Estate Finds XXXIV

Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

Nothing too exciting this week, so I’m making up for it by providing several different things – quantity instead of quality, the bywords of the US.

Let’s start with one that I discovered while mowing, and thus had to resort to the smutphone to capture, which once again convinced me how much they suck.

adult Chinese mantis Tenodera sinensis perched on author's hand
The mantids have not been highly visible on the property, and so finding this one was a little surprising, since it’s an adult Chinese mantis (Tenodera sinensis,) though with the wings it could have arrived from anywhere. Still, the largest mantid found so far wasn’t even half this size, though likely the other common species around here instead, the Carolina mantis.

adult Chinese mantis Tenodera sinensis perched on author's hand, by the Girlfriend
Despite the smutphone camera repeatedly locking focus directly on the mantis, which was dead-center in the focusing ring, damn near every time the shutter was tripped the fucking thing adjusted focus to the background. I would have charitably put this down to attempting this one-handed, had I not handed the phone over the The Girlfriend, who had the spare hand to tap the screen to tell the goddamn phone, “Focus here,” and still had it jump to the background immediately before tripping the shutter. Out of eight or nine frames, only these two locked in properly – and then, the color register and quality was still sub-par. Now, I’m sure that some people with their hyper-expensive smutphones can achieve better, and hooray for them. I’m not spending that much for a phone that goes obsolete within 18 months, especially something that fragile; I’ve spent a small fraction of the high-end phone costs on my current cameras, which do it right and will trash any phone photo handily. This is called, “cost effectiveness.”

In the background of this sits the almond tree, by the way, which has been very happy with the move and recently surpassed me in height – I just don’t have enough comparison photos to show this off well.

A few different, new-to-me wildflowers have appeared on the property, or to be more accurate, they’ve bloomed and made me aware of their presence. Presented in order of their difficulty to identify.

cluster of groundnut Apios americana flowers
i found this one in fairly short order within the North Carolina Wildflower Database that I use: this is a groundnut (Apios americana,) which also goes by the common names of potato bean, Indian potato, Virginia potato, wild bean, and wild sweet potato, all of which are misleading since it is a member of the pea family. Plants appear to be even worse than insects about having regional, colloquial names, to say nothing of the people that would confidently misidentify them. You get a hint of the esoteric bloom structure here, which I will have to revisit in better detail.

sicklepod Senna obtusifolia blossom and leaves seen at night
I made a small mistake on this one, in that I didn’t tackle these images until after nightfall, not realizing that this was one of those plants that close up at night. This is a sicklepod (Senna obtusifolia,) also going by five other common names, and I was also examining this plant to see if it featured any sleeping anoles, which is now a semi-regular exercise. So I actually examined those leaves closely to see if there were any tail-tips sticking out, thinking that an anole might have achieved its position before the leaves fully closed (which I don’t imagine do so firmly enough to actually trap a lizard.) We’ll return to this topic in a moment.

swamp loosestrife Decodon verticillatus in mid-bloom
I found nothing even approaching this in the online database, even accounting for their execrable take on what color something is, so I had to go back out with the smutphone and resort to PlantNet, which quickly identified it as a swamp loosestrife (Decodon verticillatus,) though for some reason the name was hyphenated in the app; it’s also called a waterwillow, which is decidedly more pleasant. The moths were partaking of these blossoms while I was out there at night.

Speaking of willows…

newborn carolina anole Anolis carolinensis sleeping on weeping willow Salix babylonica leafAs linked earlier, I’ve begun going out at night to do a count of the newborn Carolina anoles (Anolis carolinensis) that I find sleeping on various plants, since it now seems to be a serious buttload of them. For a couple of nights, my count stood at 23, but last night it jumped to 28. I’m sure there are more, but that’s how many I could confidently spot. Moreover, this was the first found on my new weeping willow (Salix babylonica) tree, last year’s birthday present, more or less; I was promised the tree when we found one in good shape, which was achieved several weeks ago, and it has also been quite happy with the new location. I made the mistake of not measuring it when we first got it, but it’s over three meters tall now.

