The depths of your eyes

Al Denelsbeck

Yeah, that title’s fairly similar to a post from about a year ago, but the difference is significant. That one was about a fly with a maze-like pattern in its eyes (thus, “lost,” get it?) while this one really does involve depth. I spend hours on these titles…

Anyone who’s had a close enough encounter with a praying mantis knows about the false pupil, even if they haven’t discovered that it’s false, believing instead that it indicates where the mantis is actually looking, as our own eyes do. Mantids, though, have compound eyes like most arthropods, lots of simple optical mechanisms bundled together into a knobby group that provides a wide field of view. Even with this field of view, mantids have an optimum angle of sight, and so will still turn their heads to face potential prey or danger; when this happens, the false pupil may become minimized or disappear altogether, enhancing the illusion, but the bare truth is, the false pupil (when visible) always faces the viewer. The mantis may or may not be focusing its primary attention on us, but those little black spots give us the impression that it’s looking right at us.

two images showing false pupil depthThere is a particular trait that I’ve noticed before under high magnification, and managed to capture in images the other day: the false pupils are not on the surface of the eye, but actually down beneath. This makes sense when you know why they occur, but seeing it firsthand is pretty cool.

Notice how the false pupil isn’t visible in the top image where the mantis’ face is sharp, but is pretty distinct in the bottom image where the face is out of focus; also note the comparative focus on the shoulder. Working in natural light with the macro lens at its widest aperture of f4, the depth of sharp focus is incredibly short. The false pupils are actually there in the top image, but blurred into indistinction by being out of focus. A slight twitch closer in the bottom image brought them into focus. Using even a slightly smaller aperture would have increased the depth of field enough to have face and false pupil in focus simultaneously (especially for a subject this small.)

You see, the false pupil is an optical effect. The compound eyes of most arthropods aren’t little clusters of spheres, but something more like a globular flower blossom, originating deeper within the owner’s head. Each eye is a tapered tube, with a simple lens on top and an optic nerve at the bottom; this gives each eye a very specific direction that it sees. Most times, it is the walls of these tubes that give the eyes their collective colors, since we are seeing nearly all of them obliquely, at an angle. It is only when we can see directly down the tubes that the color vanishes, and we get darkness instead, perhaps even seeing the optic nerve at the bottom. So yes, it really is farther away than the surface of the compound eyes, with the possibility that the effect is enhanced by the lenses themselves.

It is believed that this is an evolved protective trait, much like the coloration resembling eyes that several different species possess. Something that is staring right at you is aware of your presence, perhaps ready to defend itself vigorously. This not only runs against the hunting instincts of many species that want to capture their prey unawares, even we feel it; mantids are routinely described as having an “evil stare.” They have no more stare than a housefly, but just saying that isn’t enough to dispel the feeling, is it?

Another interesting trait about mantis eyes can be seen in the last image in this post; at night, the camouflage coloration fades to black. Presumably, this provides some benefit to their night-vision capabilities, but as yet I cannot tell you how or why. It’s also a trait that has to develop. The Chinese mantises, at least, are born with darker eyes but they turn to much the same color as the body within hours (see also this post,) and for the next several weeks, the eyes remain that way day or night. At a certain age, perhaps following a molt, their eyes can become dark at night, as I found out the other evening, when the same model we see above posed for a tight closeup well after sundown.

tight portrait of juvenile Chinese mantis
I wasn’t around when these hatched, so I only have a guesstimate of how old they are – we’ll use the known date of the hatching I witnessed and consider these nine weeks old. What I do have is a measurement of the eyes, since this guy held still for a close pass of the calipers: it’s 4.5mm across the outside of the eyes.

I have no information or trivia to pass along regarding this next image – I’m just including it for variety, and because I obtained it during the same photo session. It appears we also have a resident grey treefrog (Hyla versicolor,) though it might actually be a Copes grey treefrog (Hyla chrysoscelis,) a rarer species – I have to record their mating call to be sure, and so far I haven’t heard a sound from this one. Since they are largely identical, call it either one for the sake of the image.

grey treefrog
The little bit of cottony fluff near the toe, by the way, is some form of leafhopper nymph, partially demonstrating the same trait as the mantis, only for this species, the eyes turn red at night; by day, they are very pale blue-white. I’ll come back later on with more detail pics of the species.

Other ways of getting the results you want

Al Denelsbeck

Every once in a while, you will get to hear the phrase, “other ways of knowing” – almost invariably, it will be in defense of some topic that is sorely lacking in demonstrable evidence or repeatable results. But this doesn’t matter, because science isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, since there are other ways of knowing. While, not surprisingly, it is used most often to defend religion (most especially religious revelation,) I have seen it also used to excuse astrology and psychic powers, and philosophers have even blurted it out as a rebuttal to the loathsome demon of empiricism. I’ve never been able to take it seriously, always considering it a blatant dodge, but I finally decided to see if there was a more rigorous definition than the common usage; to see if I was selling it short, in other words.

