Yes, of course I had to post today, but I also had to post a few images from the other day, since today is grey and rainy. So most of what you’ll see here is from Tuesday’s trip over to a botanical garden.
You don’t need me to tell you this if you spend any time online at all, because plenty of other sites just love throwing out trivia of this nature, but it’s the equinox today, the day when daylight and nightdark hours are the same length, and this occurs at 6:45 PM. Wait, what? The sunlit and sunbarren hours are the same, only at 6:45? What form of sorcery is this? But no, it simply depends on what definition of equinox you’re using. The seasonal changes and the variable daylight hours are both due to the tilt of the Earth’s axis, in relation to its orbital plane around the sun, and over the course of a year this makes the sun appear to reach higher or lower into the sky at celestial noon (which is rarely 12 o’clock, and why the hell are we still using such an arcane word as, “o’clock?”) Today, the Earth’s orbit hits the point where the sun appears directly overhead at the equator, which serves to make those bright and dark hours match up, but the precise point when it is nice and aligned is 22:45 UTC, or ‘Greenwich’ time, which is 6:45 PM here on the east coast in Daylight Saving Time. Are you getting the impression of how goofy our system of time is? Yeah, I’m one of those who’s firmly in support of the entire world switching to UTC and having done with it. Many people think this would be confusing – “That would mean the sun rises at 11 AM!” – but so what? They’re just numbers, and the sun rises at a different time every day anyway. If you take your lunch break at 5 PM according to the clock, what difference does it make if it’s still midday to you?
Many also consider this the first day of spring, which is also nonsense – call it whatever you want, or perhaps something appropriate to the present weather. It may look like spring around here, but further north it’s got some time to go yet, and down south there might seem to be no winter at all anyway. What it is, however, is now warm enough that the birds are nesting and the reptiles are stirring, as shown by these sliders basking on the only log they could find in the pond. The exact species is debatable – yellow-bellied sliders (Trachemys scripta scripta) are native to this area, but their close cousin the red-eared slider (Trachemys scripta elegans) probably don’t naturally reach this far north. However, they are/were popular as pets, which is often enough to introduce them to a non-native habitat, and they can easily live in the same conditions and even interbreed with their yellow-bellied cousins. The red ear-mark can easily be seen on two of these at least, so there might be a mix of species in this image.
Now, admittedly it’s cheating a little to go to a botanical garden and post about signs of spring, since so many of the flowers are tended in greenhouses and planted outside as they approach their peak display, but it’s true enough that many of these would be appearing now anyway. I avoided the wider shots that would show the retaining walls, planters, and other manmade stuff, plus I like going in for close details anyway. Only a small percentage of the myriad flower species had identifying plaques, so I can’t provide definitive ID, but I suspect these are crocuses. Whatever, they present a great mix of colors.
Another slider, one that wasn’t being cooperative because it was too cooperative. You see, I spotted this specimen basking, and decided to do some work with a student on approaches and stalking, practicing how to get closer without spooking the wildlife away. Only, this turtle was so mellow that it never moved at all, even with several examples of behavior that would send the average terrapin scrambling for deep water. So it wasn’t very good practice.
But since it was going to sit there like a bump on a log (or rock, in this case,) I did my own extreme closeups, including a reflection portrait. I was admittedly using a long lens for this and not the macro, so I wasn’t anywhere near as close as these imply, but I was still much closer than I had any right to be. You have to appreciate the irony, though, of encountering hundreds of animals over the years which spooked long before I could ever get a decent image, and then wanting to demonstrate how tricky it is to approach many species and finding one that couldn’t be assed to move at all…
Okay, there’s something curious going on here. I’m probably not alone in considering these a brilliant purple in color, but let’s stop and take a close look. The petals actually run the spectrum from white down to a deep purple only at the very tips, and I suspect it’s this gradient that makes us believe the colors are so rich (helped, perhaps, but the contrasting orange sex organs in the center, and certainly by the surrounding green.) The drying blossom to the right is a deeper color, but not as vibrant in appearance – it’s not the color that’s cluing us in. Maybe it’s just me…
This one I can identify, because the ID plaque was present, and if I’m interpreting it correctly it’s a crossbred plum, Prunus cerasifera ‘Atropurpurea’ x Prunus mume – say that in Hogwarts and something bad will happen (like that’s unusual.) Almost immediately after getting this image, a group of students passing by excitedly directed my attention to the snake at my feet, and on glancing down I found an unimposing brown snake slithering determinedly across my sandal. I think they expected me to react in shock or something, but I just said, “Ah, a brown snake,” and tried to pick it up – seeing me coming, however, it panicked and shot for cover in the pine straw. With any luck, the blasé reaction might have impressed on some of the students how little risk snakes actually impose. I’m not sure my reaction would have been any different had it been a copperhead, the only venomous snake in the region, except that I wouldn’t have tried to pick it up. Doing anything drastic would be more likely to provoke a defensive strike than simply holding still and letting it go its merry way.
