Estate Find XIX

May 9, 2025May 8, 2025 Al Denelsbeck

This one was exactly a week ago, but I already had the Estate Find posted, plus in the late morning we lost internet. However, we’re going to build to this one a little.

I’ve mentioned before about the subspecies of Canada goose that’s been hanging around, a dusky Canada goose (Branta canadensis occidentalis.) We’re considering him likely a male due to behavior, though he’s recently been alone, and from time to time he has minor altercations with another pair that visits the yard, a male Atlantic Canada (Branta canadensis, the most common subspecies) and his dusky wife, which happens on occasion; a previous Estate Find showed some Canadas crossbred with what appeared to be domestic Roman geese, so they’re up for anything it seems. There’s a curious dynamic in their interactions, though:

Then a week ago, The Girlfriend and I looked out back around noon and found this:

Earlier, we’d had a pair of dusky Canadas visiting, then it went down to just one hanging around quite a bit, as seen in the video, but now suddenly there was a pair again with their geeseling (yes, that’s the proper plural term from now on.) We’re surmising that the male was hanging around because it was normally pretty quiet and of course we were throwing down corn routinely, while the female sat on the nest someplace unknown to us – but that means he wasn’t around for protection for a large percentage of the time. Is that typical? Regardless, since this appearance the dusky has not been spending time in the pond.

The geeseling were foraging with mom enthusiastically, and occasionally flapping their little stub wings.

We were out on the deck and at the edge of the yard observing them, and the parents kept an eye on us but otherwise weren’t concerned, even as we walked around a little. This was not the case when the territorial pair arrived on the scene, though.

With this arrival, the parents became quite wary and the foraging halted, with the geeseling remaining clustered around mom. Now, we’re fine with letting wildlife figure out their own dynamics – except when it comes to the babies. While the dusky pair were likely capable of defending them and, while we watched, the territorial pair did nothing but make a lot of noise, we weren’t going to sit by and watch the young-uns get harassed or savaged – not in our backyard. I started circling around, still with the camera in hand though.

You’d think the female, at least, may have learned her lesson, but there she is egging on the male, who was being as obnoxious as usual – at least, until he realized that I was ambling up from the side. His honking got slower and quieter until it was little more than a faint question from the shy kid at the back of the class, and I suggested he get back into the pond. He was hesitant, though the female was already taking the hint. I repeated my suggestion, stepping closer, and he gave me a defiant hiss that he could see failed to impress me, and he sidled into the pond, trying to maintain his dignity. Once they had ceased trying to claim the backyard, I circled back but fired off a few frames of the dusky brood as I was doing so.

Is that adorable or what? Just the luck of the timing, really, but you don’t have to know that.

Dad stood by dutifully, but he’d been getting fed daily by both of us and had approached pretty close on numerous occasions, so he appears to have decided we were cool and did nothing more than stand by, and mom was visibly unconcerned. The brood took her cue, with one examining me intently.

I didn’t have the tripod set up and so didn’t attempt more than a single video clip, since these were with the long lens, and video with that and no tripod is nausea-inducing. There wasn’t a lot to see other than some ambling about and pecking at the grass anyway, though occasionally one of the geeseling would attempt to decapitate a flower and fall over. We’re guessing they were no more than a couple days old.

Unfortunately, this was their only appearance so far, which is a shame, because we distributed gosling [sic] crumble in the yard for their return, and I’m almost certain that the pond is too shallow to have any predators like snapping turtles and largemouth bass, which certainly reduced any of the broods that hatched out at the neighborhood pond by the old place, so it should be quite safe. I can’t vouch for nighttime predators like foxes, raccoons, and coyotes however, but I also know that there are countless areas in The Bayou that should be safe from such, or at least provide adequate warning from the splashing as they attempt to get close. Regardless, it was an entertaining afternoon, and we were pleased that the parents brought them by.

A few more whittled off

May 9, 2025 Al Denelsbeck

Just clearing out a couple more photos from the backlog where I can. These were from the other night, while I was poking around with the headlamp, as is my wont. I’m quite used to seeing the bright blue ‘stars’ from the lawn that signify spider eyes reflecting the light, but the location of this one drew me in closer, since it was on the wall of the house. The odd appearance of her abdomen convinced me that photos were in order, though.

