Just because, part 53

Al Denelsbeck

It’s not Dittyday, but we’re doing this anyway, because it occurred to me a couple of weeks back that this song has a particular quality: it’s one that I can listen to anytime, and often, and not get tired of it. And I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this regard.

This is once again from the eighties – what else? – and considered one of the classics of that era, yet I’m not sure how much it reflects that era. Some songs from that time, including many of this artist’s other tracks, have a style and ‘feel’ that was common for their time period, an example of trends and pop culture, but I can’t say that this one does so much. But either way, it’s extremely unlikely that anyone next to you at the stop light is going to think you’re some old geezer mired in the past if you’re playing this loud. Even if they do, fuck ’em – like what you like and be proud of it.

We’re talking about Don Henley’s ‘The Boys of Summer,’ from 1984 and off of the album Building the Perfect Beast. It’s instantly recognizable to a great many people, starting off with a simple beat from the high-hat cymbals, damped to keep the tones short; Henley is mainly a drummer and it shows quite distinctly in this song, since the drums provide a significant part of the character while remaining understated. If I were to say to you a simple phrase like, “drum song,” you’re far more likely to imagine a driving beat with plenty of thumping fills and bridges, perhaps even a solo, but this is instead almost sneaky in its manner. Alongside that we have a lovely three-note keyboard motif that is surprising in its appeal through utter simplicity, some very restrained guitar riffs (at least two different types of guitar, but I think it’s three,) and perhaps the most eighties aspect of it, background synth tones that carry the mood throughout the piece, and really come into their own during the chorus. It doesn’t seem complicated – until you listen closely and catch how lots of simple pieces are blended together. Also, listen for the “seagull” to pop in after the bridge.

Henley’s voice fills it out nicely as well, a little rough around the edges especially in the higher notes, but setting the mood adeptly: reminiscing while a little melancholy, pining for a lost love while recognizing that it might never have been love, and he perhaps should have known better. Is the tragedy here that’s she’s gone, or that he never expected this?


There are two parts of the lyrics that pin the song down in the eighties very distinctly, and might even be confusing to those that grew up afterward. In the fourth chorus he refers to his missing lover as having “those Wayfarers on,” though a clue exists in that this is simply a rephrasing of the first chorus; “Wayfarers” are sunglasses, specifically a Buddy Holly hornrim style that became popular for a few years in the mid-eighties before largely vanishing. The other eighties reference is the opening of the third stanza:

Out on the road today I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac,

Aside from Cadillac being a bygone symbol of American affluence, a “Deadhead” sticker was sported by fans of the band Grateful Dead, a counterculture band popular with hippies and stoners from the sixties to the nineties; the message here is the clash of lifestyles, a status-symbol flaunting a symbol of rejected values – Henley considered this a metaphor for selling out. This part was always lost on me – the Cadillac that I pictured was a beat-up gunboat many years past prime, and it was simply a reminder of his lover’s musical tastes and/or convertible. It’s often extremely easy to miss the writer’s intentions in the lyrics.

So, it’s not ‘timeless,’ but it remains just as strong today as it was when it came out, and is exceptionally easy to listen to – even if it just played an hour ago. Let it flow, and feel the days getting shorter.

Scattered, smothered and covered

Al Denelsbeck

Some of you (you know, you nonexistent readers,) will get that reference, while the rest eat at real restaurants and shouldn’t feel left out. Meanwhile, we have another image from the random pile.

red saddlebags Tramea onusta dragonfly perched on tip of twig
This is a species of dragonfly known as a red saddlebags (Tramea onusta,) which I love – you could pop the common name on anyone and ask what kind of animal it was, and no one would ever come close, including probably a good number of entomologists. The name comes from those dark patches on the wings, which is only on the hindwings by the way, and determining the species showed a flaw in BugGuide’s information standards, specifically (and I’ve noticed this before) that they don’t really have them. I had to go through Ecosia to find that this was some variety of saddlebags, and then searching within BugGuide mostly brought up Carolina saddlebags, which specifically said that it’s very hard to tell apart from the similar species red saddlebags, especially in the field. However, when I checked out red saddlebags instead, they had two specific traits to spot (a clear gap in the brown portions of the wings near the body, and the amount of black on the abdomen) that pinned this down, almost certainly, to a red saddlebags. Again, not really sure how much it matters – I just try to be accurate if it’s at all possible.

