On this date 34

Al Denelsbeck

Blue Ridge mountain outcrop in infrared
It’s funny – just a couple of days ago, I realized that I hadn’t posted anything since the previous On This Date post, and was worried about that. Guess I filled in the gap…

Anyway, our first entry is from 2006, one of the few trips that I’ve taken to the Blue Ridge Mountains. This time, I was playing with infra-red photography with the Canon Pro-90. It didn’t originally look like this, however; the in-camera effect is monochrome in the faintly purplish range, and much lower contrast, so this has been altered, playing with the color registers. I kinda like it.

By the way, see that shadow on the road? That’s a car passing during the one-second exposure necessary for infra-red. If you look even closer, right at the height of the road’s edge, you’ll see that it had its running lights on. Such composition!

Following, we have another trivial curiosity. All three of the images below were back-to-back in the spreadsheet that I created for this: 2008, 2012, and 2013, all from the Arthropods folders – just, not the same folder, because I have over 22,000 digital arthropod images. But still sequential when you start with the month and day…

trio of images of dragonfly, mantis, and mantis with green lynx spider
Isn’t that veird?

I must also note that 2012 was easily the most productive when it came to arthropod images, because I amassed 6,693 for that year alone – and those are the keepers. Nary a bug in North Carolina went unphotographed…

Finally, we have an entry from just last year, which allows me to pin down exact dates of last year’s events, since I took this while my brother and I were doing a brief outing before putting him on a plane back up to New York.

great egret Ardea alba preening in tree canopy
I’d done a vacation trip to Ohio and New York, and driven back down with my brother to enlist his help in painting the living room/stairs/upstairs hallway – due to the curious design of this house, they’re all contiguous, so it was a major job involving high walls and vaulted ceilings. The Girlfriend still enthuses over the improvement, so we’re good.

Oh, the pic? Yeah, it’s a great egret (Ardea alba) in a tree overhead, letting me get a lot of cool frames, among them this one. The birds are simply falling over themselves to have their pictures taken by me. Now, if I could only get them to think about the clutter, and perch in better locations…

Building slowly

Al Denelsbeck

silhouette of green heron Butorides virescens in typical perch on log
Despite some modest success recently, I’m still pursuing the green herons (Butorides virescens) at the nearby pond. They remain as secretive and shy as ever, but I’m slowly finding ways to subvert this, so the collection of photos is growing.

A state of affairs I’ve been able to exploit has been that one heron, at least (there are several, with no way to tell them apart yet,) has taken to hunting from a snag within fairly easy view of shore. Of course, the heron has an easy view of me, too, so I have to move in slowly and take advantage of the times when it’s hunting, thus less aware of closer approaches. The green herons seem to suffer from inattention blindness, or perhaps focusing too intently, because when they’re looking like the frame below, you can approach them a lot closer than normally.

green heron Butorides virescens posed on snag
The pond is quite active with tiny minnows, so the herons have plenty to feed on, and it’s usually not a long wait for some action. This was approaching sunset, with the sun almost directly behind the heron – not ideal, but whatcha gonna do?

green heron Butorides virescens watching water intently
I thought I had a great opportunity for a fish capture here, but after a few moments the heron turned around and began hunting on the other side of the log. Spoilsport.

green heron Butorides virescens making strike at minnow
At least I was ready when the strike occurred – which still can be hit-or-miss, both from the heron’s standpoint and from the photographer’s. The strikes happen so quickly that timing is somewhat up to chance, not at all helped by shooting from the shady side and thus losing the shutter speed advantage that brighter light would bestow. Still, this one isn’t ruined by motion blur, so it could be worse.

green heron Butorides virescens with successful capture
But the position meant the little minnow that the heron captured remained hidden behind the log most of the few seconds it was even within the bird’s beak, and when it wasn’t, it was moving. So, yes that’s a fish, but no, I’m trying for better than that.

green heron Butorides virescens with head almost hidden
I happened to like this one for the barely visible eye, which was actually intentional on my part (while the heron was once again hunting on the far side.) These are all shot at 600mm, by the way, and cropped tighter afterward, because I still can’t get terribly close. One of these days I’ll pace it off for accuracy, but right now I’m estimating it at 12-15 meters off. I at least took a seat on the ground for these, gaining a little stability.

