There definitely needs to be a little better planning on our part, meaning we humans, because we have two major holidays that come up in winter, which is good because we need something positive to focus upon as the weather goes hyurgl, but they’re slammed close together towards the beginning of the season (in fact, there’s yet another holiday beating them both to the draw, coming up very soon,) and then there’s bupkiss afterward. We need something exciting to happen, say in mid-February, to help break all this up. And no, not Valentine’s Day, which counts as anything from wishy-washy to downright sadistic for up to half of the population. Let’s start a movement to make Darwin Day (February 12) much bigger than it is, with special food dishes and television specials and so on; this will have the added benefit of really pissing off the creationists, so win-win there.
But until that happens, we have nature photographers in the mid-latitudes, or at least me (how many others do you follow?) trying to drum up something of interest when it’s cold, grey, and rainy, which brings us to this. I had a couple of idle photo topics that I’d been intending to tackle for a while now, and finally did some shooting. Don’t get too excited, seriously.
The first is, while in central New York I collected a bunch of freshwater snail shells from the lake I grew up on (directly on, raised on a raft – I learned to hunt crayfish long before I learned to ride a bike.) It’s kind of curious; for a long time I never even knew the lake hosted snails, and then one winter when the ice was thick enough to venture out on but still pretty clear, my friend and I found a huge collection of shells on the bottom, well out from the shore but still in shallow water, and knocked a hole in the ice to collect a bunch, practically freezing our hands solid in doing so. Then I never saw many again, up until this summer. The place that I’d stayed at suddenly got inundated with them this year, on the shores and in the small bay by the docks, when they never had before; some vagary of currents had washed millions of them ashore, so collecting them was a matter of just digging my hands into the mounds of them in the shallows.
As usual, shells look much better wet than dry, and after cleaning them, they developed a dull, muted coloration, not half as interesting as they’d appeared when wet. Now, I could always soak them down before shooting, but I decided to try something else, and picked a small selection to paint with clear acrylic. This had the desired affect, as well as making them easier to handle than wet shells, which not only require drying one’s hands before grabbing the camera, but also makes them tend to cling together and drip and all that.
Despite the fact that I was indiscriminate in just collecting a few handfuls of them, none were occupied by live snails; those don’t tend to get driven much by currents, and the snails themselves aim for areas that provide their food and not expanses of empty houses.
None of these were very big either, averaging about 15-20mm in length, but some of them were remarkably small.
I’m showing roughly the biggest and smallest here, ranging from 28mm down to just under 7, and no, I’m not finding out what species they belong to – I’m not even sure where to begin looking.
The sand, by the way, is some pretty fine stuff, not from central New York but from coastal NC. From a typical viewing distance it appears pale grey, but up close the quartz nature of it can be seen easily. ‘Up close’ means with some serious macro magnification, the reversed 28-105.
This is the same small shell again. Like I said, I tend to save these projects for the slow season, and two days ago when I tackled this, it had literally rained all day long, so, yeah.
But I had something else that I did this session, which had been sitting in my curio cabinet for, oh, since this outing.
I found this deceased turtle, exactly as seen here, sitting atop the washout detritus left behind by high river levels, and figured it had not been there long, but how long ago it had actually expired I could only guess. The lack of any ridges around its scutes (shell pattern pieces) indicate that it was less than a year old when it died, and overall it measures 39mm, slightly larger than a large coin or, if this helps (of course it does,) the same diameter as a film can. I am reasonably sure this is a river cooter (Pseudemys concinna) due to some details that we’re about to see.
But first, we go take a morbid peek into that eye socket, which shows just how much space a young turtle’s eyes take up in it head. Amphibian brains are not very big nor terribly developed, in comparison to many other classes anyway, but they’re still sufficient to the need.
Now we can take a look at more interesting and telling detail.
This detailed pattern on the plastron is what identifies the species, or so I believe – you know how often I hedge my bets. I mean, what if I decided (after some brain injury) to run for political office, and then someone dug up an old post of mine where I confidently misidentified a dead turtle? Imagine the scandal! No, I gotta play it safe.
[Yeah, like the posts ripping apart religion will all go past without notice in this country…]
One more detail shot, because.
This is one of the hind claws, and the exposed portion of the longest nail there measures all of 2mm. The skeleton of my specimen is surprisingly intact: one foreleg is missing, and a couple of neck vertebrae, but that appears to be it. Notably for turtles, the carapace and plastron form most of the ribcage and vertebrae, so what remains are the limbs, really. Yet as you can imagine, this is still very delicate, so it largely stays in my cabinet without being handled, a nature photographer’s version of a Star Wars figurine. Okay maybe not.
And I just realized that I tried to muddle through the dead season by shooting… dead things. Way to go, me. Maybe I should just stick to the cats or something.
But then I had to do this, and it came out fairly well despite the difficulties. This is just the two images above overlaid, with faded transitions between the two, showing how much the lunar day has advanced in one full Earth day: not much. It’s not quite accurate, because the difference is 20.5 hours instead of 24, and for accuracy I should be out shooting the moon right at this moment but I’m not gonna. That’s the kinda sloppy journalism and illustrations that you’ve come to expect from me, and I see no reason to change now. And yes, it doesn’t look ‘perfect,’ because the two moons were actually oriented differently in the viewfinder because of this difference in shooting times, and I had to resize and reposition the two images to match, which is a hell of a lot harder than it sounds, PLUS, the moon wobbles a little (libration,) and there is no way to do a perfect match anyway – part of what you’re seeing are my errors, and part is simply this natural wobbling motion. You can also see a faint difference in exposure, especially if you look to the top right, and this is because the moon gets brighter as the phases advance, due to more sunlight reflecting directly rather than obliquely, and exposure times have to be adjusted to compensate. Again, I could have tweaked it in GIMP for a close match but didn’t bother. What you should be looking at is the changes in definition near the terminator; not just Tycho appearing, but other features becoming less distinct as the sun rises higher for them, shortening the shadows.
