As usual, I had several egg cases of praying mantids to keep an eye on around the yard this spring: one Chinese mantis, two that I suspected were European mantis brought down from NY, and three Carolina mantis. One of the Carolina’s vanished over the winter, perhaps found by mice or something (this was before I’d mounted them on new stalks to keep them out of reach of
Category: Nature
One week to prepare
Well, a little less now, because I’m posting this later than I should, but next Saturday, May 13th, is World Migratory Bird Day for the Americas, so make your plans now. For once, we have no traveling that falls around that weekend, though my own schedule flanking it is a little booked, so we’ll see what happens.
It’s not like I don’t get the chance to photograph
More Friday color
We’ve done Friday color before, two, no, three times, and a
Tripod holes 18
N 34°51’19.93″ W 76°19’6.58″ Google Earth Location
This one’s a little fun in that, if you go to the location, it’s not technically there anymore. Well, it is, but storms between the time this was taken and now have radically reshaped the islands, and what was once inlet is now mid-island. Not only that, but reaching it takes a lot more effort.
This came from
April? I thought you left already
April is now toddling off into the past, never to be seen again or at least not for another eleven months depending on your interpretation (or remaining perpetually according to yet another,) and so we arrive at the end of the month abstract. Which looks amazingly like thus:
The sunset didn’t perform all that well this day, but the double-crested cormorant (Nannopterum
That’s a bit better
I was out on two photo excursions earlier this week, and the first made me distinctly aware that something was wrong with my autofocus. Well, mine was all right, but the camera’s was off noticeably, for damn near every frame. I provide some examples:
This is full-frame, and while it’s taken at 600mm, the osprey (Pandion haliaetus) wasn’t that far away –
Tripod holes 17
N 35°17’45.63″ W 82°46’9.89″ Google Earth Location
This one was slightly tricky to pin down, not because I wasn’t quite sure where it was – I could almost certainly take you to within four meters of this exact spot – but because the location is so shrouded in trees and shadow that it’s extremely hard to pinpoint from aerial photos. It did not help
Not from Earth Day
I have not been staying on top of the various April holidays, and today (which is indeed Earth Day) is rainy and blergh out there, so we’ll have a variety of photos obtained earlier that I finally got around to editing. Let’s see, let’s see, what have I been taking recently?
Over at the neighborhood pond, a trio of yellow-bellied sliders (Trachemys scripta scripta)
Two curiosities
Haven’t been in much of a blogging mood the past week or so, and thus haven’t been in search of subjects, but I’ll throw down two quick ones because… um… I really have no idea why anymore…
As the treefrogs become more prevalent in various areas of Walkabout Estates, I’ve been seeing some patterns of appearance and can tell a few apart, somewhat, simply by
Tripod holes 16
N 36° 5’2.73″ W 79° 8’27.55″ Google Earth Location
Today’s image comes from the banks of the Eno River, not too far away from where I used to live, a secluded little creekside area that I would visit from time to time. To get this image, I had to be sprawled flat on my stomach on a rock on the banks, with my legs extended far enough into the water behind me that my