That’s a wolf spider, genus Lycosidae but I’m not attempting to get any more specific than that, with her brood of newborns on her abdomen. This is common for the genus, which carries its egg sac around until they hatch out, and then carries the young for a bit, also preparing food for them. Other species hang the egg sac in a web or within a nursery protected by walls of webbing until the young are able to scamper away on their own, typically a few days to maybe two weeks.

This one knew I was nearby, and I touched her leg to try and get her to turn for a more direct profile shot, which prompted her to start moving off. After only a few steps, however, she missed her footing and fell about 20cm to the ground, where the appearance changed a bit.

While many remained on her abdomen, a lot of the babies had bounced off and were scattered around in in all directions. While editing this photo, I realized she was missing a leg and wondered if she’d lost it in the fall, but no, it’s missing in the original shots too, and might be what caused her to fall. I have no idea how well spiders compensate for missing limbs – it happens a lot – or whether it even registers on them. Do they still attempt to wind prey with webbing manipulated by legs that aren’t there, failing miserably? I’ll have to observe a bit closer. Meanwhile, I highlighted all of the bebbies I could find in the original image to show how far they’d bounced.

I didn’t do the remaining brood on her back, though I did mark one on her leg, and who knows how many I couldn’t spot in the debris? I know I came back a few minutes later, and she hadn’t moved while the area surrounding her still sparkled with the eyes of the young that had not climbed back aboard.

Meanwhile, there’s been a bird soaring over the property just about every day, usually seen when the camera isn’t in hand, but just once I was able to fire off a few frames as it passed, unfortunately without compensation for the cloudy sky, so almost entirely silhouetted.

No calls have ever been heard, and the scale is difficult to judge but I got the impression of a smallish raptor, perhaps about crow-sized. It generally soars without flapping, wheeling in large circles like a vulture, but faster and more adept. I took this frame and tweaked the levels to bring out what details I could:

That’s enough to reveal a small marking through the eye, but nothing else evident, and my belief is that, if it were white, it should look brighter than this, so I’m leaning towards it being a uniform grey. With that, the shape, and the small hooked beak, the only thing that I found that appears to match is a Mississippi kite (Ictinia mississippiensis.) The Cornell site doesn’t show them living in this area, though the Sibley guide indicates occasional sightings. I know when I first spotted it, it appeared to have a slightly notched tail, which didn’t match the various photos and outlines that I’d found, but if you watch the second video in this gallery closely (the one in flight against the sky,) you can see that occasionally, the tail closes down and it gets a notched appearance – the Cornell site also remarks upon this. So this is a tentative identification for now, pending better shots and perhaps some audio clues. We’ll see what happens.

This is a good place to say that tomorrow is World Migratory Bird Day, so I already have one goal set for that, and I encourage everyone to pursue their own.

Let’s start with last night

May 7, 2025 Al Denelsbeck

Because, why go in chronological order? More to the point however, the Eta Aquariids meteor shower is still going on for the next few days, we’re just not at peak. Not that I’m going to convince you to go out with this post, but we all know how good my luck with meteor showers is.

So I was out to do some time exposures in the quest for meteors last night, and the moon was a bit bright initially, but in this phase it was due to be setting as the shower was supposed to peak. I did a few frames before then, because.

That was in the opposite direction of the best sky view on Walkabout Estates, disappearing behind the roof, so I was fine with it, especially since the humidity wasn’t too high and thus the moon wasn’t lighting up the surrounding sky too much. This was also shortly after we were supposed to have some storms rolling through, which made no appearance whatsoever. Or so I thought, until I was out there firing off time exposures and realized how often the sky to the east was flashing, meaning there was an extremely active (though silent) thunderhead somewhere off in that direction.

One of the photographic things that I’ve had on my bucket list for a while is to capture some red sprites or blue jets, odd discharges that emanate from well above the tops of thunderheads and so visible only a significant distance from the storm, and these seemed to be the right conditions. So I loaded up the car and sought out a decent view out to the east. What I located was a boat launch a little way off of the river, up a tributary, but it provided a wider view than anywhere else I’d seen. Since the storm was quite distant (the lightning tracker app on my smutphone placed it as roughly 135 kilometers off!) I started with the long lens.

