Profiles of Nature 6

pair of hamadryas baboons Papio hamadryas squabbling
This week we have siblings Gollumer (left) and Leggite (guess) when they’d been amusing themselves by throwing sheep off the roof, suddenly discovering that dad was home early. Gollumer and Leggite had won their appearance in the opening sequence of Miami Lice in a contest sponsored by Stouffer’s Stove Top Stuffing, despite the fact that this never existed. Their attempts to parlay this (their appearance, not the stuffing thing) into a regular modeling career failed when neither of them could master looking pouty – thankfully, they found this out before they dropped the money on butt botox. They then pooled their resources together to start their own business selling shock collars for conspiracy believers, earning millions in pre-sales that they had to return when they couldn’t locate 220v batteries, which they suspect was a plot; they are now trying to find another use for their business name, “Gollumer & Leggite’s Fryawhack.” In their early childhood, Leggite convinced Gollumer that their bathroom was once an ancient Indian burial ground (fed by the Ganges,) forcing Gollumer to consult a Ouija board before entering each time; this was how they found out it was actually true, but the spirits were cool with it because they liked playing with the bathroom scale. In three years the pair will own more America Online CDs than AOL actually produced, due to interest. Leggite’s favorite Kid from CAPER is Bugs, and Gollumer’s preferred press manufacturer is Gestetner.

Be sure to check back next week – we’re confident this isn’t going to get any better.

Blame it on February

There are a lot of things that you could blame this short gallery on: the weather, the underperforming birds, my lack of ambition, my lack of skill… but we’re going with February, of course. I mean, I’d hate to put all the blame on the birds.

northern mockingbird Mimus polyglottos looking offended
Yesterday during our routine break between rains, the temperature actually rose above 15°C and The Girlfriend and I took a tour around the neighborhood pond. There yet remains little to see, so this is a rehash of the same ol’ subjects, but there was a smidgen of activity nonetheless. Above, a northern mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos) was foraging for berries in a tree alongside the water and wasn’t terribly concerned with my presence, allowing me to affix the long lens before then trying to hide amongst the leaves. On the second pass I was a little luckier, but it still refused to gulp berries where I could photograph it.

One of the resident ducks was more specific in its reaction.

female mallard Anas platyrhynchos stretching, maybe
One of the female mallards sported very pale coloration, and noticed me as I was lining up for the shot. Ostensibly she was ‘just stretching,’ but you and I both know that was the alibi if the teacher was watching, and this is how a duck flips you off. I wasn’t being creepy (I mean, The Girlfriend was right there,) but you know, some women are just paranoid.

There are, naturally, a few gaggles of Canada geese (Branta canadensis) hanging about, and true to form, lots of territorial squabbling. One in particular was desperately in need of some lithium or chocolate or something.

Canada goose Branta canadensis chasing many others
Small shifts in position on the large expanse of water would periodically send a more possessive goose into a rage, eliciting a flurry of splashing and pursuit and, really, a godawful amount of honking, also contributed by those on the sidelines who had nothing to do with the disputes but felt their input was needed anyway like, well, every sporting event in history. Hey there, see? They could just fill the stadiums with geese and get the same effect, though granted, with probably fewer beer bellies painted in team colors. Probably.

great blue heron Ardea herodias overhead
I mentioned before about stalking a spooky great blue heron, the only example found at the pond for the last six months, but yesterday showed a duo that were hanging out together, in the treetops rather than down at the pond’s edge foraging, and I’m now suspecting a mated (or soon to be) pair. They changed position a few times as we ambled around, not quite providing clean shots, but I snagged a few overhead and a few when one perched in a bare tree.

great nlue heron Ardea herodias in cluttered bare tree
This was shot across the pond without any ability to clear the foreground or background, so I’m pleased the eye came up that damn sharp. Composition-wise, not so much of course, but it would have been far worse with foliage. I’ll have to keep checking and see if they remain, and if they actually build a nest nearby – I don’t think I’ve ever seen evidence of one there yet.

