Curious origins

Al Denelsbeck

Back when I was young and impressionable (as opposed to now when I’m old and cynical,) The Six Million Dollar Man debuted, and like many kids of that time, I was hooked. Not only did I make it a point not to miss an episode, my friend and I ripped around doing great feats of strength with items that gave the barest impression of being heavy and/or sturdy (and only occasionally running really fast – there aren’t as many opportunities for cool storylines regarding that.) This would continue, off and on, until Star Wars came out and we started blasting things instead. Don’t ask me why we never had any crossover adventures, nor why I was kind of annoyed when Luke received a bionic hand instead of a lab-grown organic one…

But there were two curious paths that this single influence led down for me. The first was noticing that the show was based on the book Cyborg by Martin Caidin, and some years afterward at a garage sale I found several books by the same author, including Cyborg IV, and so snatched them up. Cyborg IV was interesting and more than a little philosophical, but it was one called Thunderbolt! that captured my attention more. Caidin assisted with the autobiographical accounts of Robert S. Johnson, an American WWII pilot assigned to the European theater flying the Republic P-47 ‘Thunderbolt,‘ a single-engine fighter of massive proportions; it was predicted to perform poorly against the Luftwaffe’s Focke-Wulfs and Messerschmidts yet defied these expectations, becoming a major asset to the Army Air Force and one of the top fighters in the European theater. The firsthand accounts of the air war in Europe and the life of a fighter pilot fascinated me, starting a minor obsession that remains to this day. I even received a larger-scale model kit of the P-47 for my last birthday, soon to be reproduced faithfully as I get back into working on kits occasionally.

Affectionately nicknamed “Jug,” the P-47 was one of the most famous AAF fighter planes of WW II. Although originally conceived as a lightweight interceptor, the P-47 developed as a heavyweight fighter. [Source: USAF public domain]

Another book, again by Caidin and obtained at the same time, assisted this path: Whip, which was a fictional account of a B-25 Mitchell squadron that removed the bomber’s station in the nose of the aircraft to replace it with guns, making the medium twin-engine bomber a strike fighter instead; this was an actual modification in WWII, though the events in Whip are fictional. Both of these books fostered my knowledge of WWII aircraft and tactics, not as much directly, but more that they provoked the interest that led to further reading. My attention to military weaponry has waned significantly, given the pacifism that I’ve largely adopted in the past decade or so, but the historical aspect remains, and the dogfights of WWII were a very specific moment in time that won’t be repeated: aircraft and tactics have changed drastically, and air combat now, when it takes place, is more often accomplished at significant distances, often completely out of visual range.

And then there’s the other, trivial thing from the opening credits of The Six Million Dollar Man: the crash that led to the bionic replacement limbs. The pilot episode also showed a few tantalizing glimpses of the aircraft, an experimental lifting body, which is an aircraft without wings that derives lift from the fuselage shape instead. This was a real NASA program, though it would be years before I could find out more about it, and the footage of the crash used in the opening credits was NASA film of an actual crash, as I was to discover long after my interest in Steve Austin’s slow-motion antics had faded. The lifting body program throughout the sixties was intended to design the next generation of spacecraft, able to land on a runway on return rather than necessitating an expensive and complicated water recovery, and I’ll spare you the engineering aspects of aircraft without wings or why they were necessary, despite having read quite a bit about them. The crash seen in the opening was of an M2-F2 piloted by Bruce Peterson, and his injuries were notably similar to Steve Austin’s – Caidin took his cue from this accident for his book, though Peterson recovered much better than Austin did and without the need of any prosthetics.

Yet the aircraft shown in the pilot episode, attached to the underwing of its mothership, was instead an HL-10, another aircraft in the program, and as far as I’m concerned, a much better-looking one. Both of these aircraft, and several others besides, did numerous flights examining the feasibility of lifting bodies, and this research led to the Space Shuttle Orbiter even though they scrapped the lifting body idea for that.

Source: NASA Dryden Flight Research Center Photo Collection.

