They’re trying to avoid me

May 3, 2021 Al Denelsbeck

It’s almost 4 AM right now, and don’t ask me about my sleep schedule. But yesterday evening (as in, about seven hours ago,) I checked on the mantis egg sacs in the yard because I know they’re due – actually overdue, going by previous years. Nothing was happening then, so as I stepped out this morning at 3-ish I only glanced down at the nearest one in passing, since it sits by the Japanese maple right by the front door – and saw the telltale beard.

Yep, they thought they’d slip this hatching by me – and almost succeeded, too, especially since we’re due for a thunderstorm in about four more hours. Wasn’t going to try setting up the video light, so it’s only still photos this time; I got video last year of the hatching, and now I’m aiming for hunting behavior, at least. See how many you can spot just in this tighter shot; the thin legs are the giveaway. But it was apparent they’d been at it for a while, judging from the huge number roaming the twigs.

The twigs here are not from the maple, but the dried branch that I affixed the egg sac to, and they were mostly sticking to it, though some had ventured farther ‘afield’ and as I leaned in closer for detail shots, more of them felt threatened and dropped away like rain. This hurts them not at all, since their mass is so slight that even a big drop results in infinitesimal impact, and they just scamper away upon landing.

I really do have to emphasize their numbers.

Curiosity has me wanting to do a rough count to see how many had emerged, but I knew this would be nigh impossible. Not only had they already started to disperse among the maple and underlying vinca/periwinkle, but they were criss-crossing one another and dodging back and forth, so it would be hard to tell who was already counted. It will be an exercise for the day that I see the first hints of emergence, and want to sit there for several hours. Don’t expect that to happen anytime soon.

And while I didn’t see any in the act of emerging, I probably could have just waited, since at least one was still limbering up before detaching itself from the ‘dragline’ that anchors them to the ootheca.

You can see the still-bulging ‘forehead,’ just below the dark eyes, a bullet-shape that disappears soon after emergence, so this one was almost certainly less than 15 minutes old. And of course, the discarded exoskeletons (or something,) the chaff from all of the previous – you can go ahead and count those if you like.

They were definitely reluctant to let me loom in too close, no matter how slow I went, but then I got lucky with one that roamed into range as I was already in position.

Only a few days back, I had completed mowing and edging the area, less than a meter from the egg sac, so I’m glad I won’t have to do it again for a while – we’ll avoid the slaughter as much as possible. They are, of course, a little less than 10mm in length, and so a bit hard to discern unless you’re right on top of them (or they’re clustered in huge masses right after hatching.) Thankfully, they tend to stay up on plants and not run around in the lawn very much – though they do spread out a bit, so it still happens.

I was hoping to get one to pose on the vinca blossoms for some nice colorful shots, but despite the availability of at least four flowers in the immediate vicinity, they weren’t getting particularly close. Then I lucked out slightly as a wandering individual started sizing up a new bud for a jump.

It eventually decided against it, so this is the best I got in the short session, but I’ll likely have plenty of opportunity. Close by, there will soon be daylilys, peonies, and the butterfly bushes to pose against, so we’ll see what happens.

On this date 58

May 2, 2021January 8, 2024 Al Denelsbeck

Yes, this topic has not died yet, but there’s a special reason for it to occur this time, and we’ll get to that. Right now, let’s see what was happening on this date in history. Pretty recent history, and nothing at all historical. Pretty self-centered, to be blunt. But it’s a blog, which as I’ve said before, is an exercise is thinly-veiled narcissism. If it’s veiled at all.

So back to Florida we go.

In 2004, I was out in the Indian River Lagoon (surprise surprise) making the valiant attempt to get clear photos of aquatic species through a rippling surface, never the best of moves – the water might look quite clear and reasonably calm, but our vision tends to average out the distortion of each little wavelet while the camera will capture the funhouse effect. Nonetheless, I snagged a decent-enough frame of a Florida stone crab (Menippe mercenaria,) a species that I saw quite infrequently. Despite their buff and steroidal appearance, and the fact that their pincers looked easily capable of lopping off a finger joint, stone crabs are incredibly meek and seek shelter at the slightest provocation, at least in my experience – I could just be that intimidating myself. Atlantic blue crabs are something else entirely; they’ll take a shot at you if you’re just in the general neighborhood.

A year later, an entirely different neighborhood.