[When I was growing up in central New York, we planted a weeping willow in a damp portion of the yard soon after moving in, so 1973 or ’74. As they do, this grew quickly and soon dominated that portion of the yard, and by the mid-eighties it was large enough to climb; I had a hammock strung across two boughs about five meters up, where I would lie and read on summer days, and in the fall, as the wind got gusty but not yet cold, it was enormously satisfying to be riding in the swaying canopy of the tree. The last time that I drove past the old house, it was still there, but as of March of this year, it is now missing in Google Earth images, which saddens me, but half a century still isn’t bad for a willow. Since we already had bald cypress on the property here, one of my pipe dreams, I figured we needed a new willow, though how much climbing I might be doing remains to be seen…]

newborn Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis slwwping on leaves of weeping willow Salix babylonicaActually, there were two anoles on the tree – despite that dangling foot giving the appearance of having caught this one trying to scramble away, it had only opened its eyes for the photo as I leaned in close with the headlamp. They do occasionally adopt some of the more awkward poses to sleep in, including hanging fully vertical, head down.

As I was making these rounds, I caught movement within the thick foliage that marks the hollow in the yard that we call The Puddle; in winter, it’s a complete, if small, pond, but the spring sees it become overgrown with only a few centimeters of water in the wet seasons. This means that the frogs adore it, and it isn’t hard to find treefrogs and narrowmouth toads hanging out. A tiny green treefrog (Dryophytes cinereus) appeared to be struggling, unable to free itself from the stem of a leaf, and I reached in to detach the leaf and see if I could help. My mistake: it was not actually trapped, but had seized a small ‘inchworm’ larva that refused to relinquish its hold on the leaf, and so a tug-of-war was going on, even within my hand as I snapped photos.

newly-emerged green treefrog Dryophytes cinereus struggling with unidentified larva that refused to let go of a leaf stem, while in author's hand
Notice the little fingers gripping the stem and larva – I really should have had video.

Eventually, between not having success with the larva and not being wild about doing this in my hand with the camera flash going off, the frog disgorged the larva and hopped away. I felt bad that it was deprived of its meal, but I’d been trying to help it, honest.

Okay, fine, I’ll go out and distribute a load of mealworms in the vicinity. Happy now?

Thinking like that

Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

Because I’m a supporter of George Hrab’s Geologic podcast, I receive his weekly newsletter, and the one from July 5th [yes, this sat in editing limbo for a bit] contained an article on superstition that he’d written for the James Randi Educational Foundation back in 2008. I’d done a post myself on superstition two years after that, without having seen his, so I dug it out to compare it as I read his own. Mine was much shorter and more ‘clinical’ (you know, like how that sketchy tattoo parlor is ‘clinical’) while his delved more into the social and empirical implications – I’d link to it here but I don’t believe it exists online anymore. Anyway, what I’m going to cover now is an extension of his own thoughts, so credit to George Hrab for most of this.

Basic premise of my post: superstition seems (to me) to stem from three things primarily, which are searching for meaning and cause, finding patterns, and confirmation bias. As for the first, while we endeavor to find the cause of any particular event or phenomenon, we too often view this through the filter of our human social instincts where we reward good behavior and punish bad, to keep the tribe strong, but then mistake events that occur to also follow this reward and punishment system, even when there’s no reason to believe this. When something bad happens to us, we’re too inclined to think that we deserved it somehow. The second part, pattern recognition, is simply our ability to seek patterns from what we experience, which was likely a decent survival trait and certainly assisted in our quest for knowledge – yet we can find patterns too often when no such pattern actually exists. And that brings us to confirmation bias, the practice of noticing the events or circumstances that support our beliefs and ignoring or downplaying those that fail to. Together, this gives us the ability to wonder about things like droughts, then consider that they might be related to when the peppers were harvested, and then start to believe that harvesting peppers leads to a drought (reinforced by not harvesting the peppers and finding that it rained soon afterward – even when it was bound to rain at some point anyway.) In short, various human traits combine to support superstition. Something that I failed to note in that post: assisting with this is the tendency to seek agency, to believe that events or occurrences are the product of intention rather than simply happenstance, which does a lot for supporting gods and all that. This last one isn’t always an aspect of superstition, but it appears a lot all the same.