The first thing to note is, ‘knowing’ is clearly a wildly subjective term. While most people are likely to consider this to refer to information that we not only have confidence in, we can also use it to predict or explain something about our world, this is rarely what anyone is referring to when they use ‘other ways of knowing’ as their trump card. Like ‘Truth™,’ knowing seems to only refer to something self-validating, supportive of a pre-existing view. No one ever points to someone else holding a view counter to their own and concedes the argument to them because of other ways of knowing – it is, strangely enough, only used in a selfish way.

Which makes it a little surprising to me to find that there are courses that examine ‘other ways of knowing’ as a defined topic in the theory of knowledge. I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising; theology still exists after all, and some pretty esoteric and pointless schools of philosophy. But it does make it a little easier to post about a specific approach rather than anyone’s personal usage. It also demonstrates that people have tried too hard to justify it as a viable topic rather than consider whether it really is a viable topic.

Am I being harsh? Well, you can judge that for yourself, since four of the other ways of knowing are emotion, faith, intuition, and memory. Naturally, faith had to get in here, since that’s the prime thing that people try to justify in the face of stubbornly nonexistent evidence, but can we honestly consider it a way of knowing anything if whatever is ‘known’ is wildly different the world over? Is something known because it is defined by how someone grew up and who placed emphasis on it, or is it simply culturally defined as important? If we can consider faith as a way of knowing something, then knowing has virtually no meaning whatsoever – you might as well say I know I am a brilliant scientist. Should I list this on my résumé?

Even the other three – emotion, intuition, and memory – are well known as being ridiculously inaccurate. In fact, it is the very scientific method that these attempt to dodge which demonstrates this, as if the huge success of any gambling establishment wasn’t enough. Perhaps we’re not talking about gambler’s intuition, or failed relationships, or even the low accuracy of eyewitness testimony when we speak of ‘knowing.’ But then again, if we’re allowed to pick and choose only the bits that support the concept, are we establishing any value to other ways of knowing at all? The scientific method was created because of these, because what people ‘knew’ wasn’t really producing any accurate answers. Falsifiability and replicability are the foils of false confidence.

What about imagination, and the role it has played in theoretical sciences and sudden insights? Does this make it worthy of consideration? Certainly, it’s an important part of scientific endeavor, but again, let’s not count only the successes – for every breakthrough achieved by imagined scenarios, there are a few thousand failures, since we need to remember that every crackpot and garage inventor is also relying on imagination. As is every child when playing, and every creator of fiction or art, and so on. So, how much is this contributing to our base of knowledge, versus how much is going off on unrelated or unproductive tangents? And does it even count if every breakthrough that was achieved through imagination also had to be backed by solid evidence and repeatable results, the hallmark of science in the first place?

So we get the question of whether language is a ‘way of knowing,’ instead of considering the rather obvious influence it has on how we approach things. It only takes a moment’s thought to realize that culture, quite naturally, has an affect on how we learn, and what we consider important, but that’s a far cry from considering it a method of obtaining knowledge in the first place. And of course, since we’re purposefully avoiding the hoary old empirical methods in this pursuit, we must therefore ignore the rather telling evidence that those speaking Portuguese do not produce more, or less, knowledge or insights than those speaking Farsi.

We come to sense perception, and are now starting to delve into the realm of the ridiculous. Everything that we ever learn comes through our senses, so they cannot be considered any ‘other way of knowing,’ but the functional apparatus that permits us to do so in the first place. Even imagination is considered to be mere reconstruction of sensory experience; we are not believed to be able to imagine something that has not been experienced, and if you don’t believe that, imagine what it’s like to see in infrared without using any resemblance to any other form of vision that we have. Meanwhile, questions about whether our senses can be considered accurate or skewed are philosophical at best, and tackled long ago, with the utter lack of value established back then as well. Certainly, we do not perceive everything that exists, and almost certainly, much of what we do perceive is individually colored. But this is as valuable as whether a computer has produced the answer to a mathematical formula by using Windows or Mac OS as the operating system; who cares? Is the answer accurate? What more do you need?