I close with the only photo from today, expressing the conditions pretty well. These are the blossoms of a ‘Mountain Snow’ pieris bush, one that we purchased the other day to plant in the backyard because it does well in the shade, which pretty much describes the backyard. It flowers in early spring (so, hah! It must be spring then!) and I wanted to capture the clusters of blooms before they all turned brown and vanished, since I won’t get the opportunity again until next year. While I want things that will serve as a good backdrop and attract insects and/or birds, The Girlfriend isn’t all that concerned with arthropod activity, somehow, concentrating instead on plants that will look nice and do well in our conditions. Hopefully, we’ve got some things that will serve both purposes – we’ll see how it goes.
Now, some perspective. You’re not going to see anything like that image above when you go out to look at Orion – what you’re going to see will look much more like the photo at right. Nebulae are faint sky objects, and only a handful are visible without help in the best of viewing conditions. More specifically, most details won’t even show at all without filters designed to select only the narrow bands of emissions that they produce (like, as that page says, hydrogen alpha.) So the APOD image is “shopped,” a composite of visible light and very selective wavelengths captured through long exposures.
Either way, that photo was obtained too, though the lizard’s position atop the thick rib of the leaf reduced the distinction of the shadow – it really needs the image above to explain what it is you’re seeing. I actually waited to see if the anole would provide me with a better shadow pose, or would even launch itself after a leaf-footed bug that was walking along the same leaf (and provided its own silhouette images,) but the reptile was more interested in basking, possibly because the October nights were pretty chilly.
Don’t ask me what this flower is – it’s a whopping 5mm across from tip to tip, and I shamelessly added the ‘dew’ with a misting bottle since we’re still a ways off from those conditions. This was actually growing in the pot with my salvia plant, and I’ve photographed them before but still haven’t determined the species.
Betrayed by its eyes, this unidentified spider at least gave me more of an interesting pose when I went in close – most just remained in place on the ground as if pinned on display. The reflection must come from a very narrow angle between light and receiver (which means your eye, or the camera lens,) so the reflection effect is not visible in the image, and in fact very hard to get when close enough to see the details of the spider at all. A bright light may show a starburst of blue-green down on the ground (and occasionally on weeds, tree trunks, overhead branches, and even out onto the water,) a few meters away, which will disappear as you draw closer. Usually, this is just because the reflection angle has gotten too great, and keeping an eye on that spot will often reveal the spider itself, sometimes much smaller than the brightness of the reflection seemed to indicate. Last night, I saw dozens, with some patches of ground showing a half-dozen at the same time. The one seen here was the size of my little fingernail, and soon ducked for cover, but I also spotted a few of the fishing spiders, one at a significant distance of six meters or so (confirmed with a 400mm lens.)
Here, another plays it cool while we were nearby, refusing to reveal its presence any more than it has, which isn’t much. Chorus frogs are quite small, perhaps 5 cm in length, and are easily mistaken for just about anything else in the water. I was only able to spot this one by knowing it would be there.
Eggs could be found as well, but only by looking very closely – the bi-colored center of these aren’t much larger than the head of a pin, and that’s pine straw that they’re attached to. Since the botanical garden is much closer to where I live now than last year, I might be able to keep an eye on the development of these – we’ll see. I had also intended to have a pond established on the property by now, but that project hasn’t gone well at all this winter, so it’s unlikely I’ll have the easy access to aquatic subjects that I’d planned to have. The best I can say is watch this space to see what pops up.