Which reminds me: I’m now starting to make routine checks, because I’d really like to try and get the green heron nest this year, if they do indeed return to the same spot as they have for the past three or so. Since I’ve only found the remains of the old nests once the leaves have dropped off in late fall, I feel they know what they’re doing and having any view at all might be quite challenging, but it’s on the list of things to attempt, anyway.

I was a little surprised to see my next subject, expecting them to have migrated from the area, but I’ll take it.

female double-crested cormorant Phalacrocorax auritus cruising
This female double-crested cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus) was posed nicely on a snag over the water, but the camera was being balky for a moment, possibly a bad battery, and the cormorant slipped under the water as I fiddled. Eventually it surfaced much farther off, and I waited for it to turn the right way to at least catch the green eye in the sunlight.

On the next circuit, it was back in position on the snag but a little more wary, and I crept in trying for a clear shot between all of the intervening branches of the pondside bushes. This is one of the reasons that I’m not enamored of autofocus, because I chase a lot of subjects in these conditions and the AF often decides I must be after the foreground branches – usually right as my intended subject provides the best post. It happened again this time too, but I still got a usable frame.

female double-crested cormorant Phalacrocorax auritus on snag just before entering water
As she slipped into the water, I was expecting her to do the same thing and surface some distance off, but she almost immediately emerged with a fish in her beak. I had to dodge around the branches for a clear shot, and by the time I got a decent gap she was almost finished with her meal.

female double-crested cormorant Phalacrocorax auritus just swallowing a meal
Mind you, this doesn’t take a long time at all, requiring only the right positioning of the fish before swallowing it whole, so it’s not like I was bumbling about. But I was still impressed that she got a fish in the mere seconds she’d been in the water, especially when her entry had been so casual, without apparent deliberation or examination. Then, just as casually, she did it again, arising with another fish in mere seconds.

female double-crested cormorant Phalacrocorax auritus with fragmented fish
With a clearer view this time, it was obvious that her ‘capture’ was not only dead, it was dismembered, which may not exactly apply to fish because they don’t have a lot of members to dis (a tail, I guess,) but you get the idea. Eviscerated. Poorly fileted. An overall lack of cohesiveness. This was curious to me in that I was almost positive cormorants were interested only in fresh captures, and did not scavenge or save meals for later, but now I’ve seen otherwise, so…? I am vaguely in suspicion that she stole this from a snapping turtle, but it remains possible that they keep larger meals handy nearby for when they get peckish (a ha ha ha!) which helps explain her preference for that perch. So far, none of my info sources addresses this, but I’ll keep looking.

But at least I found a few things to photograph, even if they weren’t new or particularly noteworthy, though I’m still in my wintry low expectations and you should be too. So there.

Podcast: Where we’re going…

… we don’t need rails! And I think that says enough, really.

But it’s the first example of my goal for the year to do more podcasts, after letting it slide for the past two. There’s that, at least.

Walkabout podcast – We Don’t Need Rails

Nothing to add – no illustrations, outside links or additional materials. Once you listen, you’ll realize this is probably a good thing.

Graverobbing

Okay, it’s not that bad, but we are gonna go with some older photos here.

Going back through the folders, I found a couple of photos that I felt I should feature, and now I’ve finally got the time and inclination to do so – been buried in a few other projects for a bit. So let’s take a peek at a photo subject from 2005.

black rat snake eastern rat snake Pantherophis alleghaniensis showing recent injury
I came across this black rat snake, or eastern rat snake (Pantherophis alleghaniensis) in a ditch, showing distinct evidence of a recent large meal – and distinct evidence of an altercation, as well. There were a couple other minor injuries, but this one was the worst. Had it come from the unknown critter now residing in the snake’s belly? It seems plausible, but hardly conclusive; plenty of other species in the area prey on snakes, to say nothing of human hazards. However, there’s a high level of confidence that the injury was there before the snake began swallowing its sizable meal whole, so I’ll let you imagine how it must feel to stretch out such a wound over the passage of a… what? Medium-sized bird? Juvenile rabbit? Large rat? Whatever it was, it was about that size.

