Estate Find XXV

Not a stunning one this week, but hopefully, one that will produce a follow-up sometime in the near future. I was digging in some soft mulch alongside the back steps and unearthed this:

egg of likely Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis with author's fingers for scale
Definitely an egg, almost certainly of a Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) – I’ve seen the eggs of ground skinks before and they’re smaller than this. While I can’t prove that it’s not from a five-lined skink, which make the occasional appearance on the property, we have scads of anoles, so we’re going with that for now.

egg of likely Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis with millimeter scale
I decided I’d try to hatch this one out myself, and created a small terrarium/incubator that I could monitor – all they really need is warmth and moisture, and so it has a bed of mulch, but up against the terrarium glass so I can see what’s happening. I’d hatched out some ground skink eggs, many years ago, but never got any photos of them emerging though I was closely observing one that showed the first crack; naturally, in the few minutes that I took a break, the skink emerged at that time. I’m better equipped to tackle such photos now, so hopefully this will come to fruition.

Meanwhile, we also have this, captured early Thursday morning (well after finding the egg):

obviously pregnant Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis on lamp post
I’ve seen some portly anoles before, but never one that looked this ready to pop at any moment. She was asleep on the lamp post, and I did a few frames and let her be.

After daybreak, I found one hanging out in almost the same location, but not looking pregnant at all.

quite trim Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis on same lamp post hours later
While this was taken in the afternoon, I first saw the specimen a couple hours after sunrise, and the proximity to the same location as the pregnant one made me wonder if it was the same, having laid its egg(s) in the interim. Some careful comparison of photos followed, mostly looking at some abrasions/scarring on the shoulders, which seemed the same though I didn’t have photos from the same angles. I was looking at the wrong end, though. Here we have a full-length shot from the night:

obviously pregnant Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis showing kinked tail from injury
And an inset crop of that tail tip:

tip of tail of pregnant Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis showing kink from injury
That’s pretty distinctive, you have to admit, some old injury that healed oddly. And now, a closeup of the tail of the daytime anole:

close crop of tail tip of not pregnant Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis showing same injury
Yep, that’s a match all right. So I’m surmising that somewhere at the base of the lamp post is her egg stash, and since I know, down to a few hours, when it/they were laid, I can be watching for the emergence of the newborn(s) right on schedule, though whether they’ll show out in the open right away remains to be seen – every one that I’ve found previously gives the impression of being some time after hatching, and I suspect they might stay hidden deep in foliage for the first week or two. The base of the lamp post is all thick liriope, so they’ll have a good spot for it.

The gestation period is five to seven weeks, so I’ll be watching carefully at the end of July. Meanwhile, we have another week before the first turtle nest may start to hatch, and I have four of them to monitor. You’d think with that many, I’d catch the emergence of at least one set of newborn turtles…

* * *

LAST MINUTE ADDITION (Okay, it’s a little less than three hours before this is scheduled to post): While looking for something else in pics already posted this year, I found that this same anole (most likely) has appeared here before. Granted, it’s probably happened quite a bit, I just couldn’t tell for sure because I’m anolist and they all look alike, but this one has another distinctive trait. Check out the lump under the jaw, visible best in this pic but still there in some of the images above:

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis showing lump on lower jaw
And now, we go back a few months to before the lamp post had been replaced, but the same location:

pair of Carolina anoles Anolis carolinensis hanging out on lamp post
I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but yes, they can change color that much, and during the winter months (this was shot in February) they will typically be found in shades of brown because there aren’t that many bright green leaves on hand, plus it likely helps them absorb solar radiation. When I found her during daylight yesterday morning, she was roughly olive in color, which may or may not have been related to laying her egg(s) not long before.

I checked: the images from that photo session in February don’t ever show her tail, so I don’t know if it was injured at that point or not. Regardless, I just had to add this trivial bit.

‘Tis been a year…

… since we first saw the new Walkabout Estates Plus in person.

Yep, we were perusing the real estate listings and considering this location, initially having rejected it for not having some specific criteria, then a closer look seemed to contradict that, indicating that it actually met those criteria. The Girlfriend had the day off for the Juneteenth holiday, and I said, “You know, we could be out there by noon – why don’t you give our agent a call?” She did, our agent and the house were available for a walk-through, and, well, here we are.

