After a day of torrential rain, the water dragon living under our house came out looking for food and found a grasshopper. The insect was almost as big as the water dragon and must have been quite sluggish as it didn’t seem to realize the threat!
The reptile ran around the insect and approached it head on to bite down on its head – this might be an instinctual strategy to disable it quickly whilst avoiding the spikes on the powerful hind legs? Initially, we thought that lizzie had bitten off more than she could chew, but over the period of 20 to 30 minutes, she polished of the insect; legs, wings and all! An awesome display of nature at work; one life sacrificed so that another may grow stronger!
Canon 40D with 70-200 F4 L IS, hand-held hanging out the lounge room window. ISO 400, 1/250 sec at F5. The IS was working overtime here, in the low light conditions, definitely saving the picture from camera shake. Full frame with a couple of crops from the same shot.
Thanks for looking!
Dennis
PS - our thoughts are now with those in N NSW where the line of storms moved onto
Good sequence of shots. Mother nature at work. I think you'll find that grasshoppers jump forwards, not sideways. The lizard came at it from the front so it had no where to go (lizard was in the way). Grasshoppers are not the brightest of insects.
"....and in a nail bighting finish to the season, the Dragons devoured the Hoppers in the last 30 minutes of the game.
Earlier, rain had threatened to wash out the match but held off at the last minute.
The Dragon's game play was simple.......a swift initial head-on attack with a relentless followup of pressure from all sides made the hoppers wing attack look very sluggish in these conditions.
Finally the Dragons were able to destroy any chances of a counter attack by the Hoppers as they swallowed up their advances, boots and all !!!
A thrilling end to the season.
Our thanks also to our sports photographer, Dennis Simmons for a wonderful set of action shots."
"....and in a nail bighting finish to the season, the Dragons devoured the Hoppers in the last 30 minutes of the game.
Earlier, rain had threatened to wash out the match but held off at the last minute.
The Dragon's game play was simple.......a swift initial head-on attack with a relentless followup of pressure from all sides made the hoppers wing attack look very sluggish in these conditions.
Finally the Dragons were able to destroy any chances of a counter attack by the Hoppers as they swallowed up their advances, boots and all !!!
A thrilling end to the season.
Thanks guys – it was a fascinating event to witness. I’ll just recap that there is only one shot here; the (progressive) close ups are just crops from the full frame to show more of the gory details!
Good sequence of shots. Mother nature at work. I think you'll find that grasshoppers jump forwards, not sideways. The lizard came at it from the front so it had no where to go (lizard was in the way). Grasshoppers are not the brightest of insects.
Dave
Thanks Dave – it seems that water dragons are somewhat brighter than grass hoppers then!
Dennis. Fantastic images! Very sharp and detailed..
Your thoughts are correct, attacking an insect head on is natural instinct for a dragon taking on large prey.. My dragons will attack small/medium sized crickets from whatever angle seems easiest to them at the time, however when tackling a fully grown cricket or cockroach, they will position themselves in such as way as to ensure they will have a head on attack. This is not only to protect them from the hind legs of the prey and to ensure the prey is quickly immobilised, but also because they can see the large hind legs protruding from the rear, and they know that they will not be able to swallow the prey with such a large obstruction... Essentially, they attack the apparent smallest area of the prey, so that they can be sure that they will get their jaw around it..
Great work.. You have to love nature and wildlife!
Dennis - I've probably spent a LOT more time photographing Insects and Arachnids than anyone on this board - one does get used to their behaviour after a while, and one does learn an awful lot. Nature does teach, you just have to watch :-)
Several years ago, I was lucky to capture Two jumping spiders in a mating dance, something that isn't commonly seen, let alone imaged. As I was a newbie to macrophotography back then, the quality of the images wasn't too great.
Alex - I just noticed that you use a Mark III ;-) it sems that we have another hobby in common lol.
"Only when you can safely walk past the dragon ... Only then Grasshopper will you be ready for the next phase"
Great shots !!!!!
Thanks Jeff!
I remember the series Kung Fu with David Carradine very well indeed!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Liz
Thanks for the warning Dennis, but I still had to look ....
but, well done!!
Thanks Liz!
I was in two minds about including the warning – it’s a bit like the “wet paint – don’t touch” signs; I am always compelled to touch!
Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexN
Dennis. Fantastic images! Very sharp and detailed..
You have to love nature and wildlife!
Thanks Alex!
Observing these creatures, even for short periods of time, opens up a whole new world when you begin to see patterns in their behaviour and get a glimpse into their daily lives. This was quite an interesting, if hurried shoot!
The background is a 30 year old, weathered concrete path, pitted and aged by lichen, mould, etc and through the viewfinder, had the same tones as the skin of the reptile – almost perfect camouflage. The dull, flat lighting also made it difficult to separate the tones of the water dragon from the background tones.
In Photoshop, I tried to overcome this by selecting the reptile, then using a Layer to bump up the exposure for the lizard by +0.85 and another Layer to apply a Gaussian blur of 2 pixels to the aged concrete background. Blending these layers then provided more of a separation between the lizard and the background.
A nice ray of sunshine would have helped but alas, that didn’t arrive until after late morning!
"....and in a nail bighting finish to the season, the Dragons devoured the Hoppers in the last 30 minutes of the game.
Earlier, rain had threatened to wash out the match but held off at the last minute.
The Dragon's game play was simple.......a swift initial head-on attack with a relentless followup of pressure from all sides made the hoppers wing attack look very sluggish in these conditions.
Finally the Dragons were able to destroy any chances of a counter attack by the Hoppers as they swallowed up their advances, boots and all !!!
A thrilling end to the season.
Our thanks also to our sports photographer, Dennis Simmons for a wonderful set of action shots."
Cracking shots Dennis, and stupendous commentary from Andrew up in the commentary box...
Cracked me up.
Rob – yes, I feel that I’ve just arrived in the foot hills of Photoshop, not even base camp and there’s still the big mountain to climb! For this photo, I used a “Layer Mask” for the very first time. Previously, I had only used adjustment Layers.
I created a new layer of the image (Ctrl-J) then selected the dragon using the “Quick Selection Tool” then I added a “Layer Mask” which used the selected dragon to create a B&W mask of the outline of the dragon, which I then touched up using the brush.
