I’ve been spending the last couple of weeks photographing in my backyard. It certainly saves on gas.  My backyard is no national park, in fact my house sits on less than a tenth of an acre. It’s a tiny piece of land, but you hang a couple of bird feeders and plant a few flowers…. suddenly  you’ve got a lot of things to photograph.  Like this bee on a Black-Eyed Susan flower.  At least I thought it was a bee until I looked it up in my National Audubon Society field guide on insects and learned this is a fly, the American Hover Fly to be exact. It drinks nectar and is beneficial to garden flowers for its aphid control. Notice the pollen sticking to its legs. Photograph taken with a 105mm f/2.8 VR lens.