While not everything has been hunky-dory, this was not unexpected for any home purchase, but really, the house and land far exceeded anyplace that we figured we’d ever live. Personality-wise, I’m somewhere between a ‘bitter realist’ and a pessimist, and this whole thing seems almost unreal to me. But I’ll cope.

Naturally, we haven’t been here a year yet – you’ll see that when it occurs. And I’m not into putting too much personal information online, so pics of the house aren’t really forthcoming, but you can see a couple of the finds that we’ve made while here, just for the sake of it – there have been plenty, and that’s largely why I started the ‘Estate Find’ weekly topic.

portrait view of eastern spadefoot Scaphiopus holbrookii showing almost-confusing eyes
So we’ll go with a couple of my personal favorites: a hypnotic eastern spadefoot (Scaphiopus holbrookii) above, and of course, a pair of wood ducks (Aix sponsa) below.

female and male wood duck Aix sponsa in portrait pose
I could post a hell of a lot more, but you can simply just skim backwards through the posts too.

But that’s as far as I’ll digress over it – we now return to our regular warped content…

You can call me Ray

I had this one a couple of days ago and purposefully stalled it for the holiday today, which is Is that…? No… Is It? Day, the day when we celebrate the clash between what we think we know and what the evidence is telling us. For this, I present something captured this past Monday while down at Goose Creek State Park.

It was a quiet day, with no sign of either osprey or cormorants and just some lazy seagulls in attendance, at least out over the river. I didn’t stay long because a storm was threatening (imagine that,) but while on the water’s edge, I heard a loud splash behind me, more of a slap! really, but of course all I saw upon turning were the fading ripples from whatever had re-entered the water. As usual, I kept my eye on the spot for a few moments, just in case something else happened, and it did. A couple of fins, ostensibly, broke the surface thrashing gently, disappeared, and repeated this twice more. I had the long lens on so I could snag a few frames, but have no real estimate of size or distance, other than somewhere between 20 and 40 meters away, with the fins extending less than 20cm. The first shot was taken before the lens locked focus.

fins of unknown aquatic creature or creatures breaking surface, Pamlico River at Goose Creek State Park
It’s a crappy shot, and cropped to about half even when at 600mm; I include it as comparison to the next two.

fins of unknown aquatic creature or creatures breaking surface, Pamlico River at Goose Creek State Park
Bear in mind that, between each of these frames, the fins disappeared for a second or three, and each time they were swishing back and forth gently – not disturbing the water too much, but obviously alive and doing something. Nor were they moving laterally at all, at least, not that was discernible, though with the rippling water and no point on the opposite shore to compare them against, I won’t say they were truly fixed.

fins of unknown aquatic creature or creatures breaking surface, Pamlico River at Goose Creek State Park
The thing that gets me is, they look largely the same in all three photos: two fins, facing the same way, angled outwards from each other, protruding the same amount at the same time, roughly the same distance apart. And they’ve got that ‘shark fin’ appearance to them.

Now, I’ve seen tail fins of fish that look like this, especially when you only see half of them, and the Pamlico River is a brackish estuary; this is well upriver from the sound, and with the amount of rain we’ve had in the past week, certainly mostly fresh water – it’s not like you should expect saltwater species up here, or at least to my thinking. But the fins appearing together simultaneously and angled as they were made me immediately think, “skate or ray.” Yet they wouldn’t be way up here, would they?

While the east coast Atlantic Ocean holds several species, the three that I considered most likely are manta rays, cownose rays, and Atlantic stingrays. The last one is out – they have very rounded edges to their ‘wings,’ more plate-shaped than pointed. Cownose rays, to my experience, are always medium brown on top, like bright rust, and pale on the bottom, though the apparent size is easily within their range. But both cownose rays and manta rays have wingtips like this, and mantas are particularly known for breaching the water exuberantly, like the slap that first drew attention to the spot. Mantas are also quite dark in color, though usually well in excess of this size, getting up to three meters or more across the tips for adult specimens. Yet nothing says this has to be an adult.