I’d moved back to NC in the interim and realized that I’d never done a dedicated mountain trip in the previous years that I’d lived here, and corrected this oversight that spring. I’d underestimated the advancement of the spring growth, however; while things had been well in bloom for two weeks in the eastern Piedmont where I lived, that flower peak was still about two weeks off in the Blue Ridge mountains, and some of the trees still hadn’t budded out. But I was mostly chasing waterfalls, and had to look this one up again (in Kevin Adams’ excellent guide, North Carolina Waterfalls – Where to Find Them, How to Photograph Them, which I’d had for years at that point.) It’s Moore Cove Falls, not huge or impressive, but it has its possibilities (as I’ve hopefully illustrated.)

I’ve taken a whole lot of photos on May 2nd throughout the years: according to the spreadsheet that I created for this topic 18 months ago, 240 in the stock folders, and those were the ones good enough to retain. I had about nine potential images for this post, but I’m going to jump ahead eight years to 2013 for the next, because I picked those that I liked best.

Someplace nearby, the undiscovered ootheca of a Chinese mantis (Tenodera sinensis) had hatched out, and there were plenty of newborn mantids scampering about on the azaleas right outside the door. I should need no justification of this particular focus.

Two years later, we’ll feature two, because I couldn’t decide between them.

Identification-wise, this photo is quite unspecific, because it’s actually hard to differentiate the two different species, especially when I didn’t take measurements and am going off memory. But this is likely a wasp variety known as a beewolf (genus Philanthus,) because the adults will feed bees to their nymphs, even though they eat nectar themselves. It’s on an aster variety, likely one of the fleabanes (genus Erigeron.) But the focus, on an insect not exceeding 12mm, is bang on, isn’t it? I couldn’t pass this one up for the feature, even though a sequential frame has appeared here before.

That was in the NC Botanical Garden in the morning. That afternoon, I was wandering around the neighborhood pond and came across a treacherous pile of dog crap.

… Or at least, that’s what it looked like initially, and it’s possible that others had strolled past it without realizing its true nature. This is a northern water snake (Nerodia sipedon sipedon,) basking on the banks, helping itself dry out for its impending molt – that’s what those opaque eyes mean. It also means that this individual, of a species known for being quick to bite, cannot see well and will be especially prone to defensive measures. However, I took advantage of its obscured vision to lean in close for detail, counting (successfully) on my wraithlike abilities to remain silent and undetected [see above re: narcissism.] And in fact, silence isn’t even necessary, because snakes don’t have any ears, so I just had to keep the vibrations to a minimum.

And finally, the image that provoked all this.

One year ago, we were in the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge, the one excursion that we took all year long, and we were parked on the side of the trail and trying for a decent frame of a male red-winged blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus.) Obviously this isn’t it. It is, instead, evidence of my exquisite timing, as I tripped the shutter right when another visitor drove between us – you’re seeing the bird through two car windows. I had come across the frame again a few weeks back and set it aside for eventual use, then realized that the anniversary was coming soon; that, and finding just how many frames I’ve taken on this date, was the impetus of this post. And where I said above that there were 240 images for this date? That spreadsheet was made before this trip, so there’s a hell of a lot more in the folders now.

I was going to include one from today specifically taken for this post, but it’s 3 AM as I get ready to finalize it and there’s little to shoot. I considered the moon, just as a gimme, but the altitude it’s reached at this point means that it’s obscured by trees; I checked, going out in shorts, T-shirt, and barefoot despite the fact that it’s 9°C out there right now (spring seems to be only here during the day.) That’s dedication to a topic – only, not so much that I actually have a photo to put here.

Some birds before retiring

April 30, 2021 Al Denelsbeck

I have a gout of bird photos taken recently, so I’ll throw them up quickly to round out the month. I’ll still be one shy of a post for every day in April, but so be it. Worse, I don’t have a podcast for the month either, but may make up for this shortly.

Also, remember when I mentioned doing the sorting? I’d cleaned out the download folder at that point, yet it now has over a thousand photos awaiting sorting again as I sit here, and some more of those will be edited for blog use – I’ve found that if I don’t do it before I sort them into their categorical folders, I rarely go back and find blog topics from there, so it’s better to do it pre-sort.

The Girlfriend and I had been cruising around the neighborhood pond a few days back, and on our initial circuit, I lined up with the pair of double-crested cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus) that tend to hang out on the pilings, and snagged a near-mirror-image frame for giggles.