green heron Butorides virescens beginning stalk
Much as it might look like the same conditions, this is actually the morning a few days later, with the light coming from the right direction – when it wasn’t shielded by clouds. So much for planning.

green heron Butorides virescens adopting striking pose
Still fishing on the far side, but at least I had a good view and a semi-comfortable position to remain in. So I was more than ready as the pose and intensity told me a strike was likely to happen any second. This happens frequently, but then the fish goes deeper or moves off, and the heron relaxes again. Not this time, though.

green heron Butorides virescens super-extending neck during strike
Hazzah! Damn, that looks painful, but it illustrates how much neck remains hidden in those feathers most of the time.

green heron Butorides virescens with successful capture
Success! So you know, the heron will retain such captures for a few seconds on average, quickly juggling it into a head-down position to be swallowed easily (lots of fish have spines on their dorsal fins to prevent otherwise.) In moments, it’s gone. On occasion, it takes a little longer though.

In fact, it was watching this, and thinking about the sequence at that link, that made me go out this morning with the macro-tripod in the hopes of catching such a thing on video. Alas, it was not to be today. I spotted the heron on this same snag initially, but realized that I forgot the ground pad; the rain has been recent enough that I’d be soaking through my pants by sitting on bare ground, and while I’ve done this, I prefer to avoid it when I can. In the few minutes it took me to return, the heron had moved on, likely spooked by someone walking their dog up to the shoreline nearby. I circled the pond and spotted two close together, but in the typical cover conditions where no clear view is forthcoming, plus I was standing upright and leaning out on the very edge of solid footing to get the shot below. Not the kind of conditions to try shooting video within, even if the heron had deigned to hunt instead of staring at me suspiciously. Another time.

green heron Butorides virescens peering out from semi-concealment

Frog Monday

Al Denelsbeck

Posted with a nod to the Inestimable Mr Bugg, who told me weeks ago that he was going to do his ‘Frog Friday’ topic for August, but then apparently the server lost his posts until recently. Meanwhile, I waited on my various frog pics so as not to upstage him, and now appear to be copying him instead. Ah well.

Our first is the most recent, a peculiar portrait that I couldn’t pass on.

green treefrog Hyla cinerea hiding in ant trap
“What the hell am I looking at here?” I hear you say, and normally I’d let you figure it out for yourself just for using profanity, but fuck it, I’m feeling generous. Because of ant raids, I’d constructed a little ant trap on the hanger for the hummingbird feeder on the back porch, a simple device from a plastic bottle that retains water around the wire so ants cannot cross; it’s been there for years now. After heavy rains the other day, I was up on a stepladder cleaning out a clogged gutter, glanced over and saw the bare hints of this individual (which is a green treefrog, Hyla cinerea,) so of course I needed the photo.

After this, I reached in there carefully to see if I could nudge it into better view, and it panicked and leapt out of the bowl in one great arc, landing on my camera lens – for obvious reasons, I could not get a pic of this (because it would have required using my phone, and you know how I feel about that kind of bullshit.) Anyway, it was transferred over to the porch railing without further drama.

juvenile Copes grey treefrog Hyla chrysoscelis on tomato plant
Back at the beginning of the month, I found this tiny little guy perched like a jewel on the leaves of one of the tomato plants by the front steps – it’s a juvenile Copes grey treefrog (Hyla chrysoscelis,) and is slightly larger than a Japanese beetle in size (which puts it less than 1/4 of adult length.) I’ve kept a wary eye out ever since, but have never spotted it. This isn’t too alarming, because the number of places in the immediate vicinity where it could find cover are great, but still…

We’re going to be alternating greens here.

green treefrog Hyla cinerea calling at night
This one’s even older, coming from the beginning of June, but another green treefrog was calling on the edge of the nearby pond one night – you can see the half-inflated throat pouch and the fully-inflated belly, which will switch places during the active call. I liked this one, however, for the placement of the hind foot, clasped against the belly like that; added oomph to the call, is what I’m guessing. I hope it worked in helping to find a mate – evolving clever frogs would be fun to see.

How about something more ominous?