So I looked them up. Both will actually come into estuaries, fairly frequently it seems, so neither is as out-of-place as I originally thought. Mantas are plankton eaters, though, and unlikely to be ‘working’ one spot semi-motionless near the surface. Cownose rays eat snails, molluscs, and crustaceans, which would explain the behavior that I was seeing, if it found a spot with mussels or was trying to scarf a snail from the shallow bottom. And to add a little weight to this, we have the sudden proliferation of this species in the river:

medium-small specimen of Atlantic blue crab Callinectes sapidus just under surface in Pamlico River at Goose Creek State Park
I was shooting through the rippling surface, so you’re lucky this is as recognizable as it is, but the river was heavily populated this time with Atlantic blue crabs (Callinectes sapidus,) easily visible within two meters of the shore. These would fit into the diet of the cownose rays (Rhinoptera bonasus,) so for the time being, I’m identifying my pics as that.

[While out chasing lightning pics on the river the next evening, I was seeing little ripples on the surface tracking with the current, solely by how they disturbed the reflections of the waterfront lights, and when a few of them drew close to my spot, I shone my flashlight down onto them; both of them appeared to be blue crabs, big ones, working just under the surface, though I was never quite sure of this, and would have doubted it had I not just seen countless examples a few kilometers downriver the day before.]

Which means that I might have to start snorkeling again, since the last time I was routinely seeing cownose rays was in Florida, though I’ve been seeing the blue crabs a few times since, mostly while out at North Topsail Island. It might be interesting to see what can be found when I’m under the surface and a little ways from the shore – this looks promising, at least.

Slight success

Last night’s (or early this morning’s) activities were quite scattered. So, let me spell this out for you. I already had the duckling video done – that was from the previous evening – and was planning to post it. I’d also been out after the duckling video was shot to get the lightning pics and video, and they were also posted by last night. But another storm was rolling in and looking promising, so I planned to go back down to the waterfront – and as I was grabbing my sandals to do that, I heard the turtle in the trash can (I think I just found the name of my eventual novel.) So, take that one out into the yard to do the detail shots. While that was going on, I heard a splash from the pond, and investigating that after the turtle had begun its trek back to the pond revealed the wood duck brood on Turtle Island. Two quick shots of them, though I had the 18-135 lens mounted and the macro flash; I’d removed the softbox, but this rig was still inadequate to get a decent pic and the mama was already moving off the island with her brood, so I let them be. Down to the waterfront, fire off numerous time exposures in the hope that the lightning that I’d seen would become more prevalent, it did not and died out instead, and I packed up and headed home.

Okay, write and post the turtle trash can story. Upload the duckling video and start writing the post. Realize I have no still images to go with that post and wonder if the mama had returned with her brood. Grab up Beav Team Six (the telephoto night shooting rig) and go out there carefully, determine that she had and get a couple of excellent frames. Meanwhile, the lightning alerts had been going off sporadically on the phone and, upon checking, I notice that another distinct cell is coming straight in for the waterfront. Switch Beav Team Six out for lightning shots and go back down to the waterfront.

Now, while a couple of very bright flashes had lit up the sky while I was traveling down there (which takes literally just a couple of minutes,) upon setting up on the water, they’d largely gone away. One bright flash had convinced me to aim more downriver, and so I was framing a darker section now and going with 30-second exposures. It was raining very, very gently, little more than occasional drops, but I knew it would likely get worse. And as I stood out there, I heard a soft hiss from the far side of the river, growing in intensity.

I’ve heard that before and knew it for what it was: the rain coming across the river in my direction. I said to myself, Last exposure, and just before I unlocked the cable release to close the shutter, the sky lit up well downriver. Closed the shutter, confirmed that something had indeed been captured at the edge of the frame (chimping! I feel so dirty,) and started packing the equipment away as the hissing grew ever closer. The camera was in the bag as the rain began, and I got fairly wet as I marched back to the car while breaking down the tripod (which took about a minute.) But with only six frames in literally three minutes, I actually captured something.

lightning strike over Pamlico River, bleached out
Except – there’s really not a lot to see, is there? F8 at ISO 400 was still letting in too much light in that tiny fraction of a second that the lightning existed, so this was one hella bright strike. Seeing that faint hint of outlying bolts, I cropped in and slammed the Curves all the way down to see if the outline of the main bolt could be made out.

inset crop of previous image heavily altered in brightness, showing lightning bolt had completely exceeded the dynamic range of the image
Great – now I just made a nuclear first strike. It’s clear that the bolt exceeded the dynamic range of the image by a huge margin so, not really what I was after. Notably, the thunder didn’t roll across until after I was halfway to the car, so better than thirty seconds later – that translates to more than ten kilometers off, though I really wish I’d thought to start counting when I saw it.

