Litter Bugs

In the early part of the year when the bugs are not “out”, you have to go a hunting for them like I did recently.  This means looking for them amongst the leaf litter and under old wood. So armed with my Canon MPE-65mm lens , MT-24ex flash ( with homemade Popadom diffuser ), all important ground mat (keeps you dry whilst lying on the ground), I spent a couple of days at the weekend hunting for the leaf litter bugs.  Some of the bugs and insects that you can find in the UK are fairly big like centipedes & some are very tiny like Globular Springtails.  The later I think are very cute and photogenic, so it was pleasing to find and take some.

Not only did I manage to find some Globular Springtails, but I also managed my first handheld stack of one.  Normally they move to fast ( for a bug about 2mm long) or spring away in a jump – hence their name.

This is the resulting stack ( 4 images between 3-4x magnification,stacked in Photoshop CC)

The other thing that I stacked was the head of a centipede.  3 shots at 5x magnification – stacked in Photoshop CC.

Here’s another centipede – taken at about 4x magnification (single shot)

Whilst hunting for the springtails, I found this small spider – that looks more scared than scary.

And a woodlouse that appears to be pulling a web rope.

A couple of ugly mites – one appears to maybe have a possible parasite attached.

Finally onto the cute stuff.  More Globbys.

All images F11 with flash.