Lucky I have something

Al Denelsbeck

You are well aware, naturally, that today is Relate Something That Happened Last Night That Has Nothing To Do With Alcohol Day (that modifier put in there to prevent things from getting really fucking boring, because who needs to hear yet another story about people with no self-control?) and, as fate would have it, I have a nice little tale – had the holiday fallen any other time this week, it would have been something about, like, laundry. So here’s my contribution.

Returning from the nearby pond where I’d been getting more post fodder to appear later on, I was right by the neighbor’s house when I spotted a fox crossing the road into our yard. This was curious enough – it was still pretty early, and there are enough streetlights that I was plainly visible. I had my headlamp, but the batteries had been run nearly flat in my previous pursuits, yet I switched it on anyway and had a quick look around the yard as I came to it – nothing to see.

(It gets better – just park the yap for a second.)

I was just about to enter our front door when I heard a rustle and a squeal, and I switched the headlamp on again and shone it in the direction where the noises had come from as I stealthily crept down there. In the neighbor’s yard, a pair of eyes reflected the light back to me, their height and distance apart telling me it was the fox. Almost as soon as I saw this, I also found a baby rabbit crawling/scampering through the grass towards The Girlfriend’s car. I simply held still and watched the fox to see what it would do.

It became clear that the fox had not only unearthed the rabbit from a small copse of flowers and plants at the base of two trees in the center of the neighbor’s yard, it had no intention of giving up its prey easily. When it disappeared for a moment I changed position a bit, but it reappeared and I held still again, and the fox spent some ten minutes searching the area in pursuit of the rabbit – never coming anywhere near it, but that was likely my fault, since the rabbit had largely come towards me. There’s a streetlight directly across the road from our yard, so it’s never dark here, and though I was shining the (dim) headlamp in its direction most of the time, I have no doubts that the fox was well aware of my presence, and only my silence and stillness kept it from fleeing – that and the near-miss of its meal. Its persistence was impressive, because it was largely between five and seven meters from me the entire time, which is damn close for something as shy as a fox.

And I will note that I could positively identify it easily with the long observation. The dark stripe down the back and the lack of a white tip to the tail told me it was a grey fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) – we also have red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) in the area, and their coloration is often virtually the same, with the exception of the details I just noted. Yes, I know, you’d think a red fox would be red and a grey fox grey, because sense, but the truth is they often have mixes of both in their coats, and they can easily be mistaken.

Eventually, the fox slipped off after I called The Girlfriend’s Sprog down to watch the show (The Girlfriend was already in bed) – she got a brief look at the fox, but it definitely decided that things were getting too risky at that point. We then commenced a brief search for the baby bunny, knowing that finding it was not too likely – rabbits know how to hide, and searching at night by dim flashlight wasn’t ideal. We found no trace of it, so presumably it got away, with no idea what injuries it might have sustained. And there’s no telling if the fox returned a little later and made a more thorough search without our interference.

By the way, I had the Canon T2i with me, which has video capability, but the light wasn’t bright enough for either stills or video, and the headlamp too far gone (I’d been using it for other video, which will appear here eventually.) Slightly frustrating to me, since it would have been cool to have a video clip of the search efforts, but such missed opportunities happen often anyway – it was cool enough just watching the behavior from such a close position. And I have to note that the fox was utterly silent while stalking agitatedly back and forth in the neighbor’s yard, and with its coloration, it could easily have been missed entirely despite the light from the streetlamp – I was lucky enough to catch its silhouette as it crossed the road, and follow through with it from there.

Podcast: But no Annette Funicello

Al Denelsbeck

a pair of gulls against sunrise sky at North Topsail Beach
It’s funny; while I was in the final stages of putting this all together, I allowed myself to be sidetracked with more subjects for future posts, and just had a rather interesting evening. But I’m getting ahead of how behind I am. So for now, we have a podcast of the most recent trip, where we (meaning the family here and friends from out there, but not, you know, you and I, I’m sorry to say, unless of course it was) go back to the beach.

