Most times, Carolina anoles (Anolis carolinensis) sleep in the same location for a few days in a row, then switch to someplace nearby, but this one has been sticking to the seed pods of the hosta every night since I found it – sometimes head down, sometimes in the rain, but always tucked in like this. It’s cute.
What’s your sign?
I’m old enough to remember when that was a big factor in dating, though not quite old enough to have used it in such a manner. But in this case, it’s only in reference to two meteor showers due to peak in a few days, the southern delta Aquariids and the alpha Capricornids, both coming in right before the end of the month, which means anytime from this point on. Unfortunately, there’s still a third-quarter (half) moon rising in the wee hours when the meteors start showing up better, which is the case too often, but so it goes. I can guarantee certain results if you stay indoors, however, the same results as if I hadn’t mentioned them at all. C’mon, the temperature is going to be far better than any of the winter storms, so have at it.
As always, I will be back with any spectacular meteor images that I capture, but you know how that trend has been going (no, you likely don’t, but let’s just say that the trove of spectacular meteor images, like my sports trophy case, remains distinctly barren.) I keep hoping, though, which is far more optimistic than I normally am and which might be part of the problem. I don’t know how, really, but at this point I’ll settle for any explanation.
So go ahead and show me up – I’ll be happy for you. Really.
It’s admittedly disturbing that the best meteor trail that I’ve ever gotten, above, was achieved on perhaps my very first attempt with a truly inadequate camera, on print film, well over 30 years ago. Can anyone’s luck remain this resolutely bad? Or is there something radical that I’m doing wrong? I no longer have that Wittnauer Challenger, but I think I have an old Argus C3 ‘Brick’ that I could dig out…
Just once, part 30
This week we have what I identified then only as an Oophaga pumilio, but it also bears the common names of strawberry poison-dart frog, strawberry poison frog, and/or blue jeans poison frog. Yes, it’s one of the poisonous treefrogs from South America, but it was not photographed on that continent, instead found within the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, NC. As such, it’s both no surprise that it’s only been featured once here, and then again, kind of inexcusable.
I mean, sure, I prefer to concentrate on species actually photographed ‘in the wild,’ in their own habitat and not captive in any way, but I’ve never traveled to any location where these could be found, and it’s rather unlikely that one will make its way here eventually. Yet the museum itself is easy enough to get to and I’ve tackled the poison dart frog exhibit several times, often with poor results – a flash is necessary, and the only choice is to shoot through glass and so reflections, distortions, and mucky glass is typical, and even when overcoming these, one still has to have a subject posed usefully without the face of some kid framed in the background on the other side of the terrarium. You’d think photographing such captives would be easy, but most times it doesn’t allow anything decent at all. Still, it’s been twelve years since this image was taken and I could certainly have gotten more if I’d made the effort. Admittedly, I don’t maintain comprehensive lists of species that I should be building up my stock of.
All that said, I’m fond of the pose that this one achieved, coming out from under its bridge to eat some billy goats, and the coloration is displayed nicely – you see where they got the blue-jean name from. The grunge on the glass was limited to the lower corner, and while I didn’t manage a catchlight in the eye, the lack thereof seems to enhance the menacing air. Which is nonsense of course – it’s a frog, it has two expressions: ‘awake’ and ‘asleep,’ while its ass-kicking ability is laughable at best. Well, except for that deadly poison thing…
Thank beavers!
That’s a phrase that I’m hoping will catch on – do your part, okay?
Naturally, the full phrase is more along the lines of, “Thank beavers for our knowledge of prehistoric arthropods,” or at least some of it – they almost certainly helped. Though it was likely the evolutionary precursors to beavers. And anything else that might have done the same kind of damage to the trees of the time.
This deep insight was prompted by seeing sights like this (including this very one) while checking out the neighborhood pond the other night:
While there was evidence very early this year of a single beaver in the pond, that one apparently didn’t stay long, and I’m familiar enough with the trees surrounding the pond to know that this bark damage occurred two years ago. Nonetheless, the resin was running quite distinctly from these yet-unhealed wounds – if resin can be said to ‘run’ and not ‘ooze infinitesimally slowly.’