Far too distant to get anything but the barest vestige of the lightning bolts, though the glow and the Spanish moss on the tree gives the impression of a wildfire. However, this perspective won’t show sprites or jets, so I switched back to the wider lens and shot a lot of frames vertically at 18mm

The one thing I do know about sprites and jets is that they are dim and very transient, appearing for only a fraction of a second well above the standard electrical discharges, so I shot a lot of frames hoping to catch something, even when I wasn’t seeing any sign of such things myself. Alas, none of the long exposure frames at high ISO revealed anything either. You can see the same two trees from the previous image between the two glowing orange areas from the lightning, while the diffuse glow to the lower right is likely from a phosphate plant – there’s not much else in the direction.

By the way, the two stars in the lower center of the frame, directly above the righthand thunderhead and appearing almost oblong, are Prima Giedi and Algedi, forming the tip of the constellation Capricornus, most of which is below the horizon; just below and slightly right of those is a double star in the same constellation appearing as one, Dabih Major and Minor.

I also turned to the right, facing more south, because the sky was much more interesting there even though the storms were barely visible in that direction.

That’s a halfway-decent view of the center of the Milky Way, for a non-stacked, non-edited, in-camera frame. The bright stars at lower right form the tail of Scorpius, and the nice thick cluster of brighter clouds and darker dust lanes indicate that we’re looking towards the galactic center. No meteors, sprites, or jets in this frame though.

I also followed the Milky Way higher and across the sky more to frame something I’ve long been familiar with.

From being out walking at night while living in central New York, I rarely saw the brighter portion of the Milky Way like the previous frame, probably obscured by the nearby city lights most summer nights, but I always knew this section, riding high in the sky and (in this case) stretching from upper right to lower left. There’s a ‘gap’ visible in the dense band of stars, flanked by two brighter stars in the sky, slightly above dead center in this frame. These are what I always considered the ‘gateway’ stars holding that gap; Deneb and Sadr in the constellation Cygnus. Unfortunately my exposure here doesn’t quite carry the same impression, being a little too long and thus capturing a lot more of the dimmer stars within that gap (while not making Deneb and Sadr appear as bright as they are – they can only get so white in a photo.)

But wait! We have something at extreme lower left.

Seen here at full resolution, we have a faint streak that might, just might, be a meteor. Or a satellite, since I didn’t do a sequence of frames where I could examine this path for continuation. The teardrop shape to the stars comes mostly from their motion during the time exposure, but likely also from faint clouds or denser humidity affecting their apparent brightness during the exposure. But yeah – not a lot to show for 102 frames in pursuit of this very thing (maybe,) though I admit that I only chanced upon this one and other frames might reveal more of this kind of meteoric goodness if examined closely. The point is, I shouldn’t have to examine them closely – I want a big, bold, flaring or fragmenting streak across the sky. I mean, c’mon now.

Curiously, one of the thunderheads appeared to be growing, likely picking up warmer air off the water well out over the Atlantic now. But I clearly wasn’t having much luck and decided to wrap it up soon after this. These pics aren’t bad, just not what I was really after. And thus we continue my trend of not getting a damn thing worthwhile despite repeated attempts at these meteor showers, and no sign of red sprites or blue jets either, though I know those are much harder to witness. Still, not gonna happen without trying, right?

I gotta drop a backlog

May 6, 2025 Al Denelsbeck

Hoo boy! Lose internet for four days (don’t ask,) and suddenly I have a shitload of things to post, on top of the things that I already had waiting. It’s gonna be a while to catch it all up, plus tomorrow is going to be busy so not only will I make no progress then, I might even add to the backlog. In the meantime, I present a blue flag iris (Iris versicolor,) one of many that popped up in the puddle, as we call it, the same one where the wood ducks explored that one time and is now almost dry, certainly not swimmable by even a minnow. You may recall the yellow flag irises that were near the old place, but I definitely like the blue better.

More to come!