And then, I returned home, took the crucial equipment out of the bag to let the bag dry (it’s been treated with water-repellent spray but you never trust that implicitly,) and finished the previous duckling post. And with this posted, I still have, like, three more subjects in the queue as well as a post that I’ve already finished but have been waiting for a quiet time to let through. This assumes that I don’t find anything else in the interim that I decide needs to bump ahead…

Just before dark

It’s now this scattered occasion when we see a mother wood duck (Aix sponsa) visit with her brood, and it’s routinely been at a time when I’m unprepared; this is because they can see us easily even when we’re in the house watching out the windows, which are too distorting to actually shoot through. The options are, a) be outside but someplace that won’t spook them (next to impossible,) or b) be in the upstairs bathroom with the window and screen open so it won’t distort the images. Leaving the screen open means leaving the door closed, because we have The Boogs, and of course it invites bugs. But the other evening, I was prepared, even though she showed up with the sprogs when the light was almost too low to work with.

What this means, I believe, is that we have seen at least three broods on the pond – the first one of ten, the second one of five, and now this one. Except, one of the evenings that we were watching (while I was unable to snag any pics,) there was a suspicion that the five ducklings that we were seeing had gotten larger a lot faster than they should’ve since the last viewing. From personal experience, we know that ducklings can put on weight fast, but this might also mean that there are two broods of five. We are waiting to see if this eventually proves true.

Nevertheless, this brood of twelve is/are semi-regular visitors, just requiring both preparation and attentiveness to spot, and we’re both marveling that she actually hatched this many. As I said in the video, I don’t think they ever adopt the orphaned young of another mother – it’s genetic competition, after all, and plenty of species take specific actions to avoid that – to say nothing of the fact that they’re all the same size. And further proof: as I was getting the outside photos for the previous post, I heard a splash from the pond even though it was nearly 11 PM, and so sidetracked myself further from my goal of snagging some lightning pics (more on that later,) to go down there with the headlamp and take a look, suspecting that I might see one of the beavers, since they’ve been decimating the yellow cow lilies on the pond. However, it wasn’t the beavers, and while the pic that I snagged without the long lens was inadequate, I returned a few hours later and did it right.

mother wood duck Aix sponsa on Turtle Island with at least nine of her brood of ducklings
Yes, there are only nine there, but we can’t see her other side, and it’s certainly more than five (and the brood of ten should be about adult size by now.) But the clinching proof? They all have her eyes…

Gotta be magic

I’ve got a couple of posts that I’m trying to get to, and yet things keep popping up that deserve the bloggish attention, so they get pushed back a little. I seem to be running in this vacillating state between no posts while tackling other projects, and then too much to post. Geez

Okay, you remember when I talked about the weird things that appear in my outdoor trash basket? You don’t have to – that’s why I provide these links that you can click on. But tonight, we have a new entry, that if it hadn’t moved suddenly when I went out to get my sandals (to tackle another subject, one that didn’t pan out so don’t worry,) I might have missed entirely.

common musk turtle Sternotherus odoratus found in bottom of outdoor wastebasket
That’s a common musk turtle (Sternotherus odoratus,) and I’m more than a little curious as to how it managed to get itself in there. Now, in the intervening time, I ran a resin print job and so the rags therein are much more potent, so perhaps it was attracted to the alcohol or resin fumes. But it would still have to have either scaled a brick wall better than 30cm (more than three times its carapace length,) or walked along the narrow top of that wall, barely wide enough to accommodate the turtle, until it fell in, and that was a meter drop. I provide the same illustrating image from last week so you can see what it was facing.

outside entryway to Walkabout Studios showing wastebasket
Neither option seems likely, but here it is, so something happened. I know The Manatee threatened to bring something to put in there, but he lives better than 700 kilometers away, so if he did, he’s playing the long game…

plastron of common musk turtle Sternotherus odoratus held in author's hand
This is the best way to identify the species, because everything else of this type has a larger plastron and not this little skid plate. Plus it’s a nice scale shot – they’re not big turtles. This one was reluctant to provide a nice portrait.

head-on view of common musk turtle Sternotherus odoratus held in author's hand
I was intending to go out and potentially snag some more lightning photos, but I had this one in hand and I couldn’t just let it go without some better views (because I feel obligated to put shit like this on the blogareeno,) so we went into the yard and I set the turtle down, then sat nearby with the headlamp and waited. It took longer than I liked, but was probably typical for a turtle that’s been threatened recently, or at least, feels like it’s been threatened – I mean, I rescued it, but that’s gratitude for you.