Walkabout podcast – Back to the beach

57 percent of the crew boogie boarding
The first post regarding last year’s trip to the same locale – there are three in total, so feel free to click through to the following posts as well. Or you can use this link for all of the posts so tagged (which will include this one, so don’t get stuck in an endless loop…)

Topsail Escape Room, because you should check it out when you’re out there. It’s likely that you can find something similar near where you live, too.

Just for the hell of it, the posts tagged with Savannah and Jekyll Island, because that’s where our friends are from and who we were hanging out with while there. They were always photographically productive trips and the posts reflect that at least.

More will be along as soon as possible – it took me long enough to get this one done. I’m presently waiting on some contributions from others to provide a more robust, nutritious post, properly following the content pyramid as it were. We’re getting there – stay tuned.

sanderling Calidris alba pacing among the surf bubbles

Per the ancient lore, part 11

Al Denelsbeck

party lights on sailboat in marina at night
Dammit dammit dammit dammit dammit! I still have no fucking time to work on posts! This is getting beyond annoying. I’d say I need to take a week off, but that wouldn’t actually work…

This week’s image from the mystical and timeworn days of early digital photography comes from the Scenic/Abstract folder, and shows a small marina in the Florida town that I lived within. Naturally I was struck by the string of lights on the small sailboat and took several different versions, some cropped tighter and not showing the distant glow in the sky at all. Right now, I’ll ask that you stop and look at it for a bit, see what kind of feelings and mood you get from it, to compare to my own impressions.

No, I’m serious. Stop here for a bit and look it over. Search your true feelings. Listen to your heart. Sounds about the same as always, doesn’t it? So okay, stop that and think with your brain instead.

All set?

So, I’m a little ill-defined on this one. There’s this contrast between the faint glow from the horizon, and the darkness where the boats are, broken (somewhat defiantly, to me) by those party lights. Yet there still seems to be no one around, though I’m not sure if I’m influenced by knowing the conditions at the time and not seeing a soul stirring anywhere while getting the shots. (Curiously, there’s a small dinghy moored to the sailboat that was drifting in the breeze/current, somewhat blurred in this pic, and in at least one of the other frames there’s a faint indication that there was someone in it, but I couldn’t begin to explain why.) I get this sense of foreboding from the horizon glow, with a bit of denial coming from the party lights. In the other shots without the horizon visible, there’s instead a sense of post-festivities, an island of warmth within the stillness of the marina itself.

So how did your impressions compare?

And now, to completely ruin the idea, I’ll tell you that this was shot from the bridge overpass of one of the major roads in the town, well-lit by streetlights, and nowhere near as serene as it appears here. I’m sure it eventually quieted down late at night, but it was hardly the kind of “listen to the water lap against the sides of the boat” conditions that you might have imagined.

Per the ancient lore, part 10

Al Denelsbeck

male brown anole Anolis sagrei displaying dewlap
After a brief jaunt into the future with last week’s post, we return to the earliest days of digital photos (for me, anyway) and of course Florida. The subject here is the lovely textures of a Caribbean sycamore tree, rudely blocked by an impertinent anole. Okay, I lie, I have no idea what kind of tree it is, and was instead after the anole itself, hard as that may be to believe. This is a male brown anole (Anolis sagrei,) doing his territorial/mating display thing. Typically, if you see this it’s a signal to look around carefully, since it virtually always indicates another within visual range, though I admit I don’t think I ever saw the beneficiary of this display. I doubt it was for me, but cannot vouch for the sexual proclivity of any individual lizard.