These piling sit at the end of a little peninsula on the pond, so there are two primary angles that I can achieve, and as I came around to the second, I was able to include a great blue heron (Ardea herodias) in the frame – with the unplanned addition of a Canada goose (Branta canadensis) to boot.

Granted, depth of field at that focal length wasn’t really working in my favor, but I can assure you, that blob in the distant background is indeed a goose, and (despite the similarity in appearances) not a UFO or Bigfoot.

Yet we’d made it most of the way around the perimeter without seeing any of the green herons (Butorides virescens,) and I was puzzling over it a little, given how active they’d been only a couple days previously. And then I glanced down at the water’s edge near my feet to find one right there, not four meters away, which is a lot closer than they usually allow.

I was extremely cautious as I drew The Girlfriend’s attention to it and maneuvered for a good angle, but really, it was likely wasted effort; the heron didn’t seem to give the barest fragment of a rat’s ass that I was there. So I was able to do a full-length portrait…

… and a tighter closeup…

(The above image is full-frame, by the way) … and even a head-on perspective with some careful circling around…

Really, way too lucky with these. I remarked earlier that I knew there was at least a pair, with one being more tolerant of close approaches than the other, so I have to assume this is that one. I’m still watching for nesting behavior, even though I suspect I’d never get a clear view of the nest. And this makes me recall that I have some good illustrations of this, but not edited for posting yet. They’ll be along.

We had stopped to chat with a friend of ours, a resident around the pond, but as the two ladies got deeper into conversation, my wandering eyes were picking out more subjects. Very close by in plain sight, what I believe is a juvenile red-shouldered hawk (Buteo lineatus) sat and watched us impassively.

I’m not sure I could pin down a positive ID from this view, but our friend said she’d had a nest in her backyard and that was only a couple dozen meters off, so I’m fairly confident of tagging this as a red-shoulder. Before I could break in and draw their attention to it, it flew off, having completed its onus of sitting still for a portrait.

We were right alongside a nest box for eastern bluebirds (Sialia sialis) where we normally didn’t pause, so I was able to catch the male after his turn stuffing the young-uns.

We didn’t have a decent vantage into the nest box, so no pics of the young, but I’ll keep an eye out and potentially catch one of them bailing the box as they fledge. It’s a very narrow timeframe, and they’ll soon be up in the branches above, so more than a little luck will be involved if it happens.

Our friend had also told us about a pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) that had been visiting, though she hadn’t seen it in several days. Then she got engrossed in conversation with other residents (it was a very pleasant afternoon and, really, what else is there to do these days?) and missed the bird flying overhead and landing in a nearby tree. I could only get a couple of clear shots at it, but I’m pleased, since pileateds tend to be rare around here and it’s been a couple of years since I saw one.

It’s a shame, because they’re very cool birds, and quite big as far as woodpeckers go, only a little smaller than crows in body size. Plus they have great calls – I’ll endeavor to get some recordings at some point.

Less endearing was the sight as we returned home, hearing a commotion in the neighbor’s yard and seeing some frantic activity at a nest box of theirs.

That’s a male red-bellied woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus) raiding the nest box presently used by a black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus) family. I’d never actually seen this behavior myself, but there was no question it was after the young.

I hadn’t actually had the camera in hand when we first saw this, so I’d had to rush in and grab it, giving some indication how long this was going on. I also attempted a couple of video clips, but even braced on a fencepost, the video is so wobbly that I can’t inflict that on you. This answered the question that I’d had as to whether a monopod would be sufficient for long-lens video clips. No. No it would not.

At our first sight, one or both of the parents was well in attendance, attempting to dissuade the woodpecker, but upon returning with the camera I only got this one frame (and a bare blur in the video); they’d started to keep their distance. The woodpecker (slightly larger than a robin) managed to pull something from the nest and kept it hidden from our vantage on the far side of the nest box, but I had several views of it picking and discarding fluff, so I’m fairly certain it got a nestling chickadee. After that, it made another few attempts, then flew off, and I get the impression that another nestling, at least, was too deep to be reached, because the parent chickadees are still attending the nest.

Only a couple of minutes after seeing the raider fly off, we saw it again on trees in our yard, busy foraging among the bark as they are typically found. The vantage, with intervening branches, was worse at times, thus the green blur.

