Maybe Tim can help us with this little guy. We found him in our garden as we were closing it down for the Fall. He's definitely worth clicking on the top image.
Nice! That looks to be a Black Swallowtail caterpillar. They mostly eat things related to carrots, but if you didn't find it on something carrot-like then it was probably looking for a place to pupate for the winter. Did it poke out a couple of orange "horns" at you when you picked it up? They do that when they're annoyed.
The adults are large and very beautiful, but you'll have to wait until spring if you want to raise it up.
We used to very rarely find these downstate on carrots in the garden when I was a kid, but I haven't seen any since I moved up here to even further north.
Thanks for the ID, Tim. It was found in some parsley, which ispretty close to carrot greens. Now that I know what he was, I wish I'd kept him instead of tossing him back into the parsley.
Thanks for the compliment, Kelly. I was really happy with the top one. I just wish the camera had focused on his face instead of his neck (?) on the bottom one.
Happy to help on the ID. I'll bet it's still in the parsley patch, you may see it again sometime.
I hear you about the focus problem. Even though I never even try using autofocus anymore, even manual focus is hard. Between the shallow depth of field, and the fact that I can't really tell for sure whether it was properly focused until I get it up on the big screen, I just have to shoot a few dozen pictures and hope that at least a couple of them are OK.
I was on my way out the door, so I put the little guy on my finger and blasted off a couple of shots. I rarely use manual focus. I'm not nearly the craftsman you are. To tell you the truth, I never even think about manual focus, I just take a whole bunch and sift through them.
I'm actually having a related problem: I'm spending so much time taking pictures of bugs, that when I want to photograph a landscape or people my reflexes are all wrong. I mostly flub attempts at conventional snapshots these days.
7 comments:
Nice! That looks to be a Black Swallowtail caterpillar. They mostly eat things related to carrots, but if you didn't find it on something carrot-like then it was probably looking for a place to pupate for the winter. Did it poke out a couple of orange "horns" at you when you picked it up? They do that when they're annoyed.
The adults are large and very beautiful, but you'll have to wait until spring if you want to raise it up.
We used to very rarely find these downstate on carrots in the garden when I was a kid, but I haven't seen any since I moved up here to even further north.
Beautiful!
Thanks for the ID, Tim. It was found in some parsley, which ispretty close to carrot greens. Now that I know what he was, I wish I'd kept him instead of tossing him back into the parsley.
Thanks for the compliment, Kelly. I was really happy with the top one. I just wish the camera had focused on his face instead of his neck (?) on the bottom one.
Happy to help on the ID. I'll bet it's still in the parsley patch, you may see it again sometime.
I hear you about the focus problem. Even though I never even try using autofocus anymore, even manual focus is hard. Between the shallow depth of field, and the fact that I can't really tell for sure whether it was properly focused until I get it up on the big screen, I just have to shoot a few dozen pictures and hope that at least a couple of them are OK.
I was on my way out the door, so I put the little guy on my finger and blasted off a couple of shots. I rarely use manual focus. I'm not nearly the craftsman you are. To tell you the truth, I never even think about manual focus, I just take a whole bunch and sift through them.
As usual, you're inspiring me to do better. ;-)
I'm actually having a related problem: I'm spending so much time taking pictures of bugs, that when I want to photograph a landscape or people my reflexes are all wrong. I mostly flub attempts at conventional snapshots these days.
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