Wednesday, April 12, 2017

The Great Crane Fly Invasion Of 2017

... is almost over. Due to our extraordinarily wet winter, we had a huge bloom of crane flies. I tried to get photos, but only a few turned out even halfway decent. The camera had a hard time focusing on their tiny bodies and I didn't manually focus because I'm lazy. Here's a selection of 6 photos, 2 from a live one on the wall and 4 from a dead one.

To me, they look like little caterpillars with wings and spindly legs. Which they are. As I understand it, as flyers, all they do is mate, lay eggs and die. They last for about a week in this state.

Aside: For those who have been kind to me and concerned about my recent catastrophe, I've managed to work it down from a grand piano being dropped on me to being hit in the head with a thrown brick. The key to defusing the problem was to be honest and gentle and realize that I could always get angry and vengeful tomorrow.

Anyway, enjoy the photos. Well, as much as anyone can enjoy pictures of dead, spindly insects.

1 comment:

tim eisele said...

Having tried to photograph a lot of crane flies myself, I'm impressed that you got as many clear photos as you did. There's just something about these spread-out, highly 3-dimensional subjects that makes decent macrophotography fiendishly difficult.