common musk turtle Sternotherus odoratus edging its head out and preparing to flee
The head slowly extended as it checked out the surroundings – what it could see of them past the glare of the headlamp anyway – and I held still.

common musk turtle Sternotherus odoratus extending legs and starting to flee towards pond
And after a few minutes, it untucked and turned towards the pond, which I was thankful for, because it meant less likelihood that the turtle might return to the intoxicating bucket. If indeed that’s what is causing this. I’d exchange the open wastebasket for a lidded one, but that would only trap the fumes in there, which isn’t what I want, plus after this I’m not sure it would prevent such appearances anyway. The question now is, can I populate each category in my stock folders with a magic bucket denizen?

Tempestuous

Last night the lightning alert was going off madly, and the maps showed a couple of massive cells passing through, but not quite getting to us – they looked to be missing us by a small margin off to the west. Encouraged by this, I headed down to the waterfront because that afforded the best views east and west (actually, more west-northwest and east-southeast, but you take what you can get.) And it was quite active; I did a few video clips because that was the only way to demonstrate this.

A short note: the exposure meter wanted to render it brighter than it actually was, and I hadn’t tried dialing in any compensation, so this made it distinctly grainy. That’s okay – we’re not after accuracy in brightness, just seeing how often the lightning was firing off.

I didn’t bother with a voiceover because I wanted you to hear the sounds, which were – nothing, really; the loudest thing in there isn’t thunder at all, was just the breeze beating against the microphone since I hadn’t used the external mic that has a wind guard. The whole time I was out there, only the barest rumble of thunder carried through – this was mostly high-altitude, cloud-to-cloud stuff. And while the clip is only thirty seconds, this light show continued for perhaps twenty minutes, as the cells slowly moved northward without seeming to come closer. Of course, I did some still photography as well, a few time exposures to see if I could capture any visible bolts.

time exposure out along waterfront between lightning strikes
This is just to set the scene. I was running roughly 10-15 second exposures because the waterfront lighting was illuminating the foreground elements quite a bit, so I purposefully darkened this frame down to represent what it actually looked like, more or less – there were only a couple of instances where such short exposures still didn’t yield any noticeable sky lights. It was just before 9:00 PM locally – the sun had set not half an hour before, and without the clouds it would have still been twilight. But now the comparison:

time exposure along waterfront with plenty of inter-cloud lighting
These were back to back frames, though this one had actually come first, 11 seconds as opposed to 9, but not darkened to match visible conditions – look at the pilings in the foreground. Since this is at 18mm focal length, you know it’s showing multiple cell strikes in there. And in fact, I did, barely, catch a visible bolt, down there on the horizon peeking out from the cloud deck. A closer look:

cropped inset of previous image showing lightning bolt under cloud cover
Not the kind of thing that I’m trying to capture (well, it is, only much bigger and much closer,) but at least I caught something.

And again,

time exposure of thundercells in distance lighting up sky
Yep, there’s another down there, looking like this:

cropped inset of previous photo to show lightning bolt peeking under cloud deck
This spot seemed to produce the brighter and more noticeable sky bursts, even when I never saw these bolts as they occurred, so I set up in a slightly different position to try and take advantage of this. While there was no activity:

view down onto small dock between lightning bursts
Again, darkened to appear more accurate. The new position was actually successful, which is usually more miss than hit when it comes to electrical storms (probably not the best phrasing):

view down onto small dock with successful strike visible
Well, technically successful, but as noted before, not what I was really after, and it intertwined with the mast of a foreground sailboat:

cropped inset of previous image to highlight distant lightning bolt
This is, as close as can possibly be determined, in the same location as the previous bolt capture – I was the one that had shifted position, as comparing the location of that sailboat mast will show.

My favorite image for the night, however, was this one:

churning clouds lit from within by lightning over Pitt Street Brewing Company
This was easily the most active cell, though it was also a hair too far north to see underneath with the buildings there. While I was out, this cell gradually moved well behind the trees and the other was petering out, so I wrapped things up for the evening, having heard only the faintest rumble of thunder the entire time. The breeze off of the water felt great after the hot days we’ve been having, though, so it was a nice night.

