On this date 24

June 10, 2020June 10, 2020 Al Denelsbeck

This week, we’re back in Florida, in 2004, looking at a distant thunderhead dumping some heavy rains onto a region far to the west. Such displays were and are extremely common in Florida, as the prevailing winds carried moisture-laden air off of the Gulf of Mexico and across the state, where it encountered the overheated and rapidly rising air from the land mass, driving the moisture kilometers high, dropping its temperature and producing ice pellets. Eventually, the ice became too heavy for the rapid updrafts and fell again, melting on the way down to contact the earth as rain. Most times; serious updraft activity could keep the ice aloft for much longer, getting heavier with accumulation, and when it finally fell it wouldn’t have time to melt, and that’s hail. This method of exchanging heat with the upper atmosphere is also why the ambient air temperature drops with thunderstorms – except, not too often in Florida, because these cells tend to be sporadic and singular, as seen here.

You learn quickly to pay attention to rapidly growing, tall white fluffy clouds out to the west, because they’re often heading your way, and they can dump a lot of rain rapidly, what I call the Afternoon Monsoons. I remember one snorkeling trip on a brilliantly sunny day, but seeing that cotton off in the middle distance. I was on a bicycle, so I ended my snorkeling and headed home. Only a little ways back, the sky had become very dark, and at the halfway mark I could actually see the rain advancing on me down the road in a wall. Barely got the camera into the ziplock bag (that I carried expressly for that purpose) in time.

By the way, I’ve had this image sitting in the blog folder for a while, just to talk about Florida thunderstorms, and a few weeks back realized it would fit with the On This Date posts, and so saved it for today. There’s another too, but you won’t see that until December ;-).

Now we jump forward to 2010.

There are a large number of images from this date, all of mushrooms and fungi, and I seem to recall having a particularly wet week not long before. This soon became a long, tortuously-hot spell where the prime moisture for the local plants was my own sweat. Don’t ask me to identify these; I don’t have a handy guide and, to be honest, really don’t care. Yes, I’m dissing the mycologically-inclined readers out there.

In 2012, I had found this unidentified pupa, and took a lot of photos of it, from all angles, trying to determine what it might be – but I neglected a measurement (partially because, I hadn’t yet created the handy little paper rulers that I now carry routinely.) There is a cluster of four eyes like caterpillars have, but the legs and antennae seem to be developing well, so I’m guessing it’s a butterfly or moth on the way, though I suppose those details could be applicable to a lot of different species of insect, so, hmm. I can say that it was nowhere near the size of the hornworms in that linked post – more like 15mm, give or take. I would have expected this stage to be safely encapsulated in a cocoon or something, but no longer recall where or how I found it. So much for trivia.

This was from 2014 (still is, really,) and I include it mostly as a curiosity – I remember the trip The Girlfriend and I took, exploring the quaintly-named town of Saxapahaw and the Haw River a bit. This was built in the 1940s and represents a fairly common practice then, of using different colored bricks to spell out the company name, a no-maintenance billboard – I remember seeing such things all around New Jersey as I was growing up, but the practice faded. I can’t imagine this today, since companies cannot seem to keep the same name for a whole seven years and redoing all the brickwork would probably get a bit expensive.

(This is in the process of being restored, by the way.)

Our last is from 2016, and I liked the image but never found a use for it then (not that I have now) – just didn’t fit into any posts at that time. This is a Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) pausing on an identifying plaque in the NC Botanical Garden, and from the girth I’m suspecting a pregnant female. Another curiosity: while they were not in bloom at any point that I ever recall in the garden, the plaque is identifying balloon flowers (Platycodon grandiflorus,) which the following year we began hosting routinely in our porchside planters, and which I thought I had a photo of somewhere on the blog and just spent way too damn long trying to find. Exciting, I know. It’ll get better someday – it’s been a long week and it’s not even half over.

Your patriotic duty

June 9, 2020 Al Denelsbeck

I just realized, on typing that title rather awkwardly, that I don’t use the word “patriotic” much at all. Which is good, because I find patriotism on a par with tribalism, and that’s just arbitrary “us-vs-them”ism, which we don’t need. Personal rants aside, Saturday, June 13th is National Get Outdoors Day, and I know, you’re a bit skeptical considering some past holidays here, but this is for true; I’d provide links, but nearly everything that I found that was the most useful was also for, like, years past.

