Common Green Bottle Fly (Lucilia sericata) - The Orange Trail head, The Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge Wilderness Area, New Jersey
View On Black
I went out today to try out my prototype roof rack tele mount, but nothing was happening with the birds,
so I chased down some bugs.

Tags:   KH0831 TheGreatSwamp insect 2011 Great Swamp Swamp WildernessArea NJ Fly Diptera Macro New Jersey New Jersey Eukaryota Animalia Arthropoda Insecta Nature

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Flower Fly (Toxomerus geminatus) feeding on a Purple Gerardia (Agalinis purpurea) - The Orange Trail, The Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge Wilderness Area, New Jersey

This guy decided to stop for a leisurely lunch on this Gerardia flower where it stayed for about 5 minutes giving me plenty of time to move past ensurance shots and into some serious compositions where I was able to fuss with angles, exposure and DOF.

Sometimes when I go out looking for something that's not there, I change plans, and this time I sat down next to a couple of yards of macro real estate and waited to see if anything might happen (worst case senerio, I come away with a couple of flower pics).
And who knows, that Marshie could fly over at any time, so the tele was at the ready.

Submitted to BugGuide for ID confirmation.

Tags:   KH0831 TheGreatSwamp Insect Fly Syrphid Eukaryota Animalia Arthropoda Insecta Diptera Syrphidae Toxomerus geminatus Toxomerus geminatus Scaeva geminata Eumerus privernus Syrphus interrogans notatus 2011 Flora Great Swamp Swamp WildernessArea Simthsonian S2 NJ Macro ThousandPlus 1000+ New Jersey New Jersey Nature

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Flower Fly (Toxomerus geminatus) feeding on a Purple Gerardia (Agalinis purpurea) - The Orange Trail, The Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge Wilderness Area, New Jersey

This guy decided to stop for a leisurely lunch on this Gerardia flower where it stayed for about 5 minutes giving me plenty of time to move past ensurance shots and into some serious compositions where I was able to fuss with angles, exposure and DOF.

Sometimes when I go out looking for something that's not there, I change plans, and this time I sat down next to a couple of yards of macro real estate and waited to see if anything might happen (worst case senerio, I come away with a couple of flower pics).
And who knows, that Marshie could fly over at any time, so the tele was at the ready.

Tags:   KH0831 TheGreatSwamp wfgna 5petals pink purple Insect Fly Syrphid Eukaryota Animalia Arthropoda Insecta Diptera Syrphidae Toxomerus geminatus Toxomerus geminatus Scaeva geminata Eumerus privernus Syrphus interrogans notatus 2011 Flora Great Swamp Swamp WildernessArea NJ ThousandPlus Macro 1000+ Top 1000 New Jersey New Jersey Nature

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Mosquito (Anopheles walkeri) - The Overlook Parking Area, Pleasant Plains Road, The Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, New Jersey

I was trying out my prototype mobile telephoto support rig in my car, I had the window open for the tele, and not surprisingly I soon had guests. There was absolutely nothing happening with birds outside my car, so I occupied myself with these guys inside, and there was a little bit of a contest about who was going to get whom, and the bodies piled up on the seat while I was making these captures.

Tags:   KH0831 TheGreatSwamp insect 2011 Great Swamp Swamp NJ bug Macro ThousandPlus 1000+ New Jersey New Jersey Eukaryota Animalia Arthropoda Insecta

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Female Humboldt mosquito (Psorophora ferox) - The Orange Trail, The Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge Wilderness Area, Gillette, New Jersey

I shooed this guy away from me, and watched it carefully just in case it decided to come back at me, but instead it decided to leave me alone and landed on this seed head, so I took the opportunity to make a few captures. When I got back home and looked at the images on my computer I was surprised to see that this guy was just as colorful as the Ae. canadensis mosquito I captured this spring.
I sent a picture of this mosquito to the biologists at the Vector Biology Dept. at Rutgers, who were kind enough to send me the identification markings for this mosquito which I've appended below.

Sadly for this guy, after I took this picture it decided to come at me again, and it is no longer among the living. :{(  It did have plenty of friends though, so if you'd would like to see them they're still hanging around the trailhead of the Orange Trail! :{)

This mosquito is Psorophora ferox (Humboldt). Psorophora mosquitoes are identified by either apical banding on the abdomen which you can see is absent on this specimen or with long scales on the hind legs making them look shaggy. The character used to identify Ps. ferox is that the last 2 segments of the hind tarsi are white and the body and legs have a purple coloration.

My thanks to Linda at the Rutgers Center for Vector Biology
for the above tips on how to identify this mosquito.


This image is (or was at one time) one of my most popular images
click on the following link to see a slideshow of Dah Professor's Top 100 Images

Tags:   KH0831 TheGreatSwamp insect 2011 Great Swamp Swamp WildernessArea Simthsonian NJ ThousandPlus bug Macro 1000+ Top 1000 New Jersey New Jersey Eukaryota Animalia Arthropoda Insecta Nature

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