On occasion, it peeked out into the bright sunlight and allowed some better lighting, and I liked the glow from the eyes here.

But as I examined the photos afterward, I realized this was a different individual, not having the wet-looking stripe along the top of the head (potentially even blood from chickadee attacks) that’s visible in the earlier frames.

This raises it own questions, because the two trees were only a handful of meters apart, so this means two males in the same territory, and neither one looked like a juvenile. One taking advantage of the other being occupied? I can’t say. This one stayed busy for several minutes as I got achy muscles from holding the long lens practically over my head, eventually laying down on the back deck and shooting from a supine position, which helped a bit.

The woodpecker foraged busily under the bark of the oak tree in that slightly-manic way of theirs, almost like stop-motion animation. Makes me wonder how much caffeine they consume…

In some cases, way under, trying to find those juicy little wood-borers that make up the majority of woodpecker diets. I couldn’t pass up that view, could I?

And finally, today we did another brief trip out to Jordan Lake, which was brilliantly sunny but with a stiff wind, very seaside-like. And true to form, the eagles were easy to find, which I’m still getting used to. There was only one instance of actual fishing, way off in the distance, so no good pics of that, but a juvenile eventually passed quite close by overhead. This is the full-frame perspective:

And now we have to go in for a detail crop:

But, I have an ugly confession to make: these are not the same frame. They’re sequential, a second or less apart, but I liked the catchlight in the eye for this view, while the wisps of clouds in the previous shot made the full-frame view look better. Try not to let it ruin your sleep tonight.

And I’ll close with this one, because I’m me.

I caught the glitter of this in the sunlight as it occurred, and was glad the wind was in another direction; you may have to look hard to see the details below and behind the eagle. I saw it with its talons dropped, normally a sign of a stoop for prey, but apparently it’s also a sign that nature calls, as the juvie dropped a deuce from altitude. Let that be a warning to you: if the talons drop and the bird isn’t coming down to the water, close your mouth.

I have only a couple minutes left in the day and month, so away it goes!

April must skedaddle

April 30, 2021April 29, 2021 Al Denelsbeck

Nobody skedaddles anymore, do they? It’s becoming a lost art. Maybe I’ll start a school…

But it’s the end of the month, and you know what that means. No, not fresh underwear day – it’s the end of the month abstract, begun through a trivial coincidence and continued through sheer lack of originality and good sense. Today we have…

… to be honest, I have no idea what this is. No, okay, I lie, not being honest at all, because I’m perfectly certain this is – but wait, do you want to guess? I don’t want to take that from you. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
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If you guessed, “the surface of Enceladus illuminated by gamma ray bursts,” there’s a prize waiting for you, solely for being obtuse, because how the hell am I gonna get a pic of the surface on Enceladus during a gamma ray burst? The radiation would discharge the batteries. No, this is actually pine pollen on the surface of Jordan Lake, taken way back when; I noticed, as the sun got lower, that the pollen wasn’t in the water but instead riding on top of it enough to show a texture with the right light angle, and immediately knew I had my month-end photo.

Or one of them, anyway.

Some of my abstracts are pretty weak, stretching the meaning of the word even to my standards, but both of these I’m pretty happy with. While in Duke Forest trying to find decent subjects, an eddy in New Hope Creek had collected the shedding flowers and such from some species of tree nearby, in a vaguely Starry Night way; I’m especially pleased with the air bubbles captured underneath. Or it might be methane – I never bothered to check. I know, I know; I’m a lazy little shit.

But of course this means May is right on its heels, and that’s fine with me; I think May might be my favorite month. There’s even a chance it will be photographically productive. Shocking, I know…

I let my guard down…

April 29, 2021 Al Denelsbeck

… and of course someone snuck in.

In this case, it was the first of the mantis egg cases (oothecas) hatching. There are several in the yard, including four now that had been naturally placed there – three Chinese mantids and a Carolina. I was doing routine checks, but the last one discovered, deep under an untended thicket of mostly vines, I now realize that I don’t recall checking two days ago, and so yesterday I find it with the telltale ‘beard’ of molted exoskeletons that the new hatchlings soon discard.No sign of any hatchlings though, so I figure it had occurred the day previously, or even overnight. I am ashamed to have missed this, bringing dishonor to my family and profession, and I poked myself in the belly with a butter knife to atone for this. But in my defense, the position was so bad on this one that I was certain I’d be doing very few extreme closeups of the hatching, and no video – just too much stuff in the way. Here’s a small example:

And bear in mind, this is with crouching low and aiming into deep shadow – I only discovered it when picking up damnable pinecones before mowing. I took no photos on the day of discovery, so going out there this morning, I made it a point to search carefully for the newborns, and only managed to spot two, but they do represent the first mantids of this year, so everyone take note.

