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Flying ant female. Natural light.
Not sure if this was a test flight but I didn't see any other flying ants about
Check out flickr.com/photos/58993939@N00/
radio4 has some amazing fly shots and one day I am going to take one like his!
True flies are insects of the order Diptera, the name being derived from the Greek δι- di- "two", and πτερόν pteron "wings". Insects of this order use only a single pair of wings to fly, the hindwings having evolved into advanced mechanosensory organs known as halteres, which act as high-speed sensors of rotational movement and allow dipterans to perform advanced aerobatics.[1]
Flies have a mobile head, with a pair of large compound eyes, and mouthparts designed for piercing and sucking (mosquitoes, black flies and robber flies), or for lapping and sucking in the other groups. Their wing arrangement gives them great maneuverability in flight, and claws and pads on their feet enable them to cling to smooth surfaces. Flies undergo complete metamorphosis; the eggs are laid on the larval food-source and the larvae, which lack true limbs, develop in a protected environment, often inside their food source. The pupa is a tough capsule from which the adult emerges when ready to do so; flies mostly have short lives as adults.
Fall is rapidly approaching and the birds are assembling for their migration south, but I'm not ready to give up on summer just yet!
Thanks for all the views, comments and faves everyone! Hope you all had a great weekend!
During a break at work I tried chasing some Dragonflies around the jobsite, but finally gave up and just sat down. Lo and behold, this guy landed right in front of me and posed for quite a while!! Go figure!
Graphosome rayé
(Graphosoma lineatum)
Tellement joli, presque abstrait que je n'ai pu résister à immortaliser
Bumblebees are social insects which form colonies with a single queen. Colonies are smaller than those of honeybees, growing to as few as 50 individuals in a nest. Female bumblebees can sting repeatedly, but generally ignore humans and other animals. Cuckoo bumblebees do not make nests; their queens aggressively invade the nests of other bumblebee species, kill the resident queens and then lay their own eggs which are cared for by the resident workers.
Bumblebees have round bodies covered in soft hair (long, branched setae), called pile, making them appear and feel fuzzy. They have aposematic (warning) coloration, often consisting of contrasting bands of colour, and different species of bumblebee in a region often resemble each other in mutually protective Müllerian mimicry. Harmless insects such as hoverflies often derive protection from resembling bumblebees, in Batesian mimicry, and may be confused with them. Nest-making bumblebees can be distinguished from similarly large, fuzzy cuckoo bees by the form of the female hind leg. In nesting bumblebees, it is modified to form a pollen basket, a bare shiny area surrounded by a fringe of hairs used to transport pollen, whereas in cuckoo bees, the hind leg is hairy all round, and pollen grains are wedged among the hairs for transport.
Like their relatives the honeybees, bumblebees feed on nectar, using their long hairy tongues to lap up the liquid; the proboscis is folded under the head during flight. Bumblebees gather nectar to add to the stores in the nest, and pollen to feed their young. They forage using colour and spatial relationships to identify flowers to feed from. Some bumblebees rob nectar, making a hole near the base of a flower to access the nectar while avoiding pollen transfer. Bumblebees are important agricultural pollinators, so their decline in Europe, North America, and Asia is a cause for concern. The decline has been caused by habitat loss, the mechanisation of agriculture, and pesticides.