Sunday color, arthropod edition

Al Denelsbeck

Continuing the theme, we have a look at the monochromatically-challenged bugs also found on Saturday’s outing.

European honeybee Apis mellifera on unidentified pale pink flowers
Had I been inclined, I could have rushed to post this yesterday, since it was National Honey Bee Day, and this is indeed a European honeybee (Apis mellifera.) This was taken on that day, at least, but we’ve already had a holiday for August, so I let it go. I also spent no small amount of time trying to identify those flowers, without luck, so just enjoy the pic, okay?

umbrella paper wasp either Polistes carolina or Polistes rubiginosus showing myriad false pupils
There are two species of umbrella paper wasp that look like this, Polistes carolina and Polistes rubiginosus, and they can only be differentiated by microscope; I could confidently tell you that this was, for instance, Polistes carolina, and you wouldn’t be able to dispute it. Oh, you can make out the pubescence in the malar space that clearly, can you? I could say, and you would be obliged to concede. But I’m not that cruel.

All those false pupils, though – you can’t beat those.

black-and-yellow argiope Argiope aurantia blocking path
This black-and-yellow argiope (Argiope aurantia) was blocking the path down to some flowers that a hummingbird was frequenting, necessitating a detour under a boardwalk since, you know, their webs come close to a meter across. Bright and contrasting colors would usually mean aposematic warning coloration, and an ability to deter predation through venom or distasteful stuff, and yeah, it’s a spider so it has venom, but often that doesn’t slow birds down, which crush the spider before it has a chance to bite, so… I’ll have to look into this, is what I’m saying.

unidentified hymenoptera covered in brilliant yellow pollen
In the previous post I mentioned the list of post titles, and I have long noted that I have no titles starting with the letter ‘X’ – not surprising, I imagine, even though I did achieve a ‘Z’ post in there. So I have a small quest to accomplish this, and this image was in the running because, really, there aren’t a lot of words beginning with ‘X’ in the first place, and fewer still that could possibly work in the topics and format of this blog. But I’ll let the Scrabble players among you try to determine which word was in consideration regarding this pic.

arrowshaped micrathena Micrathena sagittata belly-first in web
Not the best photo of an arrowshaped micrathena (Micrathena sagittata) spider, since you’re seeing it from the underside, but it was the only side I could get at. The close cousin, the spined micrathena, used to be found all over the place in the area, even within the backyard here at Walkabout Estates, but for the past few years it’s been scarce. Anyway, both species are quite malevolent-looking, not at all supported by their behavior, and I suspect that the appearance is more to attract certain prey.

great black dagger wasp Sphex pensylvanicus on flower cluster
There were quite a few of these large wasps on some of the flower clusters, but they were shy and it took some time to get nice closeups of them. This is likely a great black dagger wasp (Sphex pensylvanicus,) a wonderful name for an impressively-sized wasp; at better than 25mm, it was half-again as large as similar-looking paper wasps or daubers. I’ve seen them quite often and always liked their electric blue coloration, and it wasn’t until I got these shots that I realized the coloration was only on the wings; the entire body of the wasp is dusky black, like a teenager transitioning between goth and punk phases. But those wings, man! I want to paint my Stingray bike in that color.

That’s what I got for the outing – no snakes, lizards, birds, and certainly (thankfully) no treefrogs. But I’ll scare something else up before the week is out.

Saturday color

Al Denelsbeck

I have a list of the titles of every post, in an attempt not to have duplicates, and double-checked this one before continuing. Not only have I not done ‘Saturday color’ before, the only time I’ve done Saturday in a title has been ‘Saturday night black & white,’ only a few months ago. Go figure.

Anyway, quick photos without much exposition, from an outing today. I have less than 90 minutes left to post this before it’s not Saturday, so wish me luck.

closeup of purpletop vervain Verbena bonariensis
You’d think just posting some photos wouldn’t be much of a challenge, but I’m providing the species names too, which requires looking them up. This was almost the easiest, since I’ve posted it before, though that doesn’t mean I remember the name or how to find the post quickly. It’s a purpletop vervain (Verbena bonariensis,) going in close with very short depth, so I chose one particular blossom to focus upon, never realizing that it still had dew on it from the morning.

small red morning glory Convolvulaceae with unidentified purple flower in background
This is a small red morning glory – that’s not a description, but the actual name – a member of the Convolvulaceae family which is as specific as it gets, apparently. Plus some unidentified purple flower in the background. Only about 15-20mm across, much smaller than the common morning glory bloom sizes.

likely gentian sage Salvia patens with unidentified sweat bees
There are a significant number of salvia (or sage) varieties, but I’m guessing this one is a gentian sage (Salvia patens.) I’m not even going to try to identify the tiny sweat bees checking it out, since they measured all of 5mm at the most. That’s not being sizest – some of my best friends are 5mm. It’s just that I don’t have enough identifying features to make the effort. Plus it’s still Saturday…

fireweed Chamerion angustifolium closeup
One thing about flowers is, they usually have a variety of ‘common’ names, and this one in particular goes by fireweed, narrow-leaf fireweed, willow herb, rosebay willow herb, and blooming sally – but all are Chamerion angustifolium. Again, in close for detail of dew and unopened buds, though the petals and the buds themselves were 20-25mm, so the open blossom was fairly big.