A few hours later, another collection of cells (I honestly have no idea how many,) did actually pass through our area, producing at least three separate horrendous downpours, perhaps more, and a few lightning strikes that were within half a kilometer as we were trying to sleep. It’s been that kind of weather recently, and I’m used to hearing the lightning alert on my smutphone just about every hour, though the sources of most alerts aren’t actually passing that close. I’m still after those really dramatic pics, though…

Reclaimed

A few weeks back, we installed a new light fixture by the front walk, mounted to a 4×4 post. Going to the local Lowes Home Improvement store to get a cap for it was utterly pointless, despite the fact that they listed 15 of them in stock – the store has repeatedly proven to be grossly incompetent, and unfortunately it’s the only place for such materials within 30 kilometers. This frustration led me to design my own damn cap (yes, I could have ordered one online, but that’s stupid for something costing a couple bucks that will more than double with shipping,) putting the 3D printer and my Blender skills to work. Of course it’s customized, now a working weathervane topped by a wood duck, looking great and personalizing the front walk a bit more.

This morning, however, we found that it had attracted some outside attention.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis perched on crossarm of custom weathervane
I don’t have to waste typing time telling you this is a Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis,) do I? Good. With the new pole that is no longer hollow, the anoles seemed to have been miffed for a bit, but they’re starting to warm up to it. Meanwhile, I hate how the light angle makes the paint job on the wood duck sail look washed out and blotchy, and the portions of the head that are supposed to be iridescent feathers actually have a little shine to them that can’t be seen, but oh well.

About a half-hour later, just as we were leaving to go someplace, the anole had changed position.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis perched on wood duck figure of custom weathervane
The figure, which is a reworked and thinned version of my display model, really is pretty thin and the anole can’t be that comfortable, but no one can dispute that he was the highest anole for meters.

And I know it was a male, because he quickly began telling me that the weathervane was his, and to get lost.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis doing territorial display from top of wood duck figure on custom weathervane
Yeah, yeah, we get it: you own this now. Chill out, dude – you’re free to do what you want until it needs repainting. You may not like it when we get a gusty storm, though…

Sidetracking (literally)

Just throwing this down for giggles. As I was sitting down to do a few of the in situ shots of the last Estate Find, I heard a rustling in the taller grasses/weeds very close behind me. It wasn’t a deer as expected, and wasn’t showing above the grasses at all, but was easy enough to find. So while I was there, I shot a quick video clip.

That’s all – nothing elaborate, just taking the opportunity with an incidental find. I haven’t a decent idea where her nest might be, except “north-ish” and off of our property, so I’m not going looking for it. If the newborns take a direct route back to the pond when hatched, I shouldn’t have to worry about them when mowing, at least…

Estate Find XXIV

This Estate Find might set the record for the most frames taken to capture what I was after, but that’s because I was after some pretty specific things that are very hard to see, from a subject that’s difficult to work with.

In the past week, as if a switch has been thrown, there’s a section of the property that sports large numbers of this week’s find, which could be a lot worse if they all get to be the size of a typical adult. We’re talking about these little monsters:

juvenile golden silk orbweaver Trichonephila clavipes in web
As massive as it appears here, it’s actually not, and a tiny fraction of what they can achieve in adulthood. This is a juvenile golden silk orbweaver (Trichonephila clavipes,) and this specimen, which accounts for all images herein except one, is only 12mm in body length – naturally, this is a bit more when you count leg spread, but it still tops maybe 35mm with that. Compare that to a large adult, which can exceed 100mm in spread, spanning across your palm. I very quickly became aware that the species could be found here, but by mid-fall they had vanished. Spiders typically only live a single year, but curiously, the young usually hatch in late summer to early fall and survive through the winter, quite tiny, until spring when they start to do some serious hunting and put on weight.

juvenile golden silk orbweaver Trichonephila clavipes showing leg hairs
Even at this age/size, you can see why this species is also known as a “banana spider,” as well as a few other colloquial names, and they have the uninviting habit of stringing their large webs between trees at heights of one to six meters, which you can easily become aware of (even if you miss the brilliant spider) because the silk is damn strong – that’s how I located this particular specimen, when I was aiming to use one of three different ones that I’d already plotted. You can also see another trait that makes them easy to identify, which is the tufts of black hair on three pairs of their legs, making the joints look swollen.

silk strands of golden silk orbweaver Trichonephila clavipes showing distinctly yellow hue
This is a patch of the silk, and it’s clear that it really is yellow, though it often takes the right lighting to reveal this distinctly; I’ve seen plenty of webs and it’s only occasionally visible, not helped at all by the webs usually being seen against the sky.