[A quick note: sap feeds the inner tissues of the tree and is quite thin, only fractionally less so than water, while resin erupts from the bark and helps protect damaged areas from infestation, and is the consistency of almost-dried glue.]
But resin has the curious property that, once it’s buried in the right conditions, it continues to harden and can weather out millions of years as almost a gemstone, where we actually get ‘amber’ from. And amber, as anyone that knows their Jurassic Park can tell you, is where we get the detailed preserved bodies of arthropods of the time period when the resin was oozing.
I could not see any movement from the resin while I was there focusing, but the two ants (and many more) were noticeably active – no such luck in watching them get stuck for posterity. And I spot-checked a few other areas, but couldn’t find an example of a trapped insect. Nonetheless, it happens often enough to have given us a better record of arthropod species running millions of years back than we have of any other class on the planet. And it preserves them better than any other method of fossilization, too, since the exchange of moisture and the actions of microbes virtually cease when the subject is encapsulated. But it couldn’t happen without damage to tree bark in the first place, so thank the prehistoric equivalent of beavers, and bears, and deer perhaps – anything that can get the resin running. And you can thank clumsy insects too if you like, but that doesn’t roll off the tongue the same way.
* * *
A quick note if you’re like me and would like to have a genuine amber fossil yourself: the market is absolutely brimming with fakes, and you’re almost certainly not going to find a genuine one for less than a few hundred dollars. There are some simple tests that you can do to detect them, but of course, only if you can lay your hands on it, so online purchases are ruled out unless you can authenticate the source quite thoroughly. But even a cursory examination can reveal a fake; arthropods trapped in resin are stuck fast, usually by a leg or three, struggle, and gradually get rolled over and encapsulated. They are almost never in ‘good’ condition from all this, and usually share the amber with whatever debris also gets snagged in that time. If you’re seeing a nice, clean (and recognizable) mantis species in an action pose with little to obscure it? It’s more fake than Faux News, though considerably easier to digest. And yes, I found this out before dropping any money on such examples, and still don’t have a genuine one either. But feel free to send one along, you know, in appreciation of all the stunning content here…
Scattered, in all directions
Once again down at the lake (actually, most of the lake photos all came from the same day, but still unrelated and random,) I heard the passing of a jet and looked around, but didn’t think a whole lot of it because the lake sits near the approach corridors for the nearest major airport and this happens all the time. But then in the search for more birdlife, I looked almost directly overhead and saw this:
Well, not exactly this, because this was with the Tamron 150-600 at 600mm and cropped tighter for that – what I could see before raising the camera was just enough of a double-winged outline to know what I was looking at. I’ve only seen it in person once before, too, many moons ago in central New York. This is what mid-air refueling looks like from underneath.
Mostly, anyway – I don’t think they were actively refueling because the refueling boom (evidenced by that tiny little fin sticking out from the forward plane just ahead of the tail) appears to still be in stowed position, plus both aircraft were banking. The lead aircraft, according to my FlightRadar24 smutphone app, is a Boeing KC-135R Stratotanker from Tampa, while the trailing aircraft, according to my knowledge of military aircraft, is a McDonnell-Douglas/Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, which like many military flights, did not show up on FlightRadar24 – I was a little surprised to find that the KC-135 did, and also that it had come from Tampa and not Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, much closer in Goldsboro NC, because I know that they have an air refueling wing there.
According to the app, these aircraft were flying at 27,000 feet at the time, and while the trailing aircraft seems much closer, it isn’t by more than a hundred meters, probably half that – the Globemaster is a heavy-lifter cargo aircraft and is much broader in body width than the Stratotanker. But a neat capture for the day, and I almost missed it.
Scattered, by the numbers
This time, when I went down to Jordan Lake it was at night, because I thought I might be able to see some moderately distant thunderstorms looking south. They had all petered out by the time I got there, and it was still World Snake Day, so I poked around briefly in the idle thought that a snake might be visible. I saw none, and indeed not much of anything, but walking along the water’s edge I heard a curious drilling-whining sound that I didn’t quite recognize, and it was coming from right in front of me. I paused and shone the headlamp around carefully, seeing nothing, and crept forward slowly while the penetrating sound was still being produced.
