Brand new wings

A glittering green fly, freshly emerged from the pupa, rests in the garden while his wings unfold and dry out.

So very shiny!

When I came back a few minutes later, he had gained the use of both wings and flown away.

(He's sitting on the back of an old plastic turtle who works in the garden supporting transplants and sheltering pillbugs.)

One eye, one wing.

I've had rather an exciting day, in spite of being shut in by heavy rain. First, I've been testing out a new camera, a Nikon CoolPix P7000; we bought it for Laurie because he wanted something small that would fit in a pocket, so he'd always have it handy. In the field, though, he wasn't too happy with its zoom. So I'll be using it for a desk camera, now that there's sand in the lens of my poor little Sony.

I tried it out on a few dead bugs I had on hand, alternating with the Sony for comparison. And I'm happy! It can use the home-made macro lens that I made to fit the Sony, with only a little adjustment. It's fast and sharp, and zooms in closer than the Sony. It has a shoe, so it can take the big flash, which gives better coverage. I haven't tried that yet; I will soon.

I've tried to get those wonderful compound eyes of some insects many times. It never works, and I've been wondering if I should invest in one of those arm-and-a-leg cameras with an extra macro lens. Maybe I will, some day. Not now; look what the CoolPix gave me on the first trial!

Eye of a fly I found on my car.

I hadn't figured out how to set the white balance yet, so the tiny squashed fly* I worked on didn't turn out too well; the Sony did better. It picked out the detail on the one surviving wing; look at this; I've never seen veins like these before:

Each vein is feathered, and the whole wing fringed.

I don't know if it will be possible to identify the fly, since the whole front end is battered, but maybe that wing will do the trick.

And just when I was putting away the cameras and bugs, I happened to notice my spider-in-residence acting strangely. He was just starting to molt, and I got to watch the whole process from start to finish; it took about 4 hours. Story tomorrow ...

*Looks like a mosquito. Thanks for the correction, Christopher!