What I thought were a bazillion gnats flying around last week turned out to be a bazillion woolly aphids. Going outside for any amount of time guaranteed that you would find at least one on your clothes when you came back in. After about 20 attempts I managed to get a few focused photos of one of these aphids on my finger.
Aphids in general have been interesting to read about – some ants farm aphids for honeydew, and aphids often reproduce by essentially cloning themselves. Wikipedia has a good overview on aphids if any of that sounds weirdly interesting.
So far, I haven’t able to find much information about the white “hairs” on the woolly aphid’s body, other than being described as waxy. This is rather disappointing because I was hoping to find out how many woolly aphids must be sheared in order to make a winter jacket!
Macro Mystery #25 reveal:
Macro Mystery #26 clue:
Do you think you know what it is? You can write your guess in the comment section below. The answer will be revealed next week!
Also, if you didn’t happen to see it yet, I made a video compilation of autumn leaf photographs from this October, complete with some new music. Be sure to check it out: https://themarkhorton.com/photography/galleries/october-leaves-2017/.
Links:
Aphid overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphid
A woolly aphid is kinda scary! I the mystery thing a curtain rod with the special hangers for the curtain???? 🙂
It might be scary if it wasn’t so tiny and harmless. The mystery item is much smaller than a curtain rod.