Firefly Larva – The Night Flashers
The rainy season is here again, and I couldn’t get the thought of glow-in-the-dark mushrooms out of my head. When trudging through the nature reserves at night, I would switch off the torches and stand in pitch-darkness to observe the surroundings. Some mushrooms were spotted, but their glow was faint. I had to use shutter speeds of over 100s to get the colour of the glow, even at ISO1600. The unexpected find from this endeavour was a tiny flashing bug… the firefly larva. While waiting in the darkness, I noticed a tiny green blinking dot in the leaf litter, and went closer to investigate…
#1 View from the top when I first found it… just an ugly skinny little wormy-like creature
#2 Side view reveals the firefly larva with the tail-end (in white on the left end) that glows. The tail also has a suction which helps it to crawl around.
#3 So… where are the eyes? Looks like an empty head?
#4 View from the front — the eyes protrude only when it was walking. It would otherwise be retracted to safety.
#5 Final shot of the flasher. Indeed a very unique fella.
#6 These were the mushrooms that I was trying to shoot. Too dim to look like a glow at all. The red tint comes from ambient light, possibly my blinking flash.
#7 Practising a shot on a Harvestman (Opiliones)
#8 Beautiful metallic blue/green ground beetle. Very difficult to light up nicely.
#9 Orb web spider dies in it’s own web… covered with fungus
#10 White-Striped Wandering Spider (Ctenidae)
#11 Going closer…
#12 It adjusted its legs… so I moved to face it directly
#13 Complete face shot with the spiked pedipalps
#14 Another view of the face with all the hairy details
#15 Found this green crab spider (?) hiding under a leaf
#16 Very difficult to focus, the subject itself was 1cm long including the long legs
#17 Top view. Nibbling it’s legs?
#18 Cleaner top view
#19 Alfred found this amazing cluster of newborns clutched by a Daddy Long Legs Spider mummy
#20 Incredible view from the side shows all the lanky baby legs sticking out in all directions
#21 The weevils we found tonight were infested with ticks. Some of them were moving around very slowly.
#22 Diagonal view. Wonder how badly the ticks can affect the weevil?
#23 Front view of the poor fella
#24 Little toad hiding in a crevice of a tree trunk
#25 Checkered Beetle? As hairy as ever!
#26 Getting a shot at the compound eyes
#27 Big compound eyes surrounding the antennae, like the longhorn beetle
#28 View from below.
The complete album can be viewed here.