As you might imagine, the snake wasn’t the most amenable to being a photo subject.

black rat snake eastern rat snake Pantherophis alleghaniensis ready to strike
While not thrilled about the approach of the camera, the snake still recognized that, by itself, it wasn’t a typical threat, plus it didn’t smell right. Had I reached out towards the head at this point with my hand, however, I’m sure I would have been bitten. Black rat snakes are harmless constrictors, with teeth only suitable to helping immobilize prey – tiny little things, capable of stinging and drawing blood, but not much else, and I’ve been bitten more times than I can count. I don’t recall being bitten during this session, but at this point I’m not even sure I would bother retaining that detail. However, I like the comparison of this shot and the much-smaller (like 1/50th the mass) juvenile of the same species from a few days back.

And while I’m at it, another comparison.

close profile of green treefrog Hyla cinerea
This green treefrog (Hyla cinerea) was taken in 2009, a time when I rarely found such subjects, and I was eminently pleased with the detail and sharpness that were captured. In fact, a closer crop is part of the rotating banner images at top – I considered it one of my better accomplishments.

Which is a great illustration of how things change for the better, because now my attitude is, Well, it’s good, but not among the best in my galleries anymore. And that’s the way it should be; if you’re progressing in your skills, you should be able to look at your older stuff and not feel as chuffed about it now. It can help, when you’re not feeling like you’re getting anywhere, to go back and do a direct comparison just to see how wrong you are. But I can show this a little more directly, too.

unidentified juvenile treefrog within mouth of film can
This is from 2016, one of the various hatchlings from the backyard pond, and that gaping sewer pipe that it hangs from is actually a film can. I realize that this is not the best reference for size anymore, since too few people have even seen one, so just know that it’s slightly larger in diameter than a quarter. My unidentified frog subject here could fit comfortably on a thumbnail, while the adult seen above would be a snug fit within that can. However, I got a little closer than that.

unidentified amphibian in extreme closeup
I posted this back then (with specific measurements,) but it’s the same tiny frog – at this age, there are too few identifying characteristics to know if it’s a green treefrog or Cope’s grey, but they’re within the same size range as adults (the greens are slightly larger on average.) Also worth noting is the better lighting control, fewer specular highlights and softer contrast, because not only was I using a lens capable of closer work, I’d created a portable softbox system for my flash unit – actually, several times over in the intervening years, refining them as I went.

I really should have something from the present to show even more comparisons, but I have nothing readily available right now. Maybe I’ll do some microscope work soon.

No Boy Scout

There’s (at least) two messages within that title, which you know makes me happy…

So, in going back through the folders in search of more subjects for the Profiles of Nature posts, I found some of those frames for which I’d said, “I need to write about that,” and then promptly filed them and forgot about it – this is a semi-regular occurrence. Lucky for all of us, I have a rampaging ego and go look at my own photos on occasion.

This is from a student outing, back in the fall.

long-jawed orb weavers Tetragnatha during courtship
We have here a pair of long-jawed orb weavers (genus Tetragnatha,) common spiders around water sources, in this case Jordan Lake. This makes only the second time I’ve caught spiders in “the act;” that’s the female on top (hunh hunh hunh) with the male grappling her chelicerae safely away while he prepares to inseminate her. I apologize for this, because if you don’t know what you’re looking for there isn’t the level of detail here to make it clear, and describing it isn’t guaranteed to fill in the gaps, but I wasn’t intending to do finely detailed macro work and thus wasn’t prepared with the macro flash attachment or the higher magnification lens, so I was shooting in available light with a larger aperture, and focus/depth suffered.