The HL-10 became a mild obsession for me, most especially trying to obtain a physical model – only one company has created one in a decent scale, and that’s rare, expensive, and made of resin (not my preferred medium.) The only detail plans that I’ve ever found are a bit sparse, but perhaps sufficient to create my own computer-model, and from there… what? Attempt to produce one on a 3D printer (which I do now have, though the results aren’t optimal)? Or hash it out the old-fashioned way with a superstructure of balsa and finishing putty? Perhaps something else entirely – but the intention is to produce a display model in some manner, and I know it won’t be easy.

But it is amusing that both of these minor obsessions were sparked by minimal references within an iconic yet cheesy action show from the seventies. Yes, we’ve long-ago established that I’m weird, stop belaboring the point…

Not a fan

Al Denelsbeck

Another holiday has rolled around, and I’m letting you know about to celebrate if you see fit – I am, but reluctantly and perhaps not even for the entire day. Yes, it’s Put On Long Pants For The First Time Since, What, Early May? Day, and with due observation, I set aside the shorts and sandals to don actual slacks, sneakers, and socks to go around the neighborhood pond briefly this morning, since the temperature had dropped into the low teens – that’s Celsius, for all you American Neanderthals, figure it out. Even the great blue heron (Ardea herodias) was displaying its feelings about the chill.

chilly great blue heron Ardea herodias perched on piling
It’s supposed to get a bit warmer later on, so perhaps I won’t even betray my shorts and sandals for the entire day, and they certainly aren’t abandoned for the season yet, but damn, I felt bad about it. I can’t even hang out with people that own more than one pair of dress shoes – just makes me itch.

But because we might need it, (and because I’ve been slack in posting,) I offer another image from happier days.

butterfly bush Buddleja davidii blossoms with something else
Just a blossom cluster from our recovering butterfly bush (now Buddleja davidii, because yet another scientific name has been changed.) Yep, just a flower cluster – nothing else to see.

Visibly different, part 38

Al Denelsbeck

I know, it’s been a slow week. Well, it hasn’t really, it just hasn’t been a posting week – my time is being spent doing such fun things like cursing at contractors who thought that using fourteen nails from a nail gun set at 200lbs was proper procedure for attaching a measly riser on deck stairs, but that’s not important right now. Another project is waiting on a replacement part and will be a while. Meanwhile, the photos I’m getting are largely the same damn things because I’m in the same damn places. At this very moment, I’m installing a new graphics driver which is taking forever, and I have my doubts that the monitor colors presently being displayed are accurate. So this week, a quick one (that might be a little off in color register.)

pair of eastern tiger swallowtails Papilio glaucus in two color phases, likely male and female, on thistle blossom
I think this is the only time that I’ve accomplished this, and it occurred in Florida in 1999. These are not two different species, but just one, eastern tiger swallowtails (Papilio glaucus.) The black one is a female, while the yellow one is likely a male, though the females also have a yellow phase – this can only be differentiated with a look at the top surface of the hindwings, facing away from us here. I was pleased to get both color patterns in one shot, and if memory serves, this was taken almost exactly 23 years ago, this coming Saturday – I have reasons for remembering the dates on this trip. It was a roadside field where the pollinators – mostly butterflies but a handful of moths and wasps – were ridiculously active, and I think I shot an entire roll of slide film while standing amongst the flowers.

With digital I would have undoubtedly shot more than 36 frames, but that’s because each frame doesn’t cost in terms of film and processing, so I’m far more inclined to take chances and discard what doesn’t work – that hurts a bit with slides, so I tended to fire off frames only when I was fairly confident of getting a keeper. There’s something to be said for both approaches: I probably would retain more images overall (while a lower percentage) from shooting digital in the same situation, but making the effort to lock in a good image is far better than simply hosing them around in the belief that something will be useful. Large format, for instance, is so labor-intensive and costly (in comparison at least) that photographers using it tend to be meticulous, virtually guaranteeing that everything is a solid image. And of course, such a format is a really bad choice for subjects as fleeting as this, so large format images tend to be landscapes or carefully-crafted portraits. Play to the strengths.