Clip-on Shit Lens for your smutphone – Because you didn’t overspend by a factor of seven on obtaining a device to destroy both your attention span and your ability to even read, now you can attempt to ignore the fact that you really should just be using a real goddamn camera. For just the cost of some overpriced sneakers, you can have some saccharin-tablet sized lenses to stack in front, never realizing that the lack of quality actually comes from using a sensor the size of a pimple. Was $164.99, now only $74.99
Portable Bluetooth Speakers – MP3s are not compressed enough as it is – they become ever-so-much-more-so when played through a 14mm speaker that will last, oh, about 22 minutes with the tiny battery within. That’s okay, though, because you’ll still be annoying everyone around you with your personal music choices played publicly and tinnily because you won’t wear your earbuds. 
Really And For True Wireless Earbuds – We kid you not, there’s not a single wire in these! Not even surrounding the speaker magnet! This makes the battery really long-lasting! Which is good, because it’s tiny too, and if it were hooked to anything it would last about 37 minutes before dying. You will, of course, lose one of these when it falls from your ear someplace public, because taking the damn thing out when you’re not listening to music is more effort than it’s worth, and note, we don’t sell single replacements. So, multiply the price times five throughout the year. Formerly $129.99, now only $49.99
The Smallest HD Projector Yet We Swear – What’s better than watching high-definition movies on a screen that comes nowhere near high-definition resolution, thus making you waste scads of memory in your smutphone? Projecting the same damn thing in low-contrast onto a sub-optimal surface! For the 23 minutes that the battery will last, of course – even moderately bright lights require power. But what better way to share some vapid video instead of, you know, sending the link to someone else’s phone? I’d love to hear it. 
Something CBD – It doesn’t matter what, really, because it doesn’t do jack shit, but the placebo effect remains alive and well, and so does the concept of how cool weed is, because only the coolest kids in school were into it, remember? So now you can indulge in your teenage rebellion in the lamest and most ineffective way possible, without actually rebelling because it’s legal because see above about jack shit. Regardless, you can put this oil in, I dunno, vapes or gummy bears or Doritos or something. Marked down from $72.99 to only $34.98!
Alcohol Flask Hidden in Some Damn Thing – Even more teenage rebellion here, as you get some liquor into someplace it’s forbidden, mostly because alcohol breeds assholes, and dog forbid you go without a buzz for a couple of hours, or find something to do that’s actually entertaining on its own. Whatever – it’s ‘Muricah, dammit! Fucking Alcohol! Alter your brain because you’re pathetic! And stick it to The Man by sneaking it past, um, The Man. 
Badass Knife – You’re sure to be prepared for something that will never happen – zombie apocalypse, the downfall of civilization, some mugger dumb enough to let you try and dig out a weapon that you have no clue how to use – with this over-decorated, black and knobby knife that says “Tactical” on it. First Blood started this whole idea that with the right knife you can do anything, ignoring that a knife only does light cutting – packing tape, fishing line, and so on. Any other pursuit has a more proper tool that will work dozens of times better. But this isn’t a tool – it’s an ego-stroker. Now you won’t have any feelings of inadequacy with a knobby black knife that has a weak flashlight, a compass you don’t know how to use, and a snakebite kit built in! Plus it has a crosshairs etched on the side, because knives and crosshairs go together. Millions have bought this pigsticker at the regular price of $335.99, but today only you can get it for the low, low price of $174.99!
Bang-Thingy Selfie Mount – Mount your smutphone or XtreemKoolDood action cam onto the end of your deadly toy so you can film yourself looking cool while making noise for no reason like a child. It even points away from the target that you keep missing, so no embarrassing evidence here! Includes a variety of filter apps, like scars or trickling blood or more of a five-o’clock shadow than you can manage. 
Tenzing Cooler – Made with technology and engineered, so it has to work many times better than, say, a cooler costing less than a tenth of the price, because insulation is very complicated. But you’ve heard the buzz over the name, so you’ll pay the price, and imagination will do the rest. $379.99
Outdoorsy Shirt – More buzzwords here, like “breathable” and “micromesh” and “carbon-fiber,” plus the idea that with this, you become fit, rugged, and totally not afraid to run to your car in the rain. It’s still just a shirt, and won’t last any longer than any other shirt, but there’s a cool logo others don’t have, and pocket flaps. At leading retailers for $119.99, we’re offering it here exclusively for $69.99!
Professional Something-Or-Other Bundle – It’s time for a new career, but going to school is right out, so here’s a software bundle of instructional stuff that will clearly educate you enough to get into a high-paying job, because those don’t really require experience or advanced courses. Employers love seeing “self-taught” on a résumé! Get your life on track, whatever that means! (Even the losers in the race were on the track, but…) Was $789.99, now only $12.95!
Some Cooking Kit – You want to learn how to cook, but simply doing recipes found online is too passé. We’ll send you stuff you still have to know how to cook, but don’t have to buy on your own, for a subscription fee, and include a complicated knife set even though you really only need three or four to do everything you could possibly want in a kitchen (or see Badass Knife above.) Best way to spend four times as much on food and still be just as disappointed. 
