Something from yesterday

Al Denelsbeck

crescent moon with Earthshine and neighboring star
The images in this post are going to reflect more of my casual shooting stance last night, and I apologize. I went out solely to see if I could capture something in the few minutes that it might be visible, and I did, but didn’t have my heart set on astrophotography and it shows.

Above, a crescent moon was showing notable earthshine on the ‘shadowed’ portion while I was out, so I fired off a few frames to capture this, which overexposed the hell out of the sunlit crescent, and this is typical – the difference in light levels far exceeds the range of any camera out there, including the best slides films, so you pick one or the other to expose for. Or, like far too many people out there today, you get separate exposures for both and then Photoshop them together, like this is some reflection of skill or something. Is the snark showing? Gosh I hope not. Anyway, I also captured a neighboring star while I was at it, and was fretting that I missed an occlusion, but it turns out the two only passed close together – the closest pass was a little closer than this, but not by a lot.

[Pedantry on for a second: Technically, I probably did capture an occlusion, perhaps even a lot, because that means that a star would be behind the moon out of sight. What I thought I might have missed was the very beginning or end of an occlusion, when the star was right smack at the edge of the moon but visible, which was not going to be the case with the star seen here anyway.]

The moon was also appearing very close to Venus in the sky (which is not the star seen here,) and at twilight they were the only two things visible in a perfectly clear sky with some nice fading colors, but at that point we were leaving a restaurant and I did not have the camera with me. Yes, I admitted that, because my therapist suggested that I do, but I suspect he’s kind of a sadist to be honest, and just likes humiliating me. By the time we got home the colors had faded almost entirely, and I only looked at Stellarium to confirm that it was Venus in the sky near the moon, but realized I had ten minutes to get out and capture something else. This was a narrow time frame to get the tripod and trek to a spot where I’d have a clear view, but in that, I was successful at least.

streak of Hubble Space Telescope passing against background stars
The streak seen in this nine-second exposure is the Hubble Space Telescope passing by fairly low on the horizon, the first time I’ve captured it, largely because it always runs fairly low on the horizon for us here in NC – it is in an equatorial orbit and will never pass overhead, or even close to it. I’ve been out a few times before and never spotted it, or just caught the barest glimpse because it doesn’t reflect a lot of light. Which is faintly amusing in that, just a few moments after I closed the shutter on this exposure, it flared brightly, likely from its solar panels throwing back a more distinct reflection from the sun.

[More exposition: the sun can easily be out of sight to us around the curve of the planet, presenting a perfectly dark sky, but satellites are high enough to still be sunlit and visible, many times, and Heavens Above will let you know about all of them if you input your location. The app, only for Android users, will even pinpoint the spot against the sky when you hold your phone/tablet up, provided it has the necessary hardware, which nearly all do anymore.]

Now if you look at that image above, you’ll see some faint little crescents all through the image, and these are the background stars. You could take this to mean that my camera/tripod combination wasn’t perfectly steady, and you’d be right, but perhaps not to the extent that you think – in nine seconds, there should be streaks from the stars as the Earth rotates; there just shouldn’t be curves. That little bit of lateral displacement (in this case, upper right to lower left) was the unwanted movement, and I can’t explain why it occurs so evenly during the time of the exposure, but perhaps I was tugging gently on the cable release. It could also be a bad bearing on the Earth’s axle, I suppose…

While out there, I revisited another quick experiment from years past.

streak of Sirius during panning, showing scintillation
This is Sirius, the brightest star in the sky (still surpassed by at least three planets, though,) during a long exposure as I panned the camera on the tripod. The rainbow effect is from scintillation, kinda, and is responsible for the ‘twinkle’ that so many people see from the brighter stars. I did not expect this one to be steady at all, because the tripod and ballhead are not made for butterly-smooth pans of this nature – the squiggle at the right side is the start of the exposure as I began the pan. You can even see a hint of scintillation from another star higher in the frame, one so dim that it was probably barely visible, naked-eye (this was at 600mm focal length.)

[Yet another aside: my framing is terrible because the angles I was working at were uncomfortable, and again, I wasn’t being too serious – ha! Get it? The tripod was raised fairly high because I wanted to stand more-or-less upright, bad news for stability really, but even then I had to stoop a lot just to see the viewfinder for a lot of my subjects, and this meant unclear oblique views through the eyepiece. Had I been doing this properly, I would have had the tripod as low as possible, myself seated on a ground pad for a more comfortable view angle, and would have tightened down as many weak points as possible: tripod legs and center column, ballhead pan and ball knobs, mounting plate to lens, switched to mirror lock-up to reduce vibrations, ensure that I was on firm ground, and so on. Really sharp astrophotography images require a lot of prep, among them a tracking motor to counteract the Earth’s rotation. I was being lazy, but admittedly, I didn’t have a lot of time to capture the Hubble pass that I was originally after, and as it was my knees got extremely muddy for a few of the frames.]

