August collection

Al Denelsbeck

No, not the month of August, but the adjective ‘august,’ meaning reputable, refined, and noteworthy.

Okay, yeah, it’s the month. And I looked it up just for giggles, and the none of those are synonyms for august anyway, which list, ‘dignified,’ ‘distinguished,’ and, ‘imposing.’ So much for my high-school English classes…

Regardless, there’s little theme here, just recent photos. As a follow-up to the previous horrofascinating post, I went out that night with the headlamp, doing the rounds as it were, and spotted something on the sweet potato vines along the front garden.

remains of annual cicada Neotibicen
That’s the remains of an annual cicada, and three meters or so from the driveway, so very likely to be the last vestiges of the mantis meal. Huh! In my day, we ate every bit of the cicada! But prompted by this, I began a close examination of the front garden, even though I’d looked it over when I returned about an hour after shooting those video clips, and this time located my quarry, a meter from the carcass, sitting on the oak-leaf hydrangea.

Chinese mantis Tenodera sinensis matching appearance of video subject
Right size, right coloration, immediate vicinity, even near the remains, so I’m 95% sure this is the same one. Not quite as swollen as I expected, but perhaps there had been some significant bowel movements in the meantime. Be sure to recommend Walkabout to all your friends.

A few days previously, after a heavy rain, I’d found another sizable adult specimen in the backyard, this one all tan in color – I still don’t know how their color change takes place, but given what I’ve observed in the past couple of years, I think it can only change during a molt. This one gave several nice poses, not at all concerned with my presence and actively hunting. But I call this one, “Reagan” – see if you can determine why.

Chinese mantis Tenodera sinensis from underside
I would like to claim that I am monitoring the many mantids in the yard for either mating or egg-laying activity, but that would imply something more that spot-checking, mostly at night, because it’s still ridiculously hot during the day. Granted, if I had someone willing to pay for such photos, I’d be out there constantly (well, depending on how much they were willing to pay,) but given how this is little more than a hobby, I’m retaining more of my body moisture within. Yeah, I know, I’m such a poseur…

possibly white-banded crab spider Misumenoides formosipes on underside of butterfly bush leaf
On the butterfly bush one night, I found a decent sized crab spider ambling around, waiting for another blossom cluster to come into bloom (the drought had slowed down a lot of plants in the yard.) From what I can tell, this is most likely genus Misumenoides, possibly a Misumenoides formosipes, or white-banded crab spider – this is determined partially from the coloration, but mostly from the positions of those eyes. Believe me, pinning this stuff down can be tedious – I have 13 tabs dedicated to spiders open in my browser right at the moment.

Then a day or two later as I stood by the main Japanese maple in the yard, I spotted a curious movement, what almost appeared to be a crab spider flying to one of the leaves. I leaned in for a closer peek, then trotted in to get the camera. Thankfully, it was still in the area when I got back, having moved further on but betraying itself through its telltale movements (and obvious color contrast.)

possibly mud-nesting spider wasp Auploplus carrying paralyzed crab spider
This was a very small wasp, no bigger than a house fly, but carrying a paralyzed crab spider. I’m familiar with wasps that use spiders to lay their eggs within, sealing up the paralyzed spider in mud cases for the young to hatch out and consume, but had never seen one this small. Near as I can tell, this is an Auploplus, but the few frames that I managed didn’t provide enough detail for much else. Effectively pinning down a species accurately can often require minute examination of specific body points, requiring a captive (dead) specimen, so not going to happen from photos obtained in situ. I do what I can to identify what I shoot, but rarely get a full range of body positions, and I usually don’t collect specimens just to identify them.

But this made me wonder if the wasp had snagged my crab spider subject from earlier, so I checked later on in the evening. Nope – still there, this time happily ensconced in a new blossom cluster

possibly white-banded crab spider Misumenoides formosipes within blossoms of butterfly bush Buddleia davidii
But you want to know what’s really bad? I didn’t see the other spider in this frame until reviewing the draft of this post just now. Granted, it’s not 3mm in overall width, but you’d think while doing the cropping and resizing…

Same species? That white band across the face lends some weight to the idea, but that’s far from definitive for crab spiders, and the size disparity would seem to indicate two separate broods, with far too little detail to tell anything else, so no, I’m not committing to anything, but I can keep going and see if I can get this sentence to run on ever longer…

Another image just for the sake of it.

unidentified 'inchworm' larva dangling from silk line
I’ve spent enough time on BugGuide.net right now, so I’m not even going to try to identify this, knowing it would be far too time-consuming given how many species have ‘inchworm’ type larva. Perhaps 20mm long, I found it one night dangling from a tree and shot a few frames, liking how the detail came out. That’s the head at the top; inchworms extrude their silk from their mouths, to allow them to make cocoons. I still kind of expect them to be head-down like a spider. You can just make out three eyes in the pale patch on the side of the head, close to the jaws.

