After the Rain

[Ryan.M]

I had the day off today, so after the rain stopped I headed to my backyard to see what I could find!

I found a green bottle fly resting nicely on some patio furniture who made a great subject, some random flowers, and some ants who came out to harvest water droplets!

The ants were pretty interesting. Not only were they fairly large compared to the other workers, there were probably 20 or 30 per plant, with 2 or 3 on each leaf. They were sucking up the water and spitting it into each others mouth to carry back to the nest. I took quite a few pictures of them passing water mouth-to-mouth, but to my dismay they all turned out kind of blurry and not worth posting Oh well, next time!

 

[PhilinYuma]

Nice pix! Our plants look like that after the sprinkler has been on them, too, but what is this "rain"?

 

[Peter Clausen]

It's been a very cool, wet July here in Oregon. The pill bugs have been out in force at night and a few millipedes too. My daughter and her neighbor friends are out dodging mud wasps in the sprinkler right at this moment (the sun did come out today).

Nice photos! I have to wonder what the evolutionary advantage to being bright, shiny green is. I know that we don't see the world through the same eyes as predators of flies, but there is no doubt a very good reason(s) for such a pretty fly.

Oh, my daughter also had some bing cherries with her lunch on the back deck today and shared them with a small bunch of ants that she discovered under a dirt clod. They had eggs. She offered them some nibbles of cherry, replaced the clod and placed some additional dried leaves over them for shade since they'd gone into panic mode with their delicate eggs.

 

[PhilinYuma]

It's been a very cool, wet July here in Oregon. The pill bugs have been out in force at night and a few millipedes too. My daughter and her neighbor friends are out dodging mud wasps in the sprinkler right at this moment (the sun did come out today).

Nice photos! I have to wonder what the evolutionary advantage to being bright, shiny green is. I know that we don't see the world through the same eyes as predators of flies, but there is no doubt a very good reason(s) for such a pretty fly.

Oh, my daughter also had some bing cherries with her lunch on the back deck today and shared them with a small bunch of ants that she discovered under a dirt clod. They had eggs. She offered them some nibbles of cherry, replaced the clod and placed some additional dried leaves over them for shade since they'd gone into panic mode with their delicate eggs.

We might be able to get an idea from the photo of the greenbottle. Notice that it is at least three colors with three levels of brightness on a convex surface that is constantly moving (by which I mean that even when stationary, the slightest body movement will move the highlights). It seems quite possible that this acts as "dazzle" camouflage, which could confuse a bird, just as the constantly moving black and white stripes of a heard of galloping. zebras confuses a predator.

And what a daughter! What a dad!

 

[Ryan.M]

We might be able to get an idea from the photo of the greenbottle. Notice that it is at least three colors with three levels of brightness on a convex surface that is constantly moving (by which I mean that even when stationary, the slightest body movement will move the highlights). It seems quite possible that this acts as "dazzle" camouflage, which could confuse a bird, just as the constantly moving black and white stripes of a heard of galloping. zebras confuses a predator.

And what a daughter! What a dad!

That's a great (and quite likely) theory Phil! Personally I think the highly reflective surface of a fly's back (in this case green) helps them locate each other during mating. Especially since they see in the ultraviolet spectrum of light, it may look quite different to another fly. I'd imagine it would get quite confusing for flies to locate thier own species for mating in a pile of fly-infested rotting material! That's on the mating side of natural selection of course, and Phil's explanation takes care of the predator-prey side of natural selection.

 

[hibiscusmile]

nice pics! getting bored? come on over to my place, plenty to photograph here!

 

[Peter Clausen]

Both explanations perfectly explain just why I've never noticed how attractive those green bottles are!

 

[ExoticOddities]

Ryan, I think you had some beautiful, natural light colors in those photos.

Could some of the reason they were blurry be because you hand-held at a 1/50 shutter speed?

Also, what was your f/stop set to--and did you use auto-focus or manual focus?

Jack

PS: I still like them