But seriously, why would you need any guidance for this? Get outside, go explore, run around in the rain, play stickball against the stoop (or something) – go nuts. You want an assignment? Fine: sit in just one spot for ten minutes, without moving, and count how many different species you see in that time frame. Birds, bugs, neighborhood dogs, you name it. Even if you don’t know the species, just tally it. You might be surprised at how many there really are in a small area.

Of course, if you want to wield a camera at that time, I wouldn’t dream of stopping you. Or a sketchpad, paints, audio recorder, writing pad, whatever. Commune, I think is the word. Don’t let the country down.

Naturally, both images here are of the same (potted, for now) plant, taken at the same time from different angles. I don’t think the treefrog was counting on the late afternoon sunlight from finding a break in the surrounding trees and shining right into its eyes…

Bug fix

June 7, 2020 Al Denelsbeck

Normally, when you see those words, it means some techie details about software issues that are being corrected, but here, it’s nowhere near that exciting. Instead, we’re going to talk about breaking news on the arthropod front – cue triumphant newsreel music.

Just after sunrise the other morning, I was examining several of the plants in the yard and noticed that a trio of hoverflies seemed rather infatuated with one of the delphiniums, two of them flitting around while one usually perched on one of the leaves unless they got too close. What this meant, I don’t know – I try not to be too obtrusive with the lives of flies – but it attracted the attention of someone else, who actually appears in the photo above if you look close. Not fully prepared for a video session but unwilling to go get the proper equipment, I decided to wing it and simply shoot handheld.

A juvenile Chinese mantis (Tenodera sinensis) had also noticed the presence of the hoverfly, and began stalking it with glacial slowness. I stayed put and watched as it drew closer, endeavoring not to spook anybody and hoping to snag video of a capture. It didn’t quite pan out, so numerous video clips of the stalking and several stiff joints from the awkward position never led anywhere, so I consoled myself with still photos instead.

It was actually more than a little disappointing, because this was behavior that I’d really love to capture on video, and it tends to be very sporadic and hard to even witness, much less get decent clips of, and here it was promising to happen right smack in front of me without ever coming to fruition. If and when I’m ever successful, maybe a couple of these recent clips will be used to help illustrate the process, but I can’t see the point in doing a bunch of editing for no visible payoff in the video right now.

On the same plant, a jumping spider was appearing and disappearing as it hunted for available prey. My first good view, however, had the macro flash blocked by the very leaf the spider was perched upon.

Even though I’ve only featured them here once or twice before (and thus had to have it handy,) I remember the Latin name easily: Hentzia mitrata, with no apparent common name. They’re distinctively colored, and not uncommon around here. Eventually, my subject ventured further out where the flash could have the proper effect.

I suspect it’s simply the white coloration, though the large eyes might have something to do with it, but I consider these guys almost cute in a fuzzy-terrier sort of way. Would it be the same if they were black, or maroon? Is it just my own weirdness? The answers to these questions… will probably not come anytime soon.

Meanwhile, examining the flowers on the oak-leaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia) confirmed my suspicion that it’s a favorite haunt of crab spiders.

I don’t know the species, but I see them semi-regularly on the hydrangeas – though as yet, I have neither seen them with prey or any actual insects pollinating the flowers to begin with, so maybe they’re not too bright. Move to the butterfly bushes, guys.

(That’s what we regular writers call a segue…)

We have two new butterfly bushes (Buddleia davidii) in the yard, which I’ve always found to be very attractive to arthropods of all kinds, and so far they’re proving this even in the brief time that they’ve been here. The paler one (though the flowers are coming in darker now that it’s been transplanted) is shown here, playing host to an unidentified species of bumble bee.

There’s something that I want to point out about that image above, and it’s the forelegs. Because that’s them up alongside the eyes, pulled close to the head and clasping the top of the flower to hold it still while the bee plunges its proboscis within – the uppermost joints sit almost completely hidden behind the bee’s head. Like all arthropods, the legs all originate from the same region underneath the thorax, right next to each other, so the foreleg position here just looks bizarre.

Meanwhile on the ‘black knight’ variety nearby, an occupant that I knew was there showed its prowess at remaining hidden, and I purposefully used a smaller image to illustrate what it looked like from a typical viewing distance, instead of the invaded-personal-space closeups that I normally display, and to which we will return in a moment.