Hrab goes into the advances of science and human achievement when superstition was ignored in favor of actual testing and experiments and consideration of other causes or answers, and this is the part that I’m highlighting now. It’s easy to believe that ancient cultures, when viewing the rare occurrences of eclipses, assigned them portentous or supernatural causes, and there are some limited accounts of this, though written records of older cultures are too sparse to give an accurate idea of how widespread such beliefs might have been. And while total solar eclipses tend to be few and far between, not usually able to be witnessed multiple times in anyone’s life span, partial solar and lunar eclipses are another matter. Someone, sometime, recognized that these occurred only at the times of new or full moons and began piecing together the patterns, ignoring whatever cultural beliefs existed about the special or supernatural causes and starting to find that they were only due to orbital mechanics. The Antikythera mechanism indicates that this occurred, at least in Greece, 2,200 or more years ago, since the patterns and timing were understood well enough to build a geared device that would predict future eclipses, as well as other celestial events.

Medicine is another excellent example. The various illnesses that befell humankind were given untold thousands of explanations and supposed treatments, some vaguely on the right track, some so far afield that we consider our ancestors to have been irretrievably stupid, but gradually, people began to notice the patterns, and to recognize the indicators and counter-indicators. Germ theory, easily the greatest advancement of medicine in our history, promoted the idea of organisms far too small to see as the primary culprit in numerous diseases, and while we can understand how difficult it was to get this idea across to enough people, the concept was obviously quite sound.

We might see such occurrences as evidence of past ignorance, a time when the populace was much more superstitious than today, but we need to recognize that a lot of such advancements occurred quite recently, and it wasn’t very long ago at all that exorcisms were practiced for erratic behavior; indeed, they still are.

The point here, however, is that a very large percentage of the advancements that we’ve made, as a culture, as a species, originated from people that didn’t accept the pat answer, that didn’t believe in the idea that ‘if enough others believe it, it must be true,’ that dared to question not just common knowledge, not just authority, but even their own senses. The ones that said, “Shouldn’t we expect B to happen if A is really true?” The ones that required a demonstrable and measurable body of evidence before they accepted an answer. They had to deny that tendency towards superstition, the ‘gut feelings’ and the internal prods towards accepting certain answers (or even just relying on other people as a guide,) to actually make progress.

It’s also easy to take the wrong message from this. The key isn’t, “Buck the trends and rebel against common knowledge,” which can be done for literally anything (as countless people do,) but instead, “Build the supporting data and the probabilities until the conclusion is valid.” And there’s even a caveat to that, because that pattern-seeking aspect, as well as the ego in believing we’re right, can cause us to ignore all of the evidence that fails to support this, which is confirmation bias, a huge favorite of those that embrace psychic powers and alternative medicine. Doubt is a key ingredient, especially self-doubt, the recognition of how many ways we can be wrong.

And there’s another aspect that doesn’t receive as much attention yet has held true throughout the majority of advancements, and that is, if we need to propose significant complication or properties that we have not actually measured or observed, it’s probably wrong – at the very least, such complications should be well-supported by evidence and data. Oh, the stars can predict what our personalities will be? How do they possibly do that? What physical law applies here, and in what manner? The number 666 is connected to satan? In what way, and why? Isn’t this a distinct giveaway that satan should have abandoned by now? Even small corporations will ditch their negative branding…

This is why critical thinking is such an important aspect of education, too often neglected in favor of simply teaching facts. The idea isn’t to memorize what we’ve found before, but to know how to find (and test, and confirm or deny) new results, new ideas, new discoveries. The scientific method, overall, places a lot of emphasis on this, though it’s not as widely adopted as it should be, but it should never be up to just college graduates; we should all be practicing this as much as possible. Remember that, at one time, there were no colleges, no such thing as ‘higher education.’ It took specific people to encourage and emphasize this departure from our internal biases to even promote the idea of an advanced and comprehensive education.

Those are the people that we need to recognize and emulate – or more specifically (since hero worship is missing the point,) the mindset and habits that they possessed. As interesting as it might be to believe in ghosts, as satisfying as it might be to think that shaking water gives it special properties, as self-affirming as it is to hear that Capricorns are supposed to like music and we really do, 99.999% of the time, the actual advancements and improvements in our culture and health and technology came from relying on more than feelings and gut instincts and “there’s something more mystical at work here, I know it.” We can’t look at any point in human history and say something like, “Boy, it’s a good thing we could tell how honest someone was by how far apart their eyes were – that certainly saved a lot of lives!” Let’s give credit and respect where it’s actually due, and not fall prey to the simpler human traits.