And finally, the most recent one.

swollen female green lynx spider Peucetia viridans not long from making egg case
I did a brief trip to the North Carolina Botanical Gardens, uh, yesterday now, and snagged just a few photos – far too many have to be discarded, because I was shooting wide open with the Mamiya macro, no flash, and the depth was so short that I had a hard time nailing focus. Not my best day. This green lynx spider (Peucetia viridans) is a female and not far from producing an egg sac, judging from that swollen abdomen though I know you’re not supposed to do that, or at least vocalize it. In the old place, we had several broods develop, but we don’t have inviting enough flowers around Walkabout Estates now: taller, able to attract the big pollinators, and able to support their egg sacs which can get bigger than 30mm across. So right now, I typically only see them at the Botanical Gardens or Mason Farm Biological Reserve. I could add some enticing flowers, but considering how difficult it’s been to get some of the new plants established, I’ll probably just find the lynx spiders where they are now.

28 for 28 – three more days/posts (at least) to go…

Did you eat already?

Al Denelsbeck

This afternoon while talking to The Girlfriend in the garage, I heard the strident ratcheting sound of a captured cicada, very close by – like within a few meters. I went out into the driveway and immediately found the source, since they had cooperatively performed this drama right in the driveway, good light and everything. Not just an opportunity for photos, but video as well. Which tells you more than you ever wanted to know about me.

One of the resident Chinese mantises (Tenodera sinensis) had captured an annual cicada (genus Neotibicen, possibly Neotibicen canicularis,) and said cicada was protesting loudly. This was not in any way deterring the mantis which, as they do, started right in on the meal. You have been warned.


The Girlfriend was nearby but not watching as I captured the video, so she didn’t see the details until I finished the editing, but her review of the footage consisted largely of, “That’s gross.” Repeatedly.

I mention the background noise in there, since I didn’t have time to get the proper video mic but I doubt it would have improved matters in any way – that’s what you get in a suburban neighborhood in early afternoon: chainsaws and crows. It’s been worse, and I didn’t include the clip where a helicopter passed overhead.

I went out sometime later and found no traces of either, even though I’d witnessed a wing get discarded, so whether this was later consumed or blew away I can’t say. I wanted to see how much the mantis’ girth had increased.

It’s possible that this is the same mantis as number three here, since the size, markings, and coloration are all the same, and this occurred about six to eight meters away from last sighting, but with mantises, who knows? Still haven’t found a way to differentiate them.

I can’t neglect one of the still frames I took in between clips.

Chinese mantis Tenodera sinensis with head buried within body cavity of still-living annual cicada Neotibicen
I couldn’t resist this one, nor could I resist calling it, “Look, I’m a cicada!” Hey, this is how nature works (though, granted, I don’t really have to make it worse I guess.)

But yeah, productive day, anyway. And I still have images from previous days to get together.

More and more

Al Denelsbeck

Yesterday I was working on clearing out the front ‘garden,’ what I’ve taken to calling “The Jungle” because it’s become ridiculously overgrown with some kind of disturbingly fast-growing and unkillable trees, vines, briars, and raspberry bushes – we haven’t decided what we want in there yet, so it hasn’t been receiving the attention it should. And this one tree – seriously, the previous owners of the house cut it out, but every year we’ve been here (that’s seven so far,) the roots sprout a new sapling in another location (or four, this year,) and it’ll get over two meters tall in a single season.

Clearing out this stuff, while necessary, provided some misgivings, because I knew it was home to countless critters, but it was getting so bad that I couldn’t mow the lawn near it, so I started in and just kind of kept digging further. I made it a point, however, to keep shaking and disturbing the heavier stuff that I was pulling out, to scare off any occupants before they took a chance on getting injured. For good reason, too.

juvenile Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis peeking from cover
While I spotted a mantis and two frogs, it was this guy that made me get the camera, because it’s another juvenile Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis,) which makes several different specimens found around the yard now, with a few adults of course. This is very pleasing to me, because I’ve wanted them established in the yard and the sheer number of juveniles I’ve seen indicates that it’s definitely happening. I’m not happy that I’m taking away some of their habitat right now, but we’re intending to replace it with better plants soon enough.

