Mark Cassino Photography - Mark's Blog

Lots of these flies were buzzing around my yard a few days ago, so I caught a couple an dfroze them for studio macro shots. There are two wings and a pair of halteres, which would seem to place this into the order diptera. While I have looked through seveal websites, I have not been able to form an opion beyond that - and I'd rather admit to not being able to identify a subject than to offer a mis-identification. So - it is just a fly. All I care about is the photography, anyhow...

Pentax K-3, reverse mounted F 28mm f2.8, extension tubes. Approximately 3.6x lifesized. Cropped.

Heres a view of the entire insects - any suggestions about ID would be appreciated:

There are few places I’d rather be than on the Oak Savanna when the coreopsis is blooming. For a few days, maybe even a week, the sandy barrens seem to be adorned with gold.

Those June days seem far off, sitting here on a cold, damp, March 31 – but they will be here before you know it.

This is another shot from the archives, taken last June. Im not entirely sure why I passed it by while editing photos last summer. I am sure that a the time this immature Blue Dasher dragonfly was, metaphorically, sitting in butter.

I continue to go over RAW files from last summer, looking for interesting shots that I may have missed. There’s a lot of files to go through!

This image was set aside because I didn’t want to post it till I identified the subject. OK - I give up. I have no idea what this little creature is. They were quite abundant along the edge of my favorite seasonal marsh in late June and early July. The insect or spider was about 1/4th of inch tall. This one is on a wild raspberry leaf.

I’m not even sure if those are 8 legs or 6 poking out of that shell. If you can offer a clue as to the ID, please send a feedback!

UPDATE - April 1, 2009: The intrepid naturalists at the Kalamazoo Nature Center, with a little help from an MSU entomologist, identified this as a casebearer beetle – family Chrysomelidae, sub family Cryptocephalinae. Mystery solved!