Now, I want to set the picture here, because I was walking on a sandy shore right at the damp line, and it was flat and featureless, the only thing that was not ‘sand’ was a small line of fine washout debris, dark fragments of old wood and lake reeds that were only slightly larger than the sand itself, driven in by the breeze coming off the lake, which was also causing tiny wavelets to splash right there. More like a painting, in other words, with just some dark stuff making more contrast than concealment, for anything. I was easily seeing small sand-colored spiders running along ahead of me from the shadows that they cast and the reflections of their eyes.
Eventually, I realized I was right on top of the producer of the sound, pinning it down to within a 20cm radius right at my feet – and still couldn’t see anything, nor did I disturb anything as I approached. The sound was piercing and very directional, so much so that a simple tilt of my head produced decibels of difference in either ear as I turned. I did a quick recording with my smutphone, but was without a decent mic and so this is only with the phone’s, and suffers from wind noise, distortion, and the sounds of the waves, as well as likely some dropoff from the mic not being sensitive enough in the outer ranges. But this was what I got:
Mysterious lakeside sound
If you have decent spread on your stereo speakers, or are using headphones, you can actually hear the sound traverse between ears as I tilted the phone, but for the full effect, kick the volume up until you’re wincing.
Finally, I settled on a little hollow at the debris line, perhaps a bit over a centimeter in diameter, what appeared to have been a burrow – nothing else was visible at all, and again, I’m now bent double right overhead and the sound still hasn’t ceased. It did immediately, though, as I touched the sand right behind the hollow, and so I quickly plunged my hand in far enough back and scooped up all of the sand that held the burrow.
Almost immediately I unearthed a small, strange grey critter than endeavored to rebury itself as soon as it was exposed, whose appearance brought an involuntary and out-loud, “What the fuck are you?” from me – it resembled nothing more than a small squid, which might have been okay if this were oceanside, but not from a freshwater lake in the middle of North Carolina. I also felt it attempting to dig past the sand and down through my fingers, so I dropped it and kept exposing it as it tried to hide. The camera sling bag was on my back and I knew I had to get pics, because after a moment I recognized it as a species that I’ve only seen once and didn’t get very good photos of then. What followed was a lot of thigh-slapping and hand-rubbing as I attempted to rid my hands of all vestiges of damp sand before handling the camera. No macro lens or flash rig, so I had to rely on the on-camera flash and the 18-135 lens, but eventually I got a decent enough frame of it.
This is likely a tawny mole cricket (Neoscapteriscus vicinus,) which the sound should have helped me out with (indeed, I felt it was either a cricket or a chorus frog species, but it was different enough and piercing enough that it didn’t seem like either.) At roughly 30mm in length it was nearly double the size of a typical cricket, and as it burrowed it simply trailed those hind legs behind it as it dug with its wicked front legs – that large thorax head shield and the trailing legs, never seen clearly due to the movement, certainly looked a hell of a lot like a squid.
I screwed up here too, in that I somehow felt I had nothing to carry it home within even though I’d just removed the camera from the bag that always has a few empty film cans in it for exactly this kind of opportunity – when they’re not actually holding fishhooks from irresponsible fishermen (which is, to all appearances, redundant.) So I did a few frames until i knew I had a decent shot and simply let the cricket be and walked on, when I could easily have brought it back to do quite detailed shots in a studio setting, especially of those front legs. Silly me.
Scattered, part of a series
Once again, clearing out a bunch of recent photos that aren’t related to one another and don’t make a narrative, but far be it from me to post something without words. I mean, c’mon…
On one of the trips down to Jordan Lake, I didn’t see a whole lot of action, though a couple of osprey (Pandion haliaetus) cruised overhead, perhaps hunting, perhaps just bored. It was later in the day which changed the sun angle, and that added a little mood to this capture of one looking back at its falling keys or something.
There, see? I can get by without too many words. If I’d just shut up now of course…
Crucial update
Sneaking this in before it becomes tomorrow, but I had to check and see if our new little friend had taken up a sleeping spot nearby, and indeed it had:
These are the seeds of one of the two hosta plants that our newborn Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) was skipping around on this morning. In the afternoon we got another horrendous downpour (I’m not complaining,) and I figured the anole would have gone for deep cover, but apparently the call of the hosta was too strong. And now The Girlfriend and The Girlfriend’s Sprog both got to see it too, so we’re all good.
