June finis

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And so, June did expire, but not before, with its last breath, producing an abstract. It shouldn’t have made the effort, really…

I find myself woefully unprepared for the month end, and can offer only an archival image – at least, in the truer sense of the word, “abstract.” I stumbled across this earlier this month, kinda liked it, and set it aside in case I, you know, failed to produce anything better. I know, right? It is to laugh.

hazy sun reflected in water with leaves
It works, at least, and I need to be concentrating on approaches of this nature, since that was the whole point of making this a monthly thing. Actually, the whole point was finding a curious coincidence and deciding to run with it, though we can see how well I run.

Anyway, this is just the reflection of a hazy sun and overhanging branches in the water’s surface, taken seven years ago. It’s certainly better than what I have to offer from this month:

bizarre shaded image of spring peeper Pseudacris crucifer on far side of tinted glass
No, don’t send me links to Merriam-Webster, I know what “abstract” means; this is just what I produced recently while attempting something else. Bizarre, but in a far more creepy way.

However, fear not! I have a lot more images I’d like to get up today, but also some other things planned, so we’ll see if I get to them, while I may have the opportunity to produce a better abstract too – shouldn’t be hard, really. Day ain’t over yet…

For once

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My sleep schedule is quite whack right now, so when I say I was doing something, “early in the morning,” that means for me, translating to midmorning for most people. So, early in the morning, I looked out back and spotted one of the green herons (Butorides virescens) right down at the pond edge. We’ve had a couple sticking around for a while now, but virtually every time I’ve been aware of them, it’s when they’re flying off venting an alarm call, or chasing one another – I get the impression we have one resident that fiercely protects its territory from another frequent interloper. This time, however, I knew right where it was and had the long lens handy.

My allergies were acting up last night [even earlier this morning], resulting in dry eyes that will often give me problems sleeping, so I’d lubricated them before going to bed. Since they remained dry, I was having a hard time clearing said lubricant from them in the morning, and my view through the camera was variable but overall poor. I had to trust in autofocus, and I was quite skeptical about this as the heron was stalking among tall weeds that I felt sure the AF would snag instead. However, I was pleasantly surprised:

green heron Butorides virescens stalking along pond edge
Can’t complain about that, really. I’d slipped out onto the deck and was moving when the heron didn’t seem to be looking in my direction, though I was still pretty far off. I snapped far too many frames, tweaking focus by hand or forcing the camera to refocus in the hopes I’d get something useful, but it did pretty well overall.

green heron Butorides virescens with leg raised in slow stalk
One of these days I’ll be equipped to snag video, but the tripod will have to already be set up. So for now, I can tell you that most herons seem to stalk like cartoon characters walking on tiptoe, that elaborate, extend-one-foot-well-out-ahead-and-then-pitch-the-body-to-catch-up-with-hands-held-limply-as-if-the-restroom-ran-out-of-paper-towels routine, though they never have an orchestral soundtrack to creep to.

As the heron worked the pond edge, it nicely posed alongside an unrealistically-painted metal cousin.

green heron Butorides virescens on pond edge alongside metal great blue heron sculpture
Ironically, today is another holiday, Trust In Technology Day, or TITD. I had intended to ignore it entirely, since I don’t (trust in technology, or at least, not very much,) but I kinda had to this morning, and it paid off, so make of that what you will. Still not gonna upload any damn thing to The Cloud, though…

Sorting finds n+16

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Another round of sorting finds, because I emptied out the folders (well, the image folders – the video folders still need ‘some work.’) Except, the image sort folders remained empty for less than a day, so I could do it again, but it’s not enough to worry about right now.