Okay, one more little detail and then we’re done. This comes from a very tight crop of the image above, magnified more than 100%.

stray light source, probably a bad pixel, in long star exposure
I noticed a couple of these while doing the edits, and highlighted this one for commentary. The little spot centered in the frame is not a star, because I was panning, and if it had been an actual light source it would have had to have been extremely momentary, mere milliseconds to not become stretched or attenuated by the camera’s motion like Sirius’ streak beneath it. While it remains possible that I caught something like a gamma ray burst, I am almost certain this is simply a bad pixel on the sensor, and because I shoot in jpeg rather than RAW, it got interpolated as this curious X-shape. I know, I know, “Why are you not shooting star images, or indeed everything, in RAW mode?!” Mostly, because RAW both takes a serious increase in memory usage and slows the camera down a bit in sequential shots, while providing a fractional increase in quality for only a handful of uses. I am against popular opinion in this regard, but I know my own demands too. Astrophotography does indeed benefit from RAW mode at times, and yes I should switch, at least when I’m doing this right. But, you know, some other time.

Something for today

Al Denelsbeck

bald cypress Taxodium distichum in Jones Lake, NCI’ve got some current content that will be coming soon, but I’m a little tired right now and have to crash for a short while, and by the time I’m awake again it’ll be tomorrow, so I’m sneaking this in now, a trivial thing but it’s been on my mind for a couple of days.

At right is the context image, a bald cypress tree (Taxodium distichum) in the ‘middle’ (not really) of Jones Lake, near Elizabethtown NC. One of quite a few images that I got while we visited, this one in particular was a favorite of The Girlfriend’s and was framed in the hall at the old place. Presumably it’s still around somewhere after the move, but I’m not sure where, and I probably should reprint it and find a place for it.

All that aside, I did a variation of it at the time that I just came across again, and it’s been digging at my mind because I happen to like it, but I can’t really pin down why. Which might mean that it’s simply a quirk of my tastes, or alternately something that may appeal to a variety of people and I just don’t know exactly why yet. Thus, you’re welcome and invited to express an opinion on it (and, really, on any of the images here or in the gallery) so I can determine if I’m as weird as we all suspect. It’s not a question of whether or not I’m weird – I am – but how weird, like faintly eccentric at times or the guy that everyone knew was gonna start conversing with fire hydrants some day.

That’s an adequate introduction, I think. So here’s the variant:

bald cypress Taxodium distichum in Jones Lake bearing Spanish moss Tillandsia usneoides
The Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) is what makes this framing so distinctive, and I haven’t yet decided if it’s better this way or if I should crop it right above the waterline and make the trunk and moss completely dominant, if a little more abstract. I definitely like those branches and the cypress leaves/needles, how they add a little color against the textures of the monochrome moss and bark. But does it pop? Does it have zazz? Does it have… it?

Let me know.

On this date 9

Al Denelsbeck

a pair of mating red-shouldered hawks Buteo lineatus in treetop
Nine years ago, early in the morning, I was watching a pair of red-shouldered hawks (Buteo lineatus) wheeling overhead and making a certain amount of noise – I was going to add, “as they often do,” but this is not necessarily true; we certainly tend to notice them when they are, because red-shouldered hawks have a distinctively plaintive and forlorn-sounding call, but when they’re not attracting our attention with these territorial or mating displays, we rarely ever look up to see who might be soaring up there silently.

Such was not the case on this date, and as I watched, the circling pair eventually both found perches fairly close to one another, which I believed was promising, as well as confirming that the calls were for courtship. Being prepared with the long lens and tripod, I was able to capture the moments when they reached their accord.

a pair of mating red-shouldered hawks Buteo lineatus in treetop
While they were cooperative to the extent that they played pattycake where I could see them, they hadn’t picked a spot that was clear of intervening branches, so award-winners these images are not. And there is something a bit… unconvincing, let’s say… about the total lack of differentiating expression or posture or anything from the female, who could have been dubbed in from any other photo of a perched hawk. I often say that we shouldn’t be expecting human reactions from any other species, because they have their own rules of interaction, but sheesh.

