More than meets the eye


When I took a quick look outside tonight thinking I was hearing rain (it was actually the bubbles in my Pepsi can, but that’s another post,) the moon was peeking through a thin layer of high cirrus clouds and producing an effect much like the above image. However, the shots I took just now don’t look like the image above, because that one was taken under rather specific conditions.

Before read more

Habitat and habitant

Whenever I speak to people about wildlife “encroachment” issues, such as beavers damaging expensive ornamental trees or copperheads found in their yards, I always remind them of one crucial factor: if there’s a habitat, it will draw the animals. Case in point: this little butterfly.

The weather’s been getting colder here in North Carolina, and often falls just to the point read more

Sampling of the season



While I have unfortunately been unable to get out and do justice to the autumn season around here, I feel obligated to at least get a few examples up. The biggest issue I have right now is with trying to get my digital images to adequately represent the colors that I’m actually seeing. The sky in particular has been remarkably clear and rich in color, but the digital read more

Frustrations, part five


Now that the season for such things is effectively over, I can admit to myself that I didn’t get what I was after this year, and go with what I have so far.

The Sphingidae is one of the more interesting families of moth. While not as big or impressive as luna moths, they have a very finely developed protective camouflage, which is exhibited not only in coloration, but in body size read more

Two can play that game

While I had been planning to put this post up soon, Dr. Jerry Coyne over at Why Evolution Is True beat me to it with his own post about snakes, but his includes some great video, including a stunning sequence of an egg-eating snake! I hate it when someone on my blogroll to the right upstages read more

Things change

Just a few posts ago, I featured some yellowjackets working on their underground nest. Today, I discovered I was not the only one who had found them.

Sometime in the last few days, something had dug up the opening into the nest and removed several large portions of comb, leaving them strewn about the ground nearby. It was a bit curious, because the excavation wasn’t read more

Can you see the light?

From time to time, I play around with infra-red photography, because it can produce some really cool effects, and also because there are ways to make it relatively easy. An old digital camera of mine, the Canon Pro90 IS, can not only capture infra-red light, it can focus it and calculate exposure reasonably as well. All that’s read more

More from the neighbors


Early this evening, as I spoke on the telephone while standing on my upstairs patio, a “conversation” from the trees across the driveway drew my attention, and I cut the call short. While I couldn’t see anything, some very soft “wheet-a wheet-a” sounds were emanating from quite close by. Naturally, I grabbed the camera and started tracking read more

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