Finally, we get to reason, and you might think I’d have a hard time arguing against this. Yet, reason is only as good as the information it uses as a base. A few hundred years ago, it was certainly reasonable to believe that lightning and volcanoes were evidence of a god’s wrath; they were impressive and violent and, of course, everyone knew gods existed. Look as hard as you like, and try to find the people who determined geothermal activity through reason, intuition, emotion, faith, imagination, or even sensory perception. Dig out the people (and, since other ways of knowing shouldn’t be sporadic or rare, there should be a lot of them) who announced the true nature of pathogen-borne illnesses before the age of microscopes and culture dishes.

In fact, if you’re looking at the info in those provided links (1, 2,) you might notice something: they’re not really demonstrating that any knowledge is being produced by these topics, but instead asking if we can consider these as contributing. This is not only philosophy, but weak philosophy at that; soliciting essays on opinions isn’t exactly establishing the viability of the approach, is it? Especially when ‘knowing’ isn’t even defined, nor any goal set. Despite the number of times I’ve heard the phrase, I have yet to see any example of knowledge gained in this manner, even when I’ve specifically inquired. One would think, if it were a recognized phenomena, an example isn’t too much to ask – a lot of them isn’t too much to ask.

This has been tackling the defined, structured definitions of ‘other ways of knowing,’ which is saying nothing at all about revelation, or extra-sensory perception, or cosmic connections, or drug-induced insights, or all of the other aspects people seize onto when they feel there must be something else. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but shouldn’t we expect knowledge gained through whatever means to be consistent, and extending beyond the personal experience? Shouldn’t the millions of psychedelic drug users who claim they have reached a different plane of consciousness be producing similar experiences? Shouldn’t religious revelation the world over be pointing to the same concept of gods, whatever they may be? Isn’t that how we actually define knowledge?

All of this has been ignoring a simple, yet wildly misunderstood fact: that the pursuit of science is not a structured ritual, but only a method to try and eliminate mistakes and human influence – exactly as noted above. There is nothing that prevents us from finding some previously unknown trait of humans, or clouds our judgment of such; if we can detect it ourselves, then ‘science’ can certainly find it. It’s not like it has to fit into a test tube or anything, and our methods have determined some pretty subtle and curious things. We discovered that numerous species can not only orient to the Earth’s magnetic field, they can read it to extremely fine degrees, something that we neither knew from experience nor expected. Many other species see portions of the electromagnetic spectrum (light) way outside of what humans can see, and possess abilities to detect distress in other species or the turbulence of the water. ‘Other ways of knowing’ are not, by any stretch of the imagination, ruled out by scientific investigation, or ignored, or even discouraged, and some of them have even been researched (and found lacking, imagine that.) It’s the scientific approach that lets us test the intuition, the imagination, the revelation or insight, to determine if they really are valuable. And, more often, shows us that they aren’t – for every right answer in science, numerous wrong answers have been ruled out by the same method. The ability to determine that something really is wrong, instead of just wondering or, even worse, ignoring the possibility wholesale, is also the strength of the scientific method.

Yet, there’s an even bigger disservice that ‘other ways of knowing’ inflicts upon us. As noted earlier, many of the potential other ways are known for their inaccuracy – something that is often poorly recognized by many people, when it’s not outright ignored. We have vast amounts of evidence that emotions, for instance, are simply mechanisms to provoke survival behavior – not at all a way of knowing, but a way of reacting, like the slap of a beaver’s tail onto the water when danger threatens. At times, we must ignore the emotional provocations, for the sake of polite company or traffic safety or avoiding a stay in prison. The supreme functionality of a brain that handles abstract thought and nuanced decisions is its ability to override emotions, to recognize that intuition is perhaps just wishful thinking, to see that faith is a cultural attempt to deny that evidence is thousands of times more dependable. Rather than finding facile, superficial ways to promote self-indulgence, we could be expending effort instead towards recognizing just how our thought processes work – and how they can go wrong. Might that be considered a bit more useful than self-gratification? I’d like to think so, anyway.

*    *    *    *    *

When looking up web resources for “other ways of knowing,” I came across this article. Lilian “Na’ia” Alessa has interpreted the phrase differently from the linked sources above, and indeed from most uses of it; her version, contrasting traditional Native American practices against the structure of “Western science,” is one of the few times I’ve seen the phrase used in a coherent and plausible manner. The point she makes is that her grandmother, lacking the benefit of any structured education, nonetheless possessed the skills to thrive in her environment.

I have no argument with this, but is this really another ‘way of knowing,’ or simply a culture clash? I haven’t run across anyone who’s ever said that people did not learn anything before the scientific method was adopted, or that current educational practices were the only ones that were effective. Alessa herself admits that her grandmother did not obtain her traditions through intuition or some kind of unknown ‘connection,’ but through the trial-and-error, long experience and observations that, in a more structured form, underlie ‘Western’ science itself (I perceive a certain snarkiness in her use of this compass distinction, but maybe I’m reading too much into it.)