Since this occurred in a neighbor’s tree within easy sight of our yard, I had hoped this to meant the nest would be close by, but most avian species would already have the nest completed by this moment, it being one of the ways the male convinces the female that he is successful and worthy. True to form, I had no idea where the nest was in the neighborhood and could do no observations of rearing or fledging or anything; that would come several years later at the new place.

And speaking of that, we’ll include a photo from the same date in 2015, from the edge of the pond near that same new place.

nighttime long exposure of snow blanketed woods
Now here’s what’s faintly amusing about this: I had selected these photos last week right after preparing the last On This Date entry, and right after having done a photo outing without needing a jacket. So at that point, it was commentary on how different the weather could be in February. Just a few days after that, however, we had a winter storm for this year, kinda killing the commentary, and together with the On This Date entry from a few weeks back, I started to realize that perhaps February storms in North Carolina were not as uncommon or variable as I’d believed.

And I’m still writing this a day ahead, so if I go into the image folders and choose something like some sunny day as more commentary, I’m still liable to be thwarted by what the weather actually is when this posts, so screw it.

Why are these not online?

Al Denelsbeck

sunrise over Indialantic Beach, Florida
Some years back I created a collection of 5×7 prints in a matched boxed set, with mats and clear envelopes, so I had a portable gallery of images to show to publishers and art directors and all that – nicer presentation than a portfolio folder, easier to flip through. I selected a wide range of images, but concentrated on the fartsier ones instead of, you know, detail shots of cockroaches getting their insides sucked out, because I have the barest sense of aesthetics. And among them were these two frames from my time in Florida, nice beachy sunrises.

The fate of the boxed set was to sit on my shelves pretty much unmoving, because my meetings with publishers have been too few and far between, but more distinctly, the negotiations that I have had have taken place online or over the phone, with most of their exposure to my work coming through the website and through specific thumbnails that I sent over. I still like the boxed presentation, but no one gets to see it. Meanwhile, I have used these frames to illustrate something to my students, which I’ll get to shortly, so they’re in the instruction folder on my tablet.

As I was sorting through photos for another purpose recently, I started thinking that these two frames were not actually online anywhere, and double-checked the gallery to be sure: nope. A little surprising, but since we’re still in the slow season (the snow is now all gone and we’re back into rainy grey weather, bare trees, and brown grass,) they’re jumping in here for some color and content.

sunrise over breakers, Indialantic Beach, Florida
Both of these are slide film, by the way, and both from Indialantic Beach, Florida. In fact, from the exact same position, because they were taken only minutes apart, at radically different focal lengths – the bottom one was actually earlier than the top. It demonstrates how different something can look depending on how you frame it and what focal length is used, with a wide angle diminishing the details while giving a great impression of space, compared to the telephoto getting more color detail while enhancing those crepuscular rays. You can also see, if you look close at the clouds, that the exposures are slightly different because of the different areas of the sky and water that the meter was reading from (almost certainly the Evaluative Metering setting of Canon bodies, since these were definitely taken with the Elan IIe.)

What’s missing from the bottom one, however, while faintly visible in the top, is the layering of the clouds. In the bottom frame the clouds look more like flat pieces of lavender paper placed vertically in front of the sun, instead of thick blankets lying parallel to the earth’s surface, the light coming through at a very oblique angle. There was too little light underneath to show details or depth, so they’re largely silhouetted even though they have a decent color cast. Not a big deal of course, but it shows how easily the appearance can deviate from the reality.

Moreover, those little slots admitting the sunlight were remarkably narrow and selective. Go back up the the top one and notice that the sunlight, reaching me and the camera where I stood, did not touch the water more than a few dozen meters out, producing no shine at all beyond the breakers – it wasn’t actually visible from there. Might have been really interesting being aloft in a plane, looking down on the landscape and seeing how selectively the golden sunlight was touching it.

All that glitters is not cold

Al Denelsbeck

… except, for this post, it really is.

backlit snowpack ice
True to North Carolina form, the day after the snowstorm is remarkably clear, even if it’s a tad chillier than it was during the storm (by like a degree.) My sinuses were protesting and I’d already spent time clearing off The Girlfriend’s car, so I intended to keep my outing brief, but I couldn’t pass on the opportunity of course. The snow had all partially melted due to the air temperature as it fell, then refroze during the night, so what we had was actually ice clusters, which sparkle a lot more than snow does.