So let’s see, we’ll start with a sequence:

four-image sequence of territorial male wood duck Aix sponsa chasing female into water
A bit earlier in the year (these are from April,) the wood ducks (Aix sponsa) were being seriously territorial, with one in particular being ‘boss,’ or at least that’s how it seemed to us – distinguishing individuals isn’t done by coloration or markings, so we usually use behavior, and this one stood out. Here, he chased a female into the water, despite the fact that we ensure there is enough food for everybody. Just your typical bully…

I have far too many video clips to compile into a whole narrative, but this hints at it, since we see here a female with her brood:

adult female wood duck Aix sponsa with ducklings on edge of pond in late afternoon sun
This is right around the time that the ducklings were now able to take the corn – you can see one with a kernel in its beak. We had a lot of broods this year, we’re not even sure how many, but too many to keep track – and on top of that, just yesterday I spotted what appeared to be a brand new collection. This is late, even for a second brood, and I’m not 100% sure it was a wood duck family.

This all resulted in some interesting collections at the pond edge, at times:

wood duck Aix sponsa mother and ducklings chowing down at pond edge with Canada geese Branta canadensis, nutria Myocastor coypus, and eastern grey squirrel Sciurus carolinensis
So let’s see, we have a mother wood duck and her ducklings, with two Canada geese (Branta canadensis) behind, a nutria (Myocastor coypus) alongside, and an eastern grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) on the tree. The only thing missing are the turtles. We need a closer look at the ducklings:

mother wood duck Aix sponsa with brood of five ducklings at pond edge
There’s five of them in there, and I can’t say if there were any more behind the tree. At present, nearly all of the broods are close to adult size and developing their adult coloration, though a few stragglers can be found at times. I still have no way of knowing when the nest box is in use, but I’m working on it.

I have to note, too, that the beaver dam is steadily raising the water levels, and this region you see here is now a pool ringed by the tops of the cypress knees – I will have some comparison images soon.

Tip Jar 26: Perspective tool

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We’re halfway through now, and I regret picking this kind of topic a little, because many of these posts take a fair amount of work and I’m often pushing the deadline, like I am now. It’s not like there’s a firm deadline anyway, just the one I arbitrarily chose, and you probably couldn’t even tell me the one I blew by several hours. Still, I’m trying to be conscientious, dog knows why.

Herewith, a demonstration of the Perspective tool in GIMP, Photoshop being very similar. This is a handy method of skewing a layer, often in order to correct something that got skewed by our camera work or shooting angle, sometimes by lens distortion. But it also allows us to purposefully skew the image (or the layers thereof) for compositing or creative purposes. Let’s watch the video:

Now, while recording the voiceover, I actually shut off the downstairs air-conditioning because the compressor fan is right outside the window to Walkabout Studios and I didn’t want it kicking on in the recording. However, the upstairs fan is there too – quieter, but it still switched on in the middle and left behind a hum. Noise Reduction and Noise Gate in Audacity removed some of this, mostly between sentences, but it still pops in just to annoy the piss out of me. I will endeavor to correct this in future.

For the record, the restored glass plate negative is recounted here (original here,) while the creative text on the cooler was for this post.

Okay, back to catching up…

Narrow windows

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Astronomy Picture of the Day today had a lovely sunspot image.

sunspot group by Alfredo Vital Perez, courtesy of Astronomy Picture of the Day
Sunspot group by Alfredo Vital Perez, courtesy of APOD

… which they said was presently crossing the sun. We’re in a narrow window between scattered clouds and rainstorms that are due within hours, so I quickly grabbed the solar filter and went out to see just how visible this sunspot group was. Actually, not too shabby.

sunspot group through solar filter on June 28, 2026
rough rendition of sun appearance through viewfinder and solar filterAs always, it took several frames to get one that was sharp, since autofocus is notoriously untrustworthy on something like this (virtually nothing to lock onto, save the edges of the disc,) and even with manual focus, the resolution in the viewfinder is quite small, roughly like the image at right. So I shot numerous frames, tweaking focus between each one, and this was the sharpest.

The image above is roughly half-resolution; full resolution for the Canon 70D looks like this:

full resolution inset of sunspots through solar filter from June 28, 2026
Sure, Alfredo Vital Perez has me beat – I admit it. I doubt he’s working from a consumer zoom telephoto and a $20 solar filter, either. From the income my photography pursuits and blogging have garnered, though, I’m probably only 99% of the way away from purchasing a rig comparable to his.