Then, too, we must consider the other aspects found in the same culture, of personifying plants and the land and crediting amotken with the creation, as well as their belief that they have occupied the land since the start of time. While some of the rituals are undeniably useful, what are we to make of the lack of belief in amotken elsewhere in the world, or the significant evidence that the ancestors of the Salish entered this continent less than 20,000 years ago? How much accuracy is needed to consider something an effective ‘way of knowing?’ Because I have a special coin sitting on my desk that, for simple true/false questions, is correct 50% of the time.

But I can only determine this, of course, if I already ‘know’ what the correct answer should be through other means…

Blogging wasn’t in the cards

Al Denelsbeck

For anyone, should they actually exist, who has been stopping by and not finding any new posts, I apologize. On occasion, circumstances inhibit sitting down and working on posts, and this particular occasion was a move. We are now in a new house!

I take no credit for this whatsoever; it was all The Girlfriend’s accomplishment. Well, okay, that sounds like I didn’t even help with the move, which isn’t true at all, but what I mean by that is, it’s her house, and her finances that permitted it. She is quite pleased with it, and rightfully so. It’s in a considerably nicer neighborhood, not terribly far from the old place (which made moving a little easier,) but a lot more convenient to her work, and various useful shops. We will not be missing the old place, or the obnoxious neighbors, in any way at all.

And that goes for my own pursuits as well. I had actually planned to bring along a few of the mantises that had hatched back there, but found that a Japanese maple tree at the new place already plays host to a large number of Chinese mantises (got the Asian thing going on,) and I didn’t feel the need to introduce competition. The butterfly bush came along for transplant, along with the salvia plant and my almond tree, but the rosemary bush had grown too large to move, so we’ll have to start a new one here (and yes, we did get lots of cuttings to do this.)

Chinese mantis on Japanese maple
I was watching the almond tree with trepidation for the past few weeks, since the local white-tailed deer had a tendency to let it get fully leafed out before stripping more than half of the leaves away early in the morning; this is how they feed, browsing for tasty leaves or shoots but not killing off the provider, and then leaving it alone for a few weeks to replenish their food source before returning. My little tree, which had sprouted spontaneously from a discarded almond in the compost bin a few years back, had produced its first leaves in the spring and then been stripped several weeks ago. It had reproduced its foliage, and was due for a return visit; I figured it would get nailed right before the move, but the deer waited too long and I was able to transplant it intact.

The cats, it must be said, did not handle the move with feline grace; the more appropriate term is, “freaked out.” For a couple of days, they slunk around the new place like feral strays, jumping at every sound, and spending a lot of time deep in a closet. Eventually, they determined they were not intruding on someone else’s territory and could claim this as their own, and soon discovered the delight of stairs and a balcony overlooking the living room. A few days later when they were mellow, they were permitted to explore the screened-in back porch, which was all kinds of okay to them.

Little Girl, or is it Zoe? chilling in the window.
I, myself, am still recovering – my hands, feet, legs, and back took a beating, and of course I’m doing the typical post-move endeavor of trying to find where I packed this or that crucial thing. It doesn’t matter how organized you try to be, I think – Chaos will take over and make you dance to his discordant tune. I suspect I will get back into posting slowly, so for now I’ll just close with a small crab spider, genus Mecaphesa, that I shot during the final stages of packing. She measures 6mm across the tucked legs, so, not exactly an imposing specimen unless you’re tiny (or extremely arachnophobic.) I have spotted several interesting arthropods in the immediate vicinity, but so far have only taken the time to photograph the mantis above – I’ll try to amend that soon.

Mecaphesa crab spider in defensive posture

Near invisibility potion

Al Denelsbeck

Honeysuckle genitals
The other day I went out chasing pics again, and didn’t really snag much of merit. But while playing around with macro shots of honeysuckle flowers, I captured a few frames that illustrate a peculiar, and sometimes handy, photographic trait. It takes some explaining, so bear with me.

First, the illustration. These are two frames from almost exactly the same vantage point, with just a change of focus in between. The green stigma is in front of the yellow anthers bearing the pollen in both images. But as can be seen, it is rendered almost invisible in the right side, plainly semi-transparent.

composite image showing defocus transparency
How can this occur?

The first thing to remember is, when we look at something with our naked, or even demurely clad, eyes, we’re seeing through the tiny hole of our pupil. Photons that reflect from any surface all have to pass through this opening for us to see anything, and the size of the opening restricts both how many photons can come through, and from what angle. Objects reflect light not just towards us, but in all directions; most of it we simply do not see. And in the case of the stigma and anther, as illustrated in the top part of the image below, the stigma is sufficient to block most of our view of the anther.