It’s this kind of thing that makes me regret how slow our technology in digital photography has progressed in certain areas. Manufacturers are concentrating on cramming ever more megapixels into sensors, but the dynamic range remains largely the same, and the display on these LCD monitors falls into a really dismal scale. The bright sparkles here should just about hurt your eyes for an accurate impact, but they’ll be nowhere near that bright no matter how you view them. Hey, all you techie people, let’s get on this!

refraction from melting ice droplets on pine needles
It’s also pretty challenging to capture the rainbow refraction that produces starbursts of intense color from the melting ice when viewed at the right angle, but that’s the fault of lenses and apertures more than digital sensors. The orange shows up well enough, but you only get a hint of the teal from the drop to the left. If you ever tackle this, a larger aperture helps, and do a lot of shots because luck plays a large part.

I’m not about to drive up to Gold Park, where we shot the early blossoming trees a couple of posts back, so we’re going for this right now as seasonal commentary.

red bud blossoms under topping of snow ice
I don’t recall which trees these were and can’t identify them by the blossoms – I was initially going to say sweetgum, but the gumballs are still visible on the branches of those, so no. Not a lot of chance of them getting pollinated today, anyway.

And another, altered to show a trait of the morning.

tree branches and visible blowing ice and water in the air
I boosted contrast and adjusted saturation on this to make a detail more visible, but getting it beyond the subtle aspect seen here made it look incredibly unrealistic. The sun was warm enough to be melting off the ice, with the occasional breezy gust, and the air was actually full of misty droplets and falling ice bits anywhere near a tree, so getting gently pelted with these was par for the day. If you look closely at the clear blue sky areas, you’ll see they’re full of white spots of the ice and water drops.

I had no intention of chasing bird pics, but they seemed galvanized by the snow or sunshine or something to be active, so even with casual shooting I netted a handful of different species.

male northern cardinal Cardinalis cardinalis in bare tree with snow tufts
The northern cardinals (Cardinalis cardinalis) adore this stuff, of course, and this one was patient enough to let me shift slightly for a clearer view and better framing, then posed momentarily for posterity before flying off into more of a thicket where it was nigh invisible.

As I walked along I spooked a northern flicker (Colaptes auratus) from a tree where I hadn’t seen it at all, its pale rump flashing during its swooping flight, but it landed not far off in good light and I snagged a couple of frames.

male northern flicker Colaptes auratus on pine trunk
I don’t see enough flickers around here, which is a shame because they’re cool birds, but it’s possible that I’m just not searching hard enough – the other woodpeckers tend to draw more attention to themselves, at least. The dark ‘mustache’ mark denotes this as a male, like the cardinal above (which is indicated by the bright red color for that species.) The black bib is also a distinctive trait of the flicker, but my angle here shows only the barest hint of it.

I’d been hearing the semi-distant calls of the next one, but caught it out of the corner of my eye as it silently flew to a new perch. It, too, gave me just a few moments for a couple of frames before it flew off again.

red-bellied woodpecker Melanerpes carolinus also perched on trunk
This is a red-bellied woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus,) which I see a lot more of, and hear even more often, though they’re comparable in size and habits to the flickers. Again, a male – the females lack red on top of the head though they still have it on the neck. Neither ever seems to show a red belly, to be honest, though I believe there’s a hint of it on the males during breeding season and no other time. I think ornithologists could have tried harder to name them something appropriate.

And I’ve said the same for this next one, too.

double-crested cormorant Phalacrocorax auritus perched on piling in pond
Here we have a double-crested cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus,) so-named because during breeding season the males have two narrow stripes of paler feathers on their crowns – as much as I’ve seen and photographed these birds, I’ve never seen this at all myself, so I think it’s all bullshit and the few photo examples out there have all been Photoshopped. I tend to consider these warmer weather birds, seen more often at the coast though the numbers may be increasing here inland, and I wasn’t expecting to see one in this weather; a couple years back one spent some months in the summer in this pond, perching on the same pilings in fact, so we’ll just have to see what happens.

By the way, these pilings are a matter of slight frustration, because their position means they’re always backlit and too many species seem to like them. Maybe I need to erect some big reflectors on the bank nearby.

And for our last pic, I’ll go slightly fartsy with one of the ubiquitous Canada geese (Branta canadensis,) which I have more than enough photos of (as does everyone, I guess,) but I liked the sun’s reflection in the water alongside it. Plus it brings my photo uploads this month to 49, not too shabby for the winter and the slow start. And I still have at least another ‘On This Date’ photo coming.

