Here is my entry sharing a few of the insect photos we took while we were at Yosemite National Park a few weeks ago. There is an amazing amount of insects to observe in the various habitats that we visited. This bee is on a coneflower in a marshy meadow area.
The insect was hanging underneath the cow parsnip flower that I was attempting to photograph. I noticed him as I was standing very close to the plant. I wasn't sure what kind of insect he was but I love the way he is hanging underneath the blossom.
This was the trip where I learned to distinguish between a dragonfly and a damselfly. A dragonfly's wings are out when he lands and a damselfly has his wings back. This is a damselfly. We saw hundreds of these Circumpolar Bluets on a hike to Lukens Lake. This is smallish lake at about 8000 ft in elevation. The area where we saw these damselflies was a marshy edge to the lake. ( I added an image of my nature notebooking page for the damselfly.)
Ah, this giant dragonfly was so fast that we could hardly get a photo of him. Click on the photo to zoom in a bit on his gorgeous wings. There was another kind of dragonfly, a big blue one, at this lake too but it *never* sat still long enough for a photo. Again this was taken at Lukens Lake at Yosemite National Park.
Here is a skipper of some sort on a hike to Westfalls Meadow. I have learned to recognize this general variety of butterfly but the specific.....too many to tell. :)
I was busy trying to get a photo of a flower and then I realized that there was a ladybug on the leaf. It was the biggest ladybug I have ever seen and so very red.
This is where we realized that in the mushy mud along the meadow's edge we could see bear's tracks. Yes, lots of bear's tracks all along the way as we hiked. They did not look fresh so we just kept telling ourselves that the bear had come through a long time ago.
Here is an example of the footprint we saw all along this section of the trail. Really big.
Okay, I can't tell you how long I tried to identify this butterfly using my field guide and the internet. Nothing seemed right so I will just call this the "happy butterfly" since it was happy doing its thing with its mate. They were so big and pretty.
Just another buzzing bee in the wildflowers.....
Last but not least....a Pacific Treefrog. I don't have any other amphibians to post this with so it will go on my insect post.
Hope you enjoyed seeing a few insects from the week....and hearing about the bear and seeing the frog.
We definitely had fun hiking out into the wilderness to see all these things.
Barb-Harmony Art Mom