Estate Find XIIX (deal with it)

May 2, 2025May 1, 2025 Al Denelsbeck

This one’s several days old now, but it fits, unless I find something better today (I’m typing this Thursday to have it ready, but will happily bump it as needed.) Out once again with the headlamp at night, I saw a dark spot at the edge of the lawn near the front door that I was pretty sure hadn’t been there before.

Despite the fact that this one was found not three meters from a previous mud turtle, this is not the same species as that, but a common musk turtle (Sternotherus odoratus) instead. And the reason why she’s semi-buried in the soft earth and has her neck extended like that is, she’s laying eggs.

This does, naturally, please me, since it couldn’t be easier to monitor the nest, and it now has two markers alongside it so I’m careful with mowing and weeding. Musk turtles never get very big, and she seemed to be a small specimen, as the next image attests to somewhat.

You can see the white clover blossoms peeking in there – she wasn’t more than 90mm in carapace length, though I was already disturbing her by getting down this low (you see that she’s retracted her neck now,) so I wasn’t going to make it worse by trying to measure her. The yellow stripes along the head are the best identifying characteristics, differentiating her from the various mud turtles that are almost the same size and coloration, certainly very similar carapace shapes. A few hours later, she had disappeared, and I tracked down to the pond to see if I could see her returning, but no dice.

I looked up the gestational period to know when to start monitoring the environs for signs of their hatching, and got wildly conflicting reports: 65-80 days from some sources, but 100-150 according to Wikipedia. That’s a hell of a big gap, and a long time for turtle eggs to hatch (my experience has been that it’s typically around two months,) so I’m going to assume that their source is terrible, or they were taking measurements in a cold climate – multiple other sources put the figure at 65-85 days, so I’m going to begin checking near the end of June. The newly hatched are quite small, usually less than 25mm in length, so they should be adorable, but perhaps quite hard to spot if I don’t actually catch them emerging.

Musk turtles are very aquatic, not even basking very much but typically using branches to do so; otherwise they’re usually found on the lake or stream bottoms walking along and poking for food down there. Really, their big trips out of the water are for exactly this purpose, so I’m glad I caught it. Hopefully, in about eight to twelve more Estate Finds you’ll see the aftermath – the newly hatched turtles will have to cover better than 50 meters of lawn to return to the pond, but that still appears better than some of the treks the pond sliders have covered to lay eggs.

Filthy filthy filthy

April 30, 2025 Al Denelsbeck

This is just to let you know that another meteor shower is coming up, actually taking place as I type this, though the peak is in a few days – it is also to squeeze one more pic out of April. The Eta Aquariids is expected to peak on the night of May 5^th and 6^th, so feel free to make the attempt anytime in the next week or so, since the moon is cooperating this time at least.

The pic above is to indicate that I did try for the past shower, the Lyrids, and got bupkiss – I saw one slow, unimpressive meteor, but captured nothing in images save for a small streak that I later found in consecutive frames, indicating that it was a slow and dim satellite, though I didn’t bother to try and determine which. Visible in the photo are Ursa Major (The Big Dipper) at top, Denebola (the tail of the lion in constellation Leo) under the chimney, and Arcturus peeking through the trees at left. Plenty of dim stars in there that I would never have seen by eye, but no meteors. As showers go, just about everything that I’ve witnessed has been remarkably dry, so I’m pretty stinky by now, meteor-wise anyway. One of these days, however…

Well, I’m sure you have things to do, April

April 30, 2025April 29, 2025 Al Denelsbeck

Sure, it’s the end of the month, but which end? Oh, yeah, that one…

That leads us inexorably to the month-end abstract, and to a dictionary to find out how to properly pronounce, “inexorably,” but hopefully one that doesn’t use all those special pronunciation characters like, “/ɪn’ɛk.sə.ɹə.bli/” – who the fuck can read that? I bet anyone that can is a load of fun at parties. Regardless, we have this:

Now see? That’s a proper abstract – I really can accomplish them from time to time. No, this wasn’t a guest photographer, shut up. But when the sun was shining through one of the two Japanese maples that were already established in the yard when we moved in, it was a simple matter to pick the ones that had the best effects and a texture you can almost feel. Go ahead – reach out and touch your monitor. It’ll feel the same way it always does, but you’ll imagine something else anyway.

We’ll throw a couple more down, since we have them.