The duel goes on

Al Denelsbeck

I’m still playing with the Chinese mantids (Tenodera sinensis,) and you’re tired of hearing about my attempts to obtain certain photos of them (aren’t you?,) specifically laying eggs, or producing the ootheca/egg sac – I’m honestly not sure these can be differentiated, because I only have one set of photos of it and they’re not that clear, plus I was too late to see the actual egg laying if it does indeed take place. What I think happens is that the mantis lays the eggs tight against the branch used as the support, then as a separate act covers them with the foamy stuff that hardens into the protective sac – think egg carton styrofoam or that expanding foam insulation. However, it’s possible that the eggs and foam are extruded together. I’d really like to catch this start to finish to see for sure, and I keep my eyes open for the opportunities.

One obviously rotund female was inhabiting the largest rosemary bush for weeks, and I was trying to keep an eye on her. But then she disappeared, and after a few days I mounted a search of the plant. Eventually, my suspicions were confirmed.

egg sac ootheca of Chinese mantis Tenodera sinensis on rosemary plant
There it was, hidden well down into the depths of the plant (which is really a sprawling bush now.) Moreover you can see that she, accidentally or intentionally, incorporated a dead leaf into the foam, and my typical view was from above and so the ootheca is completely hidden from casual sight. it also sits low to the ground and aimed ‘down,’ not the typical angle that I see them in, so photographing this come spring is going to be challenging, unless I prop it up or shift it to a slightly better location.

This is the same bush that hosted the first hatchings this past spring, and I’ve said before that I have a vague suspicion that they return to their hatching spot, so it remains a possibility that I photographed her as a newborn, maybe even rescued her from being trapped – granted, that’s about a 1-in-300 chance or less even if she was one of that brood. But at the least, I have an ootheca to keep an eye on next year, and will probably attempt to collect a few more early in the winter.

But they’re cute

Al Denelsbeck

Yeah, back in a rut – or I never left, whatever you like. But these finds from last night couldn’t be passed up.

I semi-routinely check out the property, day and night, to see what can be found, mark progress, and so on. I’d like to think that I’m getting even better at spotting extremely subtle things, but there’s no real way to determine this, no ‘master list’ of what there is to be spotted. I just know what I do find, which might only be 2% of what could be seen if I didn’t suck. Man, empiricism isn’t good for the ego…

tail of Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis hanging down from dried flowers of oak-leaf hydrangea Hydrangea quercifolia
The oak-leaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia) in The Jungle has been a good place to spot things this year, though not every time I’ve checked (see above.) The flowers from this past spring are still there, dried and brown now, and may hang on through the winter, providing a nice accent to the overall appearance as well as hiding places for various small critters – that tail hanging down is the clue, though it’s only 3cm long. And there’s more to see, if you look very closely, but I’ll make it easier in a moment. Don’t keep scrolling if you want to challenge yourself first.

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sleeping juvenile Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis within dried flowers of oak-leaf hydrangea Hydrangea quercifolia
Yep, our old friend the Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) is once again sleeping within those flowers. So you know, the individual petals might be fractionally larger than your thumbnail – this is one of the juveniles, almost certainly this year’s brood. They appear to grow much slower than the frogs do, and a few days back I believe I spotted one of last year’s brood, only half of adult size. There’s no way to tell for sure, and all I can go on to differentiate them is their locale, which may change at any time when they decide to move on. I suppose I could sneak up some night and attempt to give them a tiny tattoo…

By the way, you can tell this is a juvenile by the awkward sleeping position – adults of every species know if they try to sleep like this they’ll be worthless the next day.

About two meters away on the rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus,) was another find.

juvenile Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis hanging awkwardly from rose of Sharon Hibiscus syriacus
This one probably heard my attempt to get closer up the overgrown slope of The Jungle, through the ivy and blackberry iris and various unwanted vines, thus the open eye. It didn’t budge from position, though – and it is this position, shot perfectly upright and level, so the anole really is hanging head down like that. I’m not at all sure how it’s remaining that way, since neither the hind legs nor the tail seem to be latched onto anything, so perhaps it just licked its own belly and stuck itself to the leaf? Maybe this is a very localized example of those gravity anomalies? Maybe… nah, let’s not be indelicate.

