Just a few this week, perhaps a harbinger of the slowing shooting season, perhaps just a fluke – I haven’t looked through following weeks in the database to see how the numbers are going. First up is this bald cypress tree (Taxodium distichum) in Jones Lake near Elizabethtown, NC, from 2006. This was taken with the Canon Pro90 IS and shows the lower quality of the camera, but I had the film camera with me too and might have this on slide, though an initial search didn’t turn up anything.
Jones Lake fills one of the enigmatic ‘Carolina Bays’ along the coast – you can go here for a link that explains those, as well as a different version of this scene.
We don’t see enough gastropods – let’s have some gastropods from 2012.
Despite impressions, this snail has not hatched from these eggs – yes, they’re eggs – and is in fact way older than newborn. I just happened to catch it as I was checking on the development of the eggs, and later on found them hatching, so I’m almost positive they’re the eggs of the huge and disturbing leopard slug (Limax maximus.) Even though they look barely developed, really, not a whole lot more development is going to take place in there before hatching – slugs are never much more than early fetuses anyway, so we’re talking a faint color change and that’s about all, externally. No chance to feel the babies kicking, though you might feel them oozing, I guess…
Moving on, far too late.
While attempting to hatch out some triops in 2014, which are damn cool little crustaceans, I eventually produced a few of these, which I suspected were brine shrimp but had a reader (seriously, there was one at one time) inform me were fairy shrimp instead, Order Anostraca. A little dark field photography in the macro aquarium netted some frames of their water ballet.
That’ll do for now. Join us next week for more creepy photos which prove that at no time was I capable of taking pleasant subjects!