Since oothecas typically produce dozens to hundreds of mantids (each bit of chaff in the beard represents one emergence,) they made themselves scarce pretty thoroughly, but the foliage is thick enough that this is no surprise. It does slow me down from the project of clearing out some of that unwanted undergrowth, though. And it’s going to make me do more frequent checks of the other egg sacs – I’m wasting too much time on the computer right now…

Profiles of Nature 17

April 29, 2021April 29, 2021 Al Denelsbeck

Wow, you’re still coming back? We should have defeated even the most die-hard masochists by now, but okay. Today we’re dropping in on Euphrosyne (six syllables,) who’s largely retired from the biz now. She started out just fine, pulling down gigs for Guns and Ammo and Elevator World magazines, and even a walk-on for an episode of BJ and the Bear (no, she can’t walk, but she’s an accomplished actress, dumbass.) She soon had her own line of clothing, but had to give it up because the homeowners’ association didn’t allow clotheslines. Still, everything was looking rosy until one day two years ago when she was not refused service at a local restaurant, the maître d’ averring that she was too small a snake to provoke even the willies; the ensuing scene involved multiple police officers, two lay preachers, and a sign spinner. After that, Euphrosyne withdrew from the Public Eye (her odd bank in Massachusetts) and became a bit of a hermit, or maybe theirmit now, not appearing in public, never returning phone calls, and only posting four times a day on FaceBlerk. Naturally, rumors abound: that she lives in a trailer with 28 caps, or that she’s responsible for child beauty pageants, or she doesn’t have any Bluetooth devices. We could find no support for any of these, but we’d started them anyway, having attended journalism school, so we’ll just dodgily imply that she has some filthy habit – your choice. Her great-grandparents came over from South Sudan, and her favorite discredited discipline is plombage, according to a bio that isn’t actually hers.

If you don’t come by every week, you might miss the time when this content actually becomes interesting!

It feels better to be shooting

April 26, 2021 Al Denelsbeck

The temperature is still bouncing up and down more than it should (said within earshot of Mother Nature,) but it’s quite nice to be able to go out and easily find something to photograph. Have I mentioned that winter sucks? I mean, where are all the protestors aiming to correct that?

A few days back now, The Girlfriend and I did a pass around the neighborhood pond, not in the best of conditions considering that it started raining while we were out there, but still able to produce a handful of worthwhile shots. The double-crested cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus) are not only still around, they’re increasing.

I initially took the spread one as a male, seeing it from a distance and noticing the darker feathers (males are mostly black,) but closer inspection showed it to be a wet female, one of three females residing at the pond now. We should be in season to see the namesake double-crests, but we need a male for that.

Another pair of images just for illustration:

This is the full frame (with the Tamron 150-600mm of course,) to give you an idea how much the next was cropped.

Do you like the detail? I know I do. The autofocus can still wander a bit too much, but when it’s on, it’s on.

I’m still watching the pair of green herons (Butorides virescens,) and on that day, stalked what I’m taking to be the more mellow one. It can be hard to distinguish birds apart from one another, but so far, one seems quite spooky and won’t allow a close approach, while the other is a lot more tolerant of such.

This is almost full-frame, so we were quite close – about six meters, I believe. It remained wary, but did not interrupt its foraging over us. This image shows the nice variety of feathers, typical plumage for the adults. Like most of the heron family, males and females are largely indistinguishable, so I’m not even going to try.

As it wended along the water’s edge, it obtained the cover of border plants, but I still managed another view, switching to manual focus and using the herons’ lambent eye as the focal point whenever I got a clear enough view. The effect from the out-of-focus leaves worked pretty well.

This, to me, is more expressive of their habits, since they prefer to forage where hidden by foliage. Granted, it doesn’t show off their appearance worth a damn, but to give an accurate representation of their behavior, it works great.