The other day when I didn’t have the camera in hand (the horror!) I viewed some behavior that I’m dying to get on video, and it was almost certainly displayed by one of these two, given that it was on the top of the same hydrangea roughly midway between these two photos. I’ve already done a few short video clips, nothing fascinating, but I intend to catch more behavior before the season ends and these spuds go into hibernation. The problem is, there’s no way to get a decent view without them being acutely aware of my presence, which likely affects their behavior – it could be a while. Still, it’s been a good year for video efforts, so we’ll see.

Visibly different, part 37

Al Denelsbeck

Just playing around this week, because I didn’t dig out anything of interest and comparison from the archives – been that kind of week. Still, these will be visibly different, so you can’t take away points for not meeting the bare criteria.

unidentified berries in snow, monochrome blue channel
We open with a dramatic and contrasty image, though I admit I should have dropped the exposure down slightly to keep the snow from bleaching out in so many places, but there’s nothing I can do about it now, so we’re living with it. The berries, however, have become more enigmatic, because this is channel-clipping once again, taking advantage of a digital trait by eliminating two of the three colors that all images are composed of (those being Red, Green, and Blue, whence comes the term, ‘RGB’) – all of the subtleties and variations come solely from varying the intensity of these three. In this case, we’re looking at only the Blue channel, and the berries are so dark because there is very little blue in their natural color. Which doesn’t narrow it down too much, even though in this image they kinda look like blueberries, but they’re far from it.

unidentified red berries in snow
One of these days I’ll stop being lazy and figure out what these are, since we have several trees of them nearby and they’ve formed the subject of countless images. But that is not this day. Or even any day previous to this, which is narrowing it down steadily.

Regardless, since monochrome images are best with distinctive contrast, the Blue channel was the best one to use here. Not so much with the next one, so this is not the Blue channel below.

eastern tiger swallowtail Papilio glaucus on unidentified flower, monochrome Red channel
This one, unfortunately, looks not-quite-authentic, the wings of this eastern tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) becoming a bit too bright in this channel, but perhaps giving the impression of being backlit. A little too contrasted? Your call, but this is the Red channel, though that isn’t readily apparent when you see the original.

male eastern tiger swallowtail Papilio glaucus on unidentified flower
Were you expecting yellow wings? In the RGB color space, yellow is a combination of red and green – strange but true – but since there’s a lot of green in the background, using the Green channel brightened that up too much and didn’t have the contrast that this does, while naturally the red flower lost its vibrancy.

Now for one from this week, at least.

morning glory blossoms in monochrome Green channel
Definitely muted this time, with little differentiation from the background – this is the Green channel. Why did I use that when the surrounding foliage is green and thus would be brighter? Ah, there was a specific reason, which we get at least a clue of when we see the original.

morning glory blossoms
Yeah, I agree, it’s better in color, but let’s look at this. The various lavender hues of the blossoms meant that both the Red and the Blue channels were well represented and fairly bright in the monochrome versions, but the magenta ‘spokes’ were what made Green the choice; magenta is the opposite of green in RGB, and so they became the darkest and thus distinctive in the Green channel, instead of the blossoms being only subtle variations in brightness with the other two channels.

Still, not as much contrast as we like to see from monochrome images, so I performed a final tweak.

morning glory blossoms in monochrome green channel with contrast tweak
This was a minor Curves adjustment, boosting the brightest portions of the image all the way up to full white, and slightly reducing the shadow levels. Very simple, and the Curves function is something that every photographer should have at least some grasp of.

