Not birds, not beachy

May 22, 2021 Al Denelsbeck

I have just a couple of photos that were taken during the beach trip but aren’t beach related, so we’ll throw them down now.

Within the first day, we would look out the back side of the condo over the moderate expanse of lawn there, bordered by a thicket that separated the lawn from the sound, and see a little medium-brown mound moving around at times. I knew them on sight, having dealt with them before, though it had been a while since I’d seen one, but then I had to explain it to the others (like usual, actually.)

“Is that a rabbit? It looks too small for a rabbit,” someone said.

“It’s a vole,” I explained.

“A mole?” This is almost inevitable. Nobody’s ever heard of them.

“No, a vole.”

This was taken one evening as I spotted one and stalked it with the long lens; the vole has just realized that I was closer every time it looked up from foraging. There are several vole species and they go by a variety of common names, but this is most likely a meadow vole (Microtus pennsylvanicus.) They’re larger than mice (and moles of course,) yet typically smaller than a rat, but only by a hair, with shorter noses and shorter tails, only half the length of the body – pretty much palm-sized. Considered a pest in many places due to landscape and gardening damage, I’ve only ever seen them foraging like rabbits, snacking on clover flowers and such. There were two that appeared simultaneously, so we know it likely wasn’t the same one we kept seeing, and they seemed fairly mellow, but like rabbits, they didn’t hang around for close approaches. This one decided I was looking too shady (which I’m used to by now) and scampered for the thicket, but paused at the edge to finish its meal with an easy escape.

If you know your Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, you know why I named this image, “Bugblatter.” The vole obviously wasn’t so spooked that it felt it had to be out of harm’s way, it just wanted less lawn to cover, should the need arise.

The second day we were there, The Girlfriend and I were just coming back from a kayaking excursion, bringing the kayaks up to their storage spot under the condo, when I noticed something on the neighbors’ walk only a few meters off. A big something.

Ah, the impermanence of scientific names! This is a yellow rat snake, often just considered an eastern rat snake, but the consensus seems to be that this is a subspecies, Pantherophis alleghaniensis quadrivittata – the eastern (black) rat snakes have recently undergone renaming, so it’s all up for grabs. You may note that this isn’t exactly yellow, and I had to do a bit of research on it, because it also lacked the pattern that I was used to from yellow rat snakes. The thing is, the yellows and eastern/blacks can interbreed, producing a combined pattern – which still looks different from this, so I don’t know if it’s a straight yellow rat snake with a muted color variation, or a crossbreed of yellow and black, or perhaps even a regional variant of yellow since it blended fairly well with the sun-bleached wood of the entire area. All I had handy at the time was the little waterproof Ricoh camera, that could only get up to 140mm equivalent focal length, so I had to go in close, whereupon my motionless friend here coiled back from its original outstretched position and favored me with a marvelous deep hiss, something that I don’t hear too often from any snakes in the area. Since the snake was pushing two meters in length, this was a notable warning.

I know rat snakes, though, and paid it no mind, and since I was moving slow, the snake immediately relaxed a bit, though probably still not wild about my proximity. Which was less than half a meter, honestly; I did a little video.

[That’s The Girlfriend’s voice in there, as she maintained a discreet distance.]

Since I hadn’t recognized that color variation (but knew it wasn’t dangerous,) I did a little research when back at a computer later that day – and still never found the color pattern. Suspecting that I might have a rare specimen, I kept my eyes open for the rest of the week, hoping for another chance – I would have captured it and done a full set of photos, head to tail, top to bottom. Though probably with some difficulty, since no one else would have handled it or even gotten within a few meters, so it could have been challenging. Of course, I never saw it again, even with the enticing pudgy little vole meals hopping around the lawn. Ah well.

But still, ‘snot art

May 21, 2021 Al Denelsbeck

We still had a few good days out at the beach, and autofocus stayed locked on tight for this one. It will be a large print soon…

Broken promise

May 21, 2021 Al Denelsbeck

So Wednesday’s morning out at the beach got off to a good start…

… and almost immediately devolved into rain that lasted all day. Worse, it got damn cold too. We spent the rest of the day indoors, muttering over the weather and idiotic gas situations, but at least played games in the evening. This video was about everything that I shot.

By the way, I apologize for pointing out in there the trace of magenta that appeared as the sun separated from the horizon; it was visible in the raw files and as I was editing, but apparently didn’t survive the rendering into MP4. This time around I tried out Kdenlive instead of OpenShot, mostly because the latest version of OpenShot has some serious audio stutter issues during editing. Kdenlive has video blipping instead, but overall, it seemed a bit better and certainly didn’t have as many issues with rendering as OpenShot (which suffers from a million indecipherable options, most of which produce bloated video files.) Still working out the kinks.

