Profiles of Nature 35

Al Denelsbeck

maybe house fly Scowt captured by assassin bug
No, there have been no attempts on our life at all this past week, and we’re an easy target. Sorry you wasted your money.

This week we have Scowt (the one on the left,) whose parents maintain that it’s one of those creative spellings but really just can’t spell. Scowt realizes that, upon agreeing to become a graphic novel illustrator’s model, he probably should have looked up ‘hentai’ first – he’s totally given up on calamari, we can tell you that. His story is an interesting one: his parents were following a fishing trawler on its way to the Lesser Antilles when his egg was laid in the offal of a dolphin, but one of the acceptable ones. As a maggot, he soon rose above the others in his class and was recognized for his remarkably bloated physique, making him immensely popular and bringing him to the eye of a roving talent scout (thus) as he was working after-eating in the local sushi bar. From there, he took the body-building world by storm and won award after award in competitions across the globe, and since we’re continuing the housefly theme we’re not even going to tell you what kind of competitions; you can thank us later (tip jar over there on the sidebar.) But fame has a dark side, and Scowt soon found himself hanging with a bunch of teenage praying mantises, going door-to-door and asking if people had been saved in that smarmy way. Luckily, he found a good woman who recognized the warmth in his soul and helped him get his life back on track, walking on dead things and getting stuck in half-open windows, and so he would have no reason to be hanging around a girls’ school and making lewd propositions. Like we said, this is his story, but the jury isn’t looking too convinced and he’s liable to have to take a plea – his attorney doesn’t care because she gets paid either way. Scowt’s favorite episode of Wild Wild West is the one with the hypnotism.

Join us next week or those pics go straight to the local newspapers. Whatever those are.

Already on it

Al Denelsbeck

killdeer Charadrius vociferus skimming across water at sunrise
Someone – I can’t remember who – suggested this morning that I should work on my art. They don’t know me very well, of course, because I don’t do ‘art.’ However, I will get fartsy from time to time, and they were far too late to tell me about that, because I already had a selection of frames collected this morning. Above, a killdeer (Charadrius vociferus) skims the water’s surface at sunrise, catching a little light through the primary wing feathers.

While below, stationing myself at a preferred location as the sun was about to rise allowed me to play around with specific positioning as it appeared.

sunrise over Jordan Lake against stone stack and sapling
The stone stack was not mine – I just shamelessly used it. I will take credit for staying the hell out of the water so the surface remained smooth for the shot, though.

This, by the way, puts me one over for the ‘post for every day’ personal challenge for August, so it’s a bonus, really, and the images kinda abstracty to boot. These make it 102 pics uploaded for the month – not a record, but well above average, which is not bad for how uninviting the conditions were. I’m cool with it.

Dittyday 4: Ivan Neville

Al Denelsbeck

It’s been a while since the last installment, but then again, I never intended to be on any kind of schedule with this. Today we’re going to hear from a singer with a lot of musical background, having been in several different bands over the years (including the wonderfully named Dumpstaphunk,) but the two songs that I’m featuring here were from his solo career, peeking into the Billboard Top 40 in the late eighties (yes, the eighties, you should be used to this by now) but then fading away again, so a lot of people haven’t heard them. I’m talking about Ivan Neville, who is indeed related to the Neville Brothers and the son of Aaron Neville, possessing a soulful gravelly voice that he uses to great effect.

We’re going to do these in the reverse order that I first heard them, and start out with the more soulful one. This appeared in the soundtrack to Skin Deep, a Blake Edwards film starring John Ritter, which definitely has its moments (though I think Ritter was in better form in Noises Off, but that’s not the topic of our post today.) As might be imagined, this falls at the bridge between the second and third act and illustrates the protagonist’s self-realization. Bonnie Raitt provides the backing vocals as a lovely counterpoint to Neville’s key. One of the more curious things about this song is that it has no distinct melody, or riff or main chords or however you want to define it; no one could sit down with a guitar or keyboard and pick out the melody in any recognizable way. Maybe with a drum kit, though – it’s refreshing to hear the drums carry so much of the song without seeming to, certainly not a driving beat, but playing the part that is often up to the keyboards. Otherwise, countless instruments come in throughout to do their part but never establish dominance or a ‘lead,’ a very egalitarian song that plays nicely on the ears.

Falling Out of Love – Ivan Neville

The next one was also featured on a film soundtrack, this time in My Stepmother is an Alien, so of course, everyone knows this one. It’s easy to hear how related these both are, at least at first, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was originally written as soulful as the first, and then someone said, “Hey, what if we punched it up a bit? It’s the eighties; we need a saxophone solo, and someone in the background hitting three different cardboard tubes.” It also makes me realize how many of the songs that I like feature a wide blend of sounds and riffs, little fills and stings, lots of cameo instruments stepping in for a handful of notes just to get their names on the credits. Yet it’s all blended extremely well; the people manning the studio mixing boards don’t get near enough credit, so pay attention to how many little bits contribute to the overall sound.