Amercian bullfrog Lithobates catesbeianus looming from darkness because of mis-aimed flash unit
I have plenty of photos where a mistake was made, or something didn’t turn out as planned, and I usually toss them during the sort. But occasionally, an unintended effect comes up and makes me keep them, and this is one example. I’d forgotten that the flash was aimed for a different subject, and as I corrected it after this frame, the American bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus) disappeared, but the under-exposure gives it a nice looming quality. Plus the framing lends a little idea to the size of the specimen, which was appreciable: it would have overlapped my open palm easily, and could swallow a mouse. I’d love to be able to catch one eating something (or indeed, any of the various frog species here in some kind of action,) but even getting close to them requires stalking at night with bright lights to dazzle them, and then they’re too sensitive to impending danger to act naturally. Maybe someday I’ll figure out how to accomplish this.

And our last green treefrog. For now.

young adult green treefrog Hyla cinerea perched on edge of birdbath
This one was perched on the edge of the birdbath in the front garden one evening, so I quickly got a few frames before it moved on. It would be easy to believe that the treefrogs are fond of ponds, birdbaths, and other water sources, but in truth, they’re only used for laying their eggs, and otherwise treefrogs inhabit a fairly dry environment, despite their need to remain moist. They’re usually not out in the rain, but may emerge soon afterward, seeming to prefer post-storm conditions for mating. So no, this guy wasn’t swimming in the birdbath – it just happened to be a handy spot on its nightly perambulations. This was roughly half adult size, so about as big as the top joint of my thumb, and seems to be hanging around the front area, which I’m doing nothing to discourage – except [ahem] that I keep looming into their faces and firing off bright lights. But we’re maintaining a lot of plants and even light sources to attract insects, offsetting the negative aspects more than adequately, I hope. The numbers have noticeably increased, so we’re not doing anything too wrong.

Vanguard

Al Denelsbeck

closeup of morning glory Convolvulaceae blossom
Yes, it’s been postless around here for a few days – just one of those weeks, when the time and the desire to post were not coinciding. That’s changing a little, so right now, we have a single image to lead the way, with more to come, hopefully tonight, but within 24 hours anyway. That single image is of the first blossom from my morning glory seeds, planted late in the year but doing well now; it was a variety pack, so I had no idea what would actually erupt, but I’m pleased with this color, at least.

Doing a quick search on the scientific name for the flower, I found that there are a lot of varieties, and the taxonomy is in flux anyway, so we’re just going with the family of Convolvulaceae for this. Which answers a barely-smoldering question in the back of my mind for decades, since when reading the Durrell books, from time to time he would refer to the convolvulus flowers decorating his boyhood home, and I always passed those by vowing to look them up someday – now I don’t have to! “Sit unmoving on your ass long enough, and it’ll all come to you,” I always say…

Always with the drama

Al Denelsbeck

Carolina mantis Stagmomantis carolina on black night butterfly bush Buddleia davidii
As the Chinese mantises have been molting into final instar, which means reproducing adult phase, they have abandoned the plants with smaller leaves and hiding spots, relinquishing them to the smaller, later developing Carolina mantises (Stagmomantis carolina.) And of course, among the prime choices for these are the butterfly bushes (Buddleia davidii,) which produce plenty of pollinator-attracting flowers all summer long. The Black Knight variety, the biggest and healthiest in the yard, hosts two such mantids of slightly different size, which I photograph occasionally. They’re both small enough to hide among the leaves easily, and better camouflaged than the Chinese mantids, so spotting them is occasionally challenging – except when they perch against the blooms themselves.

Coming back from stalking the green herons at the nearby pond the other day, I stopped by the bush and was rewarded with the appearance of a skipper, a family of butterfly with distinctive ‘X’ wings – there are too many species alike in appearance to pin this one down, but this might be a fiery skipper (Hylephila phyleus) – or it might not.

possibly fiery skipper Hylephila phyleus on sparse blossoms of Black Night butterfly bush Buddleia davidii
I didn’t have the macro lens affixed and had no time to change much of anything, so I was shooting with the 18-135 on autofocus – not bad, but not ideal, and a little prone to focus wandering when you get circumstances such as… but let’s not get too far ahead.