To beat twenty-three

Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

Last night I took The Girlfriend out to the side of the driveway (livin’ large, you know it!) because the previous evening I’d found that the overgrown spot was loaded with newborn Carolina anoles (Anolis carolinensis) all sleeping on the tall weeds there. Not quite as many there last night, seven as opposed to the eight that I’d seen the night before, but it was still a nice find for standing in one location and just spotting the little beggars hanging from the grasses – it’s fairly easy since they turn pale green at night and they stand out against the darker foliage. However, this led to crawling the property to see how many others there were, and we ended up with finding twenty-one newborns in various locations. Yes, this is a breeding ground.

Tonight I decided I’d try to beat that, or at least match it, and did the rounds alone, coming up with only twenty. I reported this to The Girlfriend, and she asked if I’d checked a particular spot from last night, which I hadn’t. Back out, and upped the count to twenty-three. So that’s the number to beat now.

But I needed a few pics – not all of them, just a few cute ones – and so, back out again.

two newborn Carolina anoles Anolis carolinensis sleeping on adjacent Japanese maple leaves
This is actually the Japanese maple tree closest to the door to Walkabout Studios, the same one that might have displayed the anole that had hatched while I wasn’t looking, and it routinely hosts three or four. This is the closest together that I’ve found a pair snoozing, though, so of course it needed a pic.

Linking to that previous post reminded me about the tail damage, which I’d forgotten, and the pics that I’d gotten weren’t clear enough, but it looked like one of them might have a damaged tail. So I went back out again, just now, and checked that tail:

newborn Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis showing regrowth on damaged tail
Yep, that’s evidence of a tail growing back, cockeyed too; it seems likely this one is the same as the one first seen on this tree. I love it when I can actually tell them apart – I’ll have to go out with a pair of scissors…

[NO, I’m not going out with scissors. It’s a, I say, it’s a joke, son!]

The other population explosion on the property has been the green treefrogs (Dryophytes cinereus,) which can suddenly be found in lots of places, almost all smaller than a thumbnail. One that I’d come across tonight resisted my attempts to get it to face the camera, and instead hopped onto my hand, so we have a handy (a ha ha) scale shot:

newly-emerged green treefrog Dryophytes cinereus perched on author's thenar space
Nice of it to be so cooperative even while it was being uncooperative, and after this frame I coaxed it back onto a leaf for a more natural portrait, though blocked from getting that head-on perspective that I was after by foliage.

newly-emerged green treefrog Dryophytes cinereus chilling on leaf
Look at those little translucent toes…

We’ve found that a collection of these tiny sprites has taken up residence near the kitchen window, up to six at a time, so we leave the light on over the sink to attract food for them, which seems to work since they’re not just routinely present, one of them appears long before darkness falls to get a head start.

Now, I can’t even speculate as to why this is, but it’s disturbingly quiet out there right now, with almost no sounds from any of the numerous frog species that inhabit the environs. Meanwhile, I came across several different examples of the same species, out well away from the pond:

green frog Lithobates clamitans out foraging away from pond
While there are several species relatively new to me that I’m chasing images of, these were not among them. The ‘vein’ running from the eye down to the hip pegs this as a green frog (Lithobates clamitans,) of which I have numerous pics. Well, I have even more of the green treefrogs, but they’re cute. All of the ones that I found tonight, and this might hold true for all of this particular species found on the property so far, were bronze in color and sported little green, so I’m pushing to establish a better common name for them that’s more appropriate and less confusing. Perhaps ‘foley frog,’ since their call sounds like a cheesy bouncy sound effect from cartoons.

Every time I was on my way back inside, I found something else to photograph, and this was one of them.

likely annual cicada Cicadidae newly emerged as final instar, still drying out
On the underside of an old plastic table sat this cicada, likely one of the annual cicada species, so we’ll just go with Family Cicadidae. It was still drying out from molting into its final instar, adult phase, as revealed by the blue hue to the wings (well, and the discarded exoskeleton right there of course.) Those wings actually look pretty cool up close, so up close we go.

drying wing detail of likely annual cicada Cicadidae newly emerged as final instar
Both the slightly-translucent veins and the distorted view through the wings was worth a close look, don’t you think?