We need a closer look at that wing detail.

red saddlebags Tramea onusta dragonfly perched on tip of twig, closer
I’d resized this for the blog just to show how those wing veins stood out, especially since this was shot with the 150-600mm lens handheld from 5-7 meters off, but the details revealed helped with the identification anyway – notice how the black on the tail tip is mostly on top and not wrapping around. Also notice that the head of the dragonfly, maybe 50mm past the focus point, has gone quite blurry; I didn’t choose the focus point, letting the autofocus decide, but it works in this case.

Just once, part 31

Al Denelsbeck

Florinda coccinea and prey
This week’s entry is slightly fudged, in that I had featured the species in a post a few months earlier, only I hadn’t identified it then; I determine the choices for these posts by tags (in this case names) that have appeared just once, but technically, this doesn’t count. Too bad, because we’re using it anyway – seriously, it’s a cool shot that I was quite lucky to get.

This is a Florinda coccinea, a type of sheetweb spider that typically makes webs stretched between blades of grass, as this one was, and it’s often extremely hard to even know the webs are there unless it’s a dewy morning. To get this shot, I had to be lying on my side on the ground with the camera sideways, shooting horizontally underneath the web itself, and some idea of how tight the quarters were can be deduced by the dewdrop adhering to the spiders head; this is quite a small specimen, with adults averaging 3-3.5mm in body length – that’s half the diameter of a standard pencil. In getting ready to take this shot, i spooked the yellowish leafhopper nymph into the web and provided the meal for the spider, which may have helped me get this frame, since the spider was intent on the meal and far less likely to scoot under cover at my proximity.

A closer look at the same frame:

dewdrop on Florinda coccinea head detail
The dewdrop, which is roughly one millimeter in diameter, acts as a lens here that inverts the image behind and around it, and in this case down at the bottom, it’s showing the dew on the sheetweb above illuminated by the flash softbox, which was well above the web itself (and did a marvelous job of illuminating the scene, evenly and without harsh highlights or deep shadows – go back up and look at the mottled coloration on the spider’s abdomen.) In fact, at the top of the dewdrop, you’re seeing the reflection of the softbox itself – you can see the rig better here, though a couple years later I inadvertently fried the unit, which was a shame because it was almost impossible to replace and had worked so well. But the replacements all had a significant upgrade, which was a circular diffuser panel rather than rectangular, making the reflections of it much more natural looking when they occurred.

And take your heat with you

Al Denelsbeck

July has been way too fucking hot, and while I would like to believe that the change in arbitrary labeling that we engage in will somehow make a difference in the climate, I’m a bit skeptical, especially since August has never been known as a cooler month. Yet here we are at the month-end anyway, which does at least mean we have the abstract to consider, and I’m going to do something a little different this time, since it leads into further frames that are not as abstract but still should be featured (from my own definition of “should,” anyway.) And so, we begin with this:

twisted clouds illuminated by sun hidden just below
I’d let this one stand without exposition if I thought it was a little more mysterious, but I suspect it’s easy enough to tell that it’s clouds illuminated by a hidden sun. In this case, the outing this weekend was ostensibly to catch sunrise, but the sun rose hidden by a thick layer of clouds, and eventually peeked out long after official sunrise, announcing its imminent arrival in this manner. Yet even with all this, when it did appear, there was little color to be had from it.

sun breaking above clouds long after astronomical sunrise
Just yellow. Ho hum.

A little later on though, it was passing in and out of obscuring clouds, and in one such instance, I snagged a few frames as it was semi-obscured and filtered down to manageable levels. These revealed something interesting.

early morning sun through filtering clouds showing evidence of sunspots
The only filter here is/are the clouds, which don’t seem that thick but dropped the sunlight down enough to focus on it with the 600mm lens without being blinded. And they also showed what appeared to be several sunspots, which I didn’t notice until I was back home and unloading the memory card. Intrigued by this, I dug out the solar film again since the sun was now high and direct, and did a few frames with the help of that. I will note here that this is so effective that finding the sun through the viewfinder can actually be tricky; no glare announces when you’re getting close to the mark, and trying to spot the sun directly so you can tell which way to aim only induces temporary blindness. So with one eye tightly closed and the other pressed to the viewfinder, you have to wave the camera back and forth in the general direction until the solar disc suddenly appears in the frame. But it worked as intended, and confirmed that there were indeed sunspots.

