Amelio Little's art and photography

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I told myself not to get into bird photography. It's too frustrating. While I'm mostly sticking to arthropods, I can't r...
06/15/2026

I told myself not to get into bird photography. It's too frustrating. While I'm mostly sticking to arthropods, I can't resist shots like this.

This is the hardest I've ever worked for a photograph. It all started last spring. I had just watched a video about fora...
05/05/2026

This is the hardest I've ever worked for a photograph. It all started last spring. I had just watched a video about foraging "fairy potatoes" from Feral Foraging (link in comments.)
Fairy potatoes are the edible tuber of the ephemeral wildflower, Spring Beauty. More specifically here we have Claytonia virginica. I learned about this particular bee from this video. The Springbeauty Miner is a solitary bee that only collects the pollen from this particular flower. I was already familiar with places that this flower blooms so of course I set out to photograph the bee. Sadly last year I thought I got a photo of the bee on the flower, but no showy pink pollen on the legs, because it was the wrong tiny little bee. I'm getting better at IDs.
This year I set out with my camera in the same spot, found the bee, but my camera was still in my backpack. I did get a quick snap from my phone, but I really wanted nice shot from my new Canon EOS R7. Clearly my macro set up wasn't going to cut it. So I set out again with a borrowed zoom lens. Saw more bees. Only got shots of other species. I was having trouble focusing on these tiny guys that were rapidly buzzing from flower to flower.
At this point the flowers are nearing the end of their season but I went out one more time. I sat down in the patch of flowers waiting for any sign of movement amongst the blossoms. I took 250 photos, got sunburn, and some mild heat exhaustion but I got the shot! In retrospect camping out in 90° weather and sun I really should have had twice as much water and wore a sunshirt. Hopefully it was worth it.

While attempting to photograph more Springbeauty Miner bees, I managed to find every other type of little bees. Nomad be...
04/13/2026

While attempting to photograph more Springbeauty Miner bees, I managed to find every other type of little bees. Nomad bees, small carpenter bees, sweat bees, masked bees, everything but the my target species! And I saw three, the just didn't cooperate for the bee paparazzi.

Springtime Darner, Basiaeschna janataThis is one of the earliest emerging dragonflies.
04/13/2026

Springtime Darner, Basiaeschna janata
This is one of the earliest emerging dragonflies.

More spring ephemeral wildflowersDutchman's Breeches, Dicentra cucullariaPoppy family
04/10/2026

More spring ephemeral wildflowers
Dutchman's Breeches, Dicentra cucullaria
Poppy family

Andrena erigeniaeSpring Beauty MinerThis small solitary native bee specializes in collecting the pink pollen from the sp...
04/10/2026

Andrena erigeniae
Spring Beauty Miner
This small solitary native bee specializes in collecting the pink pollen from the spring ephemeral wildflower, the Virginia Spring Beauty

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Charlottesville, VA
22901

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