Cinquefoil Fly
Between the cabin and the site is a glacial erratic in the intertidal zone. It is quite high up, with its feet rarely in the water. At the base of the erratic are sporadic and small clumps of the hairy or northern cinquefoil (Potentilla villosa). On the stone itself there are large clumps of the flowers. While we were on Kilgii Gwaay it was in full bloom and I went to the rock one day to take pictures.
One thing that caught my eye was a fly in disguise as a wasp, that was visiting the blossoms, one after another. Today’s post features the fly on the cinquefoil. Other post(s) will have some other shots from this session.
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To see larger versions of the images below open them in the gallery view by clicking on any of the thumbnails then navigate with the arrows and escape to return to this page.
This link catalogues my posts about volunteering on the Kilgii Gwaay archaeological site project.
Tansy, one of the Quimper Hittys came along and has blogged about the trip from a doll’s view and you can find those posts here while this post has some photos of Tansy and the cinquefoil.
Canon 5Dii, SMC Takumar 100mm/f4 Macro lens, ISO100. (EXIF data does not record aperture for adapted manual lens, so ignore what it says in the gallery).
burnt embers 
Pingback: Cinquefoil Summer « burnt embers
Great series, my friend, wow talk about lovely bokeh! Your depth of focus here really brings this gorgeous set to life, there is no way I am going to try and pick a favorite here!
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Most of that nice bokeh is from the Takumar macro – that is one of the things to love about the old Takumar lenses, they do really nice bokeh. Still, I would love an IS lens for this kind of hand-held shooting just to get a bit more depth of field (not much, one or maybe 2 cm more would get the fly completely in focus) with lots of sharp detail.
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Pollen hunting it
Alights, bud to yellow bud,
To capture summer.
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Ryan, that is perfect – they were capturing summer. I have more shots of other insects doing the same thing on these flowers. Can I quote you as the text when I post those ones?
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Yes. Please do. 🙂
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OK, coming up soon 🙂 And, thanks!
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The shots where the structure of the wings is visible are fantastic and my favorites. Really fine macro work on a difficult subject (ie: moving fast).
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Hi Ken – thanks a lot. A tripod just won’t work in this location on the side of a very large boulder, not to mention the bouncing from one flower to another. I probably should have had more depth of field, but then something different would have been compromised in image quality. I am developing a hankering for image stabilisation in my lenses, though I don’t know if that would be possible in a macro.
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There is a bee that looks like a fly which my favorite entomologist (my son) assured me doesn’t sting. The camouflage that insects use probably have nothing to do with our reactions but are effective in that regard nevertheless.
These are wonderful shots. I love shots of insects hard at work!
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Hi Paula – I never heard of a bee mimicking a fly – seems bizarre. Thanks for your great comment!
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