Finally, I saved this one for last because it was easily my favorite, so let’s return to the green treefrogs, or at least one in particular.

newly-emerged green treefrog Dryophytes cinereus clinging to drooping blade of grass
Hopping away as I was maneuvering for another attempt at a head-on perspective, this guy made it even better by clinging to the bare tip of a blade of grass. It’s actually smaller than the one above, and you can compare it with the foley frog by looking at the grasses in both images. But who could resist this action pose?

So, not too shabby for only intending to get the two anoles sleeping together…

Well, yes, and no…

Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

Today marked another opportunity to capture a transit, and this time, we had clear skies and I kept the timing straight in my head and everything. The target was the Tiangong space station, China’s own entry into low-Earth-orbit experiments and observations, and the waning crescent moon. I checked everything, was on location (several kilometers south of Walkabout Estates Plus,) did my focusing and exposure tests, and was ready to go with the high-speed shutter setting when the time came.

And it did indeed work:

animated gif of Tiangong space station transiting moon during daylight
My timing was actually bang on, since I caught the space station on approach and completely past, as this animated gif (pronounced, “em-pee-FOR”) shows clearly.

What? You didn’t see a damn thing? But it’s right there! I even made sure to travel to the location where it would pass right across the center of the moon!

All right, sheesh. Here’s an annotated version – look to the left of the yellow pointers:

animated gif of Tiangong space station transiting the waning crescent moon during daylight, with pointers
Yeah, we see the problem here, that the 600mm wasn’t anywhere near the magnification necessary to show anything but a speck, especially when aiming only 34° off the horizon, meaning Tiangong was much more distant than overhead and allowing even more of the humid air between my location and the station. So it was successful, but not at all in a way that I wanted. At least I have an inkling what to attempt next time, which will likely reveal even more refinements that should have been done.

By the way, if you look at the moon you can see that it appears to travel downwards, which it is; the frames represent just over a second of actual time elapsed, and that’s how far it moved. More or less, anyway – you can also see some lateral twitching, which is either due to atmospheric distortion or twitching of the tripod, or both. The shutter speed was 1/1250 second, so fast enough to stop all but the most egregious of camera shake, but that doesn’t mean that between those frames there wasn’t a little vibration coming into play.

Still, the 2X teleconverter is probably warranted, if I don’t actually opt for the telescope instead, but I’m still working out how to get the clearest shots from that, much less have the tracking motor working properly. Still chasing this goal and not particularly close to it, is what I’m saying.

Other attempts can be found here (except for the Falcon one – I’m just linking to those posts tagged with “transit”) and the site I’m using to plot these is Transit-finder.com, which has been working well after that first attempt.

Estate Find XXXIII: The secret is corn

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Last week’s Find was still fresh on the, um, server memory thingy, whatever, when I got the first clips of this week’s. A few days later I was able to add to the stock, so we have a couple of days worth of observations, which also added in the number of other species appearing. So without further ado:

Now, this was not a total surprise, because we’d been down at the neighbor’s house late last year, one that lives further down The Bayou, actually just past where our portion ends, and had seen one then; just like this time, I had mistaken it for a beaver (only because I hadn’t seen the tail yet,) until the neighbor corrected me, but then never saw any sign of one again until now. I was a little surprised to find that they were this far inland, since my experience had only been with one on the Outer Banks, but here we are. And the beavers do actually come into the pond, or at least did for a while, decimating the yellow cow lilies as they did so, but those are growing back so it appears they’re not visiting much anymore.

The nutria seem pretty mellow about sharing their territory (well, except for the green heron,) but how are they with beavers, or beavers with them? Don’t know yet. The wood ducks also seem fine, though they didn’t show when I had the video camera going.

Most places you will find in the US, nutria are considered an invasive pest, and they can do a lot of damage, as well as carrying several zoonotic diseases that can transmit to humans. They were imported from South America for the fur trade and got established after escaping or being released upon the collapse of that trade, many decades ago. We apparently don’t have the same level of predators (or health hazards) here as in South America to keep their numbers in check, so the byword in many areas is, “Shoot on sight.” As far as The Girlfriend and I are concerned, they can stay here since there’s little they can damage, but we’ll see if their numbers start increasing significantly.

At least one has made an appearance every day this week, at different times, and I thought I’d seen a smaller one as well, but have not confirmed that yet. As for their lodge/burrow, no idea where that might be yet either, but I’ll keep an eye out.

