The Hidden Killer, Pt. 2 - _TNY_3990
Walking towards the old miller's cottage at Åva-Stensjödal I noticed a green-veined white (Pieris napi) sitting on a yellow hawkweed flower (Hiearacium sp.).
"Nice!", I thought. A bit of a weird position, but still a potentially cool shot if it doesn't fly away.
So I managed to snap a shot with it still there when I began suspecting there was more to this scene than I had thought.
And upon further inspection I realized that the risk of it flying off was pretty slim - as this butterfly had turned into lunch for a female goldenrod crab spider (Misumena vatia) in yellow mode which made for a downright awesome camouflage!
One of those shots can be found here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/51340047179/
After getting some shots of it I continued in pursuit of other motives - but when walking back I had the MP-E65 mm on the camera instead of the 100 mm f/2.8 and that's when I saw that Mrs. Spider was still eating the butterfly!
The MP-E65 obviously let me get closer so I took a couple of additional shots, including this one at 2:1 magnification.
Here we can see that those white scales of the butterfly's wings really seem to end up just about anywhere - the spider is covered in them!
The Hidden Killer, Pt. 2 - _TNY_3990
Walking towards the old miller's cottage at Åva-Stensjödal I noticed a green-veined white (Pieris napi) sitting on a yellow hawkweed flower (Hiearacium sp.).
"Nice!", I thought. A bit of a weird position, but still a potentially cool shot if it doesn't fly away.
So I managed to snap a shot with it still there when I began suspecting there was more to this scene than I had thought.
And upon further inspection I realized that the risk of it flying off was pretty slim - as this butterfly had turned into lunch for a female goldenrod crab spider (Misumena vatia) in yellow mode which made for a downright awesome camouflage!
One of those shots can be found here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/51340047179/
After getting some shots of it I continued in pursuit of other motives - but when walking back I had the MP-E65 mm on the camera instead of the 100 mm f/2.8 and that's when I saw that Mrs. Spider was still eating the butterfly!
The MP-E65 obviously let me get closer so I took a couple of additional shots, including this one at 2:1 magnification.
Here we can see that those white scales of the butterfly's wings really seem to end up just about anywhere - the spider is covered in them!