Canada goose Branta canadensis with sun's glare

A quick public service message

Al Denelsbeck

It’s a lot later in the day than it should be for this to do much good for the drivers around here, but it’s still something to keep in mind at all times, so here it is anyway.

Clean off the entire car; all windows, and even the roof. Visibility is the whole reason you have all those windows, and shit flies off the car as it warms up. Nobody should ever be put at risk because you’re too fucking lazy or didn’t plan ahead enough to have a snow brush. Yes, you’ll be late for work. Next time think ahead, Brainiac.

The roads may seem clear, but patch ice exists. Especially in shaded areas. ‘Nuff said.

Leave following distance. Nobody gives a fuck if you want to drive faster, and there’s a good chance they know something you don’t. Tailgating doesn’t actually get you there any quicker, and greatly increases the risk that you’re gonna be the one that totals your car. And then receives a skull fracture if you do it to me. Cool your jets – you ain’t got nowhere to be that’s that important.

If you wouldn’t drive that way in front of a cop, then simply don’t drive that way. It doesn’t serve any purpose anyway, but if you consider yourself that important or infallible or whatever your feeble reasoning, do it right in front of the cop and take the fine and the points, Chuckles. If you ain’t got the balls then, what kind of coward are you?

Seriously, why increase the number of assholes on the road?

Okay, I’m done now. For the moment, anyway.

Not through lack of trying

Al Denelsbeck

nighttime snow scene
The topic for the day is “snow,” at least, anywhere in public among North Carolina natives. I honestly can’t say if I’m overstating or understating the anxiety that’s been present; all I can say is, from a New Yorker’s standpoint, this barely counts as snow. The surfaces are too warm to retain it so the roads are only wet, maybe a tad slushy in places, and the surface air temperature is warm enough to make my evening’s pursuits mostly in vain. Yes, I was once again after snowflake photos.

As I’ve discovered before, what you really want is a nice standing flake against a dark background, which is hard enough to accomplish, but it also has to stay intact for at least a few moments, and the air temperature wasn’t helping at all. I cleared a couple of spots on the black grill cover on the back deck and watched for opportunities along the edges of the cleared area, where a stack of snow would provide a bit of insulation against melting, but wasn’t having a lot of luck.

snow crystals without too much form
It did not help that very few distinct flakes were even falling; it was mostly clumps, or flakes that had re-accumulated more moisture and thus were beaded with ice bumps. Which is a shame, because I discovered that leaving an old pop shield outside to get cold enough worked pretty damn well for catching snow without melting it – I just wasn’t getting flakes.

snowflake with additional moisture frozen onto the surface
[A pop shield, by the way, is a screen for microphones that are very sensitive to forced air, which can create a thumping sound. It is usually a layer or two of nylon that stops the puff of air, and being black, works well for a background.)

The snow stopped before the temperature had dropped enough to provide good, shapely flakes or simply keep the ones that fell from melting, so my efforts in that respect are done for the night at least, and very likely for the year. Below, about the best that I got, which isn’t going to win any awards (yeah, yeah, keep your snark to yourself.)

almost a distinctive snowflake
There hasn’t even been enough snow to make for great landscapes, as the top photo demonstrates – too thin, no real ‘blanketing.’ But I did do a follow-up image to one posted the other day, just for giggles. The neighboring gardenia bushes were about lying flat from the weight of the wet snow, and even the mantis egg case was warm enough to slushify the snow load upon it.

egg case ootheca of Chinese mantis Tenodera sinensis with load of melting snow atop
This isn’t any concern; such cases weather much worse than this for longer periods. And while it might look like late afternoon sunlight, this was actually shot at night by the light of the headlamp. I’m at least hoping these eggs in particular provide some nice hatching shots, just for the blog continuity – the kind of thing you think about when you’re publicizing your photographic efforts. The roads may ice up later on as the temperature drops, and they’re damn slow about getting salt trucks out around here, yet I have nowhere to be tomorrow so it’s no skin off my nose. But as I close, I simply have to relate a conversation from earlier.

I’d been outside checking conditions and came in, warning The Girlfriend to be careful if she went out, because the snow atop the layers of wet leaves in places made them especially slippery, indicating that I’d already slipped and fallen once.

“Are you okay? You need to be careful,” she warned.

“I’m fine. I plopped on my ass. I’m not seventy-five, for pete’s sake.”

“No, but you’re over fifty,” she reminded me. As if I’d forgotten – you know how us old folks get.