sun through solar filter film showing distinct sunspots
This, by the way, was underexposed by about a full stop, which lets the details show much better, but yeah, plenty of little spots to be found there. I’ll have to keep checking periodically, because now that I have the solar film, I have the chance to catch some really good sunspots if they appear, and we’re almost at the 12-year solar maximum. We’ll see what happens.

Too much of the same

Al Denelsbeck

I had an outing this past Saturday, once again down at Jordan Lake due to Buggato doing the choosing, and the activity there wasn’t impressive in the slightest – in fact, while sorting the images, I realized that I was taking far too many photos of ‘birds overhead,’ not only deleting the majority of them, but vowing from here on out to trip the shutter only when things looked quite promising. True action and behavior shots, excellent lighting and background, that kind of thing. There’s only so many photos of an osprey in flight that anyone needs, and I’ve exceeded that by a wide margin.

I was also amazed at how tattered many of the birds looked – not just molting, but with significantly damaged feathers, and I’m not sure if this was just a coincidence or if something had happened to contribute to this. In the case of this distant, pre-sunrise bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus,) the wings may simply be showing signs of molting, though I’m not sure about that tail.

adult bald eagle Haliaeetus leucocephalus in distance before sunrise
The eagles seemed to have thinned down quite a bit now, though I suspect that once the ospreys migrated back into the area and began nesting, the competition caused the eagles to shift to different areas – or their own nesting may have been responsible, choosing nest sites in thicker woods farther from people. We glimpsed them a couple of times, but only at a distance.

Continuing the theme of feather damage, we have an osprey (Pandion haliaetus):

osprey Pandion haliaetus in brief stoop showing tattered tail feathers
This was as close as any osprey came to actively hunting where we could see them, dropping into a stoop for a few moments before abandoning it as its prey went deeper (or revealed that it had a club.) Look at those tail feathers, though – that’s not from molting, but what it is from, I can’t say. The morning light was semi-cooperative at least.

At another location, I saw a head peeking up over the edge of the boat ramp, and so we stalked it carefully for a minute.

head of juvenile great blue heron Ardea herodias herodias peeking out from among rocks
In the long lens, I was a little suspicious of that coloration, and subsequent full-body shots confirmed it: this is a juvenile great blue heron (Ardea herodias herodias,) this year’s brood – the brownish hue and the stippling are good indications. We managed to maneuver around for a better view before it spooked off:

full-body shot of juvenile great blue heron Ardea herodias herodias showing first year coloration
This is only the second first-year heron that I’ve seen, or at least that I realized I’ve seen – at even a moderate distance, the evidence may be indiscernible. And I have yet to find a nest anywhere within decent shooting distance – I found a couple, last year, but they were hundreds of meters away, so far that atmospheric haze would soften the images, with no apparent way of getting closer. I’ll keep looking, though.

A short while later, another interesting specimen made a quick appearance.

possibly juvenile turkey vulture Cathartes aura in distance
This one was way off, so even at 600mm it was quite small in the frame. It’s clearly a turkey vulture (Cathartes aura,) but I’ve never seen one with any white at all in the feathers, so I was assuming that this is another first-year example. But the Cornell site doesn’t seem to agree: they list the juveniles as having a grey head (though immatures will go back to pinkish red like the adults,) and give no indication of piebald coloration like that seen here. So I’m again at a loss as to what we’re seeing – if that’s feather damage, it’s a lot of it.