Yeah, I’ve done this before, but it’s a fun experiment. This is simply a collection of coals from a fire hours before, still smoldering in the fire pit, that I stirred up during the 30-second exposure at night. But if you’re paying attention you’ll see there’s a faint pattern, and may realize that a lot of the coals are duplicated, because as I came back to the camera after stirring them I bumped the tripod leg – smoove.

But that leads to this, naturally:

A simple effect, but one that takes a light touch, since this is racking the 18-135mm lens from wide to tele in that thirty seconds. Shaking and bumping and even less-than-steady zooming shows easily, so care must be taken – I actually used both hands on the zoom ring to keep the motion as smooth and regular as possible. If you zoom faster but then run out a few seconds at the long end, zoomed in tighter, then you’ll get fainter trails with bright ends, like flaming fragments leaving a path behind them. Here, the effect is very faint but more in the center, occurring at the wider/shorter focal length instead, which for me was the beginning of the exposure as I gently got my hands into position. You can always zoom in the opposite direction too, tele to wide, and use little tricks like covering the lens with a soft cloth until your hands are in position and can start the movement right away. Be creative.

Okay, that’s enough red/orange – let’s find something else.

Chasing out the spiders

April 29, 2025 Al Denelsbeck

Okay, finally updated the Latest Images gallery, so now it’s time to clear out a few more from the backlog of photos from the past couple of weeks. Right now these will be spiders, only a few, but impressive specimens, all from three nights ago and all from a span of eleven minutes.

Now, when I’m out with the headlamp at night, the reflections from spider eyes are distinct and frequent: they’re always blue-green in color, and might twinkle as the spider moves but the color doesn’t shift like dew will. If I wanted to see how many I could score in a night, it would be dozens, easily, but most of those would be wolf spiders since they’re the most active on the ground as well as the easiest to spot by reflection. With a misting bottle I might get quite a few more – dog knows I walk through enough webs strung among the bamboo. The ones you’re about to see were noticeable even without making the effort, and I present them in reverse order of my finding them.

I recalled photographing something like this before, and I don’t have any more identifying characteristics this time around, so I’ll simply say it was a nursery web spider (Genus Pisaurina,) and leave it at that. The leg spread was an estimated 30-40mm, and it was quite obvious on the large leaves. It was content to remain in place as I maneuvered for a decent angle.

The next was indeed found by its eye reflections, but notable in that the reflections were visibly higher/closer than the background leaves, indicating that this might be a large specimen for its legs to lift it a visible amount.

Those two eyes sitting high and further back from the front of the cephalothorax (‘head’) peg this easily as a wolf spider (Family Lycosidae,) though the size and locale help too, and of course we have an egg sac carried in typical fashion; many species do this. But we don’t have to guess her size from the bamboo leaves nor from my estimates, because we have a proper scale shot:

I print these out with my business cards every once in a while and carry a few in my wallet because, you know, always be prepared (I had to toss the condoms out to have room.) This one was complacent enough to allow me to place the scale alongside her, so you can see that body length is in the realm of 20mm, while leg spread exceeds 50 – not the largest that I’ve seen, but impressive nonetheless. The sparkles on her abdomen are likely from the dew just starting to form.

The worst, however, was the first.

I was advancing along the beaver crossover between the creek and the pond, where I’d also photographed the wood duck, looking carefully to try and spot anything in the water, when this specimen descended from the trees right in front of me. Easily the biggest leg spread of the three, and it paused just above eye level and fiddled with its webline, allowing me to snag this shot. Then I tried switching over to manual focus because autofocus kept wandering, and as I looked down at the lens to get the correct switch (I have a beef with lens manufacturers in that they a) always put this switch in a different location, even on other lenses from the same manufacturer, and b) often put it alongside other switches that feel exactly the same, necessitating that you look at the lens to ensure you have the correct one,) and when I looked back up after that brief second, the spider was nowhere to be seen. It wasn’t small enough to disappear into the leaf litter too readily, plus it had a two-meter descent down to it, and almost the same to return to the branches where the web was anchored. Wherever it went, it went with record speed and vanished completely, and even though I’m getting used to spiders and know this was a harmless species (I really only have to rule out two for this area,) my lingering arachnophobia wasn’t pleased with the sudden disappearance of a large spider that was that close in the first place. The large pedipalps, those two balls right in the center of the image, peg this as a male, but my initial searches on a rough description didn’t turn up any matches, so I can’t even hazard a guess as to which species this is. I thought it bore a resemblance to the golden silk orbweaver, but the males of that species look entirely different from this, so no.

