Yesterday morning, I decided to go check out Snowball Hill Prairie, a wonderful prairie remnant near my rural Missouri home. This past winter, the Missouri Prairie Foundation (MPF) did a controlled burn on the remaining half of the prairie (the first half was burned in the winter of 2016) and I wanted to see what was blooming. One of the most common wildflowers blooming right now is the Spiderwort. While photographing these beautiful wildflowers, I noticed lots of small hover flies (which look similar to small, sweat bees) busy seeking nectar from the flowers. While photographing one of these hover flies, up close and personal, a second hover fly flew in and acted “frisky” with the fly already collecting nectar:
Next week I’ll post more images from my recent Columbia River Gorge photo trip to the Pacific Northwest.
Photographic Equipment Used:
- Canon 5D Mark III body
- Canon 180mm macro lens
- Bogen 3221 tripod, with ball head
- ISO 800 (high ISO used due to windy conditions on the hill)
- Aperture f/3.5
- Shutter 1/500 sec.