Friday, August 26, 2011

The Great Snail Hunt

I've seen some strange little creatures on milkweed plants, and today I'm going to bring you some more. While I was closely examining a few more milkweed plants I found a strange little thing in the shadows of one plant.

At first I thought I had gotten lucky enough to find a cocoon of some sort, but the flash of my camera saw it for what it truly was. It was the shell of a snail! And guess what, people. That shell also had a snail inside. Wonder of wonders!

Seriously, this snail was tucked down on a plant that was in behind several other milkweeds. It was very dark, so I had a lot of trouble seeing just what I was looking at. The camera wasn't having much more success than I was, so I decided to use the flash. All of my previous experiments with that finally gave me this success, a bright clear picture of this snail.

Now I knew from previous experience with milkweed plants that if I found one critter on a milkweed then I would find others. So I began my search for more snails. And very soon I found exactly what I had been looking for.

Right out in the open there were more snails to be examined and studied. I'm not exactly sure anymore if I used the flash on these or not, but the pictures came out just fine.

One thing I've learned with using the camera's flash is that it takes out any motion blur that there might be. So now I've been experimenting with the flash at every opportunity I can get. I guess you never know something until you try.

So now we've come to my final picture of these snails. Three is a magic number so I try to use it as often as I can. Three pictures. Three blogs. Three... You get the idea. Three is a perfect balance. But you have to know how to use it.

So now after that last bit of mysterious strangeness we come to the end of this post. Do a search for the magic of the number three and see what you find. 1... 2... 3... Go!


Nature Center Magazine - The garbage man can!

14 comments:

  1. Very clear pictures Ratty. Thanks for the tip about the flash.

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  2. love the clarity and crispness of pictures. I too hate using flash, if I have a choice, I will not use it since it makes me feel it's not the natural light. But when the lighting is very low and hard to get details, if the subject moves, I use flash too.

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  3. Cute little guys! My fields are pretty dry for snails.

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  4. love these shots. Your adventures are uncovering all kinds of things

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  5. That's odd to see snails on milkweed! Did you find monarch eggs too?

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  6. I haven't experiment using flash outdoors yet, but will try now.

    Beautiful photos, Ratty!

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  7. Nice pictures of the snail!! I don't like using the flash at times but it's the onlyw ay I can get good pics sometimes. Especially when it's too dark to use the "Sport" mode, which I use most of the time because the animals move a lot.

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  8. Thanks! I have not seen before so like color of the snail...

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  9. Thanks for the comments, everyone.
    -

    @Lin
    I looked and looked for monarch eggs but I couldn't find any. Looking for them was how I found the snails.

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  10. These are baby snails.... I actually never saw a snail where a leaf can hold it.

    Lovely shots...1...2...3... smile!

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  11. Great shot and tip. Milkweed is sure a valuable source of food.

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  12. Wonderful photographs. Do the snails eat up the plants, Ratty. I am so amazed at how quickly snails can destroy some things.

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  13. Nice stuff! Thanks for sharing this post recently.

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