So only three, not enough to call it a night of big spiders, but again, some impressive specimens in the time it takes to hard-boil an egg. Efficient, at least…

Sweep out the amphibians

April 27, 2025 Al Denelsbeck

I’ve got a minor backlog of images to work through – nothing breathtaking, just the various things found around the property that aren’t really Estate Finds, but I’ve been getting plenty of pics and you might as well see some of them. So we’re going to start with the amphibians.

This one – the same exact individual – was featured before, peeking from the same exact burrow, but I might have misidentified it then. I called it an American toad (Anaxyrus americanus,) but there’s a chance that it’s actually a southern toad (Anaxyrus terrestris); the distinguishing difference are the large knobs sitting on the back of the head, behind and inwards from the eyes, and none of my photos are adequate to determine if they’re present or not. Southern toads did not really reach as far inland as we used to live, so I got used to knowing it was always American toads there, but now things are different. Which also includes this species:

The pale stripe that’s visible down the middle of the back of this high-contrast specimen indicates that this is a Fowler’s toad (Anaxyrus fowleri,) – I think, anyway, because it also has some bulges on the back of the head. I’ve long held the view that too many of the sources of identification of species fail to have adequate images to illustrate what they mean by “less pronounced cranial crests that are flush with the parotoid glands,” and it occurs to me that I can actually be someone that corrects that. I’m often inclined to take photos in situ and not in studio or while handling, but in these cases that’s simply the best way to see those identifying characteristics clearly. And of course I’m thinking this now that none of them are immediately available.

Meanwhile, I will show you the shamelessly posed one, though all I did was place the toad in a different location – this seductive expression is all on the toad:

The flower pales in comparison, doesn’t it?

Okay, now things get interesting, because right here, I stopped this post as lightning was moving into the area and I went out to try for pics. This was completely unsuccessful (I have noticed that lightning strike plotters are notoriously inaccurate for this region, often off by kilometers,) but on returning, I found a toad right alongside the car, recognizing it as a southern toad. Since I had just typed that bit above about doing my own identification images, I snatched this toad up for a photo session.

Only a hair away from a ‘wild’ shot, I simply set her down on the front walk, because she was pretty complacent, and I could light those cranial knobs distinctly. She was a little less complacent about the hind leg shots…

… even though there are no identifying characteristics here, yet the Fowler’s toad does, so this is for comparison. Relax – she was being held gently, even though she didn’t like having her leg held out. And then the belly shot…

… which primarily shows the lack of a dark spot, once again indicating that this is not a Fowler’s, and the pale throat, which indicates that this is a female. Seriously, trying to be even a little knowledgeable about the species found in any area can take a fair amount of internet research.

It gets worse, though. I went through older images to demonstrate the difference with the American toad, and found that more than a few of my toad images were indeed of southern toads, like that below from four years ago.

However, the map at Herps of NC.org showing the southern toad’s range specifically excludes the two counties I was photographing them within, highlighted in pale blue at right. Which goes to show you that online sources can be out of date or simply incomplete, so trusting them implicitly isn’t perhaps the best move. Anyway, I do still have a comparison image of a true American toad, also from four years ago:

All that was a sidetrack from what I’d already planned to write about, and while getting those images, I got another that’s on topic and even a little fartsy, so we’ll throw it in here:

This is a very tiny Copes grey treefrog (Dryophytes chrysoscelis) perched on one of our decorative wind spinners, this one on the back deck. It had moved from its initial position as I tried for a good angle, but allowed me to get this one instead, so we’re good.

And now, back to our fun with identification. These were from a few weeks back.