So, the male is largely vertical, and you can see the dark eyes all lined up. Below them (or to the upper right as far as the photo goes) sit the very large chelicerae, the ‘fangs,’ for which the long-jawed orb weavers are named – you can get better views here (male) and here (female.) You can just make out that the male has his wrapped around the female’s; it’s the darker orange bit near the top of the frame. The key bit is the pedipalps, the extra ‘legs’ or even ‘feelers’ that emanate from right alongside the chelicerae, thinner than the legs. One of the male’s is in plain sight and focus, crossing over his own chelicera, but the other is the key one, and it’s a bit unfocused; that’s it underneath the female’s abdomen with its big ‘boxing glove’ end. Again, you can see the difference in the male and female versions in those other links: the male has club ends, while the female has slender pointed ends. That’s because the male stores sperm within his, and ‘manually’ inserts this into the female’s epigyne, a flap opening near the base of the abdomen, which this frame is just short of illustrating.

Most people are familiar with the idea that the female spider may eat the male after mating, which can be true among certain species at least, but overall, courtship is often a highly contentious affair; it’s possibly the way that the female weeds out the less-capable males to ensure that her progeny is from tough genes. I’ve seen courtship a few times now, and in most of them the male is very quick to drop away from the female if she makes a threatening move – only to slip in again for another try, like a tipsy lounge lizard. In fact, seeing the unique chelicerae of this species in such use, I wondered if that was the true purpose, and had to go back through my photos to determine if it was only the male that had these hinged monstrosties. But no, the female has much the same, so this may only be a secondary, incidental purpose.

This would be an ideal subject for video, though exceptionally challenging. The magnification has to be pretty high, the focus bang on, the view unobstructed, the light adequate and from the right direction, and most especially, it’s very difficult to find a way to use a tripod, and not using one means so much focus change from either the camera movement or just the breeze shifting the breeding lair (which would be an issue even with a tripod) that sea-sickness is likely to be induced from such a video clip. Maybe someday.

But we come back to the title, where we find I’m unprepared for the subject matter, as well as creeping on the spiders during their private time. But hey, they could have pulled the shades if privacy was so important…

Profiles of Nature 5

juvenile black rat snake eastern rat snake Pantherophis alleghaniensis in alert pose
In this week’s Profiles, we find Durwood just as he was remembering that there is a home inspection scheduled for today and he hadn’t put away certain, um, things – we’ve all been there, even if we don’t necessarily have Durwood’s taste in possessions. He admits that he’s just working as a nature photographer’s model for the time being, fulfilling a promise to his imaginary abusive grandmother before pursuing his lateadolescencelong dream of becoming roadkill. Durwood told us of being the teacher’s pet one year in school, but doesn’t recall being particularly quick or clever, so he suspects it was because she enjoyed seeing him get tripped in the cafeteria; we’ll let you try to picture that. Due to his disappointment in finding that bok choy didn’t taste anywhere near as good as it sounded, he founded the grass roots campaign to rename foods appropriately, suggesting new words such as, ‘plud,’ and, ‘vagicrust.’ This doesn’t leave him much time for a hobby, but Durwood has always been curious about what percentage of macaroni is used only in kid’s crafts, and more importantly why, so he plans to research this in his retirement. His favorite ISO standard is 11040-2:2011 Part 2.

Join us next week when we continue to avoid asking why we keep posting in first-person plural – it’s sure to be a rollercoaster!

Kick January to the curb

That’s right, January has become irrelevant, and not only that, a bit long in the tooth (what a stupid phrase,) and so, to see it on its way, we hit it in the ass with the month-end abstracts. Two this month, both weak, but it’s freaking winter so put a cork in it.

wavelets at sunset
It’s not hard to tell what this is, and I’ve done much the same before, but I happened to like the dark patches that came from reflecting the treeline on shore. Either that or they’re portals to another dimension – I never actually checked, to be honest.