Defocus transparency illustration
But a camera lens, and indeed many other lenses such as telescopes and binoculars, are different. They’re much larger than our pupils, so they capture a much greater percentage of the light reflecting from an object, everything that hits their front surface – properly focused, they take all of these photons, every path that meets the lens, and converge them back into a sharp image. The larger the lens surface (which usually means the ‘faster,’ or the greater the aperture,) the more light is gathered. This is why a 300mm f2.8 lens is so much larger than a 300mm f5.6.

This means that the green stigma may not necessarily block the view of the yellow anther, because the lens can also see past the stigma, to either side, above and below. While a portion of the view is blocked, not all of it is, so some of the light from the anther comes past. This gets focused down onto the film/sensor plane (shown in deep green.)

Yet, what about the green stigma? It’s still there, and still sending its own reflected light to the lens, right? True enough, but it’s out of focus, so the light paths do not converge back down into a sharp image; instead, the light is somewhat scattered, diffused over a greater area, while the light from the yellow anther is concentrated tightly (this pretty much defines the difference between unfocused and focused.) Light from the green stigma hits the film/sensor in the same place as light from the yellow anther, but the anther’s light is more concentrated, and overpowers the stigma’s. It’s not exactly transparency, it’s just that the object with the most light takes precedent.

This method works best when there is a large difference in focus (which usually translates as distance) between two subjects, and can be used to blur out a fence that blocks our view, for example. The higher the depth of field, of course, the weaker the effect, because the light from the green stigma would become more focused and concentrated. Since lenses are usually at maximum aperture while we’re framing our subject, only closing down to the desired shooting aperture after we trip the shutter, this can sometimes play against the macro photographer: when chasing subjects down among the plants, a leaf or stem can actually be directly between the camera and the chosen subject, but so far out of focus that it is virtually transparent to us through the viewfinder – only to burst into sharper focus and obliterate the subject when the shutter is tripped and the aperture closes down, re-concentrating the light from the leaf/stem. If the object is bright enough, even well out of focus it can throw a color cast across the subject, exactly as seen above.

Our eyes have lenses too, and the effect is exactly the same, but since they’re much smaller it is not as pronounced, and we tend to ignore it when it occurs. However, you can close one eye and hold something narrow like a toothpick vertically in your vision path while focused on something well past the toothpick, and see the same effect, just probably not to as high a transparency as the photo shows. Also, since we have two eyes, the other one may have a clearer view, and our brains can select which eye to give its attention to, so issues only arise on those rare occasions when either eye has a radically different view from the other, such as when we try to see into a narrow gap (especially when we want the depth-perception that two eyes provide.)

I have a page dedicated to explaining how and why aperture affects focus, if you want further information – just click here. It also explains some of the weird things that might occur, and why there is a limit to closing down aperture to increase depth of field.

I’m a dude

Al Denelsbeck

I had to wash off some things outside a short while ago, and while draining the hose, I set the sprayer for ‘mist’ and applied a liberal coating to grasses where I knew some of the praying mantises lived; I was rewarded with seeing one of them scamper up and begin drinking deeply from the water droplets adhering to the leaves. Of course, I trotted (it might have been a canter, come to think of it) inside myself and grabbed the camera. The recipient of my largesse, however, did not acquiesce to displaying this as I loomed nearby with the softbox rig.

There are at least three mantids that have moved to the dog fennel plants, however – this does not seem to have been the most advantageous action as they remain smaller than their brethren; either that, or there was another hatching that I remained unaware of. But since the one on the grasses appreciated the moisture, I brought out the misting bottle and heavily doused the areas on the dog fennel where the other mantids were out foraging. They appreciated this as much as the first, and eagerly sucked up what adhered to the leaves before the sun (which is quite bright and hot today) evaporated this windfall. Perhaps ‘windfall’ is not the right word here…

juvenile Chinese mantis gathering water
Seen here, one that had borne the full effect of the misting draws up water from its forelegs, having swept its eyes clear. If you don’t have a little misting bottle to carry in the camera bag, get one. Mine is from a purse-sized Jheri Curl, after I used the product up keeping my ‘fro dashing. (The true story is, I went to the drugstore specifically to find a misting bottle for photographic purposes, but everything they had was too big for the camera bag – until I spotted a clearance bin on the way out with items for a buck; that was fifteen years ago, and I still use that mister.)

