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Posts Tagged ‘harvestman’

Daddy’s watching you

Posted in Arachnids, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Portraits, wildlife, tagged , , , , , , on June 7, 2014| 16 Comments »

Daddy longlegs have a single pair of eyes, oriented sideways, in the middle of their heads and it’s a little disconcerting to peer through a macro lens and see one of these eyes looking toward you. Daddy longlegs (also known as harvestmen) belong to the arachnid family, but are not spiders. Harvestmen make up the order Opiliones and, according to Wikipedia, there may be as many as ten thousand species of harvestmen worldwide, with over 6500 already discovered.

I cropped the first shot of the harvestman to allow you to see the eyes better, but it doesn’t really give you a sense of the length of the legs. The second shot, which is actually a less-cropped version of the first one, shows you more of the legs. I did crop out the ends of the outermost legs, though, to keep the body from looking too small.

 

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© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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One more Daddy

Posted in Arachnids, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, tagged , , , , , on June 14, 2013| 2 Comments »

As I was going over my images from the last few weeks, I came across this image of a daddy longlegs (also known as a harvestman) that I really like, in part because of the way that the photo shows its eyes.

Previously I posted  what I had characterized as an artistic shot of this arachnid that showed mostly its bottom side. In this shot, the harvestman had turned toward the camera and the eyes, which grow on a stalk in the middle of its back are visible.

They are a huge contrast with the eyes of a jumping spider that I featured recently in a posting, which had multiple sets of large eyes.  

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Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved

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Daddy out on a limb

Posted in Arachnids, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged , , , , , on June 4, 2013| 9 Comments »

Can a photo of a daddy longlegs (also known as a harvestman) be artistic?

Ordinarily, I would emphatically respond in the negative, but somehow this macro shot that I took of a daddy longlegs, suspended upside down from a branch, came out with a cool, creative vibe to it. I like the way the legs are placed, the way the light is hitting its body, and the way the branch is in focus only in the center area.

I ran across this daddy longlegs as I was walking through the woods and I took the time to set up my tripod and use my 100mm macro lens to get this shot. The daddy longlegs was amazingly tolerant of my efforts and remained in place the whole time, even when I experimented with the use of my pop-up flash.

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Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved

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First harvestman of the spring

Posted in Arachnids, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged , , , , , , on May 19, 2013| 10 Comments »

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.

Daddy1_blog

Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved

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Insect interaction

Posted in Bugs, Flowers, Gardening, Humor, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, tagged , , , , , , , on October 10, 2012| 1 Comment »

I am always fascinated whenever I happen to capture two different insects in a single image, especially when they appear to be interacting. A bee flew onto a flowering plant and appears to be having a conversation with a daddy longlegs (aka harvestman) that was already there. Does one of them look at the other as a potential prey? Are they sharing information? Is one asking the other out on a date?

Can you hear me now?

Insect interaction

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Spider and Daddy

Posted in Bugs, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged , , , , , , on August 11, 2012| 3 Comments »

When I came upon this scene this afternoon I couldn’t help but think of some blog posts that I had read recently. Steven Schwartzman had a beautiful artistic image of a damselfly caught in a spider’s web entitled “Three Orbs, Three Colors.”  Daniel Proud had a wonderfully informative Four part series on Harvestmen (Daddy Longlegs) in late July that included colorful images of different harvestmen. Both of those bloggers caused me to be much more attentive today as I took in my surroundings during a nature walk at a local marsh.

I managed to capture an image of the spider moving in on his captured prey, a daddy longlegs, that had become stuck in the spider’s web.  Some may find the photo to be a little disturbing, but to me it is a simple fact of natural life.

Shortly after taking this photo, I moved in a little closer and must have disturbed the web. The spider quickly climbed up the web and took refuge inside the curled-up leaf. I waited for quite some time but the spider did not reappear.

I think the daddylongs was still alive when I left him, but his prospects do not appear to be good.

Caught in the web

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Eyes of a harvestman

Posted in Gardening, Insects, Macro Photography, Photography, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 13, 2012| 8 Comments »

What’s a harvestman?

a. A man who harvests. like a farmer or a migrant worker;

b. A pocket electronic device made by International Harvester (like a Walkman or Discman);

c. An insect related to a spider; or

d. Spiderman’s adversary in the new Spiderman movie

Until earlier this week I might have responded with selection  “a” if  I had been posed this question—it is the most obvious answer. I would have been wrong. The correct answer is “c.”

As I was finishing up a photo shoot in a local garden one of my friends excitedly pointed to a bush and exclaimed, “There’s your first harvestman.” I did not have a clue what she was talking about. All I could really see in the bush was a bunch of long legs connected to a body. (My friend Cindy D. has some photos of the entire body of a harvestman in one of her blog postings in case you are not familiar with this insect.)

I shot some photos anyways and when I looked at them on my computer I was shocked. There appeared to be two eyes on a stalk in the middle of the insect’s back, with the eyes looking sidewards in completely opposite directions. Could they really be eyes?

Here is one of my photos of the harvestman. It is not a technically perfect photo but it gives you a pretty clear view of the unusual eyes of this strange insect.  If you want to learn more, check out this page, which is full of fascination factoids and photos.

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved

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