Meanwhile, I snapped a pic with my (blerk) smutphone while the video was shooting.

This shows naked eye conditions with reasonable accurately, save for the ‘too wide’ effect, but it suffices.

You can also see some wind vibration during the vid, but seriously, at 600mm with the stiff gusts off the ocean, this is actually pretty damn stable; I wouldn’t achieve better without at least an extra stabilizing arm for the camera body itself (the rig was supported near the balance point by the tripod collar on the lens.) Perhaps it would have been slightly better had I used the tripod at minimal leg extension – the center column wasn’t extended at all – but that would have required plopping my ass on the wet beach just to frame and focus, and may have even obscured things more from the wave height closer to the camera. I’ll cope with the vibration, and hopefully you will too, but there are therapists around if need be.

The idea of doing this came from capturing the green flash in still photos a couple years ago, and realizing that it’d look much cooler in video. Those fishing boats would have also looked better, but no such luck this day.

More video (and naturally lots of still photos) will be along later on – I’m kinda building up here.

Angry bird

May 20, 2021 Al Denelsbeck

I just had to post this from this morning…

No editing or trickery here, just the perspective and lack of defining shadows.

Profiles of Nature 20

May 20, 2021May 19, 2021 Al Denelsbeck

This week we have our singing, dancing, and seriously cheesy humor trio, Dawny, Orlando, and Tone, warming up for their debut variety show, inexplicably named Shields and Yarnell. Raised in a musical family, they opted to inflict this on the rest of the world rather than assert their independence like any normal person, resulting in several musical contracts from agents that believed ‘cute’ and ‘kitschy’ would supplant talent adequately, because they never take the blame. The trio is well prepared, though, already planning post-popularity careers for the inevitable, “Did they die of a drug overdose or what?” TV segments; Tone is learning how to name boutique products, Dawny is going to teach Answering The Exact Same Questions In Creative Ways at a community college, and Orlando is endeavoring to pronounce “artisanal” consistently. None of them are planning to make vagina-scented anythings, so there’s that. They even have their last album planned, where they experiment with new styles only to determine that their fans were solely people that liked the cute and kitschy stuff; a lot of studio musicians are gonna get stiffed on that one. In the meantime they’re making the most of their fame, getting pompous in public and endorsing shitty products while over-publicizing their scant charitable work, such as with Clichés Deserve Our Respect. In their spare time they like to stare vapidly. Asked about their favorite car colors, Dawny admitted his was Dark Titanium Metallic, Tone countered that Magnum Grey Metallic was superior, and Orlando insisted that they were both lackluster and Ink Slate Metallic was clearly the best.

We’ll be here next week, and could tell you that it can only go up from here but we all know that’s a lie, don’t we?

All over the place

May 19, 2021 Al Denelsbeck

Tuesday of last week, out at North Topsail Beach, was a day of widely varied conditions. I was up and on the beach itself for sunrise, but it was a waste of time, the horizon being entirely clouded over even while the upper reaches weren’t too bad. Worse, the spray coming off the ocean was so thick that my glasses became coated with salt, rendering my vision so bad that I couldn’t be sure the camera was even focused; it was akin to first waking up and your eyes haven’t cleared yet, but no amount of reflexive blinking was improving matters. On taking the kayaks out (after cleaning the glasses, for the first time anyway,) the wind was a bit stiff and had to be fought against when facing that way, and the sky remained resolutely blerk.

That’s me, and the green thing on my arm is the case for the waterproof Ricoh, when it isn’t in the hands of one of our friends like it is here – keeps it handy (the case I mean,) because believe me, rooting in pockets while in a kayak doesn’t work well.

And the wind’s blowing my shirt around; I’m not that fat. Asshole.

The military aircraft, quiescent through the weekend, had started their maneuvers on Monday and made their occasional low passes like before, punctuated by ‘artillery’ rounds a few kilometers off at the practice landing zone north of the island, which occasionally produced a nice little mushroom cloud like a departing magician.

My hair is not falling out, or any faster than normal anyway, so I’m tentatively considering this an inert practice round.

On coming back along the dock/walkway, one of the marsh crabs was venturing out in the afternoon, which is rare since they’re primarily nocturnal. I had encountered them the first night, even scooping one up for a momentary close inspection, but thereafter they made themselves scarce, so this is the best I have from this trip.

