The weather was gorgeous today with blue sky and nice clouds. Filled with fresh morning air, everyone was in high spirit and ready to shoot. Without any delay, we moved into a refreshing greenery just beside the highway.
There was a small stream where we spotted a wide variety of common dragonflies such as Slender Blue Skimmer, Blue Dasher, Trumpet Tail, Scarlet Grenadier, Common Parasol, etc.
Strangely, damselflies were not as plentiful. Lester managed to photograph a beautiful Variable Wisp, shot against a glowing morning light.
There were quite a number of wild bitter gourd plants. Citron bugs love these plants and we found a few nymphs under a leaf.
Allan Lee
It is not uncommon to find bugs having intimate moments during the early hours.
Yue Teng, with his telephoto lens, captured two colourful birds.
At about 9 am, we moved further into the open field. Lester found an interesting subject low on the ground. He showed us that getting dirty is part and parcel of macro photography.
What was Lester shooting?
It was a whitish plant hopper. Plenty of other hoppers around this area too.
Valanga nigricornis is a huge short-horned grasshopper. Despite its size, it was not easy to spot as it blended well into its surrounding.
Grasshoppers, Katydids and Crickets belong to the same order of insect known as Orthoptera. They look very similar. One way to differentiate them is to observe their antennas. Grasshoppers have short and thick antennas whereas katydids and crickets antennas are much thinner and longer. If the antennas are longer than the body it’s a katydid or cricket! Katydid is also called long-horned grasshopper or bush cricket. Here are a katydid nymph and a cricket nymph taken by Cathy and Endy respectively.
With Ben & Yue Teng in this outing, we are bound to get some butterflies and moths pictures. Kyaw Htay & Allan chipped in to make it a good collection.
There was a not so pretty shield bug but the interesting perch more than made it up.
Anthony Quek
Kyaw Htay was more keen in taking spiders.
Other subjects captured include leaf beetle, tiger beetle, field cockroach, ant, bean bug, citron bug, praying mantis, etc.
We called it a day at about 10.30 am as the weather was getting unbearably hot.
Participants (11) : Ben Ee, Cathy E., Dion Wong, Henry Tan, Kyaw Htay, Lee Yue Teng, Lester Koh, Loy Xing Jian, Allan Lee, Endy, Anthony Quek (Leader)
Informal Macro Outing Group 