The ‘orbweaver’ bit means that they make circular, ‘wheel’ webs of course, which as adults can reach two meters in the main part (not counting the anchoring strands which can go a lot further,) but as I discovered, the juveniles at least may make dual-structure webs, surrounding the orb by a random ‘cob’ web, as protection from predators. Like so:

dual web structure of juvenile golden silk orbweaver Trichonephila clavipes, highlighted by mist droplets
I came prepared to snag an image of this, armed with a misting bottle to highlight the strands – if you look, you can see the orb structure, semi-obscured by the cob structure surrounding it. My guess is that only the orb is sticky silk, so insects won’t get snagged by the outer cob, though it almost certainly connects to the orb so the spider can feel disturbances. This, by the way, is the sole appearance of a second subject. Now we return to the first, who I collected to so detailed photos in controlled conditions within Walkabout Studios. Without the interference of the wind, web strands, poor positions, or crappy lighting, I could capture some of those specific details I mentioned.

closeup of cephalothorax of juvenile golden silk orbweaver Trichonephila clavipes showing eye arrangement
Like the eye arrangement, though it’s only partially visible here. You can make out the posterior median (back middle) eyes here easily, but there are another two below them, facing more forward, and four out on those bumps flanking the visible eyes. You can also see that the silver-grey coloration of the cephalothorax really depends on the light angle, though from nearly every ‘normal’ view, this will appear silver-white.

underside of juvenile golden silk orbweaver Trichonephila clavipes with fang tips cleaning one leg
Now we go underneath, and despite countless attempts and digging out the ringflash for the first time in years, this was the best view that I achieved of the fangs; you can just make out the reddish-brown tips of them overlapping the leg while the spider cleans it (the spider is facing down in this pic.) My specimen was more-or-less free to go where she chose, as long as she chose to remain on the bamboo branch that I’d provided her, while I attempted to get the angle I needed. Her tendency was to hang from the underside and head down on any branch she paused upon, and at these magnifications, focus distance is critical – about a millimeter for sharp focus, and I can easily sway a lot more than that while “holding perfectly still.” She’d pause, and I’d gently rotate the branch to have her face the way I wanted, and she would usually maneuver back into the same position as I did so.

This was also the most ‘retro’ Estate Find so far, because in addition to the ringflash, I also dug out the Mamiya 45mm lens to use reversed – there’s a reason for this, and I’ll get to that in another post. These closeups were a combination of the reversed 45mm and the reversed 28-105, which allows greater flexibility in working distance and magnification, at the cost of a) permanently being fixed at f16, thus making the viewfinder view quite dark and necessitating bright focusing lights, and b) having waayyy too short depth of field, meaning focus distance is absolutely critical. Lots of shots are getting tossed.

head-on shot of juvenile golden silk orbweaver Trichonephila clavipes showing angles of lateral eyes
This is why I the ringflash has been stored away for so long. The softbox has its own issues, mostly that it still throws shadows that can hide crucial details, closely followed by, it’s big and can interfere with things like, say, a bamboo branch that your subject is perched upon (working distance for these images are a hand-width to a hand-length.) The ringflash is attached to the end of the lens and illuminates the subject evenly, but this often takes away shadows that provide the shape and textures, and it does this: reflects in little circles from shiny surfaces like four of the spider’s eyes. You can make out two more eyes because of the ringflash though, on those humps flanking the center eyes, aiming wide and down (in relation to the spider.) I had intended the ringflash to illuminate the fangs better, but after I’d switched, the spider refused to give me the same poses.

straight-down shot of juvenile golden silk orbweaver Trichonephila clavipes showing anterior median eyes
And a top-down shot to close out the post. The ring reflection is still there, but the angle is right now to get a reflection from the retinas of the spider, brighter and thus appearing like a pale grey pupil. By this point I figured I’d had enough frustration, since the multiple shooting sessions with lens and lighting changes had spanned 83 minutes and I still had to download and edit the shots and write the post. That contains closeup images of ooky spiders and thus too few people will even read…

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