This morning, I was out back at the edge of the deck and glanced over at a potted hydrangea that we had, then immediately scampered inside to get the camera. Thankfully, it was still visible when I got back.

tiny juvenile Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis perched on old hydrangea blooms
This is in the back yard, many meters away from the others that I’ve seen, and incredibly tiny – but also not quite as spooky as most of the others, so I was able to shoot a variety of images. It looked quite thin, so I watered the leaves nearby to give it plenty to drink (even though there are several planter reservoirs in the immediate vicinity,) and intend to keep a few dead wood roaches nearby each evening. We have plenty of wood roaches appearing every night, and the ants adore stripping their crushed carcasses – and the anoles adore ants. I’m a guy.

tiny juvenile Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis splayed on hydrangea leaf
Nice, nearly full-length shot – look at those lovely toes. And we’re going to get a better sense of scale in just a moment. But first…

tiny juvenile Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis providing a lovely pose
This is my favorite frame, nice and dynamic, smooth curves to the body and all that. Some indication of their age can be determined by the shape of the skull, since that stubby little nose will quickly get longer (see top,) and the lower jaw fuller, until adulthood.

I said something about scale, didn’t I?

tiny juvenile Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis with photographer's fingers for scale
Not the best of shots, but it c’mon – those are my own fingers, shot wide-open because I couldn’t work the aperture lever, and I had only a couple of seconds to lean in to focus range before the little reptile leapt to another leaf. It serves its purpose, to a degree anyway, though it would help to know just how yuge my hands are. Seriously, the envy of every man and the delight of every woman.

Okay, no they’re not – about average, maybe slightly smaller. But I use them well.

Profiles of Nature 34

Al Denelsbeck

eastern fence lizard Sceloporus undulatus Chichimecacihuatzin perched on tree
Week after week, the Profiles keep coming, so if you believe in karma you must have seriously fucked up in a past life. Don’t blame us.

This week we have Chichimecacihuatzin, which we’re fairly certain is just a stage name, since she is an interpretive pole dancer; her version of Waiting for Godot apparently has the gentlemen throwing down the green with the same delight as an Uno Draw Four card. Chichimecacihuatzin does not have “daddy issues” or problems with self-esteem but is happy with her career choice, being one of the few high-schoolers that followed the advice of her guidance counselor (who’s a regular on Thursday nights.) She finds her vocation rewarding and is proud of her skills, though we know for a fact that she goes in regularly for spray-stippling, and those are probably not the lips she was born with. True enough, she has to deal with creeps who can’t understand that her Billy Pilgrim is allegorical, but then again many of us have the same problem at work and we don’t have the benefit of a bouncer. Chichimecacihuatzin knows she won’t be able to do this forever and already has her backup plan all worked out: by her third molt, she intends to have completed her Masters in Theoretical Geneology and can begin consulting. As a hobby, she goes into the comments for music videos on YouTube and tries to make listening to a song sound like some life-affirming thing. Her favorite unidentified item from the bathroom drawer is that thing with the rubber bristles and some kind of hook.

There’s always a chance that we’ll have a stroke or something and this won’t be here next week, so you’ll check back in the vain hope, and we’re always happy to exploit that.

Fixed that

Al Denelsbeck

There are a lot of blogs out there that amount to something only slightly more elaborate than a diary or journal, with a lot of personal examination and coping with issues and so on. I’m not disparaging these at all, because I’m sure they help a lot of people – it’s just never been for me. I don’t usually feel comfortable airing my personal issues here, and it’s not the focus of the blog or website; I imagine readers (heh!) feeling a little uncomfortable with a post that suddenly starts talking about emotional drama immediately alongside the fascinating aspects of slug sex.

Nonetheless, there have been times when stuff has been weighing heavily on my mind, and more than a few circumstances in my life where I’ve been struggling with depression and frustration and so on, and I’ve been very close to writing about it (this is not one of those times, just to forestall the people who think they’ve found some hidden message in here.) Part of what stopped me are the reasons above. Part of what stopped me, some of the time anyway, is that it involved family, and while I name very few people in here directly, it wouldn’t be hard to figure out, especially if you’re one of those family members. Even approaching it indirectly wouldn’t fool very many people.

A small amusing aside: the concern over some family member reading what I have to say here is almost laughable, because not one of them ever reads the blog or even knows how to find the site. Well, I’m overstating a tad; one can, and occasionally sees a post, almost entirely if I link to it. The remainder, however, ranged from not having any computer access at all to not doing a lot with one regardless – no, we do not hail from the Ozarks or anything. Still, I prefer not to post on the odd chance that anyone did stumble across it and have an issue with the content.