And finally,

firewheel Gaillardia pulchella direct portrait
This is perhaps the most geometrically perfect blossom that I’ve ever photographed, so of course I had to do the direct perspective. It’s a firewheel, or Indian blanket, or Indian blanketflower, or perhaps even Native-American woven-covering herbaceous genitalia (probably not, but Gaillardia pulchella is likely anyway.) As I type this, it seems I’ve also featured these before, though I don’t remember it, but the tag appeared in the list as I started to type it. Ah, yes, earlier this year too. But not as Euclidean as this one.

There’s going to be another color post coming soon, from the same outing too, but this time it’ll be arthropods. Alert your friends, call in the dog, whatever it takes.

And so you know, it’s 11:35 PM as I hit ‘Publish’…

Average: average

Al Denelsbeck

Oops, I’m one behind on my ‘daily’ posts, or at least one for every day of the month; should correct that soon enough. In the meantime, various things are progressing – some usefully, some not so.

For instance, the car is back together and on the road, one of those deals where the work that needed to be done would normally be mildly involved, but due to an incredibly bad design, was a lot more complicated than it ever should be (for instance, removing the throttle body and intake manifold to change the goddamn spark plugs.) While doing this work, I broke the head from my monopod, but then not only fixed it the day after, I radically improved it.

[Okay, I know you’re wondering, even though you probably don’t even exist. One trivial repair on the car was to a failed lift support for the rear hatch, those little shock-absorber-like pistons that help support the weight. To replace this, the hatch needed to be held up firmly, not something I could spare an arm for, so the monopod served as the support structure. Except that, with the wobbling and aligning, it tumbled out of the back of the car and hit directly on the head, snapping it free from the post. However, I had an old Manfrotto short center column from one of my tripods, and with some slight modification, was able to use that to replace the rather shoddy original construction and thus improve the monopod significantly. Because I’m that good.]

Other projects and/or shooting sessions did not go as good. Tallying the successes and failures brings us to about average, right in the middle, except the car is fixed, so we’ll lean in the positive direction.

Just tonight, the thunder told me the storms were rolling closer than they have been for a while, and I went over to the neighborhood pond to take a stab at it. Some 40 minutes of shooting, 75 frames, produced very little of merit – the storm just wasn’t developing in a good way.

thin wide branches of lightning stretching across sky
I’d been framing to include the water in the shot when I watched a broad, scattered bolt cross the sky, so I re-aimed, and eventually was rewarded with a semi-decent display, cropped here with contrast increased slightly. It might have been a nice one for video because I watched it branch out and scamper across the sky, but video probably would have been grainy and ugly. Naturally, a better display than this occurred just as I closed the shutter following an empty exposure; thanks. You have to accept such things, because leaving the shutter open too long will overexpose the frame and bleach out any brief lightning that might occur anyway.

The only clear and distinct bolt of the evening (while I was out there, anyway,) did strike as my shutter was open, though:

wide shot with lightning going off edge of frame
Yeah, lovely. Like I said, it was the only clear bolt, so there was nothing to indicate the best direction to aim in, and of course, when I re-aimed after this, nothing appeared. Ho hum.

But we’ll take a closer look anyway.

inset of previous frame for detail
Could have been very nice, had the framing been better, but oh well.

Other photo opportunities have been scarce, especially if I avoided doing any more frogs, and the heat has been intense, even producing sweat from no effort at night (so you can imagine how badly I was soaked while doing the car work.) We are at least getting rain now, long overdue, so the rainbarrels are refilled and I’m not going out as often to water the plants. But while exploring one night, I got lucky with the appearance of a different subject, who held still as I adjusted the flash settings (seeing how I was configured for macro work.)

likely deer mouse Peromyscus maniculatus perched on fence
This little guy suddenly appeared on the fence right as the headlamp was aimed in that direction and froze, allowing me to change the flash power and angle and the aperture to snag a single frame, though as I attempted to creep closer, it beat a quick retreat along the fence.

Now a little of the research just to insert the proper name. I had grown up with two species of mice: the all-grey ones with smaller eyes that we called the house mice, and the ones seen here, larger eyes with a brown coat and very distinct white underbelly, called field mice. Except that that particular name is also applied to house mice, and what is pictured here is more typically referred to as a deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus.) Fine, whatever – make me feel stupid. But at least I have another mammal to add to the stock, something that I’m surprisingly thin on.