Well, now…
Had to feature a sudden find late this morning – if this guy had held still, I would have easily missed it, especially since I’d about given up on seeing one this year. This is a newborn Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis,) scampering around on one of the hosta plants, appearing at a time when even the adults could barely be found. This might have come about because we had some heavy rains in the past day and the temperature finally dropped to, “Not Deadly,” but I wasted no time in trying to get a selection of pics, including some scale shots. Afterwards, I measured the stem that the anole is clutching, and it’s 5mm in thickness; the twig off to the right is actually just some pine needles. Though we can do even better than this.
Not only did it let me get away with slowly sliding my fingers close to it, for a moment it looked like it was about to jump onto them, then appeared to reconsider that idea. This is in a line along the front walk that has two gardenias (one of which is seen here, the roundish leaves,) two hostas, and two butterfly bushes – in other words, happy hunting grounds for little anoles, and they’ve used it as such all last summer. It’s great to see one doing so again.
Now, I say “newborn,” but I honestly don’t know how new; I suspect that they remain sequestered in leaves for a while after hatching, but they’re largely independent and the mother doesn’t feed them at all. According to Wikipedia, egg development in the mother takes two to four weeks, and incubation after laying from five to seven, so we’re within the scheduled period – maybe a little later if this one was close to laying eggs, but that pic was around the back of Walkabout Estates fairly distant from the newborn, so not likely the same clutch. Overall length is roughly 55-60mm – not far from newborn, at least.
But we need a better look at that detail.
It looks like it’s napping here, and might well be – I’ve seen the behavior countless times, where right in the middle of scampering around in their slightly manic way, they pause and simply close their eyes, even when they know I’m nearby. It only lasts for a few seconds and I have no idea of the purpose – maybe it’s an attempt to Force Hurl me away. Still, look at that wonderfully textured skin.
I may dribble a few drops of the hummingbird food on the leaves near here to attract the ants, because that’s what these guys like to eat, among other things. I do what I can for my subjects.
Scattered, the start
I have a collection of semi-recent but unrelated images in the blog folder awaiting my attention, either to include them in a post or simply discard them as irrelevant, and so I decided that I’d do posts around a single image, partially because I haven’t been posting much and this is easier. Somewhere in there will sneak in a couple of longish, philosophical posts as I get motivated to tackle them, but for now we have these.
This one I’m faintly annoyed with myself over. Not because of the image itself, which is not bad for an initial experiment, but because I didn’t do the experiment sooner. It is the sun of course, through the solar filter material that I purchased specifically for the total solar eclipse in April. The material was/is flimsy mylar film however, and to keep it in good shape I sandwiched it between two pieces of picture frame glass and made a holder to go onto the lenshood of the Tamron 150-600 to keep them all in place. The results were terrible, and while I did a few frames during the eclipse, to say that they’re unremarkable is vastly understating it.
Then recently, I created a new holder that simply clamped the edges of the filter but otherwise left it alone ahead of the lens, and got this result. Well, shit – that would have been nice to have during the eclipse, right? And I kick myself for not trying it before now – in fact, I’m wondering how the experiment escaped me, because I was suspicious of the quality of the glass even back then.
But I also recall that I was ass-deep in the tracking motor project, concentrating on getting some esoteric images during totality, and that this dragged on with issue after issue right up until the day before the eclipse, when I finally gave it up. I had rebuilt the platform, re-printed several parts, tried umpteen different variations of the motor driving software, re-ordered another motor and a driver for that, fretted through interminable and pointless postal delays, switched software, and so on. It was obsessive, and truth be told, I wasn’t really fired up to get images of the partially eclipsed sun as much as what totality might allow.
Still, damn, should have at least tried a quick experiment.
By the way, those are indeed sunspots, with perhaps a hint of clouds around the edges – I was timing the sun between appearances of scattered clouds and may have caught the vestiges of some, which I wouldn’t have been able to see in the glare. That one spot in the middle is so distinct and round that I wondered if I didn’t catch Mercury in front of the sun, but no, Stellarium told me it was well off to the side. And just so you know, I’ve been trying to reprint a better filter holder, but my 3D printer is being balky for as-yet unknown reasons, and other projects have prevented me from troubleshooting this right now. I know you need this minutia to feel complete…