You’re boned

Al Denelsbeck

I actually had a little time to do some shooting today, and was lucky enough to find a few subjects. More will be along later when I have more time to post about them, but for now we’ll cover a brief but dramatic saga.

As I passed a potted basil plant without the camera in hand, I saw a small black and white wasp traipsing across the leaves, which is not uncommon, but as I looked closer I could see it was burdened with a larva of some kind, and not its own. Realizing that it was probably futile, I dashed inside and got the camera in hand, fresh batteries in the flash and everything. Luck was with me on my return, since the wasp was still there. I figured there was a pretty good chance it would fly off with its prey, but I was going to give it a shot anyway.

Eumeninae wasp with unidentified caterpillar
It’s likely that the caterpillar was going to serve as food for the wasp’s young’uns, since that’s a common trait among many species of Vespidae, but instead of flying off bearing this new meal, the wasp was carrying it around on the basil leaf, sometimes on top, sometimes on the underside, seeming unable to determine where it wanted to be. I kept shifting to try and maintain a good vantage, but then the wasp cooperated and halted on top of the leaf in good sight. The caterpillar, it must be said, wasn’t putting up any fight at all, and could have been dead for all the movement it demonstrated.

Eumeninae wasp with unidentified caterpillar
I spent a bit of time trying to identify the wasp, with only moderate luck. I’m fairly certain it’s a potter or mason wasp, of the genus Eumeninae, but pinning down the exact species hasn’t happened yet. Here’s an example passage from a biological key that allows precise identification:

Metasomal tergum 1 with short overhang, the space below not serving as acarinarium (mites never present); base of tergum 2 usually with a row of shallow to deep pits

That’s just for one particular species. Even if I look up all of the terms that I’m not familiar with, there’s a good chance none of my images show the necessary details. Entomologists collect their species, while more often than not I’m shooting them “in the wild,” usually without native trackers or guards or anything; yeah I’m that badass. But it often means that key features simply never get captured in images.

Notably, the wasp paused a couple of times and jabbed the caterpillar vigorously with the end of its abdomen; while it might have been stinging it into submission, I think it’s far more likely that it was instead laying eggs within the body cavity of the larva. This is, after all, how caterpillars serve as food for the wasp larva. The wasp will then carry it off to its mud cocoon and seal it within, where sometime later the young, having consumed the paralyzed caterpillar (or spider, another frequent prey of some species,) will dig out of the dried mud and fly off. Meanwhile, I got to watch the wasp going to town on the caterpillar like a Chihuahua with an Ugg boot.

Eumeninae wasp likely laying eggs in unidentified caterpillar
And then – it just flew off, leaving the caterpillar behind. Not what I was expecting.

unidentified caterpillar abandoned after wasp attack
I waited a short while to see if either a) the wasp returned, perhaps after prepping an ideal spot, to carry the larva off again, or b) if the caterpillar would roust itself and go on about its business, unaware that something bad was brewing internally. When neither happened, I picked up the caterpillar and was rewarded with a defensive wiggle, showing it was still alive, so I put it back where it was and left it.

Hours later, it was still on the same leaf, though it appeared to have reversed position, and was now gaining the attention of some kind of predatory true bug. Curious now, I collected the caterpillar and placed it within a small terrarium with a few choice leaves to observe it over the next few days. I suspect it may sprout some cocoons on its back after a while, and so there might be another part of the saga coming along eventually. I know you’re on the edge of your seat.

Daily Jim pic 12

Al Denelsbeck

butterscotch river in Yellowstone National Park by James L. Kramer
Going slightly out of order with this one, just to break up two similar images. We’re just going to see how incorrectly I’m interpreting this one, but I see this as a drainage area for geysers and/or hot springs, and the yellow-tan color denotes the most recent still-damp runoff. As mentioned earlier, the mineral content in the water is off the scale, and much of the detail and shaping of the ‘rocks’ is due to deposits from the water itself, the same kind of thing that creates stalactites and stalagmites in caves. This would make those surfaces chalky and not terribly resilient, able to be shattered with a hammer, like the water-softening unit that gave up about a year after installation in my old house in central New York (we just had well water, but it was notoriously ‘hard’ and even left scale within the toilet bowl.)

But I’m probably going to be corrected by Jim – not about our water in central NY, since he wasn’t there, but about this scene from Yellowstone since he was. Confused yet?

Daily Jim pic 11

Al Denelsbeck

clay spike in geothermal mud geyser by James L. Kramer
This one also got into the ‘Too cool’ category, and it’s a favorite of mine. This is (I’m pretty sure – again, Jim didn’t tell me when he sent the stack of photos) a geothermal vent that passes through a layer of grey clay, and so produces a witches cauldron of bubbling mud. And Jim was able to capture one of the bubbles as it popped. It’s a shame it doesn’t stand out better against the immediate background, but I doubt there were a lot of positioning or lighting options at hand.

I wonder if he got video?

July leaves behind an abstract

Al Denelsbeck

I'm not telling you!
It’s the colors that made me want to use this one, and I shot it specifically with the month-end abstract in mind. If you’re confused as to what it is, you’re just admitting that you don’t come here often enough, and I’m not inclined to put in extra effort for someone that cares so little.

