Seeking Out Australian Native Orchids #78 - Ku-Ring-Gai Chase NP, NSW

I wanted to see if I could get better mayfly orchid photos in better light and to find more sun orchids flowering. So the plan was to follow the same route I had taken the walk before.

I spied this little yellow flower and tried a few things to get a half decent photograph. Nothing is working - I cannot see anything really in focus. You can see from the shadows that lighting was not a problem

Taken at 1/60 sec f/7.1 and ISO-400 - everything is fine. ISO matches the sunlight; F-stop is high to improve ability to focus. I do find that the manual focus process in bright sun is a challenge = operator error.

This does not bode well for mayfly photos which are next up also in bright light. The light was not as bright and I increased ISO to 800 and the f-stop had to come in to keep speed the same. I kind of like the picture with the curve of the dorsal sepal matching the line of light.

Mayfly Orchid- Acianthus caudatus

http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Acianthus~caudatus

More yellow flowers again in the sunlight - same ISO and f-stop but a much faster shutter speed. Because the flower has more depth it is easy to find something in focus. I have not edited this in any way.

A little further along the track I found some more mayfly orchids. This was the best picture I could conjure up. I liked the way the back flower does not distract my eye from the parts in front that are in focus.

Mayfly Orchid- Acianthus caudatus

http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Acianthus~caudatus

Not long after I had left that photo spot a group of 4 walkers came past - a little older than me. We got to chatting about walking and photography and orchids. They were walking up the other side of the creek to what I normally follow. I have not walked up that way before. I said that I was pretty sure that I would find sun orchids about opposite to where I normally see them. They were keen to get some orchid spotting lessons - new areas for them all. I went with them. Front part of the track has become quite overgrown with domestic garden escapees and the remnants of track work. No orchid joy there then.

Once the track climbed up to about the same elevation for sun orchids, I found the first sun orchids - resplendent in the sun. The first specimens were only partially opened - no amount of breathing on them was getting things opened. We did find quite a few more spread over a 400 metre range. Before long my new spotters were finding new flowers. This is the best picture with the column nicely in focus and the sun not too obvious. Note the small bug on the right hand sepal (looks like a petal but it is in the back row)

Dotted Sun Orchid- Thelymitra ixioides

http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Thelymitra~ixioides

Identification flows from the configuraion and colouring of the column - a dotted sun orchid with no spots. Next photo has clues about the hazards of being an orchid. Sitting inside the flower structure are a couple of black insects

On another plant we see what is going on. Aphids sucking the lifeblood out of the flower

... and the stem in the plant at the back

I left the walkers to continue on their way and made my way back the way I had come. Blow me down and I find a set of yellow orchids on the left hand side of the track not far from where I had met the walkers. As we had been focused on the left, we had not seen them on the right. This is an exciting find for me as it is the first time for this particular orchid anywhere and the first time I have seen the sub-species on this track. The sub species is Donkey orchid, so called because the flower looks like a donkeys ears.

Spotted Doubletail orchid- Diuris maculata

http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Diuris~maculata

Photo work is a big challenge as the light was low and the flower has quite some depth to it. First photo above taken from a little further back has the whole flower in frame and focus is strongly on the column. The next photo zooms in more to the column but loses some of the flower in the frame. Too bad. Note though a little colour noise on the lateral sepals (the green tinge on what should be yellow)

The next photo (which is sadly out of focus) shows the colour noise more explicitly. I can only guess that this is from the high 800 ISO setting in the lower light. The brighter light for the sun orchids did not bring that up.

Photos taken with Canon Powershot G16 on August 25, 2017.