Macro Madness

Still no monarch eggs. But while hunting for eggs, I can sneak up on plenty of other buggy guests in the garden, so I pretend to be a National Geographic photographer--albeit one with an idiot camera and no training, or skill for that matter. I don't mean to insult my camera; I'M the idiot. I didn't even know what the "macro" setting was until last summer. I still don't know what any of the other buttons are for, but all you have to do for macro close-ups is get really really close to something, don't breathe, hold perfectly still, and use psychic mind control to make the thing you're taking a picture of hold perfectly still, too. I can appreciate the reluctance some people have about getting this personal with a bug. But how else are you going to get a proper look at the glossy sheen on this gorgeous creature?

This ladybug JUST transitioned from pupa to adult. That's
why it's still kind of wet and doesn't have its spots yet.

The ladybug's life cycle has 4 stages, like a butterfly: egg, larva, pupa, adult. You might've seen larvae around and not known what you were looking at. I didn't, till a wild Google chase finally led me to the answer. Aside from caterpillars, I'd always pictured most larvae as being blobby and squishy, like grubs (the larval stage of certain beetles) or maggots (fly larvae). But this barbed, scrappy-looking hooligan looks nothing like a grub. And its racing stripes and thuggish appearance don't exactly call to mind the polka-dotted ladybug it's about to become. 

The larval stage is about a month long. I found lots of
them on our azaleas and crape myrtles.

So this is how they go from brawny brute to fair maiden: in the pupal stage. It's kind of like the phone booth Clark Kent slips into so he can put on his slick Superman suit and fly. You can see some of those leftover bristles where our larva attached itself to the underside of this crape myrtle leaf before pupating. 

If you have nothing better to do in early summer
than go around lifting up every leaf  in your yard
(like I did), you'll probably find some, too.

This is the crispy leftover outer layer, or cuticle, of the pupa. At the butt end you can see where the adult cracked open the cuticle and shimmied out to dry off and then go test its new wings.

If you're a gardener, or even if you're not, you probably know that these guys eat aphids, which are basically ruthless sap vampires hell bent on sucking your plants dry. Even though a lot of ladybugs are actually alien intruders from Asia, it's still nice to have them around if you hate aphids as much as I do. If you're interested in learning more about protecting and restoring our native North American ladybugs, the Lost Ladybug Project has some great content and resources on its Web site.

Oops--this post was meant to be more about the awesomeness of macro photography of bugs, not so much the awesomeness of ladybugs. So here's another example of what's revealed to you when you get right up in bugs' faces with your camera lens. I thought I was just taking a picture of a dragonfly....

But upon closer--MUCH closer--inspection, it was actually a dragonfly EATING ANOTHER dragonfly:

See what you're missing if you're not following bugs around your yard with your camera set on macro?!