Curves adjustment of previous imageHere’s how it looks – this is from GIMP, but most other programs are very similar. The mountain range at the bottom of the graph is a representation of how many pixels in the image fall into each brightness value – black at the left, white at the right, so you see a very sharp spike at the left edge, a good portion of black pixels, and none of white – this is what made the original muted and a little dark. [You can do this for each color channel as you like, but the default is ‘Value’ as it shows at top left, which means overall brightness, and since we’ve eliminated the other colors for this image anyway that’s all that we have to work with: 256 shades of grey, super kinky.] The bold diagonal line across the image is the adjustment curve, only slightly curved here. I moved the upper right endpoint to the left slightly, lining it up with the brightest pixels on the ‘mountain’ below, which means that they got moved up all the way to white. This skewed the whole diagonal (the ‘average’) away from the original values, the faint blue line, and so over to the left more – which are the shadowy portions of the image – I brought those back down to where they had been, just clicking on the line and dragging it. This increased contrast a little because the first move had increased all brightness. Make sense? Seriously, just play with it sometimes if you don’t already – it can greatly improve your images.

Which reminds me: one of these Visibly Different posts will be about darkroom versus digital editing, which will take a few specific images to illustrate – that’ll likely be more towards winter. You’re coming here regularly, of course, so you won’t miss it…

101 amphibians

Al Denelsbeck

Well, maybe not that many, but a few dozen at least. Or maybe it’s even more – I have no way of counting.

Some weeks back I mentioned the Copes grey treefrogs (Dryophytes chrysoscelis*) that deposited eggs in a water barrel in the backyard, which subsequently hatched into tadpoles. At the same time, the pond in the backyard (a proper place for amphibians to deposit eggs) also featured its own share of tadpoles. I monitored the ones in the barrel, since there was no easy way to get them out – it was well over a meter deep and held close to 200 liters of water, so I figured I’d leave them be and let nature take its course. They didn’t seem to be developing very fast, though, and the prolonged drought was causing the pond level to drop significantly, so eventually I set up a hose and siphoned out the vast majority of them (and the accompanying water) into the pond. Then a few days later, I collected a few for comparison photos.

Copes grey treefrog Dryophytes chrysoscelis tadpole with larger tadpole of unidentified species
Given the sizes that I’d observed a few days previously, that’s one of the tadpoles from the barrel on the left, with an unidentified species that grew within the pond on the right – it’s not much of a comparison, because I have no idea when those eggs were deposited, even though I feel the pond was a better environment. It is almost certainly one of four species, because they’re the ones I’ve found in the yard routinely: Copes grey treefrog, green treefrog (Dryophytes cinereus,) American toad (Anaxyrus americanus,) or green frog (Lithobates clamitans.) The latter is an aquatic species rather than a treefrog, and I really wish they had a different name just to avoid confusion, but so it goes. There are at least a pair living within the pond and I never saw the eggs that begat the other tadpoles, so I’m in the dark regarding species – and will likely remain that way, since even as they leave the water as tiny frogs/toads, they don’t have distinguishing traits and all largely look the same.

But let’s have a look at their development.

unidentified tadpole showing developing hind legs
This is the largest specimen that I collected, and those feeble little hindlegs are visible but really just dangling there – they’ll develop pretty quickly, and a bit later on the forelegs will pop out (literally – they appear to develop internally and then extrude from the skin.) Had I been monitoring the pond closely, I might have a decent handle on how long this all takes, but my observations have been sporadic and haphazard, so I can’t provide much info here. I’ve considered keeping a few in an aquarium where I can track them better, but I’m not sure what they really need for food and might simply be dooming them for the sake of curiosity, so we have this instead.

Another showed slightly less development.

closeup of developing hindleg in unidentified tadpole
In watching this one swimming within the macro aquarium, I got the impression that those legs aren’t really external, but still just under the transparent surface of the skin. This was intriguing, and I tried for better detail.

extreme closeup of developing hindleg on unidentified tadpole
That really doesn’t help; there’s a faint shadow, but no distinguishable demarcation at the base. Bear in mind the entire limb is a few millimeters in length, and I’m shooting through a layer of glass (that has seen better days – it’s time to rebuild the aquarium.) It would take an extremely fine touch with a tiny probe to see if the limb really is external, and it was difficult enough getting them to pause near the glass for these photos – they tend to swim off when disturbed.

