Bugs at home (more macro ... sorry)

[astro_south]

Managed to get away from the computer yesterday and grabbed these critters in the front and back yards.

featured below are a lynx spider with an ant, an orange ichneumon wasp and a couple of assassin bugs

more to come

[astro_south]

...told you about more....

A couple of tachinid flies including a thin long legged variety, a bee fly, a sepsid fly (I think), and a groovy bug.

[astro_south]

....and finally some that I would be glad of some IDs

[bloodhound31]

I really like #5 and #6 in your first series.
#2 and #6 in your second series, it looks like they are lining up for the big jump.
And it's a toss-up between #1 and #2 in your third series.

Excellent work Andrew, can you post up some of your common settings and what lens?

Baz.

[dpastern]

Andrew, super sets. Stands out for me:

1st series - 5 & 8

2nd series - 4 & 6

3rd series - 4

It's a wee bit late now, but I should be able to ID those in the 3rd series for you tomorrow night when I get home from work.

Dave

[troypiggo]

Wow - you must have some good gardens at home.

Can't help with the ID of that fly in series 3 there, but the last one is a sweat bee - they're pretty cool, usually metallic in colour, and named because they're attracted to the salts in human sweat.

[lacad01]

Brilliant stuff! #2 of the 3rd set is a standout :thumbsup:

[acropolite]

Nice buggage Andrew, the Fly in the second set has to be my favourite, there's so much detail there.

[astro_south]

Hi Baz - thanks for the comments. Gear was 50D, Canon EF100mm f2.8, some Kenko extension tubes at times, 580EXII either on manual setup (1/2 to 1/8 power) or using ETTL with -1/3 to -2/3 of FEC, Tv of 1/200 or 1/250, Av between f10 and f16 and ISO generally 400. My time out there was really to test the ETTL and FEC method, hence the range of settings. I found that sometimes I got better results from setting the flash manually, other times the FEC did an OK job.



Thanks for the ID Troy, and yeah - seems the gardens must be OK. I was chasing 3 blue banded bees that were looping around, but just didn't manage to do it. These guys are regulars around the front garden.



Thanks Phil - this is a crop of the original image too.



Thanks Dave



Cheers Adam

[Lumen Miner]

WoW!! Great series!!

[troypiggo]

Andrew, I heard back from Brian "LordV". Bit hard from the pics posted, but his guess was some kind of Tabinidae - horsefly (biting type). That would have been my guess, purely based on the crazy eye pattern, but I wasn't confident enough to say so.

[astro_south]

thanks Mitchell



thanks Troy. I have seen and photographed similar flies around our compost bin - perhaps it is a mutation due to the compost :D

[troypiggo]

Could be ;)

[dpastern]

I initially thought that the first 2 shots in series 3 might be from the Tephritidae family, but it also has some elements of the Micropezidae family too. Neither family is spot on though. You could submit it to the CSIRO for identification.

Dave