In fact, this generic computer-free existence was a part of some of my issues, since the solution to numerous small or large problems could be obtained through the ‘connectedness’ that most of the people in this country, at least, fully embrace and would have a hard time living without. To give an example, I traveled up to NY a couple of years ago to visit my dad, completely bedridden, and delivered a decent, newish tablet computer to him at the time, intended to provide this connectedness, give him plenty to do (including audiobooks that I’d preinstalled on it and numerous website apps,) and even potentially allow video chats. Due to one thing after another, the tablet never achieved an internet connection, which dashed everything but the audiobooks, and he forgot how to access those. You don’t want to know how many times, and in how many ways, I attempted to establish a benefit from this single little device, to no avail.

Some of my frustrations or personal issues had actually been shelved, awaiting a time when I could air them here freely without any fear of reprisal, embarrassment, or other responses that could potentially arise. But here’s the heart of the post: In the intervening time, while I set them aside for a better opportunity to hash them out, they simply… went away. What had occupied my thoughts and impacted my mental state so distinctly became nothing more than trivial when re-examined some time later. Maybe they had always been trivial, in which case it was better not to have posted about them in the first place. Or maybe, given time to get used to the ideas and having no immediate options to exercise, they became buried under more immediate concerns. I don’t know; I’m not going to try to analyze myself and certainly won’t derive some deep psychological insight from this – dog knows, we got enough chowderheads doing that on social media as it is, likely doing more harm than good. All I’m offering is the perspective, which admittedly may only be personal, that in time most of what I’d been concerned with melted down in a little curious puddle, nothing more.

I won’t even say that most situations that impact us are blown out of proportion, or that we (or just I) get too melodramatic about them. Some of my past employment, for instance, was having a far larger negative effect on me than I realized at the time, discovered only after I left and found that my mental state was significantly improved; some things shouldn’t be ignored, or allowed to fester. But others – they just evaporated. I run across the occasional vague comment in past posts regarding something that was affecting me at the time, and usually cannot recall the faintest inkling of what it was.

So, this post notwithstanding, you probably won’t see a lot of introspective, self-evaluating, or even just frustration-airing stuff here, because I’m realizing now that they likely aren’t necessary. Just some time to pass.

[It’s slightly disturbing that I wrote this post considerably faster than many of my Profiles of Nature posts – make of that what you will.]

Have I mentioned how much I like this lens?

Al Denelsbeck

Just a quick pic from tonight – more will be along, but probably not until it’s technically ‘tomorrow’ at least.

Anyway, inspecting the yard by headlamp, I came across a sleeping dragonfly, a blue dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis) on one of the gardenia bushes.

blue dasher dragonfly Pachydiplax longipennis sleeping on gardenia leaf
Dragonflies cannot see well enough to hunt at night, plus they need a lot of heat for their wing muscles to work (which is why they always perch in bright sunlight,) so this one was in place for the night. In my experience, they will fly if disturbed, but usually slowly (if you can imagine that) and only until they find another spot to cling to, so I’m surmising their night vision is crappy.

But that’s not what this post is about (coulda fooled you, eh?) Instead, it’s bragging about the Mamiya 80mm macro that serves as my workhorse, even though I’m not using a Mamiya camera. Because now we go in for the closeup, and this is not quite full resolution.

eyes of blue dasher dragonfly Pachydiplax longipennis in detail
Shot freehand but with the macro flash rig, and not even using the dedicated extension tube that allows much more magnification. Sure, I gotta manually focus and close the aperture down, but I’ve been doing that for, what, ten years or more now? I’m coping, it appears.

Running behind

Al Denelsbeck

Still not keeping up with the post count, and I feel absolutely awful, I’m here to tell you (okay, no I don’t, just slightly contrite, but not so much that a shrug can’t dismiss it.) And the subjects haven’t improved, though I did make a couple of attempts at something a little different, with no success as yet. But here’s another scale comparison, because each of these is full-frame and taken at the same magnification, so the size differential is accurate.

Carolina mantis Stagmomantis carolina Chinese mantis Tenodera sinensis and green treefrog Hyla cinerea all in same scale
The first one is a Carolina mantis (Stagmomantis carolina;) as I said before, they’re smaller and hatch later than the Chinese mantis (Tenodera sinensis,) which are the next two, both adults now, and quite possibly male and female in order. Then we have a juvenile green treefrog (Hyla cinerea,) much smaller than adult size. All three mantids were on the same Japanese maple, but the treefrog was on the hosta on the other side of the house. Still nothing to give a direct impression of scale, but the treefrog was about the length of your top finger joint, if that helps.

Still too hot to really go anywhere; I made the mistake of doing a little exertive gardening work yesterday after I took these (hacking down a couple of unwanted, incredibly fast-growing saplings,) and about wrecked myself. I was sweating so copiously the salt may kill all the garden plants anyway. Maybe I’ll dig out some winter pics – we could use ’em.

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.

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