The real challenge was this one, though.

unidentified tadpole showing all four developing limbs now
A few days previous to collecting all these, I’d found one with four developed limbs and knew it was getting ready to leave the pond, but didn’t do anything about it at the time. So when I started collecting (this was just last night, the project that I mentioned in the previous post,) I scoured the pond, multiple times spaced an hour or so apart, trying to find one with four limbs; obviously I succeeded, but I suspect it was the only one so equipped within the pond. An early developer, or the last of the litter to leave? I have no idea, and though I examined the region surrounding the pond for evidence of others that might have left, in vain, they would be easy to miss between their size and the countless places to hide.

Another view.

unidentified tadpole with four limbs clinging to twig
Seeing it using its limbs along the edges of the aquarium, I found a small twig to put in there and eventually coaxed it into range; as suspected, it started clinging to the twig, showing it was now using those limbs as intended and was probably almost ready to exit the pond. It might already have done so as I type this, 24 hours later.

Notably, this was a little smaller than the spindly-legged specimens above, but I don’t think that means much; if I’m interpreting past observations correctly, they bulk up initially and then use a lot of that to develop the limbs, slimming down in the process. From all other appearances, this is a sibling of the other larger specimens, but really, I have a whole selection of sizes living within the pond now, so don’t confidently share what you read here at parties to sound knowledgeable – dog knows I don’t (but then, I don’t get invited to parties, can’t imagine why.)

This also means that, within a few more weeks, the ground here at Walkabout Estates may be crawling with amphibians, but that’s happened before and, aside from making me examine the ground carefully for a while when I’m walking around, they disperse (and/or get eaten) pretty quickly. Some of the specimens that I’ve photographed this year have undoubtedly hatched from that pond, but really, the grounds aren’t as inundated as you might imagine. Nature of the beast: some species produce a lot of offspring to cope with the high attrition rate when young, and as long as a few make it to reproducing age, things are working effectively enough.

* Yes, in July I identified them as Hyla chrysoscelis, but now as Dryophytes chrysoscelis. Many years back I learned their taxonomic names and had them memorized, so I wasn’t checking to see if they’d changed, and just stumbled across it a few weeks ago. The new genus was established in 2016, though how quickly it migrated through the literature I cannot say, except that there are still plenty of websites using Hyla. Kinda makes a guy regret including the proper scientific names if they can’t leave ’em the hell alone…

Sorting finds n+2

Al Denelsbeck

Okay, not really a find, because I remembered they were there and had this idle intention of doing something with them, but since I was sorting the recent images tonight, I decided I might as well tackle it.

Back on August 23rd, we had sporadic and scattered thundercells cruising across the state in the early morning, and I got very little warning of one that may pass right over us, so I scampered over to the neighborhood pond to set up. Initial flashes and rumbling looked promising, but the activity pretty much died out as the cell drew close. I had a ton of frames, all time exposures waiting for a decent strike, and only got two frames that showed anything at all. Well, except for the cloud movement. And in flipping through them, I realized I could do something with those at least.

animated gif of cloud movement and lightningIt may be obvious that this is running backwards, but I couldn’t start with the one lightning flash now, could I? And that was the way it went: after changing position, I got one noticeable burst and then nothing for plenty of frames, but the glow from the streetlights off of the low clouds made them visible, and the sequence of frames (there are ten here) made their development clear. You will also notice another shift in there, because I changed angle slightly and apparently the focal length too, though this was unintentional, and I only did a half-ass job of correcting it for the gif (pronounced, “JOB-smakt.”) Actually, I’m only keeping the one frame and discarding the others, so this is the only use they’ll ever be put to. If you want to consider this an NFT, I’ll be happy to launder wisely invest your money for you.

You may want a better look at that one frame – or you may not, in which case, close your eyes because it’s coming anyway.

weak nighttime lightning pic
Actually, I’m not really sure why I’m even keeping this one, except that it shows the different layers of clouds. Woo hoo.

Meanwhile, as I was typing this, my internet connection got balky, so I paused for a bit and chased another project, the result being that I added almost a hundred frames to the Sort folder before I was even done with this sort. You’ll see some of them soon – I was a bit more successful for this project, and no, it’s not lightning.