Lest you think the mantis might not have appreciated this soaking, I wish to point out that not only do they suffer much worse than this during downpours and even fog, any of them could have easily dodged deeper into the dog fennel had they felt the urge – they certainly do it often enough as I lean in for a nice portrait. They get most of their fluids from overnight dew, and it did hit the dewpoint last night, but they still took advantage of the misting I provided, so, cool!

Not deep

Al Denelsbeck

I’m still here, and still largely busy – it’s going to be a lean posting month, but I’ll still try to put something up from time to time.

[“From time to time” – isn’t that a stupid phrase? Who makes these things up, and did they have any think what word good is?]

A few days back we received torrential rain, which is not to say this is any more remarkable than the rest of the country, but only as a lead-in, since it spurred me to go down to the river. I’ve seen plenty of evidence that it rises dramatically, yet never been down there to witness it firsthand, so I stopped down briefly the morning after the deluge. Below is a comparison composite image, the left side taken a few years ago but representative of typical conditions, while the right is the level Friday morning.

river depth comparison
It’s the same boulder in the middle of both pics, except one is seen aiming downstream while the other shooting across from the small point seen in the former. I wasn’t going to go wading in the river that day.

You can see how the river is flooding the banks in the right image, and as I stood there, a largish snapping turtle appeared between the tree and I, struggling desperately to gain a foothold on the flooded bank before vanishing back into the torrent; I had barely raised the camera and didn’t even lock focus before it was gone.

flooded footpathThis is part of the path that winds alongside the river, only about 20 cm under water at this point so I was still able to follow it – I spend the non-winter months in waterproof sandals specifically for conditions like this, because I think it’s silly to let a little water block me from something interesting. My feet are so used to this that I rarely notice the water temperature at all, unless it gets really extreme. [An example of this was when my dad visited one winter and we went out to the Outer Banks. He snagged a favorite and expensive fishing lure on something not far offshore, while casting in Croatan Sound off Roanoke Island, and I waded in barefoot to try and retrieve it – the water temperature did not exceed 4°c (40°f.) It took two attempts and became pretty painful, turning my lower legs beet red, but I got the lure and recovered quickly. I still find the people who go swimming in freezing weather to be morons, though.]

New, untouched silt and debris were distributed onto the path at higher elevations than this as well, indicating that the water level had been at least a half-meter higher, and probably more like a meter, sometime the previous night. It’s difficult to predict how hard this is on the local animal life; I know beavers often live in hollows in the banks, and water snakes are common, but both of these need air and can be drowned in their dens if the water level traps them within. Animals such as deer than venture into the rapids can easily be swept away, and the debris that is carried can be pretty dangerous even to animals that can handle the turbulent water.

There’s not much else going on. I haven’t been tackling any philosophical ideas recently, and I have a number of posts in draft form but nothing I feel too motivated to finish. It goes that way sometimes, and while I occasionally feel bad for not putting up new content, I also made up my mind long ago not to post for the sake of posting (whether I’m succeeding in that resolve remains to be seen, I suppose.)

Even the arthropods have been fairly scarce. The mantids dispersed quickly throughout the yard, and I occasionally spot one but they’re still shy about close contact; at their size, anything that shows detail at all is close contact, so good shots are tricky.

One exception is a variety of treehopper that has descended on the erupting dog fennel plants. I had to check just now to determine what the difference was between treehopper and leafhopper; basically, treehoppers look like thorns while leafhoppers look like buds or seeds. I also had to add both words to my computer’s dictionary so it would stop highlighting them as misspelled; it seems to think either should be two separate words, or hyphenated at least.

Entylia carinata
Entylia carinata and stem damageThis is an Entylia carinata, no apparent common name, and a significant number appeared on the plants overnight it seems. They run about 5mm in length, and have a tendency (like all ‘hoppers) to scuttle around to the back side of the stem when someone leans close, so it took quite a few tries to get a nice shot. The pic at right, in fact, is one I consider a ‘miss’ except for one thing: I’m pretty sure the discoloration of the plant stem beneath the treehopper is from the damage that they do while sucking out the sap. The amount of nutrients they extract from the sap is minimal, so they draw a lot and process it through their systems pretty quickly, excreting the rest as ‘dew’ that is often harvested by ants. No ants were taking advantage of these, however, even though the species is known as a favorite of them. I’ll keep my eyes open, since while I have a few images of ants farming leafhoppers and aphids, I’d still like some more detailed examples.

