Flamingo Friday: Foodie

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One Good Shot: bowing

The wasp curved into the flower as trying to become a part of it.

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Flamingo Friday: Generations

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Bouquet of Caterpillar: or, The fennel of youth

I had come to photograph the fennel wasps again: the yellow blossoms seem to exert an irresistible force over the insects, and on my first afternoon visit the whole garden had vibrated with their buzzing.

This time, however, the wasps were sparser, and I had the leisure to observe these subtle soft-bodied creatures clinging unobtrusively to stems.

For such dramatically colored animals they blend into their surroundings remarkably well. It was luck when I found the first, and the result of much effort to find two more. For all I know there were a good dozen (at least) that I didn’t spot.

Their heads were tucked down as if they were bashful or playing a game of hide-and-seek.

Perhaps they’re hoping that they can camouflage themselves even against metamorphosis: that if they conceal themselves cleverly enough, the summer will go on forever, an eternity of long warm days and drowsy twilights and ripe green plants to gorge on, and they’ll never age or change or lose themselves to the betrayals of the flesh.

Each day that the light dies earlier, I understand that hope a little more.

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Flamingo Friday: With a twist

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The Look

Sometimes you share a moment, however brief, with another creature, and it reminds you of why you value the natural world.

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Flamingo Friday: Nose Dive

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Bright ideas

It was the morning after a strong rain, and as the sun crested the houses on the hill it turned the droplet-studded leaves and flowers into a maze of sparks and diamonds.

Dazzled, almost blinded by the light, it took a minute to realize that the tall fennel plants in a front yard were hung with spider web: long rainbow strands looped across several plants, and tighter nets glittered around the heads of single flowers.

The spiders, always acrobats, became magicians—traversing lines of light, their own bodies blurring at the edges into incandescence.

Did they think anything was out of the ordinary as they rappelled alongside gems of dew or spun strands of flame along the fennel stems? Were their many eyes struck as mine were by the unending sparkle? Did it lend a new radiance to their work?

Or is this common-place to them: to begin their work in this unearthly early brilliance; to navigate an effulgent world; and to weave their deadly snares with threads of fire?

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Flamingo Friday: The Bend

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