Time to mature

Al Denelsbeck

I mentioned, like, a week ago having a bunch of photos from the NC Botanical Garden, but it was too soon then to post them – they needed time to come to their full potential, mellow and full-bodied.

[Do you like how I can sell being a slack-ass by making it sound like wines or something? And what does “full-bodied” taste like anyway? I doubt they mean fatty. Even “mellow” is pretty questionable – that’s a mood, you pompous gobwits, not a flavor (or even flavour.) All wines are supposed to be associated with mellow. Just once, I want to find one that’s anxious, with overtones of insecurity…]

eastern cicada-killer wasp Sphecius speciosus checking out pitcher plant
Compared to some visits, this one was a little slow – I didn’t spot one Carolina anole, and even the insect species were a bit sparse. The pitcher plants showed the first real activity, among the finds there being this massive eastern cicada-killer wasp (Sphecius speciosus.) Not quite the size of my little finger, it easily outmassed any other Hymenoptera that I’ve seen, and while I have no idea what the venom is actually like, it’s easy to believe getting stung by this would hurt.

There were no cicadas to be seen in the pitcher plants, though I doubt that was what it was after – the cicadas are to feed to their larvae anyway. The nectar that the plant uses to attract and drown insects remained out of reach, and the wasp wasn’t committing, so it flitted from one blossom to another, not to my knowledge accomplishing anything, but who knows what I was missing? There was another species that was taking advantage of this attraction, though.

green lynx spider Peucetia viridans on pitcher plant with unknown wasp prey
I’d just passed through a region of the garden that had typically been home to green lynx spiders (Peucetia viridans) in the past, and spotted not one, nor any sign of webbing or egg sacs, but I found several hanging out on the pitcher plants, including this one already in possession of a meal. Green lynxes are ambush predators, relying on their coloration to escape attention and then snagging their prey when it comes close, and they’re quite capable of taking something far larger than they are. One, probably 1/3 the mass of the cicada-killer at top, nevertheless took a shot at it as it came close; I wasn’t even aware of its presence until I heard the wasp flit away from it with a noticeable buzz. Meanwhile, this lynx is getting a bit large in the abdomen and may not be long before creating an egg sac.

But we need a better illustration.

green lynx spider Peucetia viridans hiding among old flowers
This patch of unidentified older flowers was in the same planter as the aforeseen pitcher plants, very open, and you can see how well the lynx spider blends in – it’s right there, but I’m comfortable saying that most of the visitors to the garden missed it.

green lynx xpider Peucetia viridans potentially guarding hidden egg sac
It didn’t really occur to me at the time, and I didn’t notice the collection of webbing until editing, but the abdomen is suspiciously thin here and the webs a hint, since they don’t use them for hunting: there’s probably an egg sac out of sight beneath the leaves. Mother will hang out near the sac until the young hatch, and run interference for a while to protect them.

A short distance away, another find was resting in the shade of a large leaf.

snowberry clearwing Hemaris diffinis resting in shade
This is a snowberry clearwing (Hemaris diffinis,) one of two hummingbird mimic moths in the area, though they also can appear like bumblebees. It’s easy to believe that this protects them from predators and it almost certainly works (otherwise it would never have evolved,) but the spiders aren’t fooled – I’m guessing birds are. Just a little later on, I debated about passing up a particular section of the garden, but then decided to check it out for just a few minutes, which turned out well.

snowberry clearwing Hemaris diffinis approaching phlox with proboscis unfurled
Another clearwing was making the rounds of a patch of phlox, and I blew quite a few frames in pursuit. This proved challenging, because the hyperactive nature of the moth was defying the autofocus quite often, but attempting to manually focus was much worse, so I have a lot of frames to discard, with enough keepers to make it worthwhile.

snowberry clearwing Hemaris diffinis at phlox
Time spent ‘on station,’ paused at a particular blossom, might have ranged as high as two seconds, but typically it was a second or less – I guess phlox doesn’t produce a lot of nectar. And like many insect species, clearwings don’t seem to follow any pattern, so anticipating their movements is hit-or-miss, and prefocusing on a specific spot largely a waste of time. You just track them as best as you can.