But this time, I did the voiceover in the afternoon so the Copes grey treefrogs did not have a chance to contribute. Now all I have to do is work on dead air…

Visibly different, part 55

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Sure, this was the weekly topic three years ago, but who says it can’t be resurrected?

I mentioned a few days ago that I could illustrate something better, and now I’m keeping my promise. We’ll start with an image from several years back, with new annotations.

waxing crescent moon with craters marked
With the light angle of approaching 1st quarter, waxing crescent now, Theophilus crater stands out quite clearly as it reaches its own personal sunrise, and Langrenus has the barest hint of shadow from one wall. We now compare this to the image that I uploaded earlier, again with annotations.

just past full 2nd quarter moon with craters marked
It’s rotated, but that’s what the moon does as it traverses our sky – or more specifically, our viewing angle rotates as the Earth does. But now you can see that Langrenus is slightly more distinct, but Theophilus virtually disappears, only visible as a faint circle with a dot in it. This shows how the full moon loses so much detail, texture, and shaping, since the direct light disguises most of the surface irregularities that the lower light angles of other phases will enhance.

Maybe one of these days I’ll see if I have enough moon pics to do a full animation of the phases tracking across. It’ll be a royal pain in the ass due to the different angles, just like this, and the different colors from atmospheric effects, but it’s sure to garner recognition and acclaim, right?

It’s a start

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The other evening I was out, for some reason without the camera, and witnessed something that I knew was going on from time to time, but usually too far off to do anything useful about. I debated about specifically trying for some pics, which would require a nighttime stakeout, but never got beyond the contemplation stage.

Then tonight, I lucked out a bit.

mother North American raccoon Procyon lotor with two of her progeny
North American raccoons (Procyon lotor) of course, a mother in the middle with two of her four progeny, who are getting quite big now. What I’d found the other night is that, as long as I didn’t make any distinctly human sounds and kept the headlamp on them (and avoided silhouetting myself against a light behind me,) I could approach reasonably close. ‘Reasonably close’ is like a minimum of eight meters – this is at 135mm and cropped a little – because raccoons can be quite convincing when they want someone to leave. I had been shooting macro and saw the eyes reflecting the headlamp, so I carefully removed the softbox, changed settings on the camera to something more appropriate, and quietly walked closer. Mom suspected something was up and moved into the middle of her young’uns, occasionally standing on her hind legs to see better, but they never panicked or got aggressive. The flash didn’t seem to faze them either, since this is one of six frames that I fired off. I knew that the moment I turned around and shone the light on something behind me, showing the outline of me standing there, they’d be off like a shot.

I might at some point try video, but I’d have to set up the tripod and spotlight them pretty seriously, which may or may not work, and they don’t seem to appear on any particular schedule. We’ll see what happens.

The Magic Bucket doesn’t differentiate

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The other night I checked out the waste can outside the door to Walkabout Studios, otherwise known as the Magic Bucket of Variety (the can, not the studios,) to find that it had snagged yet another capture. This one was a small-ish wolf spider (Genus Lycosidae) and I noticed as I tipped it out that it looked a little odd. A closer inspection told me why, and once again I got the camera in hand.

female wolf spider Lycosidae with two newborns on her abdomen
This is pretty small, overall length in leg spread less than 30mm, so the fuzzy bits on her abdomen took fairly high magnification to see clearly, in this case the reversed Mamiya 45mm. Yes, they’re her newborns, just two of them, though a closer inspection of the can told me that a lot more of them were scattered around within, so I left it upside-down in the yard and set the few items of trash that had been within alongside it, so they could all escape. The image above is full-frame, though what we find when we crop in close is much better.

closeup crop of two newborn wolf spiders Lycosidae on their mother's abdomen showing prominent anterior median eyes
Awwwwww! Lookit those huge eyes! They’re like real-life Lucas the Spider!

The credit for this goes to the big round custom softbox, and by chance getting the right angle to reflect from the eyes so distinctly. Most times, the young riding their mother are so thick and oriented for protection, so you mostly see the abdomens and nothing else, but that’s hard to do with just two siblings.

Still, the Magic Bucket was almost responsible for starving an entire family, so I still need to keep checking it routinely. I suppose I could just use a lidded version, but then what would I do for new content?