Found it yet? It’s pretty small, but the legs are the clue. Or I can simply say that I’m now paranoid about cutting off the clusters of dead blossoms, part of the routine maintenance of butterfly bushes. If that’s not enough, the next photo will help.

It’s pretty clear that the bumble bees, and most of the other visitors to the bush that I’ve seen, have nothing to fear from this mantis. At least not yet. Give it time.

I’ve also seen some minuscule, bright green crab spiders, small enough to actually take shelter within one of the blossoms, but not while I had a camera in hand (hard as that may be to imagine.) I’ll show one off someday.

Nearby on one of several Japanese maples that we now own, another mantis snacked on… something.

This mantis was slightly larger than the one on the butterfly bush, but still fell around 20-25mm in length, so the meal is something quite small. It doesn’t look like it in this pic, but they camouflage wonderfully within the maples – the ones that have green leaves, at least.

That’s all the front yard. In the back yard, I happened across a little farm going on.

Ants are notoriously hard to differentiate and identify, especially if you’ve left them be and don’t have one to manipulate and examine, so I’m just saying these are large red ants, common and harmless to people (I say this as someone who routinely attracts the attention of fire ants when in the vicinity, little fuckers.) Their presence on the curled up leaves of some unidentified shrub drew my attention within the leaves, which are fairly visible here but I went in for better detail.

That’s a cluster of aphids in there, most likely causing the leaves to curl up to begin with, but this is a small tree that I’m going to remove anyway so I don’t mind. And neither do the ants, because they ‘milk’ the aphids for their ‘nectar,’ to cross metaphors confusingly.

Here’s the scenario. Aphids suck plant saps and cycle it through pretty quickly, only getting a little bit of nutrients from their simple digestive systems, and thus excreting slightly-weakened sap. The ants know that the aphids will excrete in a defensive manner when irritated, which the ants do by tapping the aphids with their antennae, and then the ants collect the sap from the aphids, in effect farming the aphid colonies.

I was having enough trouble, both trying to get the flash to illuminate the sheltered aphids, and just nailing focus on these leaves on the tips of thin branches swaying easily in the slightest breeze, so getting video of the farming wasn’t going to happen without a lot of prep work, tripod and light stand and stabilizing arm for the branch and so on. Maybe later.

And finally, we have a story. Simply checking out the nearby pond the other night by headlamp, I was casually examining the reflections I was getting from the water surfaces and within the grassy areas, which always turn out to be spiders, just different varieties (their eyes reflect light amazingly well, but only if the source light is held close to your own eyes.) I happened to find a medium-sized wolf spider (genus Lycosidae) sporting her young on her back, something that I haven’t seen for a few years now – and my camera was back at the house. Noting her position and that she wasn’t moving much, I went back and fetched it, knowing it would be a few minutes to do so and the chances of her being in the same vicinity was minimal. Sure enough, once I returned I couldn’t find her.

I amused myself with chasing the frogs again, and trying yet again to see if I could spot the cricket frogs that I was hearing, and on giving up for the night I had to pass through the same spot and gave it one last try. Which paid off nicely.

Body length for the mama was perhaps 15-18mm – like I said, medium-sized – so your guess as to how small the bebbies are. But I had the extension tube in hand, at least, and could go in a bit closer, though I started blocking the headlamp and had to remove it to lay it on the ground for a focusing light.

I realize I’m in a rut again, what with the last On This Date post immediately preceding this one, but hey, that was years ago – this is current. Plus you got a lot of other subjects too, so hush.

On this date 23

June 3, 2020June 2, 2020 Al Denelsbeck

Back from 2005, we have an experimental image that showed proof of concept (which wasn’t really necessary – I knew the concept was solid,) but needed work on the execution. This is a mere one-second exposure while driving down a city street, intentionally streaking the various lights. One second seems to be a pretty good amount of time for this – I wouldn’t go longer than two – but from the wiggly lines it’s clear that either a smoother road (good luck with that in NC) or a stabilizing float mount is required to get a decent picture. And of course, mounting the camera with a clearer view, or at least using a more exotic car than an old Mazda pickup. I’d stood the tripod in the center of the cab within easy reach, but I recall that this is easier to imagine than it is to set up; cars aren’t typically made with lots of places for the tripod feet to go. Another way that photographers are discriminated against…

In the back of my mind, I was always going to retry this, but here it’s been fifteen years now…

Then, for reasons best left unvoiced, I went for five years without once taking a (keepable) photo on June 3rd, so we pick up again in 2010.