“I still didn’t break my goddamn hip,” I snarked back.

Seriously. It’s bad enough hearing this from students that can’t even be bothered to proofread.

On this date 8

Al Denelsbeck

jumping spider possibly Phidippus otiosus close portrait
This one comes from fourteen years ago in 2006, with the Canon Pro-90 IS camera and a reversed Olympus 50mm f1.4 attached to the front for extreme magnification – this is what produced the circular vignetting seen in the corners of the frame. My subject here is a common jumping spider in these parts, most likely Phidippus otiosus, and is quite dead, but this allowed me to do closeups that required a very specific distance without having to worry about a hyperactive subject wandering off, or attacking me viciously, or trying to use the camera itself. The brilliant iridescence of those chelicerae is of course one of the details that I was after. However, there’s another detail that was produced by accident and is a little misleading in itself. For this, we’ll have to go in a bit closer still.

jumping spider possibly Phidippus otiosus eye detail
The primary eyes (or ‘anterior median’ in spider talk, front and center in people talk) appear to actually have pupils and perhaps a metallic brown iris, but they don’t. While these eyes are indeed complex, with the ability to focus (unlike compound eyes,) they have no pupil or iris; the effect is provided by the reflection of the metal mounting plate of the Olympus lens, looming so close to the eyes – you can see it in slightly more detail here. The metallic brown color likely is from the eyes, though – in my experience, the cornea tends to turn this color in dead spiders, or perhaps its the optical fluid within. In living jumping spiders, those eyes have a blue-green hue when it can be seen at all.

“So why are spiders so hairy?” you ask, but in vain, because I’m keeping mum about that – it’s that, or admit that I don’t know and could only speculate that it’s either to help ward off parasites or repel rain, and I’m not about to do that. Frustrated, you try again and ask about the bright green chelicerae, and there, I have an answer, even if it’s someone else’s. Apparently, it assists them with hunting by reflecting light in the wavelengths that the spider is most sensitive to, a bit like those circular reflectors that doctors in old movies and cartoons always wore on their heads just to indicate that they were doctors but that no one ever sees now and never knew what they were for even when they did – that was pronoun hell but I bet you still followed it. Curiously, some spiders, even within the same species, have different colors to their chelicerae, so presumably they either have different eyes or are targeting different prey (or perhaps at different times, like when UV is stronger or weaker.) Anyway, it’s for hunting – just leave it at that. Shit, if I was a scientist I’d have so many different research projects going right now just to answer stuff that comes up on the blog…

And yet, some activity

Al Denelsbeck2 Comments

Chinese mantis Tenodera sinensis egg case ootheca on sapling at Mason Land Biological ReserveAs the previous post indicated, we get our warm spells, which mostly bring rain, but then again, there’s a chance of snow predicted for Thursday night. It will almost certainly be trivial and not worth photographing, but that’s what conditions are like right now.

Today (as I type this, though it will certainly post the following day,) I had the first serious free time in a week or so and got to a couple of impending projects, among them placing the egg cases (oothecas) of the Chinese mantids that I’d collected. They have come from here-and-there, a few different locations while out looking for photo subjects, the most challenging being in Mason Farm Biological Reserve. Mind you, there were a lot of egg cases to be found, but the vast majority of them had been placed on saplings as seen here, and I wasn’t going to damage a tree for the egg case, so I was watching for those that had been placed on tall weeds instead. They were few and far between, but I found a few (for both Mr Bugg and myself,) so these were added to the others that I’d collected, a total of seven, some of which may not be viable – we’ll see in a couple of months when hatching season arrives. And this is widely variable, depending on the weather, so it requires frequent checks, but with several, the odds of catching them right at emergence are much higher. My goal is to actually catch them springing (well, more like oozing) from the sac itself, preferably on video, something that I have not captured though I did manage some clips soon afterward, shit, three years ago. Two years back, none of my (purchased) oothecas hatched at all, and last year, while I had quite a few to monitor, my timing sucked on all of them and I got no hatching activity. You see? If more of you bought prints and such, or simply became one of them wealthy patrons that I’ve heard of, then I wouldn’t have to work some other job and could devote all my time to the content herein.