snowberry clearwing Hemaris diffinis deep into phlox
Given the deep, narrow trumpet of the phlox, though, only insects with a long proboscis (butterflies and moths) can get the nectar anyway, apparently pollinating the flowers with their face, as it were. I imagine some really tiny insects could crawl down in there, but due to body size couldn’t make much of a dent on the nectar before they were full.

snowberry clearwing Hemaris diffinis in midair with proboscis unfurled
Had to have one more in midair with the proboscis out. So you know, body length is roughly 5-6cm for the species, so captures like this are more luck than skill, but you didn’t hear that from me.

I had another find in the garden, a first I believe, and couldn’t do it justice despite waiting around to see if it reappeared in better conditions.

juvenile eastern milk snake Lampropeltis triangula triangulum on fence
A very small snake was perched on top of a fenceline, making me stare at it through the camera (this was at 135mm and cropped at that) to first try and confirm that it was a snake, and then, what species. Identification had to wait until I could get back and view the images under more magnification, but I’m calling this a juvenile eastern milk snake (Lampropeltis triangula triangulum,) because right now it’s the only pattern that seems to fit – I’m not sure of any other species that has that speckling along the margins of the belly scales, though most illustrations of the juveniles show brighter patterns and higher contrast than this. I welcome anyone’s input.

juvenile eastern milk snake Lampropeltis triangula triangulum peeking out
The snake was aware of my presence and efforts to get an unobstructed view, and peeped at me cautiously before slipping from sight into some dense foliage. I waited to see if it would reappear anywhere, but no dice, and between its size and the thickness of the plants, it could easily have been watching me while I couldn’t make it out – its body diameter was maybe 5-7mm, overall length not more than 30cm so, you know, lay a few french fries end-to-end. Still, if it was a milk snake, that makes the second that I’ve seen recently (well separated in distance) after going years without seeing one. Trend or coincidence? Only more careful observations will tell.

Visibly different, part 36

Al Denelsbeck

arctic fox Vulpes lagopus in summer coloration, from the NC Zoological Park in Asheboro NC
I’m guessing that more than a few people would fail to recognize my photo subject here, because virtually no source ever shows them at this time of year. This image is actually the first in the ‘Mammals’ category of my slide archives – not the first mammal that I’ve shot (that title probably predates this one,) but the first I took when I switched over to slides. It dates from August 1998, and was taken at the NC Zoological Park in Asheboro. This is what an arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus) looks like in its summer coloration.

For a long time, this was the only way that I’d seen them, given that I live hundreds of kilometers from the Arctic Circle and didn’t tend to visit the zoo in the winter. This coat blends in quite well with the summer conditions up there though, where some days it might even get warmish – actually I don’t really know what temperatures it reaches in the summer, though I’m comfortable saying that I wouldn’t wear sandals as frequently as I do here.

But when I say, “arctic fox,” most people (me included) picture this:

arctic fox Vulpes lagopus in winter coloration, from the NC Zoological Park in Asheboro NC
Same place, and potentially even the same fox, only eight years (and a few months) later in 2006, christmas eve in fact. The weather that day was remarkably warm – even sandals were feasible – but the fox had developed its winter coat by then and now looked properly arcticky. And of course, garnered a lot more attention now by being pure white and fluffy. Which isn’t the goal in its native conditions, but then again, there are very few human females in such locations, and a lot more golden eagles and polar bears that couldn’t give a fig about ‘fluffy’ but have a harder time spotting a white potential meal against a white snowpack background. As do the foxes’ prey, consisting largely of voles, seal pups, and lemmings.

Some things I don’t have as specific goals but am happy to obtain anyway, and variations in coloration or plumage are good things to have in stock. For any given species this might be challenging – breeding plumage especially, since it often lasts only a few weeks and may be sported by just one sex, so capturing good examples of this might take a lot of time. Granted, that wasn’t the case here, and I wasn’t trying to accomplish this anyway, but it was a productive trip overall.

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