We’ve made it to the Reptiles/Amphibians folder, of course. The brown anoles weren’t originally native to Florida and are thus considered an invasive species, but the definition of this can be debated if one is so inclined. Right now the browns outnumber the native green anoles significantly, and are probably the easiest reptile species to spot in Florida, small as they are (roughly 14cm in overall length.) Which reflects a little on my changed approach to nature photography in the intervening years (this was taken in May of 2004.) The anoles, both green and brown, in Florida are abundant, and I even had a resident within the tree right outside my window, but I never sat down and did a detailed photo-examination of them. They were certainly easier to find than the Chinese mantids that I’ve been chasing the past several years, if a bit spookier, but I have far fewer images of them. Nowadays, with such easily available models, I’d probably have a full selection of portraits and behaviors, eggs and newly-hatched young and so on, within my stock folders, and this is at least partially due to writing blog posts, realizing that I had a good subject to feature and trying for more illustrating images. Certainly I’d have better-lit versions than this (and do,) but when you spot a wild and rather shy reptile displaying, you get what you can without thinking about how to coax it into a different position, or whether you can get a fill-reflector in place. And as the theme goes, these are the early digitals shots, so this is not an example of the best that I’ve ever gotten.

I don’t wanna!

Al Denelsbeck

If it seems like too many posts recently are quick little trivial things, kinda hit-and-run offerings, well, there’s a few reasons for that. If you haven’t noticed, stop reading right here and, uh, wait a bit for the next post. But anyway, as an explanation, there’s been an awful lot going on, without much of it being blogworthy, while the appearance of decent photo subjects has been particularly slow this spring. Meanwhile, when I do actually get something to write about, I really don’t have the time to do so. I don’t want to leave the blog lacking in this manner, but haven’t been able to correct that yet.

Which means I’m here to say, it’s going to go on at least a little bit longer, but hopefully not too much. And I not only have subjects for two posts already lined up, I expect to have at least a few more on top of those coming in pretty soon. In there is a known podcast, and the potential for more. And lotsa pics. Maybe even some that aren’t creepy…

In the interim, I leave a little teaser, what I had initially identified as a pond slider or yellow-bellied slider, but instead believe is a river cooter (Pseudemys concinna) – a juvenile at that, peeking out from the water suspiciously before climbing onto that rock to bask. Just one of a handful of subjects from a recent outing, which will be elaborated upon soonest.

juvenile river cooter Pseudemys concinna peeking from water

Oh boy oh boy oh boy

Al Denelsbeck

laughing gulls Leucophaeus atricilla migrating and not
Tomorrow – that would be Saturday, May 12th – is World Migratory Bird Day. Yep, already! So find your favorite world migratory birds, and treat them to dinner, or a movie, or maybe a day at the amusement park checking out the season’s new roller coasters. Whatever, just let them know you’re thinking about them.

Or I suppose you could just photograph some, or identify one or more that you haven’t seen before, or tally how many you can see during the day. It’s a little shallow and impersonal, but you know, whatever fluffs your coverts.

At least part of the day I’ll be tied up, but we’ll see if I get some time free to chase a few birds, as the English say. Meanwhile, I’ll direct you over to the itinerant birder Mr Bugg to see what he scares up for the holiday.

Per the ancient lore, part 9

Al Denelsbeck

small runoff shower across cave opening from within
Let’s take a trip to the Mountains folder, shall we? Though to be honest, if I was doing these in true chronological order this wouldn’t appear for quite a while; this was actually taken with the first digital camera that I owned, a Canon Pro 90 IS, on the first trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina – somehow, while living in this state from 1990 to 2001, I never made it out there, so I finally did a trip once I’d returned, this one being in May 2005. My timing was off – the spring foliage and colors were still a little ways away, arriving much later in the higher altitudes than I’d guessed.

I was partially chasing waterfalls, and partially in search of scenic compositions, which the just-budding trees weren’t contributing to very well. But I can’t really remember where this was taken – I just know that I’d been on a short trail seeking something specific, and happened across this small cascade over the mouth of a shallow cave. It was easy enough to duck inside without getting wet, but not the most photogenic of actions; if I got the outside foliage exposed properly, the water would nigh have disappeared and nothing inside the cave would have shown, even with firing off the flash as I did here. It would have been much worse trying for a long exposure to get more of a milky look from the water, because the region outside the cave was in bright sunlight, very easy to over-expose. Ah well.

Here’s a curious thought, however: I would have believed that, over the centuries, this cave would have been cleared out by natives, whether Native Americans or even some earlier cultures. So was it just not as good as something else not too far away, or is it newer than I imagine? Perhaps it had been cleared long ago, but rockfalls had re-cluttered the floor?