But, another confirmed juvie was in evidence:

juvenile red-headed woodpecker Melanerpes erythrocephalus perched on limb
That’s definitely a juvenile red-headed woodpecker (Melanerpes erythrocephalus,) and I’ve watched the plumage change after the first year so I’m positive this is this year’s brood. Spotted when I heard a woodpecker drumming nearby, it flew off after a moment and a pair of adults took its place on the same limb, though they did not show any signs of recognizing the juvenile, much less feeding it.

two adult red-headed woodpeckers Melanerpes erythrocephalus sitting close on limb, likely mated pair
They were silent, and sat idly together for a few moments, then one flew down to a dead tree and revealed a nest hollow, disappearing inside.

adult red-headed woodpecker Melanerpes erythrocephalus disappearing into nest hollow in dead tree
Notably, this is the exact same dead tree that hosted at least two woodpeckers nests two years ago, but split and lost half of its length late last year, right below where the nests had been. It’s still a good candidate given its nature and type of wood, but it also may not last a whole lot longer. I watched this nest opening for far too long, getting a bit stiff and achey holding the long lens on target, but the adult never re-emerged from the hole, so I’m assuming that she has eggs in there, or will very soon anyway. There’s not a lot of point in returning too soon, not until the young have hatched and feeding behavior begins, but I do want to start monitoring this nest again – not sure how well I’ll be able to, given how much is scheduled for the next two months, but we’ll see I guess.

Scattered, far and wide

Al Denelsbeck

Ha! You thought we were done with these just because it’s been a few days? I still have plenty of random images in the blog folder, so they’ll go on for a while yet.

two-frame animation of images taken 2 seconds apart, showing immediate fogging in second frameThis came from better than two weeks ago, when the heatwave was still ongoing and the rains had just started to appear. One evening as the sun lowered, it highlighted some odd cloud shapes that I tried to capture, though the reduction of contrast in-camera meant the shapes didn’t show up very well. I only showcase these two frames to show that, due to the very hot and humid air reacting with the camera lens (which had been sitting in the air-conditioned house up until a few minutes before,) the lens kept fogging up; I would clean it, and it would return. So quickly and impressively that these two frames were taken only two seconds apart. Granted, converting this into an animated gif (pronounced, “gee-YER-mo”) did a job on the resolution and color registers – someone needs to make a better animation standard.

Worse, something that I’ve been dealing with for weeks, the viewfinder fogs up quickly too, especially if I keep my eye to the viewfinder, either tracking a subject or waiting for it to do something photogenic. Then I’m often trying to determine if it’s the viewfinder or the lens or sudden onset of old age that’s making my vision so blurry.

However improbable

Al Denelsbeck

Another holiday is upon us, and while I could celebrate it most days with a little effort, this time I have a nice example picked up yesterday (well, not literally, that’d be gross) to use. Yes indeed, it’s Nature Boi Detective Day, when we sit down and try to determine what produced some particular tableau found out in the wild someplace. This has come under attack from the moment it was conceived of course, for being both gender and age specific as well as unfriendly to urban dwellers, until it was pointed out that “boi” isn’t a real word so the definition of it can’t be used for tirades, plus we still have Mothers’ Day so go fuck yourselves.

All that out of the way, let’s take a look at what we’re going to evaluate today, shall we?

unidentified scat found in wooded area near lake's edge, showing complete bones of unknown mammal, with scale inserted
This was found near the edge of Jordan Lake during a student outing yesterday, though I used my sandal as the initial scale and this allowed me to paste in a digital one for reference. While this is obviously the aftermath of one animal being consumed by another, it’s not exactly clear whether this is feces after being washed out by hard rains, or the casting of some larger bird. It has the look of a typical owl or hawk casting, but a) it’s quite big, and b) those bones are pretty damn big to be swallowed whole. Some vertebrae can be seen in there, a few ribs it looks like, plus several smaller bones that I can’t place right now. I’m almost certain that I’m seeing both a femur/humerus (single long bone) and a tibia/fibula or radius/ulna pair (two longer bones together,) both in excess of 50mm in length, so this is much larger than a rat, which the vertebrae help confirm.

But given their position in the casting, especially smaller bones entangled in hair, while not laid out in rough skeletal form, this isn’t simply an animal that died there – this was digested. Yet those leg bones are whole and within the scat, so they appear to have been swallowed whole.

unidentified scat of unknown mammal, showing hair and bones
Given the size, it would appear to be at least a small rabbit in size, but I’m more inclined to say it was adult, while the color of the hair within points more towards opossum – I can’t say that I’ve dissected either but the proportions seem correct to me. Except that, nearly everything that I can think of that would tackle something that size (fox, coyote, wolf, hawks, owls,) is unlikely to eat their prey whole, and the meat would be stripped from the larger bones rather than swallowing them. Great blue herons will swallow their prey whole and they will indeed tackle some mammals – I watched one take a small muskrat once – but this seems both large and not a typical choice of meal for them.

