For our opening image this week, we have a female southern black widow (Latrodectus mactans,) the first that I’d seen. It dates from 1991, and was found in a rock cleft on a trail that I frequented – getting her out was a challenge, because widows are shy and prefer concealment, and of course I was endeavoring not to get bitten. Credit to the species, though,
Category: Nature
Pathetic
Well, I did get out to chase turtles for World Turtle Day, and I present proof:
Hey, listen, even I’m saying, “Really? This?” But here’s the deal: There are tons of turtles in the neighborhood pond, which is no challenge at all, so I figured I’d make the effort to photograph a species that I hadn’t seen in a while,
Go find a turtle
Getting this out early to let you know that today is World Turtle Day (for realsies, cross my heart,) so go out and find yourself a turtle – it should be warm enough throughout most of the US to spot one someplace. Or if you don’t want to do that, you can always donate to the
Make-up quiz
This past Saturday, as I said, was World Migratory Bird Day for about 21% of the world, including this portion, but I regrettably did not get out to do anything appropriate. I decided to try and make up for this on Wednesday and went down to Jordan Lake, the closest location with the greatest variety of birds. It wasn’t enormously active that day, but I managed a few frames here and there.
Head of the line
I had a selection of photos from the other day that I needed to post about, and was trying to get motivated to write that one up, when the thunder started about the same time that the Lightning Tracker on my smutphone went off again. It had gone off before, but the center of activity was too far northwest and typically such cells draw farther north as they pass, but this time the strikes were more
Routine patrol
While this doesn’t happen daily, I frequently do a patrol of the sprawling acreage of Walkabout Estates to see how things are coming along (as well as watering all the ‘tended’ plants, which can take some time anymore.) It’s not the best of ideas to ‘watch plants grow,’ really, because they’re better off being seen at least a week apart, but it’s necessary
You got a problem?
Tonight was sorting night, because I’d finally gotten enough photos in the folder to make it worthwhile, so I put on the Geologic Podcast and hemmed and hawed over whether each image made the cut or not – over a thousand before sorting, if you must know, though how many I retained I haven’t bothered to
Casual shooting
Between being deep in projects, and not really motivated by the same ol’ photo subjects, I haven’t been doing a lot of shooting. I mean, there’s plenty to see around Walkabout Estates, but I’m trying to branch out a bit and do new things, which will likely require a trip someplace, while see that bit about projects. But I’m getting a handful of subjects while I’m
Dark of the moon
If you’re in the eastern half of the US or Mexico, eastern third of Canada, or anywhere in Central and South America, there will be a total lunar eclipse on Sunday evening (May 15th) – see here for times for your area. The moon will be passing deep into the Earth’s shadow, so totality
Visibly different, part 19
Our opening image today comes from 1995, my first trip alone to Florida, dedicated to nature photography. I was starting to get serious about it, but was still using older Olympus equipment and print film, and this was taken with a Vivitar 75-260mm lens. I was in JN “Ding” Darling National Wildlife