There still isn’t much growing yet, but there were a few trout lilies (Erythronium americanum) peeking out. Not 10 cm high and extremely subtle when viewed from above, I had to get down on my knees, bent almost until my ear touched the ground, to get the details of the flower. This isn’t an old or deformed one – they grow looped over like that, which makes me wonder why, and what kind of pollinator it attracts. Perhaps they’re actually bioluminescent, and serve as kind of a street light for field mice with loose morals to hang around beneath…
These images are out of chronological order, and it shames me mightily, I admit it, but they worked better in the layout this way (unless you’re using a smutphone or some other toy to view this site, in which case all bets are off.) I shot this one first, when the reptile was perched more out in the open, and obtained the one above while it had started venturing out but was still utilizing the camouflaging and obscuring fronds of the palmlike thing – I really have to determine the species, because that particular plant has appeared in a lot of my images.
This image was taken almost exactly a year ago (March 11 to be precise,) as some early bulbs were bursting forth. A week later, another 
These are just a few more images that I obtained in the past week, that I didn’t try to jam into the previous post. Instead, I’m jamming them in here!
At the same pond, a pair of ubiquitous Canada geese (Branta canadensis) paused among the reflections of the trees, and I zoomed out and shot vertically to use the reflections, doing that fartsy thing again in abject denial of my lack of artistic skills or reverence. It’s a more complicated shot than I prefer, but you take what you can get when you’re out chasing pics, and keep the concept of better conditions in mind so you can recognize them when they occur (or better, change position or timing to help produce them.)
This was one of the images taken on the River Walk, just trying to do something with the lack of compelling subjects in winter. The background is the river itself, crashing over a log and throwing reflections of the bright sun. Well out-of-focus with, again, that short depth-of-field (wide aperture, in this case f4,) the sparkles became soft balls to frame the simple subject of the dried weed. Only a very narrow angle would produce this effect, and I recommend taking several images with infinitesimal shifts, because the placement of those background globes will vary as the water dances, and cannot be predicted – some will produce a good frame, some will clash or just get messy. The sun is in a direct line with the camera though well above the angle of view, the only way the reflections will be seen, but also backlighting the weeds so they aren’t just silhouettes. A lens hood is a good idea in these circumstances.
And finally, an image from today, one that I shamelessly (and unrepentantly) staged. The snow had since melted before the emerging daffodils (I think – I could be wrong about the species) had gotten this high, so I got a few shovels of the iceberg mentioned in the previous post, left over from digging out the car, and dumped it into the frame in choice locations. This both broke up the background in a more appealing way than the monotonous pine needles, and expressed the time of year that such flowers appear. Thus, while it is not strictly ‘as found,’ it is still representative and expressive, not much of a gross manipulation – you can, of course, form your own opinion (no matter how wrong it might be.) By noon, the nearby trees cast the flowers into shadow for the remainder of the day, so this isn’t exactly crucial timing, but I missed my opportunity for this yesterday by being busy with other things.
The snow from last week was still present when Monday rolled around, bright, sunny, and topping 15°c (60°f,) and a student wanted to take advantage of this, so we hit a new walking trail not far away, the River Walk in Hillsborough. Enough people had been walking it earlier that the snow was packed down in footprints, having become ice and thus making portions of it a little treacherous. However, the sunlight on the asphalt was eradicating it quickly, and thus only the shady portions and some of the wooden boardwalk sections still bore ice by our return trip. It’s also amusing to get into snowball fights when out without even a jacket (completely close the camera bag first. And are you carrying a towel within? Why not? Douglas Adams is displeased with you.)
The temperature stayed unseasonably warm well into the night, with a full moon shining down, and I realized I might not have conditions like this again for a while, abruptly deciding to take advantage of it. I knew the first student mentioned above was wanting to do night exposures, so I contacted him and he was game, and we went down to the same spot on the river that I 
These hibiscus flowers were photographed during the trip to Sylvan Heights Bird Park that I talk about