An unexpected yellow
Near the end of May, Wanda Hill alerted me to a colony of Mexican hats, Ratibida columnifera, along Grapevine Dr. in the part of our neighborhood closer to where she lives. On May 30th I went there and spent time photographing some of the individual Mexican hats (and talking to fellow photographer Alex Suárez, who also lives in the neighborhood and happened to drive by shortly after I got there). Beneath one developing flower head I discovered the clutch of tiny eggs you see here. I don’t know what kind of insect they’re from, but on that already sunshiny morning I was happy to get an extra dose of yellow, even one this small. How small, you ask: perhaps 1/3 of an inch, or 8mm, across the whole group. Add to the yellow the blue of the sky and the rich brownish red of the ray flowers on the fully open Mexican hat behind this still green and flowerless one, and you’ve got quite a colorful combination.
© 2014 Steven Schwartzman
Portraits of Wildflowers 
That is a rich color set. I wonder what insect chose that spot.
Jim in IA
July 23, 2014 at 7:13 AM
I used to work primarily in black and white, but now I’m enamored of color. Don’t know the fate of the insect eggs, but the spot was a productive one for me.
Steve Schwartzman
July 23, 2014 at 7:42 AM
An inattentive predator might walk or fly right by those eggs. They certainly seem to be part of the flower. I can’t quite tell, but the eggs seem to be elongated rather than round, so one possibility would be lady bugs. I bought 5,000 as a Christmas gift one year, and got an accompanying full-color brochure along that showed every stage of their life in magnificent detail. (In case you’re wondering, you keep them in the refrigerator and release them as needed. Not every friend appreciates such a gift.)
shoreacres
July 23, 2014 at 7:46 AM
What a fabulous gift!
Gallivanta
July 23, 2014 at 8:51 AM
People are always surprised that ladybug larvae look so different from the adults.
We could say that the ladybugs you bought were a gift that kept on giving.
Steve Schwartzman
July 23, 2014 at 9:22 AM
Outstanding!!!!
Kathy Comer
July 23, 2014 at 8:10 AM
Hi, Kathy. I can’t recall ever taking a picture like this one before. Glad you like this colorful little scene.
Steve Schwartzman
July 23, 2014 at 9:27 AM
Very colourful; almost a rainbow of colours?
Gallivanta
July 23, 2014 at 8:52 AM
Pretty close, I’d say: there’s even a few patches from the violet end of the spectrum that I hadn’t noticed till your comment.
Steve Schwartzman
July 23, 2014 at 9:29 AM
All the colors of the rainbow combined in one shot with the added bonus of “eggs under” instead of “cherry on top”! What a beautiful find, the shot is perfect and the eggs must be tiniest bunch I ever saw!
marksshoesbyevamarks
July 23, 2014 at 12:26 PM
Yes, instead of eggs over easy I’d like to follow your lead and say I’ve given you eggs under easy, though it wasn’t the easiest thing to take pictures of something so small and close to the ground. But the ground is sometimes meant for lying on, as it was here; you could say that nature photographers don’t hesitate to take a position on things.
Steve Schwartzman
July 23, 2014 at 1:05 PM
And the fact that you don’t hesitate to take a position, or for that matter: all kinds of positions, bring us so much closer to see and enjoy something so unbelievable and amazing! So thank you for that!
marksshoesbyevamarks
July 23, 2014 at 9:34 PM
You’re welcome. I’ve always found learning to be fun, and it’s good to see you do too.
Steve Schwartzman
July 23, 2014 at 11:02 PM
Nice work from the prone photographer. It would be interesting to know the eggs ID. Did you try to see if anyone on BG.N could help?
Steve Gingold
July 23, 2014 at 5:15 PM
I think I was on my side rather than prone. I haven’t tried to get the eggs identified, but thanks for your reminder about BugGuide.
Steve Schwartzman
July 23, 2014 at 8:00 PM
I have got to train myself to see the possibilities of background interest in my photos. (Then I have to figure out a way to get down on the ground AND back up without the need of an assistant!) 😛
Lynda
July 26, 2014 at 1:28 PM
You may have heard me say that the three most important things in a photograph are background, background, and background. That’s an exaggeration, of course, but there’s truth in it. Many of my most effective pictures are taken from fairly low looking horizontally or upward. When it comes to getting back up off the ground, maybe you can go out photographing with someone who’ll lend you a hand for support or will pull you up.
Steve Schwartzman
July 26, 2014 at 1:46 PM