On my doorstep, a wolf spider of undetermined species, but genus Lycosidae anyway, was parading around with her voluminous offspring on her back, as they do. It might be easy to believe that this is an especially high-magnification shot, but no – wolf spiders can get pretty damn big. I know the size of the beetle she’s chowing on so she’s an estimated 25-30mm in body length. The deep shadows of this photo finally convinced me to finish a project I’d been intending to tackle, which was a dedicated macro softbox for the flash unit. It actually worked pretty well (note that the photo there was posted just a few weeks later,) but I also recognized the value of indirect, off-axis lighting and have been refining the designs ever since.

[It’s funny – while this post topic was just intended to provide regular content even if the week was slow, the posts have become a lot more about trivia, conditions, and progress, and they’re often served by showing earlier entries for comparison.]

The image above came from the Arthropods 1 folder, by the way. Our next entry from 2013 came from the Arthropods 3 folder. I’ve said before but you probably weren’t paying attention, I split the stock images up to make them easier to go through and get to about 4000 images before I jump to another folder, so I was fairly busy with the bugs those years. I’m about halfway through Arthropods 6 right now…

This green lynx spider (Peucetia viridans) wasn’t very big at all, but I can’t remember exactly how big, so you’ll just have to guess by the droplets of dew adhering to its body, and the translucence of the exoskeleton; I’m pretty sure it’s on budding hydrangea leaves, so I’m guessing within the 15mm range. If you look closely at the drop on the head (right behind that Lurch hairpiece that cradles the eyes,) you can tell that I used the second softbox design for this, because the highlighted reflections there are rectangular. And then, position is still a factor; notice how deep the shadows get on the left side of the photo? That tells us the flash was positioned on the right. Eventually, I found a way to move the flash rig easily from one side to the other, depending on my subject. I don’t do it as often as I should, but it’s a lot easier now than completely dismantling the flash bracket to reverse it.

And now we have 2015.

This was from the second attempt to create a garden at the new place, which we eventually gave up on because of both the soil not being optimal, and the only place that gets enough light is the front yard. But as we were learning this lesson, we have this cherry tomato plant that was transitioning between flowers and fruit, showing the various stages in one photo. In comparison, we have some (potted) tomato plants right now that are just starting to bud out, but we’re admittedly running late in planting this year. The old place was pretty ratty overall, but damn did it have good soil – stuff was effortless to grow there. Ah well.

Just because, part 36

June 2, 2020 Al Denelsbeck

Given the topic of the previous post, I feel obligated to get a start on this month with an image that embodies incredible depth, poignancy, and insight.

Don’t believe me? Check out the nails on girlfriend here.

You just know she’s going to start complaining loudly that the price that came up at the register was way higher than it said on the shelf…

Blog trivia is the worst kind

June 2, 2020 Al Denelsbeck

So I noticed something the other day as I was checking my records. A year ago, I set a significant personal record (the ‘who-cares?’ kind of record) in May with the number of photos uploaded during the month, that number being 173; this was due to the trip we took to South Carolina, and I can’t even give the town usefully because we were between two and not even the residents seemed to know whether it counted more as Pawley’s Island or Murrell’s Inlet. Regardless, that was a notable jump, since the previous record had been 103 images in a single month. This also helped set the stage for the year being a record-holder as well.

May of this year is not even in contention – I uploaded 89 images for the month. However… the total for this year, so far, is well in advance of the same time last year, even with those 173 images from one month alone: 312 uploads by the end of May last year, versus 355 this year. The previous months held their own quite well, which says a lot considering those are the slow months of the year.

Will this trend continue? Will 2020 be a banner year for photos uploaded? Does anyone actually give a flying fuck? We’ll find out… well, it’ll be a few months yet. Except for maybe that last question.