Throwing down the gauntlet

Al Denelsbeck

It took them a while to get to this, but yesterday’s Astronomy Picture of the Day is a taunting response to a post of mine back in February, where I talked about capturing sunrise on the Tycho crater of the moon. I mean, not personally (as far as anyone knows,) but remotely, viewing at higher magnification from Earth. Their version, also taken at sunrise, shows a huge boulder that sits atop the peak, and if you go back to the photo that I included with my post (I provide these links for a reason,) you can see that it’s even visible in that image – not mine, but NASA’s detail image of that peak. It’s 120 meters across, meaning it would more than cover a football field, the universal measurement of big things here in the states. They put it down to being a bit of landed rubble from the impact that created Tycho in the first place, but I personally suspect it’s a glacial erratic…

boulder on Tycho's central peak
Main image and upper inset courtesy of NASA, Arizona State U., LRO; Lower Inset courtesy of Gregory H. Revera

Now, it must be said that NASA did not capture this image from a ground-based telescope like any real man would, but was cheating and using the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a satellite probe cruising by just 50 km above the moon’s surface. Sure, anyone could get super-detailed shots just by launching their own orbital satellite to the moon!

But is that the way you want to play, NASA? Well, fine – game on! Let’s see you–…

Okay, I got nothing.

Just because, part 26

Al Denelsbeck

mother Canada goose Branta canadensis with chick peeking from under wing
This little tableau presented itself as The Girlfriend and I made a circuit of the pond this evening. The light was dropping rapidly so conditions weren’t ideal, but you can still make out the unfortunate and bizarre tumor that this Canada goose (Branta canadensis) is plagued with. I imagine that it’s not long for this world, because even if it survives this growth I doubt flight is possible with that right there. The tragedies of the animal kingdom.

By the way, there’s the faintest hint, but I don’t suppose you can tell any more than we could that there’s actually four of them under there. Curious, too, because the night is quite warm.

And for that reason, there’s a slim chance that I’ll be back with more pics from the evening. I want to go out, but a kidney stone is suggesting otherwise…

Per the ancient lore, part 8

Al Denelsbeck

raccoon Procyon lotor and great blue heron Ardea herodias tracks in wet sand
It’s that time again, and now it’s a contribution from the Mammals/Carnivores folder. This is also from the Indian River Lagoon, but you need to understand: when I first obtained the loaner camera, that was the area I went to for experimenting. It was convenient and capable of providing plenty of subjects. In this case, we have some tracks in a saturated area of sand – I seem to recall that it was a small sandbank, something that would appear and disappear with every significant storm.

The collection of tracks was, almost certainly, less than 12 hours old, a record of activity in this tiny patch of sand. It’s easy to imagine that the two primary players were present together, but that’s unrealistic – for a reason I’ll get into shortly.

In fact, I’m going to let you determine what those tracks are from. One set I was certain of while the other had, in my mind, three possibilities with one prominent. That one was correct; when I double-checked the shapes of the suspects’ tracks, the other two looked significantly different than what’s seen here. So you tell me.

Give up? Then highlight the blank space below to reveal the answer.

The long, three-toed tracks are of course from a great blue heron (Ardea herodias) – slim chance it was a great egret, they’d leave about the same tracks with a trivial difference in size, but the great blues were far more numerous in the region. The smaller tracks, which is why this sits in the Mammals/Carnivores folder, are from a raccoon (Procyon lotor.) The other two options, in my mind, were opossum and river otter, because I knew both were prevalent in the area, but neither of those produce the same shape. Opossums leave tracks with stubby toes, almost like someone with their fingers curled a bit, and otters leaves tracks a lot more like a dog, without prominent ‘fingers.’ Not a hard one to figure out, but I realized I wasn’t exactly sure what otter tracks looked like.

And the reason why they likely didn’t occur at the same time? Raccoons are largely nocturnal, while herons are largely diurnal. Either can be present and active at other than their ‘preferred’ times, but it’s uncommon. We’ll go with the odds on this one.

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