So I’m leaning towards coyotes or wolves, though I’m not sure any wolves have ever been spotted anywhere near here – coyotes, however, are definitely around. Would a coyote swallow the legs of an opossum or similar-sized mammal whole? It seems awkward (and perhaps a little dangerous) but possible I suppose, and I don’t know enough about their eating habits to weigh in on this usefully. I did not start digging through the scat (again, I was with a student,) so I can’t vouch for the coarseness of the hair nor whether tail bones could be found, which might have helped determine what species this had been, though not what species had consumed it.

Feel free to weigh in if you have any input at all – it is still the holiday after all, and even if you’re late I promise not to turn you in.

What’s your sign?

Al Denelsbeck

I’m old enough to remember when that was a big factor in dating, though not quite old enough to have used it in such a manner. But in this case, it’s only in reference to two meteor showers due to peak in a few days, the southern delta Aquariids and the alpha Capricornids, both coming in right before the end of the month, which means anytime from this point on. Unfortunately, there’s still a third-quarter (half) moon rising in the wee hours when the meteors start showing up better, which is the case too often, but so it goes. I can guarantee certain results if you stay indoors, however, the same results as if I hadn’t mentioned them at all. C’mon, the temperature is going to be far better than any of the winter storms, so have at it.

As always, I will be back with any spectacular meteor images that I capture, but you know how that trend has been going (no, you likely don’t, but let’s just say that the trove of spectacular meteor images, like my sports trophy case, remains distinctly barren.) I keep hoping, though, which is far more optimistic than I normally am and which might be part of the problem. I don’t know how, really, but at this point I’ll settle for any explanation.

So go ahead and show me up – I’ll be happy for you. Really.

star trails around Polaris with meteor and plane
It’s admittedly disturbing that the best meteor trail that I’ve ever gotten, above, was achieved on perhaps my very first attempt with a truly inadequate camera, on print film, well over 30 years ago. Can anyone’s luck remain this resolutely bad? Or is there something radical that I’m doing wrong? I no longer have that Wittnauer Challenger, but I think I have an old Argus C3 ‘Brick’ that I could dig out…

Just once, part 30

Al Denelsbeck

strawberry poison-dart frog Oophaga pumilio venturing out from under rock overhang in Museum of Life and Science, Durham NC
This week we have what I identified then only as an Oophaga pumilio, but it also bears the common names of strawberry poison-dart frog, strawberry poison frog, and/or blue jeans poison frog. Yes, it’s one of the poisonous treefrogs from South America, but it was not photographed on that continent, instead found within the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, NC. As such, it’s both no surprise that it’s only been featured once here, and then again, kind of inexcusable.

I mean, sure, I prefer to concentrate on species actually photographed ‘in the wild,’ in their own habitat and not captive in any way, but I’ve never traveled to any location where these could be found, and it’s rather unlikely that one will make its way here eventually. Yet the museum itself is easy enough to get to and I’ve tackled the poison dart frog exhibit several times, often with poor results – a flash is necessary, and the only choice is to shoot through glass and so reflections, distortions, and mucky glass is typical, and even when overcoming these, one still has to have a subject posed usefully without the face of some kid framed in the background on the other side of the terrarium. You’d think photographing such captives would be easy, but most times it doesn’t allow anything decent at all. Still, it’s been twelve years since this image was taken and I could certainly have gotten more if I’d made the effort. Admittedly, I don’t maintain comprehensive lists of species that I should be building up my stock of.

All that said, I’m fond of the pose that this one achieved, coming out from under its bridge to eat some billy goats, and the coloration is displayed nicely – you see where they got the blue-jean name from. The grunge on the glass was limited to the lower corner, and while I didn’t manage a catchlight in the eye, the lack thereof seems to enhance the menacing air. Which is nonsense of course – it’s a frog, it has two expressions: ‘awake’ and ‘asleep,’ while its ass-kicking ability is laughable at best. Well, except for that deadly poison thing…

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