We didn’t get out there again until this morning, and in fact, The Girlfriend initially stayed home – until I spotted something that I figured she’d want to see, and called her to come over. This is the first I’ve seen on the pond this year.

They were more visible when I first saw them, but I didn’t have the camera out then. And when I did, I shot some video instead while they were in plain sight. These are of course Canada geese (Branta canadensis,) with goslings in tow – six, though only two are visible here between the adults.

By the way, the snag in the foreground is the same one used by the green heron last year, and as I link to it, I’ll suggest looking at the barring on the neck, which indicates that one was last year’s brood. It remains possible that it’s one of the same ones seen here this year, but there’s no way of telling.

But we’re getting sidetracked from the goslings.

They were quite active, wandering across several yards alongside the pond, with the adults running interference whenever another goose ventured too close – I just missed video of this, twice, but stay tuned. The adults tended to herd them a safe distance from us, meaning a handful of meters, but they’re also fed by some of the residents (the human ones) so they’re not too wary.

The Girlfriend was glad that I called her over, since she’d been planning on using the morning solely for her employee duties, but this was more interesting, and much cuter – she made up the time, don’t fret about it. Sheesh.

I played with a couple of fartsy frames, per Mr Bugg’s instructions, since the water iris was popping out in a couple of places. I searched the plants carefully for green treefrogs (or anything else of merit,) but didn’t get anything to work with except some dew drops, so I’m just O’Keeffing here.

As we circled the pond, we saw no sign whatsoever of the green herons, which I found curious because it was a bright morning and I expected them out. As we came back around to the small copses of trees that I’m reasonably certain held a heron nest last year, I finally spotted a little movement within, eventually determining that a pair was close together within the thick foliage – the view was so bad that I suspected it was them only because of the size. It appeared that they both flew off only a short distance, but then one returned within a minute or so, giving a little more weight to the idea that they’re thinking of building a nest therein – either that or they’re really late risers. I searched as best as I could, given the foliage and my desire not to be obtrusive, and saw no evidence of a nest, which really means nothing – it could easily have been there and I just never spotted it. Or, since they were both out foraging only a few days previously, it hasn’t been started yet. We’ll just have to see what transpires. But as I was there, I maneuvered around to get the barest spot to peek through, and the heron obliged by shifting a little to watch me better.

Will this lead to more behavioral photos, perhaps some nice nest shots or feeding young? Can’t say, and won’t try to predict – I’ll just do what I can, but at least I’m a little more on top of it this year.

A break in the numbers

April 23, 2021 Al Denelsbeck

This was going to be another of the ‘Just Because’ posts, but really, there’s too damn many numbered posts, so it’s not. And it’s a throw-up, just something that I came across today when watering the plants. Which looked almost exactly like this:

I had initially identified this as a black rat snake/eastern rat snake, but afterward as I looked at the almost uniformly indigo belly and smooth scales, I realized it was a racer (Coluber constrictor) instead. I always pictured them with slightly narrower heads, not to mention the habit of hurtling away upon anyone’s approach, but so much for that. Somewhere in the realm of 120-130cm in length and thus average for the species, this one was remarkably patient, not only staying put as I got the camera and The Girlfriend (who doesn’t like snakes but has gotten used to them enough to observe from a moderate distance,) but also as I leaned in pretty close for pics.

The one aspect where it was not cooperative was with the tongue action; it demonstrated plenty as I shifted position, but only a hint when I was locked in and focused, and I caught just the barest tip in a single frame, visible only at high res. Ah well.

And while we’re here, the eastern rat snake, almost identical, would show a distinct longitudinal line, a ‘keel,’ on each body scale – subtle, but it would be plainly visible in this light. This might actually be the same snake as last year, though it’s a few dozen meters away from that area – certainly not outside of any normal range. Going through the collection of frames from both years just now, the color pattern around the head isn’t identical but is remarkably similar, so I’m giving it a better than 80% chance, myself [Editor’s note: The author has no scientific training and hates math, so his estimate has less than a 50% chance of accuracy.]

Still closer.

I was a little amazed that this guy did nothing but twitch slightly as I got in this close, though I admit that, a little later on using the smutphone camera just to pester others with the shots, the snake finally decided that I was invading its personal space and gently, slowly backed from view. The focus on this particular frame needs a closer look, however, so let’s get to that:

While last year’s shot was done with the 150-600mm lens, this was with the 18-135mm, meaning I was considerably closer. So menacing in appearance, and racers are much more willing to bite than rat snakes, but this one just stayed as motionless as possible and counted on this as protection; it may have been a different matter had I tried to pick it up, but I’d rather encourage it to hang around, so I let it be and went back to my yard work. We’ll see if I encounter it anytime later on.