Daily Jim pic 10

Al Denelsbeck1 Comment

spring in Yellowstone National Park showing two different colors of sediment by James L. Kramer
We’re still in Yellowstone Park, looking at the spring water sources. If I’m interpreting this one correctly, there are at least two different subterranean channels feeding this pool, apparently passing through different types of minerals/metals. The one centered in this image, I’m almost certain, is showing a high iron content, so yes, that’s rust. But as you already know if you’ve followed enough posts here, trusting me is a stupid thing to do. Some tourist probably just dumped their pumpkin spice latté into the pool, and it ate that hole into the stone.

Sunday slide 31

Al Denelsbeck

golden silk orbweaver Nephila clavipes spinning web - damaged slide
Yes, another muted color example, and I’m often enthusiastic about the vibrancy of slides (it just means the scene was really bland.) We’ll get into some nice color shortly. For this week we have a dual illustration, which is clear the moment you look closely. First off, Florida is home to more than a few examples of this massive spider, a female golden silk orbweaver (Nephila clavipes) – the bodies alone can be the size of your finger, which can make the leg spread larger than your palm. Their webs may be as large as 2 meters across, and while they’re usually up in the branches out of immediate encounter range, not always. I have distinct memories of my brother’s ejaculation of foul language when he nearly walked into a web at chest level; he still lives in New York and isn’t used to the subtropical effect on species size.

What I managed to capture in this was a curious trait of their webs, which is how the spiraling circular strands seem to run in close parallel pairs, like train tracks, as if laid down at the same time. While it’s possible that this is the case, and the golden silk orbweaver possesses a radical set of spinnerets, it’s not consistent, and possibly only due to a habit of their casting process. Nothing that I’ve found has made mention of this trait, so I can offer no explanation either way. I was pleased, however, to have captured the details of the web distinctly enough, something that often isn’t possible without some helpful mist or dew.

But also visible is how badly damaged this slide is, and I don’t recall how this happened. Some of it is dust, but the lines aren’t; this one got badly scratched somewhere along the way. And with detail like this, it’s damn hard and time-consuming to edit it all back out in Photoshop. I’m sure plenty of people would point out how much better digital images are over film in this regard, which is true – to a point. Because digital files get damaged too, and when they do, there’s usually no saving them. You don’t get little blotches and lines and so on, you have entire portions that simply go blank, if the file opens at all. And the nature of digital is, they will go corrupt: media degrades, hard drives fail, sectors go bad. Constant duplication is necessary, and while not particularly difficult, fate is entirely unforgiving if you fail to maintain decent and regular backups.

Meanwhile, I can touch up these images, including doing a rescan with a hint of nose grease or mineral oil applied to the slide, which does a remarkable job of vanishing such scratches. This slide dates from 2001, if I remember right, and I started first shooting digital in 2003. Almost none of the original digital media from that time survives in readable form, and I only have access to those digital images through repeated copying, while this slide (and thousands of others without such damage) will be viable for quite a while yet. Perspective is important.

Eclectic and farraginous

Al Denelsbeck

This post marks a particular milestone for the blog, as it is my first use (actually, in my entire life) of the word, “farraginous.” Which spellcheck doesn’t even have listed, so that guarantees that I’m sounding like a pompous ass. But I’m not going to make anyone have to look up the word to see what it means just to understand a simple blog post, so I’ll helpfully say that it’s defined as, “consisting of a farrago.”

Anyway, we’re just going to go through a handful of relatively recent photos, most of them obtained during student outings – no real theme or message, I just can’t let Jim hog all the bandwidth.

Florida predatory stink bug Euthyrhynchus floridanus nymph with click beetle prey
This is the oldest photo among the lot, taken back on May 4th (Star Wars Day if you celebrate that in your culture) – I just never found a good excuse to post it. The insect seen here really is that colorful – it’s not a trick of the flash or anything, but it primarily appears in a certain nymph stage and will become more muted as the insect nears adulthood. This is a Florida predatory stink bug (Euthyrhynchus floridanus,) and they’re often seen in clusters, as this one was, but they’re shy and the rest of the gang dispersed to the other side of the post quick enough that I only have a couple of group pics from the encounter; this one, carrying their shared prey of a click beetle, was reluctant to discard the meal and too encumbered to escape the camera quickly. Probably about 10-12mm in length here, and seen just this once. If you want better details on that proboscis, I’ve covered it before (with another species.)

Copes grey treefrog Hyla chrysoscelis clinging to water reedOn the same evening that I found the adipose caterpillar featured here, I spotted a Copes grey treefrog (Hyla chrysoscelis) perched on a water reed in the ditch by the road, and did a quick shot. I’ve featured these enough times on the blog that I can type their scientific name from memory, like the Chinese mantids, though it’s virtually guaranteed that I’ll mispronounce it if I tried. The rules, if there are any, for Latinized (which is a slightly different process than Martinized) scientific names are beyond my vast intelligence, but I know the trick that I was taught in kindergarten – “sound it out” – is completely worthless when it comes to these. And I suspect this is done on purpose, so biologists and their ilk can quickly tell when a poser like me happens along. “Did you hear that? The doofus said, ‘kriss-o-SKELL-us,’ instead of, ‘shay-OFF-kay-eye‘ – what a total kanye…”

By the way, I think I have a buttload of these as tadpoles in the backyard pond right now (the frogs I mean, not biologists,) courtesy of the amorous pair seen here. They may be featured soon.

