1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nTwo days ago I spent some time in the mountains with a pair of House Wrens who were feeding youngsters in their nearby nest. Here one of them paused on a branch near the nest for a few moments before making the delivery. In this photo very little is sharp except for the head of the wren and the insect because I was close to the bird and shooting at f\/5\/6 which gave me very shallow depth of field.<\/p>\n
I believe the insect is a damselfly but I’m no entomologist so I’m not even sure of that, much less what species it might be. If it is a damselfly it’s a species I’m unfamiliar with.<\/p>\n
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An extreme crop of the same photo reveals more detail.<\/p>\n
Beyond the question of ID I actually find this version of the image more interesting than the previous one. For my tastes too much of the wren is out of focus in the first version and I love seeing the small details of the insect’s abdomen and wings. Notice that one of the wings extends over and behind the eye of the wren where it’s a little difficult to see but I think it creates a subtle but interesting visual effect. We’re actually seeing the eye of the bird through the wing of the insect.<\/p>\n
Obviously the membranes between the veins in the wings are transparent and unless I’m mistaken (and I very well may be) those transparent membranes actually slightly magnify the tiny feathers behind them. If so, that surprises me. It’s probably unlikely that they do but every time I look at this version of the image that’s where my mind goes.<\/p>\n
What say ye? Am I seeing things? It may be simply that those feathers behind the bird’s eye have a slightly coarser texture then the rest of the head feathers so they appear to be magnified when they’re not. Some of them are the feathers covering the ear opening so that very well may be the case.<\/p>\n
Either way, is this a damselfly? Does anyone know the species? I’m also curious about those little spots near the distal ends of each wing.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
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A little help from my friends?<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73180,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,4592],"tags":[4613,1573,2046,4614],"class_list":["post-73179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-house-wren-wrens","tag-damselfly-id","tag-house-wren","tag-troglodytes-aedon","tag-wing-vein-magnification"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/house-wren-8812-big-crop-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-j2j","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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