Chinese mantis Tenodera sinensis egg case ootheca mounted to branch in useful setting
I now have a tally of the locations of all of these, plus two other potential subjects to keep an eye on and begin daily checks when the season approaches: one is a Carolina mantis egg case on the roof edge of the shed, and another is a wheel bug (Arilus cristatus) egg cluster that I spotted on our fence (the far side of course) in the fall. While placing the mantis cases, I checked on them both just for the sake of it, and noticed that the wheel bug eggs were showing activity – only, not the expected kind. In fact, what I was seeing was so small that I brought out the photo rig to achieve the magnification necessary to show what just what it was. More or less.

egg cluster of wheel bug with unidentified flies atop
First off, I knew these weren’t the eggs hatching because I’ve seen that before, the brightly-colored nymphs emerging from their clown-car eggs, far too large to have fit inside to begin with – I used to have one of these images in the gallery but since removed it because I need better, so I’m anxiously watching this cluster for that opportunity. Now, what exactly these little flies are, I cannot say because I have too few identifying characteristics to work with, but the size of the eyes puts me in mind of syrphid flies. Bear in mind, the entire cluster can be hidden under a dime, so they’re, shall we say, on the petite side.

Here’s a slightly better look, but still not sufficient for ID.

unidentified flies perhaps laying eggs among wheel bug egg cluster
The two fly specimens furthest to the right seem to have their abdomens dipped down into the small gaps between the wheel bug eggs, so it’s possible they’re laying eggs for their parasitic larvae to glom onto the wheel nymphs as they emerge – if they don’t actually burrow into the eggs themselves. And just there I had to pause and determine that this cluster was not, in fact, a cocoon/chrysalis (intermediate stage between larva and adult) instead of eggs, but no, it appears I was right in the first place – wheel bugs do not seem to have a wormlike larval stage.

(By the way, my first photos came about because The Jim Kramer had a patch in his yard many years back, and called me when he found them hatching, but he got much better pics than I did. That time around.)

Being the ultimately-prepared (ahem) nature photographer that I am, I was carrying a paper scale in my wallet, and drew it out to get the measured shot. I have a stack of these, by the way, because I print them alongside my business cards so I can carry a few, they don’t cost me anything, and I’m not worried about damaging or losing them.

wheel bug egg cluster with measuring scale
Wheel bugs, by the way, can get big – the disparity in size between hatching and adult is comparable to the Chinese mantids, an increase in mass perhaps a hundred times or better, which leaves me curious as to who might hatch first and begin to prey on the other. Perhaps we’ll have photos or video of a showdown coming up later this year (well, I can hope, anyway.)

While out in the yard with the macro rig in hand, I started watching for other subjects, and soon located one at least.

small hymenopteran 'sweat bee' captured in web with two unidentified cobweb spiders
it doesn’t matter how early the bees or flies might emerge, they’re probably behind the spiders, which seem to have a very functional antifreeze system. This little hymenopteran, what we always called ‘sweat bees,’ is truly trapped by a pair of unidentified cobweb spiders on the frame of the shed; I’m taking them for a mated pair, and this is perhaps their late Valentine’s Day celebration. Don’t fill up too much there, guys – it doesn’t help with later on, if you get my drift.

green lynx spider Peucetia viridans nymph on twigAnd on yesterday’s (well, Monday’s) outing, Mr Bugg and I sidetracked over to a park that was not flooded, one where we photographed a few green lynx spiders (Peucetia viridans) just shy of producing egg sacs. Knowing that the young would have hatched in the late fall but weren’t likely to have vacated the area yet (if at all,) I searched around for dried weed tops that showed a lot of web strands to indicate that they were likely occupied, but it was Buggato that spotted the first, to his credit. The spider nymphs are ridiculously tiny and very shy, and I was working with natural light and no bracing, so none of my shots came out worth shit, but here’s one just for illustration. As you might imagine, we’re looking at a few millimeters in total length.

(I’ve done better of course – how could you doubt me? A good scale shot is here, though I believe the specimen at right is slightly larger, while best detail shots are here.)

And I’ll close with a photo that is wholly unrepresentative of the season and conditions, because it was one of just two trees in the park that were blooming, while the rest all looked as dried and brown as the mantis egg cases up there. But the colors are nice, and I suspect very welcome right now, so appreciate them, you know, before they disappear under water.

unidentified tree in full bloom against deep blue sky

There have been better outings

Al Denelsbeck

picnic area at Jordan lake
This will be the first of two posts about recent photos – they were far enough apart thematically, and I’ve been slow in posting anyway, so I’m breaking them up even though they will likely post within hours of one another (and before the next ‘On This Date’ entry.)