But let’s have another, courtesy of someone else.

hickory nut within tree hollow
This one, I feel safe to say, was composed by a woodpecker, and given the activity we were seeing nearby, a red-bellied one at that (plus the fact that red-bellied woodpeckers always favor compositions with focus on the right.) I couldn’t say if this was a common practice of not, given how most hollows are out of sight overhead, but at least it had a nice spot where the nut wasn’t getting away while the woodpecker drilled through the hull. And we had enough light, at the right angle, to even capture it on film – but wasted that by using digital instead. Ah, the opportunities that pass so fleetingly…

Who needs some color? Raise your hand

cool delphinium blossom
So, last night I finally got around to updating the Latest Images gallery, which had sat dormant for, seriously, don’t ask how long, mostly because I was posting all of my latest images instead. There’s nothing that said that I couldn’t put them in both places, for those who only went to the blog or only went to the galleries, and you know, the galleries are supposed to be the ‘landing’ pages of the site, so I’m planning on making updates a more regular, semi-scheduled thing (which means the reminders are already in the calendar.) So some/most of the images have appeared here on the blog before, but so what who cares?

While gathering them, however, I came across a lot of colorful frames in the Leaves/Plants/Trees folder, appreciating the brightness in these drab winter days, and since it’s damn cold out there right now and this is true for most of the eastern seaboard, I figured we needed a color day. Above (and appearing before,) we have one of the delphinium blooms from a plant I bought last year, that I’m hoping comes back this year because, damn, look at them! They’re pretty cool.

Most of these are reasonably local, by the way, if not necessary ‘native.’

firewheel aster with dew
This is a firewheel, a type of aster, and I’m pretty sure it was in the pollinator garden at Gold Park, but so what who cares? It came up pretty quickly when I did a search based on the rough description – those yellow tips are distinct.

mimosa blossoms against pale sky
Mimosa blossoms of course, from the neighborhood pond. I’ve collected a bunch of seed pods of these now, intending to start them indoors within the next month, because they’re cool trees to have around. Maybe I’ll try to breed a variant that aggressively kills all of the longneedle pines in the state…

wisteria cluster
Wisteria cluster, of course, also from the nearby pond. They’re one of the species that makes the season firmly ‘spring’ around here.

possibly cherry blossoms
I’d have to go back and check the dates and I don’t feel like that right now, but I think these are the cherry blossoms from the tree right in our own front yard. You’d think I could definitively recognize them by now, but so what who cares? They’re white with some yellow, which is the purpose of this post.

blackberry lily blooms
Blackberry lilies, definitely from our own front garden, a nice late bloomer. We’re not going chronologically here, but trying to balance out the various colors.

Speaking of that…

partridge pea flowers and leaves
Partridge peas, almost certainly from Mason Farm Biological Reserve because that’s almost the only place I ever see them. I realized that I had no yellow in the lineup and went looking for an example, with a bonus of the attendant green. There are remarkably few green flowers, you know? I mean, worldwide.

morning glory with rain
The planted morning glories have certainly appeared here before, and in fact I tried not to post them too often, but they’re pretty cool looking nonetheless. Definitely adding more of them this year, though likely with a little more color variety.

pollen within four-o'clock blossoms
The pollen within four-o’clock blooms is more distinct that many other flowers, and reflect the flash nicely for those glossy-orb highlights, but it does take some higher magnifications.

December azalea flowers
We’re going a lot more current now, because this is from December 7th, one of the azaleas bushes within the front yard. Only this little patch bloomed, and I don’t know why – possibly a prank pulled on it by neighboring branches, “Hey, hurry up, it’s spring, you’re late!” Or something. I’m not going to speculate what goes through the minds of flowers.

But even more current is our last today.