I’m reasonably certain this is a squareback marsh crab (Armases cinereum, changed from Sesarma cinereum since the last time I featured them,) and they live in those burrows by day. All subsequent nights, I could only find them in a similar position in the doorways, not venturing out across the boards, pilings, and marsh plants like previously. Were they that affected by the temperatures (which dropped into the teens or lower at night – that’s celsius, by the way)? Can’t say – crabs are not my specialty. Nothing else is either.

But as the day wore on, the clouds thinned a bit, in late afternoon presenting a nice solar filter that allowed the sun to be viewed, and photographed, directly.

I mentioned to our friends that these were ideal conditions to see sunspots, should they exist, and sure enough, there are two patches visible, if you look close, in the upper quadrants where you might expect eyes. Tiny, tiny eyes, like manatees.

Moreover, the sun dropped out from beneath the cloud cover right at sunset, allowing for some nice views and colors, raising hopes that the following day would be decent despite the forecasts.

That’s the shared dock and gazebo of the property, used among eleven condos I think, but most of those were unoccupied so it never got crowded or anything, and there was no one else around most of the times we put the kayaks in. This exposure is ‘normal,’ which doesn’t have a lot of meaning because the camera tries for a middle tone and the image certainly appears darker than it did to our eyes, but at least the patches of deeper sky and treeline helped balance out the brightness of the sun. Without them, the exposure would have been even darker as the camera tried to make the sun a ‘middle tone.’ As with most sunrises and sunsets, I did a little bracketing, often finding that darkening the exposure slightly brings out better colors, but getting a decent range, above and below, helps ensure that at least one will be what you prefer the most.

This is darkened about a full stop, rendering the sun itself much better, but wouldn’t you know it, that’s the precise time a small flight of brown pelicans (Pelecanus occidentalis) chose to cruise through up there in the cloud line, almost lost in the darkness now. Had I really been on the ball, I might have bracketed a couple of frames at least, but you know they were in position above the sun for a couple seconds at best, and I honestly didn’t know how dark this would actually be rendered – no, the LCD preview wouldn’t tell me anything with any degree of accuracy, had I even been chimping. It’s one of those learning experiences, so next time, perhaps I’ll get a couple of better shots. We’ll see, I suppose.

Initial ‘snot art

May 19, 2021 Al Denelsbeck

I was going to call these posts ‘Fart Break,’ because as I’ve said, I don’t do art, but then thought, Naah, that’s too gross, so I went with a title that at least spells out that it’s not art. Much better.

Anyway, Buggato’s parting words this morning were, “Work on your art,” but I already had on this trip – here’s the first:

The weather wasn’t all bad, and even though the temperature’s dropping quickly in this pic, you don’t know that. Or you wouldn’t have…

Some isolated birds

May 18, 2021 Al Denelsbeck

For this post, we’ll hit a handful of scattered birds captured during the beach trip, some of which I’d hoped to snag a wider variety of frames, but it was not to be. Above, however, we have a male boat-tailed grackle (Quiscalus major,) which were impossible to avoid, yet I wasn’t all that interested in capturing their behavior, but the muted light from the crummy weather at least showed the variety of feathers in their plumage, where they often just look black. Boat-tailed grackles are talkative birds with a wide repertoire, some of which you may hear in later video clips. At this time, alas, I did not have recording equipment with me, so when he voiced his soliloquy below, all I could do was capture still photos.

While a lot of people consider grackles to be pests, I find their calls to be far more interesting than most birds, and not as raucous as some of their relatives, but I’ll admit they’re a bit domineering in their territories. We don’t have them where I live in central NC, so I only see them at the beach or in Florida (where they have dark eyes instead.)

Below, one was foraging in a tidal pool at sunrise, captured as I was pursuing other species in the same pool, but I liked the droplets as it withdrew its beak from the water while backlit.

The osprey nest that we observed during previous visits was gone this year, the platform provided for them completely bare, even though osprey were active in the area. At different times, we observed a bald eagle (Haliaeetus luecocephalus) using it as an eating and spotting perch to monitor the waters below.

Seen from shore, the platform was over 200 meters off, so tight closeups were out of the question. Once, the eagle was present as we were putting the kayaks in, and we made the attempt to get in a bit closer, fostered a bit by the neighbor’s shot of an eagle in a tree taken from their phone, which likely required quite a close approach. That eagle was not this one, apparently, or it recognized us as the shallow touristas that we were, because it took flight before we got within even 75 meters, too far for the waterproof Ricoh to gain any detail.

One evening, the eagle was perched there while I dug out a jellyfish kite, taking it out onto the walkway to the gazebo and dock. I didn’t get much altitude from it in the evening breeze, but the until-then silent eagle began voicing its displeasure over an aerial intruder, which I found fascinating. I mean, I was way off, and nowhere near getting ‘up in the air,’ yet the orange kite with its trailing tentacles was apparently cause for concern.