Since his was shot two days ago and things evolve in that time, I can’t be sure if Perez’ image is showing the upper cluster or lower in my pics – I suspect the lower. You can tell from the angle that it was much closer to the edge at that time, which makes it more dynamic, even though it’s farther away.

Now, will I ever be able to image a solar prominence, those great arcs springing from the sun’s surface, with this filter? Chances are, no. If we compare the brightness with the images I’ve captured of such during the total solar eclipse, you can see that, even without a filter, they’re pretty dim – the solar filter likely eradicates any trace of them from the pic, and even the detailed images from astronomers use specialized filters for specific wavelengths – again, much more sophisticated than what I have. Still, it’s neat to be able to capture these from time to time.

Right on top of it

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Ha! More puns on multiple levels!

So sometime last year, when out early, I observed a northern mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos) on top of a Leyland cypress tree, venting forth with a varied and seemingly neverending barrage of calls, many of them lifted from other birds; I vowed then to return with the long lens and tripod and capture video of it. This finally happened, oh, eighteen days ago now, and I’m just now putting them up. Truth is, with other things going on I forgot I had them, and then further other things went on and I didn’t get to them. So yes, you could have had the benefit of this video quite some time back, had I been more of a man. I am instead more of a… what kind of animal procrastinates and forgets a lot? More of one of those, anyway.

If you listen carefully right at 2:24, you might hear a very faint, wavering hum, which was a hummingbird coming to the salvia flowers right behind me – I did indeed change position to try and capture this later, but it never returned. Maybe it’ll only be another year before I snag that…

When I’m out with someone observing wildlife, I will usually try to attract their attention to something specific with a particular whistle, since virtually no wildlife that I’ve encountered pays any attention to such, unlike actually calling their name or anything. I say this because a few days after recording these clips, The Girlfriend was walking down the driveway directly underneath this tree and heard me whistle for attention – except I wasn’t there. Apparently, the little plagiarizer we’ve seen here has heard me whistle at some point, and has added this to his own collection. She assures me it’s a perfect match, and confused her for a moment.

Were I more adept at distinguishing songbird calls, I’d identify a few of these for you, but I’ve never memorized many at all. I do know there are bluejay and goldfinch in there, but somehow not Carolina wren, which are extremely common in the area. No wood duck calls either. Lazy…

Bar’s closed

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Rather abruptly, I have a backlog of photos and two video clips to get up here, so I’m going to be working my way through these in the next couple of days, and we’ll see how many other things come up while I’m dealing with these.

We’ve been having two white-tailed deer does (Odocoileus virginianus) visiting for corn on a regular basis, usually a couple of times a day, and we knew at least one of them was nursing because we happened to catch it once. The neighbor told us that she’d had a doe with two fawns behind her place, but we’d only seen a glimpse of those. Until I looked out back, uh, yesterday now, and found that they’re now being weaned onto solid food.

white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus doe with fawn feeding on corn on podnedge
My first look out the window made it clear two fawns were there, but by the time I got The Girlfriend over to the window, much less upstairs to the Pond Overlook Blind (the bathroom) where these were taken from, only one fawn was visible, the other being blocked by a tree. But at least the one was providing a good view.

white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus fawn on pond edge
At no point did either of them attempt to nurse, and they seemed quite happy with the corn, so it appears they’re fully weaned, or very close to it. They’re also noticeably larger than newborns, though I have no way of showing this – I knew running down there with a millimeter scale wouldn’t be kosher.

Eventually, I managed a family portrait.

white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus doe with two fawns at pond edge
You’d think this would be easy, but really, the doe and the two fawns were all together at once for perhaps ten seconds or so, one of them always wandering off out of sight – you can see the trunk of the American tulip tree to the right, and this serves to block a lot of our view of where wildlife likes to be.