LATE BREAKING NEWS: I set this aside to post a little later on today, and checked the Magic Bucket in passing:

unidentified crayfish caught in bottom of outdoor waste basket, again
Yes, another crayfish. I mean, what the hell, man?

Feisty one, too.

unidentified crayfish ready to throw down
Earlier, I thought that perhaps critters were getting caught in the corner between the house and the latticework that sits above the Magic Bucket (see here,) crawling through the lattice and dropping into the can. However, I had a couple of lightweight items sitting on the ledge that runs beside the steps and these had been knocked over, so there’s evidence that this one crawled all the way along that ledge. Still can’t answer why, and I haven’t seen it happen, so it remains a mystery.

Some other night

Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

I don’t know, I think this was three nights ago, I just didn’t post it then. But while doing something else in the yard, I went past a dog fennel plant that was starting to get a little tall and found this:

pair of newborn Carolina anoles Anolis carolinensis snoozing on small dog fennel Eupatorium capillifolium plant
Now, “a little tall” is relative to the surrounding grasses, which weren’t topping 20cm, but this was a bit less than a meter in height, and far from what dog fennel can accomplish at full growth. Not at all like the trees that most of their brethren were using to sleep upon, and the top curling over is from the negligible weight of the anole.

newborn Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis sleeping precariously on small dog fennel Eupatorium capillifolium plant
As much as it looks like an action pose here, the anole was motionless and quite secure in its sleeping position. These are both newborns, because it’s that season, and they seem to be sprouting up all over the damn place.

newborn Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis sleeping vertically on small dog fennel Eupatorium capillifolium plant
As you can see, this one was aware of my presence (or at least the bright light of the headlamp,) but did not otherwise react. Had a stiff breeze come up, they would have been going for quite a ride since dog fennel isn’t particularly sturdy, but I think they adjust to this fairly well – I know I’ve disturbed the branches that others have been on before and gotten only a slight shifting in readiness.

The next night only one was on this plant, and last night none at all – you might credit this to predation but it was likely only picking a spot close to where they’d been hunting during the day, and I don’t imagine the dog fennel was big enough to provide much in the way of food choices. Though over ten years ago, they served as the setting for a lot of images, mostly lady beetles.

I’m selfish

Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

I’ve been having reminders popping up from my calendar that the Perseids meteor shower is peaking within the next few days, and various sites that I’ve visited have been promoting it as one of the best showers of the year, insofar as number and display. But I’ve been neglecting posting about it for two reasons, the first being very self-centered: the skies have been overcast or semi-overcast for days (which has brought a much-needed respite from the heat,) and so visibility was zilcho. But that’s here, and maybe not where you are, should you actually exist and are not simply a figment of my imagination, which again is self-centered.

The other reason, however, is that the moon has just passed full and visibility, no matter what the atmospheric conditions, is going to be seriously affected by that, limiting the number of dimmer meteors that can be seen. Now, the radiant of the Perseids is right near the constellation Perseus, imagine that, which is to the northeast (if you’re in the northern hemisphere anyway,) so facing away from the moon – this helps a little. Except, the radiant isn’t the best guide to where to see the meteors – it’s simply that, on average, they seem to orient as if they were coming from there, though they can appear anyplace across the sky and don’t always adhere to this rule anyway. So my advice is, aim were you have the darkest skies, because the meteors are virtually guaranteed to appear most spectacularly exactly where you’re not aiming anyway.

Earlier this evening I was out, glanced up, and the moon was shrouded in scattered thin clouds which were illuminated by it, brightening the entire sky. So I went out a little later just to illustrate this to you (me,) and the clouds had cleared, except for the faintest haze. So I shot the moon anyway.

section of 2nd quarter full moon showing advancement of shadow as phase wanes
As I always say in every moon post I think, the full moon is boring, little more than a circular painting of greys, but any other phase shows more detail and character. So here I’ve selected the side that’s beginning to drop into shadow again, at full resolution, allowing you to see how the detail and texture and three-dimensionality are beginning to show. I’m actually going to be back later on to illustrate this better, I just don’t feel like typing it all up right now.

So if you’re inclined, so see the Perseids. You’re bound to do better than I, even if you’re imaginary – my luck with meteor showers is that bad.

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