Not Just Another Girl – Ivan Neville

I’d like to say these songs introduced me to a whole undiscovered trove of his music – which they did, but nothing that I’ve found hits me the same way, just being in a style that doesn’t resonate as well. You may feel differently, and I always urge people to check it out for themselves; I don’t feature music here to showcase ‘the best,’ or particular examples of excellent musicianship, but to highlight little gems that I like, that perhaps someone else will as well. I mean, we already know about my tastes in photography, so this is to show that my tastes in music aren’t as warped/are just as warped/are even more warped (circle one.)

Nakhvamdis, August!

Al Denelsbeck

For reasons yet to be determined, there are no more numbers on my wall calendar past today, starting over at 1, so this has to mean it’s time for the end of the month abstract. Only thing is, I didn’t really take any abstract images this month, or at least if I did, I already posted them, so what we have here is kind of a cheat, but I figure if I’m gonna fudge it, I’ll do it twice.

closeup detail of eastern tiger swallowtail Papilio glaucus forewing
Is it obvious what this is? It is to me, but I took it and cropped it ridiculously tight to eliminate context, so I may be biased. How about another crop from the exact same frame?

closeup detail of eastern tiger swallowtail Papilio glaucus hindwing
Chances are, even if you didn’t tumble to the first, you know it by the second as a butterfly’s wing, specifically an eastern tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) in yellow phase. Actually, the original frame was the entire butterfly (well, the dorsal view anyway, because they still haven’t created cubist digital cameras,) shot freehand in the botanical garden, and I just cropped in for the detail in the wings – forewing at top, hindwing following (and why isn’t it simply called the followwing?) A wild specimen that wasn’t restrained in any way except by its love of nectar, so revel in the remarkable sharpness and clarity from a true professional photographer.

Ah, what the hell – one more.

blurred carpenter bee leaving hosta flower
I have to include this one lest my ego get too unwieldy, though admittedly it was shot in July. I was up on the deck landing at the top of the stairs trying for some deer photos (which reminds me that I have to dig those out,) and spotted a bumblebee on the hosta flowers below, so I fired off a couple of frames with the 150-600mm lens, again handheld – obviously they did not come out ideal, but I kinda liked this one because of the faintly impressionist quality, and I boosted the saturation a little, because cheating is addictive I suppose. Plus it boosts the uploaded image count for the month. Whatever – say goodbye to August, and we’ll see what September brings.

About time we corrected this

Al Denelsbeck

I find it hard to believe, with the overriding push to have more appropriate and accurate terminology anymore, that this term not only still remains, but it’s being ignored wholesale despite its inherent bias, so I’m taking to this (admittedly infinitesimal) soapbox to start the ball rolling. Because it’s high time we eradicated the term “light year” in favor of a more appropriate term.

It’s simple: “light year” is a unit of distance defined as how far light travels in a year, roughly equivalent to 9.46 trillion kilometers. Since we all know the speed of light is 300,000 kilometers per second, a little mental math tells us this is an Earth year, and not Martian, Jovian, or really, anything else in the solar system – it relies on a perspective from just one out of eight (or eighteen) planets, and far from the largest or most important one at that. It doesn’t even specify which year, so we don’t know if it’s a leap year or not. It also fails to take into account when the measurement is or was supposed to be made, since the length of Terran years constantly changes due to orbital mechanics.

It’s been bad enough that we even refer to ‘the’ solar system, like there’s only one, and ‘the’ sun. How utterly confusing is this, and how long would it take to communicate such terms to species from other planets and systems? It’s like some exclusive club where we only talk in code, making sly references to things that only Earthlings would understand. It’s unnecessarily anthrocentric, egotistical, and divisive. It even discriminates against species that don’t detect light as a primary sense.

And then, of course, there’s the astronomical unit (AU,) defined as the distance between the Earth and the Sun, just as bad. Not to mention that this distance changes as the Earth revolves. Sheesh.

I propose a measurement based on a universal constant, the radius of a helium atom, which is 28×10-12 meters. A light year is considered 9.46×1012 kilometers, or 9.46×1015 meters. So to create a new measurement within the same rough scale, a yottaHe (YHe) would be 1024 times the diameter of a helium atom, which would translate to…

Oh, wait. We already have parsec, which is a trigonometric function of a circle and parallax. Never mind.

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.]

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