CalArti

Visiting the Allegan Forest a couple of weeks ago, I wandered through a field just starting to turn green. It’s a place where RV’s congregate during deer season, and the remnants of campfires dot the landscape. The cold, black scars were a flutter with dancing spots of blue - spring azure butterflies coming to suck up the minerals and nutrients found in the charred wood.

And so a photo of a spring azure, taken April 10, 2010.

Yesterday I visited the Dowagiac Woods for the first time this year. The wildflowers are in full bloom – late in their progression even. The False Rue Anemone, Wood Anemone, Spring Beauty, Bellwort, and Trillium are out in force. Hepatica has come and gone.

Photographing spring wildflowers has been a project for the last few years. I’m letting it go this year – too many other commitments and a desire to do something different. But two weeks ago I did pause on a river bank in the Allegan Forest, and snap these two shots of Hepatica, poking out of the sandy soil.

And that’s it for 2010.

It’s a tradition, I guess. If one person alone can have a tradition. Each spring I try to get a photo of a honey bee in a crocus flower. Sometimes it works out… sometimes not.

This spring presented me with a narrow window of opportunity. This spring is robust and early, and the crocuses bloomed all at once in mid March, in response to several days of mild weather. But as the flowers were out in their peak, a cold snap, heavy frost, and a bit of wet snow wiped them out. They came and they went all in a matter of days.

I spent only one session out in the lawn, chasing honey bees. This shot is passable, but not great:

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And along came a fly, and perhaps I did a bit better, capturing it in all its putrid glory:

Well, that officially kicks off the insect phtography season for another year… The dragonflies can’t be far off.