But while I’m here, I’ll demonstrate why trusting autofocus for wildlife photography is often a big mistake, or at the very least wasting time and frames:

As I said, the osprey (Pandion haliaetus) were present, but not as cooperative, and I wasted numerous frames and a few video clips, both from on land and within the kayak, tracking one as it hunted unsuccessfully above – wheeling, backing, near-hovering, starting a dive but abandoning it almost immediately, and so on. When I finally saw one doing something interesting, it was well over 250 meters off (don’t get the impression I can spit out these distances easily – I used Google Earth to measure them once back home.) This is where trusting manual focus doesn’t always work, either, but autofocus would have kept snagging the changing background, so I was more accurate using manual. Just, not as accurate as I would have liked.

This was the sharpest frame, and the prey, it quickly became evident, was a sizable flounder. I really hope there was a nestful of young-uns awaiting this back home, otherwise the bird was in for a tummyache. But let’s back off to the full frame to show what it looked like even at 600mm.

That greenish-beige blur is the column supporting the stacked decks that I was shooting from, out the back of the condo; really, a decent observation spot, but only with the long lens or binoculars. We’ll see more from it later on.

And finally, something that I haven’t seen in years, and have yet to get any really nice frames of:

That’s an American oystercatcher (Haematopus palliatus), which I’ve seen only a handful of times before, and always at a fair distance – not as great as this time, though, because it was about 160 meters off (I’d estimated 100, so we see how good my estimates are.) All I could see by naked eye was a white blob against the tussock island, though, so I’m glad that I decided to get the long lens on it, and at least could show the brilliant red bill and eye. And it’s hunting in a great location, since these many islands in the shallow sound were primarily oyster beds that had collected enough silt and peat to grow grasses and remain just above the tides – in the kayaks, we’d passed numerous semi-exposed oysters during lower tides that were still feeding, squirting little fountains into the air as they expelled the filtered water.

I have plenty more birds to come; these were just the singular captures. We’re whittling them away.

Grey and green

May 17, 2021 Al Denelsbeck

So let’s see, what to tackle with the first of the beach posts? How about a familiar subject?

We’ll start with sunrise on the first two days. We’d driven out Saturday and met friends out there, so it turned out to be a late night, and I did a little poking around in the dark to see if the marsh crabs were active (they were, a little) but without any intention of doing photography or video. So Sunday morning, the first opportunity that I had, I didn’t even set the alarm, but woke up near that time anyway. Didn’t matter; the skies were near overcast, and our friends, always early risers, said that the sun appeared only briefly before ascending into clouds. Monday morning, however, I set the alarm and was out on the beach ready, to have even worse conditions.

And that pretty much spelled the tone for the day, remaining semi-overcast and not providing a lot of opportunities. That light quality, however, can be good for colorful subjects, and I took momentary advantage of this when passing some wildflowers near the sound.

But to get back on topic, we soon realized that a green heron (Butorides virescens) was hanging around, quite close. It was exceptionally shy and provided few opportunities for detail shots, and from the frequency of appearance and the calls that I kept hearing, I was suspicious that it had a nest in the thicket right off the back of the property, bordering the sound. This was a stretch only a few meters wide before giving way to the marsh grasses in peat too waterlogged to walk in, and yet it was impenetrably thick, offering no visibility or entry to anything larger than a vole. I tried, several times, to determine if there really was a nest in there, but achieved nothing. Seeing it from the sound side with the long lens might have helped, but there was no way I was bringing the regular camera equipment along in a kayak, and the waterproof Ricoh didn’t have the focal length. Eventually, I got lucky enough to see the heron perch on the railing when I was just out of sight behind the marsh reeds, and could slowly lean out and snag a few frames.

One of our friends got a bit luckier though, catching it when it perched on a tree in the thicket while she was on the deck, and snagged a much nicer portrait while I was pretty much exactly where the heron above was, no camera in hand.

With as much luck as I’ve had with the local green herons this spring, this one was much more in line with my previous experiences, remaining distant and aloof. Or maybe I shouldn’t say “one,” because another evening it became evident there were more, and I suspect we were watching courting behavior. On the neighboring dock, we could see two flitting around in close proximity, taking perches only a few meters apart, soon joined by a third. All three did not deign to get into the frame at the same time, though.

They were joined by a pair of willets, I think only because it was near dusk and the active time for birds before settling in for the night. Both species are pretty much impossible to determine the gender of on sight, but the two herons on the dock soon revealed themselves to be males, since a territorial dispute followed quickly.

