Monday, February 22, 2010

Insects Mating after Feb 14th

The day after February 14th, we went for a family getaway in Batang Kali, Selangor where my uncle owns a piece of hillside land that includes a brook / river creek and a riverside shack.

Most of the family, after having breakfast, went for a dip in the brook and literally stayed there till evening. I joined them for a bit before grabbing my camera and traversed along the brook looking for small creatures to shoot. And I got a few that I liked.

Dragonflies Mating


I saw a pair of dragonflies flying around, one chasing the other, so I followed them until they stopped and landed on a blade of grass. The dragonfly in front started to attach the tip of its abdomen on the neck of the second dragonfly.


After that, the second dragonfly attached its abdomen tip onto the underside of the first dragonfly...


Hard to say which one's male and which one's female. I'd say the one behind is male. Notice that they form a kind of heart shape in the process. The nymphs are conceived in love!


The Mating Water Striders


Capturing any decent pictures of the water striders was really hard. I had a hard time focusing on any of them due to the small size, the amazingly clear water (made the AF focus on the objects in the water) and their superfast and sudden movements. I spotted an extraordinarily large one which wasn't as fast as the others, and it wasn't until I took a picture that I realized it wasn't a large water strider, it was a pair of water striders mating!


You can kind of see how the weight of the both of them bend the surface tension of the water.


They also dance along the surface of the water while they're at it!

...

I have more pictures of other brookside insects, but let me save those for another post. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I enjoy sharing them with you.

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