And for giggles, another photo obtained during the slow hot season when I was avoiding doing even more photos of treefrogs. Nothing great, but at least it’s not a frog. No sirree bob, not a frog to be seen.

morning glory Convolvulaceae blossom that definitely does not have a juvenile green treefrog Hyla cinerea peeking from behind
There’s an outing planned for tomorrow, so we’ll see if that produces anything useful. You know where to look.

Profiles of Nature 33

Al Denelsbeck

North American river otter Lontra canadensis Dasarath obviously amused
While countless devotees try to establish proof of a loving god, we have effortlessly proven just the opposite, because these posts are still here, week after week, despite fervent pleas for them to mercifully cease. Check and mate.

This week we have தஸரத, who imagines himself quite the raconteur because of the gales of laughter that accompany each of his amusing stories; the gales are all his own, but that hasn’t stopped him. தஸரத is an immigrant (yes, we know you figured that out all on your own, clever you,) entering this country with a risky border crossing in the dead of night from his native Canada, chasing the dream of ridiculously overpriced healthcare that many Canadians (like, 6) desire. He’s honed his art for many years and pretty much trashed it all, never recognizing that the phrase is a metaphor, but then again, see above – we’re not talking Mensa here. His goal is to have his own self-titled sitcom, though he doesn’t understand why he has to keep telling everyone his name is not pronounced, “Gents.” In the meantime, தஸரத is leveraging his social media presence for maximum exposure, but that metaphor thing again, resulting in seven bans so far and forcing his agent to switch to a flat fee rather than a percentage. He used to have a job splicing cables to make ends meet, but found it easier to walk dogs, because they won’t swing at anything. தஸரத reluctantly admits that his favorite setting on a sewing machine is a shell tuck stitch, knowing how gauche this is considered.

The horror and despair will return in half-a-fortnight. Well, in a fortnight too.

What you get

Al Denelsbeck

yet another juvenile green treefrog Hyla cinerea on hosta leaves
Yes, I know we’ve had quite enough of the green treefrogs for a while, the rest of the year probably, but listen: It’s hot as hell, even when it’s raining, I’m a little under the weather (The name’s Stool – Lou Stool,) and overall it’s not worth trying to chase subjects elsewhere. Even the night sky is near-overcast and featureless. I have just a couple of semi-philosophical posts that I could tackle, but I’m not in the right mindset right now. Yet I’m staying reasonably on top of a post a day this month – I will probably let this lapse after August, but right now I’m accepting the challenge… which means more frogs.

All that aside, what’s with those toes?

I would have been so embarrassed

Al Denelsbeck

Oh my gosh, I almost let this one slip by! Today (the first Monday after a Friday the 13th that falls in a very hot non-leap-year) is Find the Flounder Day – I nearly forgot, and you all know the routine if someone forgets Find the Flounder Day. Many people celebrate the holiday by hiding a flounder around their home or workplace, which would mean that I’d have to invite you all over (all none of you,) but I figure we can do this photographically, and so, I staged a special image just for this holiday.

very small flounder hiding in sand
Well, yeah, it’s small – using big ones takes all of the challenge out of it, and we already know they can be pretty small. No, it’s not under the quarter – I’m not that underhanded. It’s right there.

If you’re having trouble [SPOILER ALERT] you can look for the googly eyes facing in opposing directions. Or you can compare the sharpness of focus among the substrate, because the camera was focused directly on the flounder, slightly higher than the surrounding sand and shell bits, so the flounder pattern will be the faintest bit sharper than its surroundings. Found it now? Good! Now you can have the traditional lasagna salad and afterward, perform the flounder line dance. Unless, of course, you’re from one of them heathen countries that never recognize Find the Flounder Day, in which case you will burn in hell for all eternity and never stop regretting your poor choice in where you were born. Sucks to be you.

C’mon, guys!

Al Denelsbeck

I was just going through the main site’s gallery to locate something, and noticed that several of the thumbnails and gallery photos were rotated incorrectly, displaying in horizontal format rather than the intended vertical, due to weird default settings in the ‘Orientation’ EXIF info and the program that I was using to examine the photos. It would seem that they’ve been this way for well over a year, since the last major site update.

And I’m sitting here saying to myself, How come not one of you mooks told me about it?! And then I remembered, Oh yeah – no one comes to the site anyway.

But I’m fixing them anyway, because I believe someday, someone will.

[I’d explain why I never noticed it during site proofing, but I don’t know you well enough.]

Anole fix

Al Denelsbeck

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis hanging upside down looking shifty
About to do some work on the car yesterday, opened the hood and zoom! this little guy leapt away and scurried up the drainpipe a short ways, then stopped. As I leaned in with the camera, it regarded me suspiciously but never moved, and remained there for no small length of time while I worked on the car, intermittently visible not two meters away through the gap behind the recycle bin. Getting used to me? Waiting for me to finish all my cursing so it could regain its hidey-hole? A decoy to keep me from discovering the heist in progress on the other side of the garage? I do not know. But to keep it (and any others) happy, I left a donut sitting on the ground, because that’s how you get ants.

