Almost nyctohylophilia
Or… love of the forests at night.
Last evening was a rewarding session at a new location (‘somewhere in MacRitchie’), new night macro set-up (X-T1 with 55-200 + Raynox + that tiny EF-X8 flashgun and a mounted torch), newish shooting companions (almost but not quite the ‘Magnificent Seven’).
I usually stick to a few usual places for night macro; exploration of new localities are rare but welcomed. Each patch, I find, has its own charms and hosts its own community of little forest denizens that may be less commonly sighted elsewhere – even if the ‘elsewhere’ is simply another track just a kilometre away. Happily, this trail had a healthy mix of the small stuff, though we didn’t sight any reptiles. In particular the numbers of assassin bugs, trap-jaw ants and Amantis sp. mantids caught my attention.
The days haven’t been very wet lately so I was surprised to find a couple of small bioluminescent fungi clusters, which was a pleasant bonus.
Our playground
Wandering spider (Ctenus sp.) female with caterpillar prey
Wandering spider (Ctenus sp.) male
Huntsman spider (Thelcticopis sp.)
Wolf spider (Venonia sp. ) on its dew-coated web
Spotted scorpion (Lychas scutilus) under UV light
Lychas scutilus with a pygmy grasshopper (Tetrigidae)
Nasute termites – mostly workers with a soldier (bottom left – with the long snout through which it sprays a noxious, defensive secretion)
Trap-jaw ant (Odontomachus sp.)
Trap-jaw ant pursuing prey
Some moth caterpillar – those yellow lines are strands of silk spun across the leaf
Some assassin bug (Reduviidae)
Some forest roach
Amantis sp. nymph
Bioluminescent fungi (Filoboletus manipularis) – lacking a tripod, I shot this hand-held: 2s, f/1.4, ISO6400