Once the skipper switched from one of the bigger bloom clusters to this barely-adequate one, it attracted some attention, from someone that I’m sorry to say I missed entirely – until it appeared in the frame.

possibly fiery skipper Hylephila phyleus being stalked by Carolina mantis Stagmomantis carolina on butterfly bush Buddleia davidii
One of the Carolina mantises was making its move, and I watched with delighted anticipation, camera ready. Actually, I should say we watched, because The Girlfriend had joined me at this point and was witnessing it too.

possibly fiery skipper Hylephila phyleus being stalked by Carolina mantis Stagmomantis carolina on butterfly bush Buddleia davidii
Perhaps it knew that skippers don’t wait around long, perhaps it was inexperienced, perhaps it’s simply the manner of Carolina mantids, but this one was moving in surprisingly fast, since I’ve seen Chinese mantids stalk insects with glacial slowness. It was clear we didn’t have long to wait.

possibly fiery skipper Hylephila phyleus being stalked by Carolina mantis Stagmomantis carolina on butterfly bush Buddleia davidii
Unfortunately, even with the aperture at f8, the depth was short and my focusing point in the viewfinder was falling between the two, with no time to correct it – the strike was imminent. I just kept shooting, twitching the camera to try and get the best focus.

possibly fiery skipper Hylephila phyleus being stalked by Carolina mantis Stagmomantis carolina on butterfly bush Buddleia davidii
The distance separating them was now less than 20mm, and the skipper seemed to notice the mantis, because the wings changed position. We’d gone from a mantis stalking an oblivious butterfly to a race to see who would react the fastest.

Carolina mantis Stagmomantis carolina striking at already-departed skipper
It was the skipper, flitting away in a fraction of a second even as the mantis struck, leaving the frame entirely. The action pose here just seems to indicate that mantids are clumsy and slow – it would have been nice to at least have a blur from the butterfly in here, but no.

Carolina mantis Stagmomantis carolina pausing after missing strike at meal
And the mantis paused there for a few moments, allowing us to try and fill in its thought processes with what we imagine it must be feeling, even though the chances are great that it’s feeling nothing but a natural instinct to hold still in case the butterfly reappears – or even to hold still because that’s what they do most of the time anyway. Regret, frustration, even a resolve to learn from this and do better next time? Not likely. There is quite likely some emotion-analog going on in there, the kind of thing that makes arthropods pursue their survival, and while we may speculate that it’s rudimentary (because their brains are exceedingly simple and they really don’t need anything too sophisticated, so natural selection would steer away from anything less efficient,) there’s also no way we’re likely to really know, either. Meanwhile, I missed a capture sequence that I’ve been after for a while, and will continue to pursue. Maybe next time it’ll be video…

On this date 33

Al Denelsbeck

We’re cheating a little here, but I said to myself, Why upload images that are identical to ones already uploaded? Which I’ve said a few times in the past, digging through the blog media library, but in this case, I’m sending you to a page in the main site gallery, because this black racer was taken on this date in 2008.

We go a little fartsy for 2011, with a tiny jumping spider all alone in the big jungle, or at least on the grape vines on the fence.

unidentified jumping spider on grape vine
The flatulence continues the following year, with a single frame of a female ruby-throated hummingbird (Archilochus colubris) failing to hold still at the feeder.

female ruby-throated hummingbird Archilochus colubris showing motion blur at feeder
Granted, it was a pretty slow shutter speed at 1/8 second, so many subjects could blur in that time, and hummingbirds can move a lot in much shorter time spans – I’ve had one start to fly off from the sound of the mirror slapping up, and while I was seeing it perched when I tripped the shutter, what I captured was it leaning back with the wings raised. But yeah, I am still reminded of those tippy drinking bird toys from my youth with this image.

jagged ambush bug genus Phymata beginning to show color changeWe have to have a callback in here, because you’ve seen this jagged ambush bug (Phymata) two weeks ago, as it was two weeks younger – or at least, I think it’s the same one. It’s really hard to tell arthropods apart in the best of circumstances, and much harder when there are chances for multiple individuals and you don’t see them every day. For the same date, I have photos of one that is distinctly different in color, and if I recall correctly, much bigger, but then again, a couple of decent meals and a molt can produce drastic changes, so who knows? I’ve said it before, but if anyone knows a method of easily distinguishing individuals, especially without contact, let me know. Maybe some kind of laser DNA plotter or something…

The next year, we have an entry from two different categories at the same time: Reptiles/Amphibians and Arthropods.

juvenile green treefrog Hyla cinerea with unknown insect on head
In 2014, we’d moved to the new (current) place, and I found a nearby pond that had large patches of pickerel weed, which attracted its share of pollinators and treefrogs. I have been unable to identify the parasite that adorns this green treefrog (Hyla cinerea,) and it may not even be a parasite, but simply a midge that found a handy perch. The frog certainly doesn’t seem too concerned.