January phlox or maybe periwinkle bloom
I’d seen this a couple days back and though to check it right before starting this post, so this is about as current as we get, but this is from early this afternoon, a frostbitten phlox (or maybe periwinkle – The Girlfriend’s Sprog and I have debated it without reaching a conclusion) attempting to weather the sub-freezing temperature right now. Again, all by itself and well in advance (or way the hell behind) the normal blooming season, but this species, whatever it is, has a little more tendency towards this because I’ve caught it before. So it’s some color for today, from today, so that makes this post extra-special, right? Of course it does.

On this date 55

“What? I thought we were finished with that!” you say incredulously, but I just calmly reply, I never said anything of the sort. You just assumed that I’d be done at the end of the year, but you know what they say about assuming…

But I had to do this one, and was intending to do it even before the ban came down. Let’s see what was happening seven years ago today.

long-haired Al Bugg hopefully not doing what it looks like he's doing
Wait, hold on, who’s that hippie? Can it be? It is! It’s the Improofable Al Bugg during our first outing! I have to admit, I’m pretty sure this is the only time I’d seen him with hair this long, but don’t credit me – I didn’t say anything.

But—… no. I mean, I hope not, though it sure looks like he’s chimping there, doesn’t it? We’ll put it down to using the LCD screen as a viewfinder to compose the image, especially since this was our first outing and he had yet to hear from me how much of a bad habit this is. Now of course, after seven long, tedious years of listening to me drone on, he not only wouldn’t use the LCD as a viewfinder, he wouldn’t dare chimp, unless it was absolutely necessary.

Would he?

Addendum: Just over a day before this was to go up, I had gone back and found a post where I talked about meeting with a new student, with photos from that outing – the same batch that the one above came from. Only, that post was dated the 29th and referred back to the 27th. The date stamp on the photos, however, was the 30th, which is why I set this up to post today. On occasion, I forget to change the camera clock to reflect the Daylight Saving Time horseshit, but three days off? Got me. Anyway, here we are.

It’s embarrassing, really

We had countless warnings of an impending snowstorm here last night, though they admitted it wasn’t going to ‘stick,’ as they say up north; basically, this means that the air temperature is cold enough to produce snow, but the ground temperature remains too warm for accumulation, melting it off quickly. It started out as rain, but in the wee hours of the morning it turned to thick and heavy snow. I shot a couple of video clips just to illustrate the amount coming down.


Sometime close to 5 AM, once it had stopped snowing, I trotted out with the camera just to fire off a few frames before it all disappeared. This was a wise move, because even as I type this the snow is vanishing, and while out there (about two hours previous,) it was dripping from the trees almost as if it was raining out.

light overnight snowstorm
In New York this would be laughed at, sufficient to make the ground muddy but not affecting driving or even walking the dog. It serves only as proof that we got at least one example of snow for 2021; it remains to be seen if this will be the only one.

another view of not-snow
Both of these were time exposures by available light, but the first was with Auto White Balance and the second with Sunlight, capturing the hue of the streetlights bouncing from low cloud cover. I was having a hard time finding anything with enough snow to become even a little fartistic. But while out there next to the neighborhood pond, I spotted a brief glow from the clouds, and on returning home the full moon appeared almost clearly, though I was shooting our rosemary bushes at the time. Once I’d finished that and changed lenses, raising the tripod up to working level and framing some gumballs, fast-moving clouds almost obscured the moon again, and I let the exposure go much longer than originally intended hoping to get it clearly through a gap in the clouds. This was not to be, and most of what I got was the glow from the clouds as they revealed the moon in portions.

gumballs against moon glow
All focusing, by the way, was manual, sometimes with the help of the headlamp, but this one is admittedly a little off. Oh well.

My last attempt at anything decent was with a mobile sculpture in the front garden, and this is two stacked frames, combining the light from the streetlight and my headlamp for more balanced illumination.

mobile sculpture with smattering of accumulated snow
That’s about it, really. Once again, I tried to get something to photograph, but even as loose as my standards are, this isn’t cutting it. We need either a more serious snowstorm or an early spring – I’m good with either one right now.

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