June 11th, 2020
Amazing Nature, Amazing Day
Goldenrod Crab Spider
My best lucky shot ever:
When I was looking through my pictures for the day, this was the last one I took. Yesterday was simply a very great day. When I was walking through the dandelions hoping to get a butterfly shot yesterday, I noticed a dandelion that looked odd, I could see a part of a bee on it, but because of the angle I was not able to get a good look, so I put my camera as close as I could and took a picture.
I was totally blown away by what I had captured in that one picture, like I said the last of the day. I struck out on the butterfly hunt, I already had a few bee captures down at the lily lake we visit, so I was not really hunting for bees, but it was there I thought might as well see if I can get a shot.
Here is a closer view:
That is a Goldenrod Crab Spider. I did not know they even existed, I have picked lots of dandelions in my life time and have never seen a spider on them. Per the site linked below, a fun little tid-bit fact:
Uniquely among spiders, they can change color by moving pigments between different layers of tissue.
http://www.pwconserve.org/wildlife/insects/spiders/goldenrodcrab.html
This is one unique and amazing spider in nature, I don't know if other spiders can change colors, the searches I did just said one of a few. I did find this from the link that will follow:
Camouflage is not exactly rare in nature, but active camouflage - the type that changes to reflect its surroundings - has always been an exceptionally rare and fascinating ability. Some fish, lizards, and cephalopods have this ability to a certain degree. Now we can add spiders to that list, after experts identified a species of crab spider than can slowly change its colors to match its background when hunting.
It would seem that this is a new find, From an article published "Apr 14, 2015 01:47 PM EDT" by Brian Stallard:
https://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/14073/20150414/camouflaged-spider-change-color.htm
It seems the color changing ability of spiders was a pretty recent discovery.
You can zoom in on both those pictures pretty far.
On @tarazkp post yesterday during his garden walk he captured an insect couple making life not war, quite a contrast to my capture on the same day. Nature is full of amazing things, all one has to do is stop and take note of it every now and then.
I was exploring the scene setting on my camera yesterday, so the photo is totally 100% automated by the camera, I think the only thing I had control over was the pointing and clicking of the button. Picture image says: f/8, - 1/640 sec - ISO 200 with my macro lens.
I am still amazed that I got such a cool picture.
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I didn't see it at first either :o
Yeah, it is pretty well camouflaged in there.
Great capture ! .. This is a real cool macro ^^ Bees are real hard to capture as photo models, but here the spider made it easy for you, hehe .. you really were there at the right place at the right time 😜
I was very shocked when I looked at the picture, from looking down all I could see was the bees head.
Wow, very cool shot! It's a very scary world out there, especially for insects.
I was, still am, surprised at that picture, all I could see from above was the bees head.
I often discover little spiders and other bugs in my macro shots of flowers. The spiders will be lurking beneath a leaf, just waiting to ruin some other bug's day. I almost never see them when I'm shooting, they just appear when I have the photo up on the computer screen.
Great shot! Have you tried improving it by bringing up the shadows?
The circle picture is the complete original just cropped and resized a little bit. On the top square one I did slide the shadow function over to about 80% range more than that it got washed out, I could have played back and forth between the exposure and shadow and a little color boost, but I was so amazed at the spider I just wanted to get it posted. I do need a bit more learning on my photo program, but it is coming slowly.
That's an awesome shot mate! You say lucky and there might always be an element of that in play - but you still have to take the image :)
Most of the time I am on full manual control, but yesterday I wanted to try out the scene auto functions with my different lenses. So I didn't really do anything other than try not to bump the flower as I moved my camera in close. I found it pretty ironic after seeing your fly shot yesterday morning, Life and death, in the same day.
it is a nice juxtaposition of nature, the full circle :)
The first photo is quite impressive and you could get very close!
I love the way they came out, so surprised it was actually centered since I could not be real sure because of the camera angle.