We hadn’t seen them before, and suspected that this was the first time out to feed on the pond edge, but we’re not watching the area 24/7, so it’s possible we missed any previous visits. One thing may have confirmed this was the first though, at least during the day.

white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus fawn timidly investigating yellow-bellied slider Trachemys scripta scripta on pond edge
One of the fawns wandered up to one of the yellow-bellied sliders (Trachemys scripta scripta,) which moved, unsure of intentions. The fawn gave a little start and then timidly checked it out, obviously having never seen one before. Since the turtles are almost always on the pond edge during daylight hours, I would have thought the fawns would have already made the discovery should they have been here before.

two white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus fawns determing that yellow-bellied sliders Trachemys scripta scripta are harmless
Its sibling was bolder, walking up to the turtle without hesitation, obviously the older (by ten minutes) and wiser of the two. The turtles all ignored them as readily as they did the geese, ducks, and nutrias. Let either of us even appear on the deck, thirty meters away, and the turtles are scrambling for the water fast enough to give a hare pause. We don’t get it.

white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus doe wandering off without fawns
Mom eventually wandered off across the yard, leaving the kids behind rather callously – maybe she was hoping. I expected the fawns to notice after a moment and scamper to catch up, but they were seemingly quite casual about it all; they’d braved turtles after all, so what remained for them to fear? One did eventually notice and move to follow, but without any urgency.

white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus fawn, likely doe, slowly following mother
We see here a perfectly clear forehead, probably indicating that this is a young doe; if you recall from the previous encounter (linked above,) the buttons of the antlers show up quite early, even though they won’t be growing for a while yet.

In contrast, we go to a closeup of the other fawn, a little earlier:

closer look at other white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus fawn showing possible antler buttons
This one shows something right where the antlers would emerge, so it appears we have one of each. They also have faint differences in their patterns, so while they retain their spots at least, we can tell them apart if we look closely.

They seemed quite bold and complacent, until they had moved off towards the edge of the yard, when one of the fawns panicked over something, we never saw or heard what, and bolted off at top speed across the yard away from mom. After a moment, realizing its mistake (or noticing that mom wasn’t following, much less leading the way,) it returned at the same high speed, practically running into the mother’s side in its haste to get close, and then remained shoulder to shoulder – well, belly – for safety. The other fawn wasn’t too far away from all this, and watched in curiosity but wasn’t the slightest bit concerned. Snake, perhaps? That remains my best guess.

There’s still no evidence that the other fawn, the first we saw this year, is out and about feeding on its own, so we’ll see if that appears soon. We’re also closing in on the time that turtle nests should be hatching, so I’ll be doing routine patrols, hoping to find some newborns or even the emergence from the nest. We’ll see…

Can’t ask for more

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I mentioned in the previous post that, after seeing the barred owl (Strix varia) family without a camera in hand, we may try to remedy that with another kayak excursion down there. However, yesterday I got busy on modifying the dock, and then the rains rolled in, so we never actually took the kayaks out.

Right around midnight, I was in the kitchen and heard the juvie call, and it sounded close – especially since I heard it through a closed double-pane window. Grabbed the camera and heavy flash, and with The Girlfriend’s help, determined that the owlets had missed us and come looking.

pair of juvenile barred owls Strix varia preening in tree in backyard
This is right in the tree outside the kitchen window, and these pics were all taken without leaving the deck. No question that they knew we were there and totally unconcerned about it. Seriously, who could ask for more?

pair of juvenile barred owls Strix varia preening in tree in backyard
Focus was manually obtained using the same flashlight that I use for night video, aimed by The Girlfriend – it wanders a little. These are both juveniles, evidenced by their behavior, their calling for food, and the baby down still visible here and there. They were busy preening one another while I was firing off frames.

pair of juvenile barred owls Strix varia preening in tree in backyard
A few days back, I realized that the focusing flashlight for Beav Team Six wouldn’t work anymore, since I’d modified the front grip for the telephoto lens, and started redesigning it, but hadn’t finished by this point, so I was extremely lucky that The Girlfriend was still awake and able to aim the light. With the telephoto lens, I had the better view of course, but they were still close enough that their behavior could be seen easily, though The Girlfriend cannot actually hear their calls.

pair of juvenile barred owls Strix varia preening in tree in backyard
Only the one on the right was calling, but doing so pretty regularly – I’m speculating that this is the younger of the two and more anxious the folks bringing food, but individual birds can easily have differences in personality (avianality,) so maybe this one is simply more vocal.