I’ll close, despite my disparaging comments above, with a mantis image. It might seem strange, but different individual insects can display different ‘personalities,’ or to be more accurate, varying responses to the same stimulus. What this means is some of the mantids from the same hatching are quite spooky and go for cover if I make the wrong move, while at least one other seems pretty tolerant of me leaning close with the camera and flash/softbox rig. Since this one has moved to a patch of some ornamental grass next to the rosemary bush, I am confident that I’m encountering the same individual, who has now taken on a more distinctive green hue. While larger, this one is still only 20 mm in overall length, so you can imagine how small the head is. In contrast, the sibling who has moved to the dog fennel plants is far more circumspect, and hasn’t allowed any decent images at all, much less a menacing portrait of this nature.
Chinese mantis portrait

Spoke too soon

Al Denelsbeck

Looking at the nest box only minutes ago, and it appeared the parents were still trying to feed their nonexistent young, and so I decided to see if the snake was still present. There was a small surprise waiting therein.

surviving bluebird fledgling
Go back down and look at that other image. Do you see any hint of this guy in there? Yeah, me neither, through multiple frames too. But it did explain why I thought I’d heard a peep while outside the nest box, shining my flashlight through the opening – after finding nothing but the snake, I put it down to coming from the mother nearby. Somewhere under or among those coils, however, sat this little sprog, apparently a helping the snake couldn’t stomach. Either that or he fought his way out…

The Girlfriend’s gonna be pissed

Al Denelsbeck

One of the bluebird boxes has been playing host to a new family of eastern bluebirds (Sialia sialis) this spring, but I’ve been too busy to do much about it. Still, I was trying to keep an eye on it to possibly catch the emergence of the fledged youngsters, something I’ve missed every time previously. Many birds will bail the nest but spend time on the ground and low branches, learning how to get control of their flight surfaces, but bluebirds apparently get through this stage pretty quickly, like within hours at the most. So I took a peek in the nest box this morning to see how well their feathers were developed, to determine if I should try to set up a camera trap. What the flashlight revealed was that I needn’t bother with this brood any more.

black rat snake coiled in bluebird box
That’s a black rat snake (Elaphe obsoleta obsoleta,) not a terribly big one as far as they go – while they can reach two meters or so in length, I’m guessing from the size of the head that this one is closer to one meter. It had consumed all of the bluebird fledglings, and was crassly using the box as a safe haven to digest its meal. It was well aware of me opening the box for the pics, and was simply holding still in the hopes that I’d go away.

CreatureOfHabitSome of this is perhaps our fault. We’d placed two nest boxes on stumps that had once been huge bushes, which the landlord’s inept assistants had hacked down to some strange modern sculptures – I suspect they misinterpreted their instructions, since the pampas grass in the yard needs to be cut back to nothing each winter. It’s a grass, it grows back; the bushes didn’t. But it means the nest boxes were placed lower to the ground on a handy climbing surface, and black rat snakes are serious climbers.

The adults were definitely confused by this development. They chattered quite a lot more than I usually hear them, and made repeated attempts to enter the box, usually hovering just outside for a few moments – you can even see this one is bearing food. They had to be aware that there was a snake in the box, and they were in as much danger as their young, but it hadn’t overcome their feeding instincts. They don’t have a lot of time to get over this; snakes can consume a lot of food when they want to, letting it cover them for days, weeks, or even months at a time, and if this one decides it can squeeze in an adult, it only has to strike while one of them peeks into the box again.

Had I discovered the snake before it found the young, I might have intervened, moving it to another location – or maybe not; this is how nature plays the game after all. But at this point I’m just leaving the situation as is – another thing The Girlfriend might be displeased with, since she’s not fond of snakes. Yet the damage is already done and the snake has likely lived in the area for at least a couple of years, judging from its size.

As a quick note, if you really want to avoid this fate for any bluebird boxes you erect, about the best you can do is use a freestanding pole, at least 150 cm (five feet) in height, with a squirrel collar well beneath the box. Just about anything else is able to be circumvented by snakes. Or you can take it all as it comes, circle of life and all that – predators routinely thin out the bird populations, and this has been going on for a long time. Our personal feelings towards cute birds and evil snakes isn’t going to improve on it at all, and is in fact pretty self-centered.

Update: Appearances can be deceiving.

Just because, part 16

Al Denelsbeck

dew on redbud leavesA couple of pics from early yesterday morning, while it was cool and humid – I was going to put these up last evening but the internet went down. I haven’t been posting much, and this is likely to continue for a while, but I had the chance to chase a few images in the morning. I made an attempt to spot some of the juvenile mantids, since they’re photogenic when bespeckled with dew, but I suspect it got a little too cold for them – the only insects I found were a few elaborate leafhoppers on the dog fennel.

