Wasp feeding

WOW! Amazing response to yesterdays blip, thanks so much for all the support, it is very appreciated.

Not a bad day at the common, after yesterdays bonanza of blip opportunities, I would happily have settled for less. I collected good images of four butterflies, a preying mantis, ladybird and a pair of enormous hoppers gettin' it on.

The blipped wasp has been very illusive for a long time. I did get a couple of decent images many weeks ago, but they were beaten to the blip. This was is very shy and very aware of your presence, but today it was so intent on feeding that it ignored me working at minimum distance.

This is actually a very scary looking wasp, with the long thin connection between the thorax and abdomen, but my experience with this particular wasp has been that it never shows aggression and I was reasonably comfortable with the shoot, collecting about thirty shots.

Back at the lab, it was a tail of disappointment. Three of the butterflies were blippable, but one was a repeat ant the other two were a bit too tatty. The mating hoppers, I failed to get both heads in focus together, more effort on my part required. The ladybirds were a new species for me and make a handsome addition to my collection, but hardly blippable material.

The wasp shoot went well, but still didn't really nail it. I did manage an in-flight shot which was reasonable, but never really captured the menacing danger of the wasp, but I am happy with the blipped shot.

After posting yesterday, I decided to have a go at Xmas cards, something that I have never tried before. It turns out that you can have a lot of fun with insect shots. I actually got three cards out of just yesterdays shots and made a total of twelve cards, not all Christmassy but quite amusing, well, I think so. I have put them in blipfolio for those who are interested. I would also like to see some of your efforts too.

Connection has been a big problem over the last few days. I have tried several different cafes and it seems to be an international problem with western sites. The connection locks up every few minutes and is a real pain. Consequently my commenting has fallen behind. Hoping this gets resolved soon.

I also put images of the tree in blipfolio as promised, forgot yesterday.

Dave