In 2015, we have possibly the smallest snail that I’ve ever photographed.

tiny unidentified snail on misty leaf
tiny unidentified snail on author's fingertipYes, that’s my own fingertip over there to the right. This one’s so cute (the snail I mean,) it seems like it should have its own children’s book or animated special. Now, it may be hard to imagine what kind of adventures a snail could get up to, but then again, the same might have been said about a freaking sponge, so…

And far be it from me to abandon a tactic too quickly, so for the final images, we’ll refer to this post from last year; all of the bird photos therein were taken on this date a mere year ago, while I was in New York. Which probably means I should polish off the last of the Pennsylvania Dutch Birch Beers that I purchased while up there…

Another alert

Al Denelsbeck

In the next couple of nights, the Perseids meteor shower is supposed to be peaking, and of course, I say this with a certain fatalism, because my personal history of meteor showers is pretty disappointing: one fantastic shower, when I was unable to capture anything on film, and then quite a few absolutely dead nights when I was more than adequately prepared to snag images of them. Still, nothing will be seen if we don’t try, right?

I figured the announcement needed some kind of image, but I don’t have any – not the kind of illustration I should, anyway. But then I remembered what I’d gotten last time around, a curiosity that I discovered entirely by accident. And so I edited together a small animated gif (pronounced, “SHON-reh”) that shows what I found. That includes a bonus!

animated gif of time exposures of night sky
So, these are four exposures of the southern sky, hoping a meteor would cross the frame, and almost full resolution at that, so ‘zoomed in’ quite a bit. Ignore the bright, stationary dots; those are sensor noise that I didn’t bother to edit out. All of the streaks running diagonally, upper left to lower right, are stars, streaked by the Earth’s rotation in the roughly-one-minute exposures. But the single streak running upper right to lower left is something else. I’d initially thought I captured a couple of very dim meteors (these are very small in the full frame,) mostly because to even see them, the frame has to be magnified significantly and thus I have to scroll around to see details, and never realized that they were close to the same positions. In preparing this animation, I found I had four in sequence, and thus we’re looking at some kind of satellite, one not moving very fast and not reflecting a lot of light; chances are it’s some old rocket booster, or even a bit of debris.

But then, as I was finalizing the animation, I found the other, a dim little dot moving vertically right smack in the center of the frame. It barely shows movement in the one-minute exposures, so it’s got a long orbit, and pretty much a polar one.

At some point I may attempt to pin down what these are, since I have the day and times, and a rough indication of direction, but for now, I’m trying to post this to alert my legion of readers to the Perseids shower, and this has already taken enough time to produce, so that little research project will wait a bit longer.

Shit. In previewing the post right before approving it, I found another – look at the purple dot at bottom left.

Motherhood

Al Denelsbeck

Well, there is a mother and babies involved, but in exactly what way, I cannot determine – no matter which, it’s definitely creepy to our human perspective.

Out the other night by the neighborhood pond with a headlamp, tracking down a calling frog, I found a black shape on the trunk of a tree that, on close inspection, turned out to be a very large spider.

six-spotted fishing spider Dolomedes triton on tree trunk with prey
It wasn’t until careful examination of the abdominal markings that I determined that this was a six-spotted fishing spider (Dolomedes triton,) since I’ve never seen one this dark – usually, they’re olive green to rust brown in color. And this wasn’t the biggest that I’ve seen either, though it was still impressive, probably about 30mm in body length. I didn’t have to look all that close to determine that it was working on a meal; details were lacking due to the advanced nature of the consumption, but it looked to be another fishing spider.

six-spotted fishing spider Dolomedes triton on tree trunk with prey
I did several angles, during which the spider twitched slightly but remained otherwise motionless, and I then pursued other subjects. Returning home and unloading the images revealed a few tiny details that prompted me to go back out and and do some more photos; right now, we’ll refer back to the first image and the details that I saw then, shown now in an inset.

inset of first images showing newborn spiders
To the lower right, at the base of the spider’s cephalothorax, can be seen another tiny spider, undoubtedly a newborn, while to the left, two more can be seen on the trunk (above and below the middle leg.)

