macro lens this morning to try and stalk this guy, who is smaller and different in coloration from other bumble bees (who were in profusion, too). Forty pictures later, this was the best I could do. They are a lot flightier than regular bumble bees. And I have just learned it is a Bombus perplexus , the cuckoo bee. Really!

If you're looking at this on your cellular telephone, the image is still bigger than this little flower is in real life. I have no idea what it is. Maybe someone here does, and will tell us.

. . . that this thing, whatever it is, is 3/8-inch long, not 50 feet!