Yeah, whatever

May 31, 2020May 31, 2020 Al Denelsbeck

You might have known, had you bothered to look at your calendar or the side of your frozen pizza, that today is another holiday, being Lack of Ambition Day, which pretty much explains why I didn’t tell you sooner. I’d go into the history of it, and the ways that it’s celebrated across the globe, but that would require way more research than I feel like putting into it right now. If you want to spit in the face of its founders and look it up yourself, feel free – I’m not that disrespectful, myself.

Hopefully the batteries in your remote are in good shape, because you aren’t likely to go changing them now. The clothes can stay in the dryer overnight. The flat tire is not gonna get any flatter, so forget about it. If you have any adult undergarments handy, have at it – they’re not as bad as they seem.

That’s enough typing.

There’s something about May

May 31, 2020May 31, 2020 Al Denelsbeck

What was it now? Oh, yeah: it’s over. And in recognition of this, we have the month-end abstract.

Up early one morning exploring Our Hosts’ pond during our trip earlier this month, I took advantage of the morning twilight showing the water bowing under the trivial weight of the spider. And that’s all I’m gonna say because I apparently can’t type seven words in a row without a typo…

Some quick closeups

May 29, 2020 Al Denelsbeck

Last night I did another check at the nearby pond, not just seeing how active the treefrogs were, but also looking for other, aquatic subjects. They weren’t hard to find, but my first surprised me a little.

This is a juvenile painted turtle (Chrysemys picta,) and unless I miss my guess, it’s this year’s brood, judging from the lack of ridges on the scutes (shell ‘scales.’) I found it in the same little drainage puddle as the snakes from the previous post and video, quite possibly swept there during the overflow flooding that followed the torrential rains we’ve received the past few days. The puddle didn’t have enough vegetation to make it happy, which it could correct for itself easily, but recently, the HOA around the nearby pond elected to poison all the weeds along the edges, and I’ve already found a few dead turtles on the banks – turtles eat pond vegetation, so there’s little doubt as to what killed them, and I don’t feel it’s prudent to reintroduce my little model here into that. Right at the moment, it resides in my backyard pond liner until I determine where to take it. Relocating turtles also isn’t a good idea, since they have immunities and diets based on where they’re presently living, but right now, it’s kind of that or take the chance on it being directly poisoned.

Also, quite curiously, this is the only painted turtle that I’ve seen anywhere near that pond, in six years – I’ve only found sliders, snappers, and musk turtles. So did it get swept in from some location upstream, one of the feeders into the pond, and then swept back out again? I couldn’t say, and so far, neither has it.

I’d seen some activity earlier from my next subject, so it was a target on last night’s exploration, which was more successful than I’d first imagined.

The guy on top is a giant water bug (Belostoma flumineum,) my target, and its capture is a backswimmer (genus Notonecta, possibly Notonecta kirbyi.) I had scooped up the giant water bug into a jar, and collected a few other odds and ends like tiny tadpoles and some of the backswimmers. Before I’d even left the edge of the puddle, the water bug had snagged a backswimmer for a snack, and retained it despite the sloshing around until I attempted to transfer it into the macro aquarium (where both of these photos were taken.) Sorry that I missed that shot, I introduced another backswimmer, and within minutes the water bug had begun another meal. Pig.

But I’m not complaining. Having something in captivity, especially short term, demonstrate feeding behavior is rare and often hard to accomplish, so being as cooperative as this helps a lot. Not from the backswimmers’ point of view, I’m sure, but they can write their own posts. The biggest difficulty that I had was from the turtle, which was sharing the macro aquarium for a little while, because it tended to blunder into the feeding water bug just as I was pinning down focus.

The turtle, by the way, was roughly 50mm in carapace length, while the water bug was a measured 25mm in body length, 5mm across the width of the eyes; I just now noticed that the dark coloration to the upper eyes wasn’t just a lack of reflection, but appears to be some kind of material, don’t ask me what. I feel obligated to point out that both of these arthropods don’t appear to have any of this coloration when seen ‘normally,’ merely looking dark brown under casual observation – it takes the flash and the right angles to show these hues. Still debating about whether I’m going to make any attempt to do aquarium video or not – there are a lot of challenges to surmount. Sure as hell, it’s gonna wait until my patience and mellow levels are near peak ;-)

Damn noisy neighbors

May 27, 2020 Al Denelsbeck

… but I can cope with this kind of noise.

A few nights back, not too long after some long overdue rains, The Girlfriend and I went over to the pond to see what sunset was doing, and as the sky darkened… well, the video explains it better.