Air, and a little Water, Day

April 22, 2021 Al Denelsbeck

While my schedule was a little odd, I did get the chance to go out for a short while in recognition of Earth Day, so back to the lake it was. I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed when, after reminding all my readers of the holiday and talking so recently about the species that could be found down there, Jordan Lake was remarkably quiet. It’s like I’m not reaching anyone somehow…

Still, I found a handful of things to photograph, and got some outdoor time and fresh air that notably wasn’t laden with some wicked allergen that hit me right in the back of the throat (unlike all day yesterday,) so I’m good. Still trying to be better of course, but right now I’m not complaining, and that’s remarkable enough on its own.

While a handful of herons and a red-tailed hawk made an appearance, we’ll just stick with the bald eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) for now; either their numbers have exploded at the lake recently, or they’ve moved from an area that I was unaware of to my most-frequented haunt. It takes almost no effort anymore.

High overhead, an adult and a juvenile wheeled together, almost appearing to be courting, which may be possible (I suspect they reach sexual maturity before their fourth year when they achieve the white head and tail of the adult,) or it may have been a parent and offspring, though I doubt this year’s because of the coloration – it looks like 2nd or 3rd year for the juvie, to me. There was no further behavior to support either idea, however, and eventually they separated a bit and disappeared from view.

Then it was quiet, but after a while I spotted one in the distance coming closer, and I switched position on the chance that it might do some fishing in my view. The sun was high and bright, not ideal for shooting up into the sky, but as the eagle started banking around I got a couple of decent angles.

This one was ‘stepping’ lower, slight swoops and pullouts, no actual diving, more like false starts, but it steadily dropped lower.

As the feet started to extend from their tucked position, I knew it was spotting potential prey, even though it maintained the indecisive descent. I wasn’t about to look away now.

Yep, it’s got its eye on something, and I silently cheered it on.

Annnddd the focus twitched away again, inexplicably. I’m going to spend the day tomorrow hashing out just what the hell it seems to be doing, and/or trying to prevent it. But this is what I got today, and the action is clear at least.

Gracefully, it snatched its prey from the water and started climbing back out, very shallowly. This is cropped significantly, and in the viewfinder I wasn’t completely sure that it had caught one or not, but since the eagle headed straight off without climbing much or wheeling back, it seemed likely to me.

I’ll be back to make more attempts, and video is in the works – I’ll have to determine if a tripod is necessary or a shoulder-rig will be sufficient, but shooting freehand (like these still photos) would only induce seasickness. We’ll see what happens, hopefully soon.

Profiles of Nature 16

April 22, 2021April 22, 2021 Al Denelsbeck

This week we wave back to Rigoberto, only to realize he was just admiring his ring. Rigoberto didn’t let his appearance hold him back, and Buscemi’d his way into movie roles such as The Jungle Book (1967,) Clash of the Titans (1981,) Conan the Barbarian (1982,) and as a stand-in for Kenneth Copeland and Sylvia Browne (though he regretted both on moral grounds, and ended up donating his fees to the charity ‘Holy Shit Use Your Head For Something Other Than A Snapchat Filter’ to help offset this.) In fact, he’s very motivated to help others, but after being asked not to volunteer at retirement homes or children’s hospitals, he found his niche perching outside Ford Motor plants, eventually being credited with a 12% increase in quality among the vehicles produced therein (nowhere near enough, but better than anything their execs ever accomplished.) Rigoberto is a perfectionist on the job, insisting on nothing but the absolute best performances and consequently not working most of the time, a standard we’re hoping to establish with more pop stars. In his youth, he set his eye on playing Charlie Brown in an eventual live-action Peanuts special and endeavored to have his head measure more than five times his neck diameter, which led his emergency room physician to call it quits, move to Montana, and begin making that string-stretched-between-nails art that was so popular in the ’70s. Rigoberto owns 754 pockets squares as an investment; we’re not sure how that works either. His favorite tourist trap is the world’s largest ball of twine.

We’ll be here next week, and you will too because now it’s just horrified fascination.

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