Yesterday, Mr Bugg wanted to do an outing to Jordan Lake, and I was a little skeptical because of the recent heavy rains, but he’s paying the fees, he calls the shots. And it was far worse than I feared. The photo above illustrates one of the little picnic areas; the trees towards the back in the center mark the normal water’s edge, I think, but there might even have been a beach margin that put the waterline further out. Regardless, all of the trails, and indeed half of the publicly accessible areas, were well under water, so no hiking out there for a bit.

lone tree deep in floodwaters of Jordan Lake
We did what we could, but with virtually no access beyond the parking lot and no bird activity, there remained few photos to chase.

Well, little bird activity.

trio of double-crested cormorants Phalacrocorax auritus perched on swimming barrier
Here, the double-crested cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus) in the center tries to smooth over an impending breakup. And this close to Valentine’s Day, too.

Okay, maybe not.

They’re perched, by the way, on the floating barrier that marked the swimming area, but I’m pretty sure one end had dislodged from shore, because it was damn far out and didn’t seem to be enclosing anything, yet it was still handy for the birds to perch on and dry out between fishing sessions.

The erosion around Jordan lake is extensive, largely because this kind of thing happens once a year, give or take (it’s raining right now as I type this, a day after these pics were taken.) Development in the area speeds runoff – parking lots and housing developments drain most of the water that would have been retained by woods and underbrush, and the lake is maintained by a dam to provide water for the area, but it only flows out so fast and in many cases is restricted at that, to prevent flooding downstream. But lake levels that change this drastically hammer the shit out of the vegetation at the edges, which die off or even fall away as the soil is washed out, so ‘stable’ is not the way to describe the lake margins. This was illustrated more when we went to another portion just to check it out.

Al Bugg standing knee-deep in floodwater at head of boat launch approach
It didn’t take much to talk Mr Bugg into posing in the water in February – he finds any excuse to go wading anyway. He’s at the head of the maneuvering circle that fronts the boat ramps, completely submerged behind him, while the trees to the left mark one of the points that we often explore. In fact, that post just visible over his left shoulder is well over two meters tall, if I remember correctly. We pass these things all the time, but don’t note just how tall they are.

Not done yet. We went along to the other boat ramps nearby – the first has now been purposed towards hand-launched craft like kayaks and (sigh) paddleboards, mostly because these fluctuating levels were silting in the ramp areas, but the second set has a higher approach and deeper clearance.

Mr Bugg shooting from low on boat ramp at Jordan Lake in December 2019
This is from December when we were chasing sunset pics, not very successfully, and he was trying for a creative angle. No, he’s not chimping, because I’ve told him repeatedly to break that habit so naturally he wouldn’t dare do this where I could see him, at least.

(If you are unaware of this term, ‘chimping’ refers to checking the LCD on the back of the camera immediately after taking a shot, something that burst forth with the switch to digital. It tells you nothing effective, of course, because the LCD is too small and too badly calibrated to indicate anything crucial, plus it looks very unprofessional to keep checking. So no, he’s clearly not doing this.)

And now, a comparison photo from yesterday, pretty much the same position.

Mr Bugg wading into water at head of flooded boat ramp on Jordan Lake, February 2020
Mind you, I hadn’t even suggested he get into the water this time, so stop tsking at me – that’s all him. But I want you to notice something else. The boat ramps float, anchored at a fixed point on shore, so they can stay with the fluctuating levels. In December, they were sloped down significantly, the drop hitting at least two meters, while yesterday they actually sloped up a little from the anchor.

floating ramps on Jordan Lake almost submerged at fixed end
And one more.

great blue heron Ardea herodias perched alongside snag in November 2019
This one dates from November, but I posted a variation of it in December, sans the boat ramp back there because it didn’t add anything to the composition – unless you’re trying to show the boat ramp. It’s the same ramp that I was standing on for the photos further up – well, not the exact same, but the one alongside it. This was taken from the other ramp area, the first pictured (not) in this post. I couldn’t do a comparison image from yesterday because I would have had to have been treading water to get the right angle as it was, plus there was nothing to see – the entire snag and everything around it was invisible, totally submerged. And when it does re-emerge, it’ll likely look different as the water shifted the driftwood and perhaps added some.

And before you ask, no, that’s not a cormorant surfacing at the feet of the heron, but just another stub of the driftwood. I had to go to the full-resolution version to confirm this, though.

So, yeah – not really the most productive outing when most of the shots are illustrating how bad the conditions were. But part two is soon to follow, unless you’re reading this after it already posted and it appears above this one in the page lineup, so you already know what that held.

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