I believe I used these photos sometime last year, but I think they are perfect for today’s Word of the Day Challenge: together. And believe me, the geese were having a raucous discussion about it. No isolation here!
Category: Food
Silly Saturday
The first mallard of the season starts his dive for food.
Blurry Macro Monday Friend
Bedecked in Christmas Green
I have quite a few tree twigs stuck among the Coleus plants and what between the plants having an occasional blossom still present, the hummingbird feeder, and the twigs to rest on, this little guy and an occasional friend or two that he tolerates, seem to spend quite a bit of time on my balcony of late. Especially when it’s raining. One day I’ll hopefully manage to get him in focus as well as the feeder. 😉
Layers of Lines That Taste Delicious
Salmon Steaks for Sale
Posted for Lens-Artist Photo Challenge #67: Layered. Also posted for Becky’s October #lines&squares and Debbie’s Six Word Saturday.
Macro Monday
How can such a small creature gather so much pollen? About six years ago, researchers discovered something new about flowers and bees. Would you believe electric charges????? It turns out as a bee flies through the air, the friction of the bee’s body parts against the air causes the bee to have a slight positive charge. The flowers that attract bees have a slight negative charge. So when a bee lands on the flower, the bee’s body attracts the pollen to it and the pollen sticks! On February 22, 2013, NPR ran the spot “Honey It’s Electric: Bees Sense Charge On Flowers.” Who knew?
Another fact: a bee can collect about 15 mg of pollen on a singe foraging trip. This is about half its body weight, and a bee has to collect pollen from about 1 million flowers to make 1 pound of honey.
Bees are truly AMAZING creatures……….. and I’m glad I’m not a bee. It makes me tired just to think about it!
Friday Flowers and Fuzzy Friends
It looks as though (sorry for the pun) bees have 2 eyes – the large ones that we see. These are the bee’s compound eyes that consist of many tiny lenses that piece together patterns that the bee sees, enabling it to recognize types of plants and other bees. However, the bee also has 3 additional eyes on the top of its head. These are called simple, or ocelli eyes. These eyes do not see patterns, but can see light. Or more importantly, these eyes see changes in light, which can alert the bee to predators flying overhead. If you look carefully, you can see one of these small ocelli eyes in the top photo; look at the large eye on your left, then look across the top of the bee’s forehead that has black coloring. At the inner tip of that, almost in the center of the forehead, you will see the leftmost oceilli eye as a very small dot. See it? Well done! You can also just barely see it in the second photo.*
*Information from 5 fascinating facts about bee eyes from lensstore.co.uk.
Also posted for: Frank’s Dutch Goes the Photo Tuesday Photo Challenge – Fuzzy and Tourmaline’s Color Your World: Burnt Sienna.
Wordless Wednesday
Also posted for Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #63 – Magical.
Focusing On How A Butterfly Eats
A butterfly eats by extending its tongue like structure, called a proboscis, and using it like a straw to suck up liquid food such as nectar. It drinks water the same way. In the second photo, it would appear that the pollen covered proboscis might be headed toward the butterfly’s mouth to be consumed. I even assumed that to be the case. However, when I did some research, I discovered that what is on the outside of the proboscis is immaterial. The butterfly in the second photo is actually finished sucking up the nectar of that particular flower, and is, in fact, coiling its “tongue” back up into the resting position.
Posted for Dutch Goes the Photo!’s Tuesday Photo Challenge: Focus.
Coffee and Cream
Iced Edition
Posted for CitySonnet’s August Colors and Letters: Starts With the Letter C
Welcome to Our Local Japanese Restaurant
Zebra's Child 