Now, I know females of the wolf spider family will carry their newborns on their back, both as protection and to introduce them to captured meals; the mother will open up the exoskeleton of the prey to allow the young access to the juicy bits. I was not aware that fishing spiders did this, certainly never having seen any despite finding lots of fishing spiders, including a nursery of newborns. But I’m not an entomologist, or any kind of collije edumacated, so it’s possible that I was simply unaware of more species doing this. When I went back out, I was hoping to find evidence of the newborns actually feeding on the captured prey, trusting the flash unit to reveal more in the shadows than I could see myself while there. Nothing was forthcoming, but I did get some slightly better pics of the little one on her back.

six-spotted fishing spider Dolomedes triton with newborn spider on base of cephalothorax
The bebby also seemed aware of me as I leaned in close, and moved away from a direct line of sight. But now, as I provide another photo, I also provide a thought that occurred to me as I was looking at them.

six-spotted fishing spider Dolomedes triton with newborn on base of cephalothorax
It remains possible that the fishing spiders do not carry their young around nor lead them to meals, and that I misidentified the prey. You see, that’s an awful swollen abdomen for a mother fishing spider, more like one that’s about to lay eggs, so it doesn’t see to fit with a proud mother. The only details that I can see for sure on the prey are the legs, and wolf spider legs can look similar. So it’s possible that what we’re seeing here are the newborns that had been on a wolf spider’s back, until it fell prey to the fishing spider. Most dispersed, a few were hiding out on the trunk, and this little bebby got confused. I’ll let you think about that one.

Quick pic from not today

Al Denelsbeck

flash photo in late twilight of green heron Butorides virescens showing reflections from spiders' eyes
This one I came across again while sorting, and decided that I needed to feature it in a brief post. Back at the end of June, I was still (mostly unsuccessfully) stalking the green heron (Butorides virescens) brood around the neighborhood pond, and this one paused on the shoreline to do a little evening fishing. It was late twilight, thus very poor light, and I popped the on-camera flash just to see if I could capture anything, but the distance was too great for the cute little capacitors that are used for such things, and I have the Custom Functions set to push the shutter speed to 1/200 second with a flash*, which made things look a lot darker than they actually were. Nevertheless, I got an oblique reflection from the heron’s eye.

And something else. A lot of something elses. Revealed by the very narrow reflection angle between the flash head and the lens, I captured the eyes of numerous spiders in the immediate vicinity, which reflect, if anything, even better than birds’ eyes despite being a tiny fraction of the size. Yes, there are easily that many spiders around, especially this time of year at the pond’s edge; most of them are probably very young fishing spiders. We’ll have a better look a little later on.

* Canon’s E-TTL flash system will automatically try to balance the flash with an ambient exposure, to provide a more natural-looking image, but this means in low light you can easily have a motion-blurred frame from a very slow shutter speed, with a similarly exposed flash image overlaid, which is of no use to me at least, so I override that setting to use the flash as primary illumination. Which occasionally works as seen here.

Quick pick from today

Al Denelsbeck

snowberry clearwing Hemaris diffinis hovering at purpletop vervain Verbena bonariensis
Just a quick one, as I gather a little time to work on more detailed posts; I have a few coming up. On an outing today, we did one last pass through a small tended flower garden within Gold Park, and Mr Bugg spotted this snowberry clearwing (Hemaris diffinis.) I tracked it for a bit, knowing any sharp photos would be from an even mix of timing and luck, but selected this one to upload because of the blue sheen of the wing’s reflections.

After some poking around, I determined that the flowers are likely purpletop vervain (Verbena bonariensis,) but feel free to pop my bubble, crush my ego, and otherwise make me feel small. I’ll probably just ignore you anyway…

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