First harvestman of the spring

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First harvestman of the spring

May 19, 2013 by Mike Powell

It was raining a little yesterday when I encountered my first harvestman (order Opiliones) of the spring, which explains the drops of water that you may notice on some on its legs.

Growing up, I was accustomed to calling them daddy longlegs and thought they were a kind of spider. Last year, I learned that harvestman in fact are not spiders, even though they do belong to the class of arachnids—harvestmen are in the order Opiliones and spiders are in the order Araneae.

I shot this image with my 55-250mm telephoto zoom, which meant that I couldn’t get in super close to the harvestman. However, I did manage to get at least part of all of his legs in the shot, which was not the case last year when I photographed one with my macro lens—there is an unavoidable tendency to want to get close whenever I put the macro lens on my camera.

Posted in Arachnids, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, wildlife | Tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 55-250mm zoom lens, Canon Rebel XT, daddy longlegs, green spring gardens, harvestman, opiliones | 10 Comments

10 Responses

on May 19, 2013 at 8:45 pm | Reply margosnotebook

great capture lovely colours and a dear little critter
- on May 19, 2013 at 9:14 pm | Reply Mike Powell
  
  Thanks. The rainy weather really made the greens stand out. This is one little creature that I never find to be threatening (unlike some spiders or certain bugs).
on May 19, 2013 at 9:22 pm | Reply krikitarts

You did a fine job with your zoom lens. I don’t think that your subject minded your exclusion of the terminal portion of one of its legs in the least–and it’s not essential that every last millimeter of each appendage needs to be present in order to appreciate the art and the expertise that went in to making the image. Great subject and wonderful detail, Mike.
- on May 19, 2013 at 9:48 pm | Reply Mike Powell
  
  Thanks, Gary. I did in fact decide to crop off part of that one leg that was in the original image for the sake of composition. Harvestmen (and spiders) are tough for me to photograph because they wreak havoc with depth of field with appendages going in all directions and often there is a limited choice of angles from which to shoot.
  - on May 20, 2013 at 9:35 pm krikitarts
    
    You’re so right about the challenge, especially when there’s a large spread of legs–and they don’t get much larger than in harvestmen. Taking this into consideration, with your use of the zoom lens, again, superb job!
on May 20, 2013 at 1:32 am | Reply Charlie@Seattle Trekker

Not a spider, I have spent a lot of time laboring under a cloud of misconception. I appreciate the information.
on May 20, 2013 at 6:55 am | Reply New Hampshire Garden Solutions

I didn’t know this wasn’t a spider either, so thanks for the clarification, Mike.
on May 20, 2013 at 4:32 pm | Reply lylekrahn

Nice work with this.
- on May 20, 2013 at 7:03 pm | Reply Mike Powell
  
  Thanks, Lyle. I was able to try a number of different angles and camera positions to get this shot. Unlike many insects and spiders, this harvestman was amazingly tolerant of my photographic gyrations.
on August 11, 2014 at 2:32 am | Reply Rare harvestman discovery in the Netherlands | Dear Kitty. Some blog

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