Speaking of frogs…

pickerel frog Lithobates palustris portrait
I had initially identified this as a leopard frog, but that goes to show you that you should (or at least, I should) always check a decent guide before posting. This is actually a pickerel frog (Lithobates palustris,) which attracted attention on the side of the Eno River during an outing with the Immutable Mr Bugg, then paused and pretended that I couldn’t see it. It may appear again in a little bit, since I have a post planned on the awkward positions one gets into for certain perspectives that nevertheless often pays off. The image has lost a little at this resolution, since the eye and skin detail came out wonderfully sharp in the original file. Order a print and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Really, just sunflower blossoms
Just some sunflowers that we came across, and using a short depth-of-field to go a bit fartsy.

Ailanthus webworm moth and looming bumblebee
I had spotted this ailanthus webworm moth (Atteva punctella) in the foreground, busily raiding these flowers, and was trying for a particular perspective since the conditions were right. You see, the dark patches on its wings are actually bright iridescent blue when the light hits them properly, and I was trying to capture this effect, but it could only be seen at a specific angle and the moth wasn’t holding still in the slightest. As I was trying to hold focus and snag an illustrative position, the bumblebee landed and came blundering straight up to the moth, so the ominous-looking capture here was more luck than design. The moth, by the way, was far less discomfited by the intrusion than you might imagine, largely ignoring the much-more-massive bee. If it was a bee…

old stump in water, possible the same shot many years earlierSo this one’s a little odd (like that never happens here,) but bear with me. Something like 12 years ago I shot a particular tree stump in Jordan Lake in a couple of fartsy compositions, using the Canon Pro 90 IS. I had remembered it being in a particular location and thought the stump had long since been washed away, but then I recently encountered this one, displaced by a few hundred meters from where I thought I’d shot those. It’s possible I wasn’t remembering the precise location correctly (hey, I’m old, it happens, I shit myself twice while typing this ridiculously long post,) so I took a pic to compare them. Result: inconclusive, since 12 years of erosion might have produced that effect, and there’s nothing specific I can say about the shapes. Looking at the other frames that I took that day, the angle of the background details seems to support the idea of the stump being in a different location. So if it is the same stump, I have to say it’s damn tough wood…

[Seriously, I do pointless challenges like this from time to time, don’t ask me why.]

unidentified butterfly silhouette
I was thinking of using this one for the month-end abstract, but I have a better one in mind, so I can use this here. I liked it not just for the silhouette and the sharpness of the details (if you look close you can see some dark spots where the feet touch,) but also for the little gap in the leaf that betrays the butterfly’s wing pattern, the tiniest bit of complementary color. I would have liked to have had the eyes peeking through that gap, but that’s a composition for another time.

lavender pond lilies and pads with tiny extra detail
And I probably shouldn’t admit it, but there’s also an extra detail in this one that was wholly intended. I know it’s there and my eyes go straight to it, but I’m not sure how subtle it is (or isn’t) to everyone else…

I’ll close with this, as a Blackhawk helicopter cuts across the sky during a sunset shoot. It never got into the really dramatic colors and clouds, those being in a pretty narrow region of the sky, but I think it works okay as it is. And I can’t help wondering what their view was like.

Blackhawk helicopter against dramatic sunset clouds

Daily Jim pic 8

Al Denelsbeck

deep blue mineral pool in Yellowstone National Park by James L. Kramer
If you’ve ever wondered where they get the water to make those colorful freezer pops, it’s Yellowstone National Park. This is the ambiguous “berry” pool.

Actually, I think this is from copper, but I could be wrong. Either way, there are enough minerals in the waters of the park to -… I can’t think of a good analogy, but there are a lot. Yellowstone has water that you have to chew. It’s all brought up by the geothermal activity in the region, a mantle plume of molten material that comes a lot closer to the surface than most other areas of the world, save for active volcanoes. Or, maybe not.

By the way, geologists have said that there’s a potential eruption building under the park, and the entire area is actually higher in elevation than it was a few decades ago. It’s even visible here – doesn’t this look closer to you?

Daily Jim pic 7

Al Denelsbeck1 Comment

torrent in Yellowstone Park
And so we move on to Yellowstone Park, and a torrent in an as-yet-unidentified river. That stark dead tree is a strong element, but notice that it’s actually two trees, and the grey one contrasts nicely against the deep green of the background trees while the smaller still-living one sets off against the water.

However, I’ll never forgive Jim for not getting a bear catching a salmon in the shot. Never mind that he didn’t have that kind of time to spend waiting. Or that this river is likely way the hell too far inland to host salmon. And it’s the wrong time of the year. And whatever other factors would prevent this scenario from occurring. A pic like this needs a bear catching a salmon. No it’s not trite or clichéish. Shut up.

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