Re: Phone Camera Competition May 2020: Superpowers
 

Since Bees have multiple superpowers, here is a macro done with the Pro¹ of a solitary bee on a thyme plant as my entry.
Cropped in original aspect ratio to ~60%.

https://mosushi.de/misc/photocomp/pr...518_151530.jpg

Re: Phone Camera Competition May 2020: Superpowers
 

Nice pic! I'm always trying to get a good bee picture, but they just don't sit still!

(BTW: If you're ever possessed of the thought, "Tossing these dried thyme branches on the fire pit would smell really nice," disabuse yourself of the notion immediately! My wife tried that once, and the voluminous VOCs drove us both inside immediately and it gave her a case of the hives!)

Re: Phone Camera Competition May 2020: Superpowers
 

This was done with a smartphone? Amazing!

Re: Phone Camera Competition May 2020: Superpowers
 

As robthebold pointed out, they don't hold still very well.
This was a luck shot i discovered after looking through the ~50 attempts i made.
Key was imo that the thyme has so many blossoms that while hopping from one to next every 2 seconds i could still follow them.
The macro effect became much more intense when i cropped it down from 4000px width to ~2400.

To get more precise on the species, it is an Andrena, subgenus Gonandrena, a sand or mining Bee. They seem to be kind of rare and thus i keep the hill they dig their wholes into untouched.
Reading into the species i learned that not all of them dig their own holes but some are called cuckoo bees and just place their stuff into other bees holes so they do not need to raise up kids. Brilliant.

I guess this is worth mentioning, we have the World Bee Day today as i saw.

Re: Phone Camera Competition May 2020: Superpowers
 

Continuing on the themes of animal superpowers, the powers of the Vipera Berus are good hearing, keen sense of smell and of course the powerful venom it uses for hunting and defence.

"Adder in grass" Taken with XperiaX/ Piggz Advanced Camera, cropping and levels in Gimp.

http://swagman.org/juice/adder-in-grass.png

Re: Phone Camera Competition May 2020: Superpowers
 

A viper in Finnland?
How can they move/survive in not-summer-times over there?

Re: Phone Camera Competition May 2020: Superpowers
 

They are actually quite common here. There are 3 different kinds of snakes in Finland, of which only one is mildly poisonous (the very one I captured above)
The other two are much rarer, I have only ever seen each of the non-poisonous snakes once in the wild.

They all go to deepsleep during the winter on burrows below ground, and only wake up when the temperature rises up way over freezing. On the spring they start to wander around to get to warm places, as tehy really are the true children of the sun, they love warmth and can only move quickly in warm conditions.

Re: Phone Camera Competition May 2020: Superpowers
 

I just had to look this up. Apparently, snakes can brumate* in cold months, hidden in protected dens from harsh weather. They live on every continent except Antarctica. Not Ireland, of course, because St. Patrick. Who also chased them out of Iceland, Greenland and New Zealand. Basically, everywhere that ends in "-land". Well, not Finland, I guess. And patron saint of Engineers! Patrick, that is, not snakes.

*This is a real word! It's like hibernation, except different to people who really care about the difference. So I guess that's another superpower this cold-blooded nightmare fuel has.

Re: Phone Camera Competition May 2020: Superpowers
 

Thanks to you two.
Now I also had to loop up a bit.

The vipera berus is also known (not common) in Germany and called 'Kreuzotter'. According to my (wrong) childhood school knowledge it would have been the only mild poisonous snake (ever seen once in my life 40y ago). But there is also the vipera aspis (Aspisviper) mild poisonous.
Generally we have only 6 snakes over here...

Re: Phone Camera Competition May 2020: Superpowers
 

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...7f980deb_o.jpg
DSC00147

11 year old picture -- but with a cameraphone(!) -- sadly not an entry. I caught this specimen wandering through my iris looking for slugs. Some variant of garter snake (Thamnophis), I'm gonna say Eastern plains garter snake (T. radix radix), but definitely some Eastern garter snake.

Only recently, it's been observed that they're venomous. I guess because that doesn't really apply to humans no one really looked into it. Anyway, risk of salmonella from handling a specimen is of much more concern to homo sapiens -- wash your hands, people, these things are unpasteurized eggs in the wild! They'll poop on you!

Shortly after the photo was taken, this individual, or one very much like it, was found in my basement eating a mouse. Mixed message: pest control good, being another pest: bad. Being a conservationist, I took the invader back outside -- it dropped the mouse first, thinking that was my goal. Failing that, it rared up, mouth agape and made as if to snap at me. It must have known its harmless nature, since it only threatened and didn't actually bite thus and reveal its harmlessness like a cowardly dog pretending it would maul you if not for this darn leash!

If you're wondering, I shot this with a Sony-Ericsson K550i -- a really nice camera in a candybar format phone, particularly for nature closeups in good light.