The preening is likely fostered by the growth of the new flight feathers. The feathers erupt covered in a sheath that supplies blood as they develop, but eventually sloughs away in flaky bits, which the birds help strip away – anyone that has had pet birds knows how much they like someone helping to clear this stuff off, so it probably itches a bit.

pair of juvenile barred owls Strix varia preening in tree in backyard
This is my favorite frame from the night, as one of them scratched its face, but it looks like it’s trying to duck the paparazzi. That is quite possibly a bit of the feather chaff flinging through the air over its head.

pair of juvenile barred owls Strix varia preening in tree in backyard
“Oh yeah – right there. That’s the stuff!”

No sign of the parents while we we watching, which is a shame, but I’m still not complaining. Especially when they stayed put as I switched to the camcorder (rather clumsily.)

Not the same reach as a 600mm lens of course, but adequate. The flashlight somehow didn’t lock into the rig quite right, and it was wandering in aim, causing me to fumble with things more than I should have, but at least not too much noise came through. When the quiet, perhaps older one moved further off, the autofocus wanted to grab the leaves instead, and I briefly switched to manual and tried to lock on better, but the little LCD viewfinder isn’t really adequate for premium focus. The calls had greatly reduced in frequency by this time, but the vocal one still gave quite a few demonstrations of the flexibility of its neck as it looked for someone bringing food, or tried seeing what was going on better. That head-circling behavior is common among owls, permitting better depth-perception than just relying on the separation of their eyes, but probably also permitting depth-perception from their ears as well. Did you know owl ears are at two different heights on their skulls? This is presumed to assist with range-finding by sound

By the way, I’ve switched from the monopod to, believe it or not, a microphone stand, modified with an adapter for a small ballhead – the camcorder rig is light enough to permit this, so overall better than trying to do video with the SLR camera and long lens, which would have required a tripod to be set up. Someday, maybe technology will advance enough that a firm tripod could be carried collapsed under the lens mount, springing into shape with the press of a button to permit instantaneous steady shots. I still wouldn’t be able to afford one, but it would be nice to know someone could benefit…

Now, had we gone down and found them again from the kayaks, I would have been working in daylight, sure, but the maximum focal length of the waterproof camera is 140mm, I believe. The camcorder falls between 300 and 400, I’m estimating (equivalent, anyway,) and the Tamron telephoto used for the still images is 600mm. So, yeah, incredibly lucky to have had this opportunity, though I admit I’m considering putting down food to attract mice and such…

Yeah, a little late, but hey…

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June 19th was the second anniversary of when we first saw Walkabout Estates Plus, and I’d had a project aimed to be completed by that date, but missed it due to needing modifications – this was one of the reasons photography and posts have been reduced. The project was largely completed today though, so that’s not too bad.

That project was, putting in a kayak dock on the pond.

The author alongside kayak dock before it was placed in pond, photo by The Girlfriend
Nothing elaborate, just something to make it easier to get in and out with, especially since the slope of the pond edge prevented one-person handling of this – we’d need a rope to pull ourselves up far enough to get out. My initial design was a floating dock, but it proved too unstable – while being anchored on the grounded end, the anchors pulled free from the too-damp soil and allowed it to pitch sideways too much, so I added legs instead to rest it on the bottom, and these had to be adequately water-treated.

kayak dock now in place within the pond, photo by The Girlfriend
Since it now uses feet, it doesn’t sit quite level because the bottom is wildly uneven, but I may eventually be able to correct that. The uprights were for a horizontal ‘pull-up’ bar to extend over the kayak bow, facilitating ingress and egress, but this was also not working in its initial design. We will need to add a tie-down method to keep the kayaks tight against the end of the dock, but otherwise, it’s low enough to let us slip in and clamber out.