So, there are two species of frog that look about like this: the pickerel frog, and the southern leopard frog. While I believe I heard the calls of the latter earlier this year, I can often hear the calls of the former, so no real help there. The distinguishing characteristics for the leopard frog are more ‘squarish’ spots long the side and a white spot on the tympanum, the external eardrum, while the pickerel frog has yellow or orange on the concealed parts of the hind legs, which of course you cannot see in any normal conditions.

While this one was nice enough to let me get both sides, the spots are pretty inconclusive, aren’t they? And that’s not a ‘white’ spot on the tympanum, but certainly paler. Except, the example images provided at that same website show specimens without the spot at all.

However, based on this specimen found a few days ago in almost the exact location, I’m going to go with these being southern leopard frogs (Lithobates sphenocephalus) and have done with it. The pale spot on the tympanum being missing doesn’t necessary rule one out as a leopard frog, but if I see it there, even faintly, I’m ruling that this is enough to count. Unless the call sounds wrong, but I never see one when they’re calling. In fact, there are a couple of different species in the pond that are calling as I’m standing there with the headlamp, and I can never spot them even though I know they’re right there.

No questions about this one, though:

Just the size would have been enough, since nothing else grows this big, about the size of my closed fist; this is an American bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus.) The coloration is also a clue, but more distinct is the ‘vein’ running from the back edge of the eye.

On the green frog, the only other species around here that appears close, the ridge from the back side of the eye runs all the way down the back, but for the bullfrog, it only curls down behind the tympanum and ends there. The call of the bullfrog is also quite distinctive, though I have yet to hear them calling here at the new place.

No problems with this one either, as it’s another Copes grey treefrog, this time perched on the potted ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba) tree on the deck, almost immediately under the spinner seen earlier, though this one is three times the size of the previously pictured specimen. That pale spot under the eye seems to develop, even very faintly, before any other markings, and I’ve identified some very young specimens from that little spot. Now, these are identical to the common grey treefrog, distinguishable in the field only by their call, but North Carolina seems to host only the Copes for some reason. Though now I don’t trust that as much.

Another appearance of the eastern spadefoot (Scaphiopus holbrookii,) whose coloration seems to almost entirely lack any of the browns that the other toads typically have; the last few specimens have been primarily grey-olive, but the pale green hue to the irises are also a telltale. I have yet to hear any calling, but I’ll endeavor to get recordings of it when it happens. This one is doing the species’ typical hunting practice, which is to sit in the mouth of its burrow and wait for crickets to wander past, though to be honest, I’ve found them outside of the burrow more often than within. As I changed angle for another frame, it drew back down into the burrow further.

By the way, I’ve examined all of those that I’ve come across, save for this one, and have seen no sign of the one with the injured hindleg. Did it heal? Did it not survive? Can’t say.

And finally,

This very young green treefrog (Dryophytes cinereus) was splayed out rather lankily on this large leaf last night, drawing in a little before I got close enough to get the photograph. It was aware of my presence and a little anxious, but I managed to get around for a better portrait angle before it leapt off elsewhere.

Isn’t that a much cooler angle? I thought so, anyway – I’ve done hundreds of images of the species, but I’m always up for something dynamic.

Anyway, that got a few images out of the folder, though I ended up adding seven to the post from the initial plans. I still have more subjects to tackle though.

Podcast: Guest speakers

April 26, 2025 Al Denelsbeck

It’s been a while since the last podcast, but you knew I’d return, and this time, it’s with some guest speakers. This was recorded less than an hour ago, and not quite in Walkabout Studios:

Walkabout podcast – Guest speakers

Okay, not much of a podcast, I admit it, but I had to pass that clip along because I’ve never gotten one clearer than that. Those are barred owls of course (Strix varia,) a mated pair that’s been hanging around and is heard frequently in the surrounding area – these are the ‘monkey calls’ that mated pairs use to communicate, though what they’re communicating, I couldn’t tell you since this is a family blog*. Now, with hearing them dozens of times since we moved here, at varying distances and even during the day, not once have we even gotten a glimpse of one. The previous residents mentioned watching them through the kitchen windows, which only rubs it in. In fact, I have so few photos of barred owls, even though they’re easily the most common owl in both of the Walkabout Estates locations, that it’s a little disturbing – the best (and not exactly good) ones can be found here. But I’ll keep working on it.

* Oh fuck no.

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