This was peak activity, but unfortunately the batteries in my video light were almost kaput, so more of the lighting is provided by the headlamp and The Girlfriend’s Sprog’s flashlight, so light color is widely variable – I apologize. I went out a few days later with the video light intact and found almost no activity.

The noise of the calls was overwhelming while we were at video distance – the Copes grey treefrog (Hyla chrysoscelis) could actually hurt your ears. As clear as many of the clips appear, almost none of these were in plain sight, but required sliding among, around, and under intervening branches, often at awkward angles, so the camera could only be handheld, but the new rig helped stabilize things quite a bit.

The only player in the video not to appear, in clips or stills, is the eastern narrowmouth toad (Gastrophryne carolinensis,) which looks like this (pic from a few years back):

And if you want to hear the call more distinctly, that can be found here. Subjects like this were a large part of my expanding into video in the first place.

By the way, before the grass clippings almost obscured the water’s surface, I did a few shots of the puddle residents, including some very small tadpoles.

I couldn’t tell you what these are, since I wasn’t there when the eggs were present, only that they’d sit comfortably on your thumbnail. I wonder if those ‘at home’ DNA tests would help?

So let me show you the current video rig, but bear in mind, this is typically a mere moment in time; probably before too long, this will change again as I refine its uses.

A few words about what you’re seeing here. First off, the whole box contraption is a video ‘cage’ that I picked up used; it also came with the shoulder mount, which has yet to see use and may not very often, since my video subjects often require very specific angles and positions, and ‘from the shoulder’ is not usually among the choices, but I may use it for bird video at some point. It has been modified, since I always use camera bodies with the extended battery grips on the bottom, and the clearance with the top bar was barely adequate, so that’s been raised 20mm. Also, the side grips were notoriously bad about creaking with any motion, but I discovered a way to fix that and will likely document that later on. If you want to know before then, feel free to ask – I just don’t want to do another post right at the moment.

Top left (pic-wise) is the video light, also used, runs on 4 AA batteries or a USB battery pack, more than adequately bright for macro work – when it has fresh batteries, anyway. Some generic Chinese model, but it works damn well, so I’m cool with it. It’s on a ‘Magic Arm’ articulated extension, all joints lock down with that knob in the middle, and yes, these also work damn well.

Just to the side of that is a video mic, a Takstar SGC-598. Listen, I’m nothing if not frugal and critical of my purchases, and while the ‘toppa-da-line’ mic choices may come highly recommended, they’re also expensive as hell, and right now macro video is not bringing in the money to justify that expense. But in side-by-side comparisons, the Takstar rated almost indistinguishable from a Rode model, for less than a quarter the price, and I picked it up used for even less. An off-camera mic is highly recommended, because the on-camera versions aren’t very good dynamically, and pick up all the little noises from the body itself, including focusing, lens adjustments, and even shifting your grip.

In the center (with the blue bits) is another grip for the cage, very useful for low-level shots and just carrying the rig around.

Top right is the off-camera monitor. Earlier I’d made one that worked fine, but it had two significant liabilities: it didn’t have terribly high resolution, and was no better in bright light than the LCD on the back of the camera body. Then I ran across someone selling a used HDMI model with the flip-up eyepiece so it can be used either way, and treated myself. A little expensive, not much, but well worth the money once I started using it. Biggest liability is, it takes several seconds to pick up the signal from the body and turn on.

It’s supported, by the way, with a mini double-ballhead arm, a few bucks online, and yes, they tighten down very well. though you can’t see the knob in the center from this perspective. I always miss something when doing ‘product’ shots…

Underneath it all is my ‘new’ macro tripod, actually my 20-year-old full-size Bogen 3401 that I’d replaced a few years back with a more capable tripod. Late last year, I got a brainstorm and ended up cutting down each leg segment a precise amount with a pipe cutter, creating this low-level, extremely stable version. The legs still spread to almost flat, and the center column has been modified to be able to shorten to a stub for ground level work; the hex-wrench to loosen these bolts rides in the rubber cap at the base of the column (hidden in the grass here.) One of these days I’ll do a post on all the gear modifications that I’ve performed to make my pursuits easier. Now if I could only modify the video editing software to cut down the extravagant time that takes…

1 … 137 138 139 140 141 … 318