The author in kayak off of new dock, photo by The Girlfriend
I can hear all the boaty people squawking about the amount of stuff on the dock, ready to trip anyone, but this was during the tests, so hush. We were both able to get in unassisted, and it’s stable in its current configuration.

This is where I made a small mistake, though. I knew it would be arduous getting this thing placed, and only intended to do the tests to know how well it worked and what needed modifying, so I wasn’t planning on going anywhere. The Girlfriend, however, wasn’t inclined to waste the time actually in the kayaks on the pond, and wanted to do an excursion down through The Bayou, so off we went.

We checked out the beaver dam, well-mortared with mud and with an approximate draft of 1.5 meters – this makes sense, since the water level in the pond has been rising slowly but steadily. On the way back, we separated, and I was some ways ahead waiting in the shade when I heard the call of a juvenile barred owl (Strix varia) again.

Now, I’d heard it a few times since that night, and actually got The Girlfriend out one evening to see and hear it up in a nearby tree, but now this was right at midday, and not very far away. I tracked it down a bit closer, but didn’t want to spook it until The Girlfriend had a chance to see, so I was biding my time. During this wait, mama owl fly right over my head, making a beeline in the direction I’d heard the juvie calls, presumably on a feeding run. After about 30 seconds, she reappeared and perched in a tree not four meters off the water, about 15 meters away from me. She remained for a minute or so, then flew off low across the pond. Still no The Girlfriend.

Eventually she showed, and I motioned her to silence and beckoned her closer, explaining in a soft voice once close enough what we were after, then we started deeper under the trees in the direction I was hearing the calls – I knew we were damn close. After a bit of searching, I spotted the owlet rather boldly out on a branch, only it looked pretty much like a full adult now in the light of day. The Girlfriend was hanging back a little and I motioned her closer, while she held up two fingers: two owls. I couldn’t see the other, and kept looking, finally to hear the juvie call again – it had been silent as we got close. Only, the call was well off the line of sight to the one I’d spotted, and we quickly determined that I’d been seeing an adult keeping watch, while two juveniles were perched together on a branch in another tree not far off. Again, this is midday, and we’re in plain sight (in bright orange and blue kayaks,) but the owls were staying put. One of the juvies was doing that head-circling routine while watching us, presumably ready to pounce if we did something rodentlike.

Since I hadn’t intended to go exploring, the waterproof camera was still in my desk cupboard and not on my armband as it usually is when I’m kayaking, so no photographic proof of this, naturally. I/we may make the attempt again tomorrow, but for now, it was a nice find while testing and celebrating the new dock.

Tip Jar 25: Using the Clone or Rubber Stamp tool

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Another entry in the GIMP tutorials, this one in patching grunge and unwanted doodads within your image. Generally a pretty straightforward process – until it isn’t, and this is intended to head off some of those stumbling blocks that can make things frustrating. Don’t get me wrong; you will still have a lot of trial-and-error, back-and-forth attempts, especially with the complicated repairs, but this may greatly reduce the learning curve.

Something that I forgot to mention within: if you’re not sure about whether you have faint shadows from sampling the wrong portion of a gradient, squinting can actually help this show up better, don’t ask me why. Also, using the scroll bar to jiggle the image up and down or back and forth.

I’ll be the first to say this can get really tedious on badly-damaged images or scans, but I’ve also tried several different shortcuts and have never found one that worked. Don’t rush it – do a little at a time if it helps. But when you see a pristine master image after all your work, it’s worth it.

By the way, all the mildew on this image was taken out in exactly this manner, finding the little spots that were free of it to begin with, and expanding them gradually across the image. I have made 8×10 prints from that restoration, and they look excellent.

Good luck!

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