[This is a Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis,) by the way…]

On the negative, and positive, side

Al Denelsbeck

Doing a little recordkeeping last night, I found that I already have 190 posts for the year, not counting this one, while last year’s total number of posts was 233, a personal record (the dumbest kind of record.) That means, in order to beat this number, I’d have to post at least 44 more times, or eleven posts per month. Given that I’m still doing the Profiles posts and there are 20 more of them, that’s a mere 24 of other, quality content to go. That’s like, pssshhffftt. I mean, we all know there will be posts showing the mantids mating and laying eggs, and the green flash on video, and a tornado and the aurora borealis (perhaps together,) so, yeah, no sweat.

Granted, one of those posts was The Manatee’s, so if I want to get technical, I have to have at least one more than that to count as mine – perhaps more if said The Manatee appears again, which I cannot rule out at this time. Ohh no, now the pressure’s on! Yeah, whatever.

Given all that, what we have for this post is a negative scan prepared when I knew I was about to leave on that trip… somewhere, up north, I forget where… but ran out of time to actually do the post, and it’s been sitting in the blog folder since then, staring at me, taunting me, wheedling in that annoying little voice negative scans have (you know exactly the one.) I thought it was kinda cool, and it represented an easy post to write, and I knew I would be uploading it sometime before the end of the year anyway, so there you go.

reflections of city lights on Indian River Lagoon, Melbourne, Florida
An experimental shot from nearly twenty years ago while I lived in Florida, this one came out amazingly well, the variety of colors far better than imagined – clicking on it, by the way, will open a larger version in a new window. I touched out the obvious bugaboos from long exposures, but left the grain intact, for a couple of reasons. The first is that the grain wasn’t that bad in the first place (much better than some films I’ve used,) and I consider it just a character of the image, indicative of film in the first place, which makes the colors of the lights that much more impressive. The second reason being, clearing the grain by filtering or blurring within a color selection would either have to be limited to the clear sky/water areas meticulously, or it would end up eradicating some of the finer details like the trailing ends of the reflections or the arms of the starbursts, and that was unacceptable. By the way, this was long before LEDs were in routine use on streets and buildings, so they’re not the source of all the colors, but this is facing a business district, so you’re probably seeing lots of advertising stuff. Only a guess at exposure time (about 30 seconds) because there’s no EXIF info to check, but I kinda wish I’d framed a little differently to get that sailboat on the left edge into the shot better, though to be honest, I may not have even known it was there. I was shooting from a well-lit causeway (you can see the edge plants peeking in, lit by those sodium streetlamps) and my eyes were adjusted to that lighting, so the unlit sailboat might have been lost in the darkness, only revealed against the faint skyglow in the longer exposure.

This is the Indian River Lagoon, which has appeared often enough before, and you’re looking at the city of Melbourne, Florida. Maybe someday, I’ll return to this spot and reshoot it in digital, just for comparison. Not as a special, dedicated trip, mind you, just if I happen to be in the area. Unless you want to fund it out of curiosity?

Profiles of Nature 32

Al Denelsbeck

wood stork Mycteria americana Ada Mae Luella wading in surf
Yes, it’s been seven days. No, we haven’t been playing with the calendar or the clocks. No, we cannot skip a week for good behavior.

This week’s featured model is Ada Mae Luella, which everyone agrees has to be a southern name, because southerners like to hear themselves talk; that’s why, “damn,” can actually be three syllables. We’re just gonna call her “A” for short, and pretend she’s Canadian. Seen here while dashing out to pick up a kid at daycare (which resulted in a big hoohah since she doesn’t have any kids,) A demonstrates why no one will ever tell her she looks better without makeup; Adobe created a whole new version of Photoshop just for her. She’s been banned from Instagram for crashing their network, twice, while attempting to apply filters. Her ‘personality’ is so good she makes people think Tom Hanks is a douche – feel free to use these. A was employed very briefly as a model for sculpting classes but was let go because, c’mon, there’s no challenge here. But she now plays to her strengths and is in high demand as a ‘Before’ model for plastic surgeon ads, and created her own lucrative business as a paid bridesmaid that won’t upstage the bride. She also picks up a lot of extra money all during October. Her favorite commission was cover art for a fantasy novel where she posed as the ogre’s club. But A has a dark side too, because her photographer doesn’t know how fill lighting works – just add in the drum stings as needed. She hates being asked for her autograph though, because she can’t read cursive and never knows if it’s hers or not. Her favorite nonexistent word is, “fartumulous.”

Join us next week. Join us.

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