Due to the number of trees in the area, few parts of the yard get any real light from early sunrise – it’s mostly narrow beams peeking briefly through the branches. The redbud tree would only have a handful of leaves backlit by the sun for just a minute or so at a time, forcing me to select a composition quickly. Doing this handheld meant a large aperture and thus short depth; a smaller aperture to increase depth would have required a tripod, and by the time everything was framed up the light would have moved on. I could only have one-half of the leaf in focus at a time, because of the faint V-fold shape, but found one catching the sun through the burden of dew. I confess that this is actually a composite image – the one frame I got with ideal focus had clipped the edge off the background leaf, due to my slight change in position, so I dubbed in a wider perspective from another frame.

Below, a dramatic shot catching the sun shining brightly on a dandelion tuft – the exposure meter compensated for the sunlight coming directly into the lens and rendered the bloom moodily dark, when in reality it was the brightest spot in the yard. I liked the peculiar effect around the light – while the impression is that this is the sun itself, it’s actually the glare from multiple narrow beams peeking through the distant foliage, rendered way out of focus, thus the edge effects. The little solar flare visible at top, however, is either a smear on the lens that I hadn’t spotted, or the vapor of the dew itself evaporating. We’ll go with the latter, because it’s more interesting and doesn’t indicate that I’ve been neglecting my lens cleaning…
DandySunrise

Telegraph Road (live of course)

Al Denelsbeck

Dire Straits was a band that, it’s safe to say, forged their own way right from the start. I’ve seen numerous people attempt to define their style, with little agreement, and I’m not even going to try; they adopted whatever style suited their song and goals, at times introducing something inherently recognizable, while at others they borrowed and combined freely. Yet, they never created discord in their compositions.

I have a pet loathing of Paul McCartney’s “Live and Let Die,” which tried to combine several different styles and only succeeded in creating confusing slop, a godawful mess of a song (and I suspect it is only through The Beatles overhyped reputation that it became as successful as it did – anyone else would have bombed out with that train wreck.) But in contrast, the song I’m featuring here routinely changes tempo, mood, and style, fluently and expressively, a river that crashes through the rocks and drifts through placid pools, only to tumble down a cascade again. It tells a tale of urban development, from wilderness to industrial giant to near ghost town; it is, in fact, about Detroit, but could represent just about any once-proud city left behind by a shifting economy (I personally thought it was about England’s fading industrial centers, a la The Full Monty – close enough.)

Mark Knopfler, the lead singer and guitarist, does not have a special voice – it’s throaty and coarse, yet he knows just how to use it. But his real strength is as a composer, and most especially his ability to rip off the most elaborate guitar riffs. The music industry is filled with people who play guitar with their spine, thrashing their heads up and down in an attempt to make Pete Townshend look low-key (I remember seeing a live band where the lead guitarist was in perpetual danger of slamming the head of his instrument against the stage – without really producing anything special from the effort.) Knopfler, in contrast, is the most minimalist guitarist I’ve ever seen, hands barely moving as his fingertips drill out complicated melodies worthy of a symphony, virtually free of the electronic effects so prevalent from electric guitar bands. One of the traits I most admired from the eighties was the ability for some bands to blend together numerous instruments, complimenting each other, without feeling the need to bury the sound in feedback and sustain; the result is a blend of subtleties, no sound taking dominance, but all of them contributing to the feel like a complicated recipe.

This particular song, however, gets most of its feel from the keyboardist, Alan Clark; Knopfler doesn’t really kick it off until late in the set. This version is live at Hammersmith Odeon in London in 1983, the same recording (with a slight tweak in mix) later issued on the Money For Nothing compilation album, and Clark brings us back in for the encore set with a slightly haunting, flutelike melody just barely heard over the audience, enormously effective in getting their attention. Throughout the song, the keyboards maintain the mood and carry us through the transitions, often delicately, always richly and with just the right amount of detail, not lost under the crash of other sounds – at least until the latter instrumental.

Credit where it’s due: much of the effect comes from quality work on the sound mixing boards, where the relative strengths of any particular instrument are carefully balanced and blended. Note how both Knopfler’s guitar and Clark’s electric piano taper off together at times, fading into the distance, but later in the song the guitar takes precedent and the keyboards only make the barest appearance – by that time, the song has evolved into a dramatic concert closer. Quite simply, this is how you do it:

Another major selling point for Dire Straits, as far as I’m concerned, is their emphasis on lyrics with more bite to them – sometimes satirical, sometimes insightful, almost always with more heft than the majority of pop songs… with the possible exception of “The Bug,” which is pretty lackluster lyrically, but carried extraordinarily well by the music. Okay, “Calling Elvis” is phoned in as well, but check out “My Parties” and “Ticket to Heaven” for their commentary on consumerism and televangelists, and “The Man’s Too Strong” for perhaps the best use of Knopfler’s voice.

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