Wildflowers and Insects

Here in Shiga Prefecture some wildflowers continue to bloom well into November. They attract a variety of flying insects, including butterflies, moths, bees, hoverflies, and wasps. On November 3, 2018, quite a few insects were feeding along an irrigation canal near rice and soybean fields near my home. Common grass yellow butterfly (Eurema hecabe hecabe, [...]

End of Summer

The last days of summer 2018 in Shiga Prefecture have been mostly cloudy, with quite a bit of rain and very little sunshine. Whenever it was not raining too hard, I went out with a camera most days September 11-19, 2018. September 11 - insects in a garden, Yasugawa, nearby fields Physostegia virginiana flowers (obedience, [...]

Rain Lilies

In our garden several varieties of rain lilies (Zephyranthes, ゼフィランサス) bloom from early June through September. I enjoy looking at them each morning, but I had not fully appreciated their beauty until I watched them in the rain. https://gpjp.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/rainlilies-hdv23.mp4 In addition to the sound of rain hitting my umbrella, I used the most appropriate rain [...]

Butterflies

Shiga Prefecture in Japan is blessed with quite a few species of butterflies. A few species are shown here in photographs taken between April and September 5, 2018, when I also made a short video clip (music from “Redwood Highway” by Jason Shaw at AudionautiX.com.) Asian swallowtails (Papilio xuthus, アゲハチョウ) Old World swallowtail (Papilio machaon, [...]