The one on the left fluffed out his feathers, dropped his beak to his chest, and trotted purposefully towards the other, who quickly chose not to dispute the claim and flew off a short distance, seen here at the edge of the dock if you look closely – distance, angle, and lighting all could have been better of course. I never understand why so many species choose to do their distinctive behavior where it’s hard to see them. The dominant male soon returned his attentions to what must have been the female, but as you can see, the marsh reeds were obscuring a lot and we never saw if they consummated this courtship or not. And I only say this because we were more successful, later on with another species, but I’m keeping my promise to do shorter posts this time, so we’ll wrap up with a brown pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis) that cooperatively did a closer pass over the sound while the light was still decent. This remained the best photo of pelicans that I got for the trip, though.

More to come – there’s only, oh, forty-some photos in the folder awaiting their turns…

Hmmm, what to do?

May 17, 2021 Al Denelsbeck

Friday, May 21st is Endangered Species Day, which to a wildlife photographer almost amounts to a challenge, and generally, a pretty tough one: get photos of at least one endangered species. Of course, they’re endangered because there aren’t many of them, and thus they’re hard to find, so it usually takes a special effort to locate any, a targeted expedition of sorts. Which leads to the issue that anyone doing so may be disturbing their habitat, and thus increasing the risk, however small the impact from one snooping person might be. It’s unlikely to get as out of hand as, like, people wanting to go to the Galápagos, but the ethical question remains over whether the attempt should even be made, and benefits outweighing risks and all that.

On top of that, there’s the species that can be found in any given area, and for us here, it’s a short list: a couple of birds, several fish, three plants, and a handful of mussels. Oh, and a snake, the southern hognose (Heterodon simus,) one of the few that I’ve actually photographed before and one of the potentials on my list, even though technically it’s an ‘At Risk Species’ and not Endangered. I know exactly where I found that one, but I have suspicions that it’s not still hanging around at that road crossing after two decades…

Mussels are not even in consideration, mostly because I can’t tell one from another, and the fish are close behind, partially because I’d have to capture one to get any kind of decent images from an aquarium. But something like the Neuse river waterdog (Necturus lewisi) remains a possibility, being large enough, distinctive enough, and semi-close enough (maybe) to warrant the attempt. Perhaps the plant species, provided I can get enough details to distinguish them from their non-endangered brethren.

Bald eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) are no longer on the Endangered list, but remain critically protected, so at least we may see more pics of them (including real soon.) The red-cockaded woodpecker (Picoides borealis) would be a challenge, given the habitat, but perhaps easier than the waterdog.

But ignoring the photography angle, which really involves more ego-gratification than anything else, there’s the chief intention of the holiday, which is to raise awareness of the species and why they’re endangered, primarily habitat loss. Development, repurposing, and pollution are the leading culprits, all fostered by humans, the most impactful species that has likely ever walked the planet. Most of us arrived in this country (ancestrally, anyway) with the idea that it was all free land, do as we will, and eventually found that this attitude was detrimental in a large variety of ways, and we’re still discovering the ripple effects of this behavior. It’s easy to think, on the face of it, that losing a species of mussel wouldn’t mean jack shit to us, but an ecosystem depends on countless species and their own impacts and effects. Mussels are filter-feeders, capable of cleaning water sources from harmful particles and bacteria, but also (like so many species) indicators of how viable the water is in the first place. Their loss might seem trivial, but it could indicate that the water is getting pretty wretched, which is going to impact everything downstream, including those of us that use those rivers as a fresh water source. Not to mention the wetlands, which provide breeding areas for countless aquatic species, many of which we eat ourselves. And the impact on the plants in the wetlands may mean encroachment of salt-laden seawater further inland, through storm surges, which results in the loss of viable farmland and, yes, even housing developments. Nothing sits alone and separate from the ecosystem, including us, and willy-nilly changes to this can have huge impacts down the line, foreseen and unforeseen.

All too often, we think that it’s somebody else that’s creating the worst effects, which is usually correct, but the overall attitude towards environmentalism is a culture, which we can change at will. In a country that’s proud of the hours we work, that revels in the sports and outdoor accomplishments, that’s always ready to stand up for something important, we can be ridiculously lazy when it comes to simple things like recycling and being mindful of resources. How hard is it to dispose of things properly, and when did hard even become this thing that we couldn’t handle? I’m ranting, I know, but seriously, we’re pretty selective about the efforts we choose to put in, to no one’s benefit. And most of it is simply the attitudes we hold. Those aren’t even slightly difficult to change.

So maybe that’s the challenge for Friday, or any day: find those things that we can change, including how others see it all. Pics are fine, but progress is undoubtedly better.

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