It’s all cycles or something

August 7, 2025 Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

It’s been interesting living right on the edge of an ecosystem, and I know that makes little sense because we’re all within an ecosystem no matter what, but what I mean is, we can observe the behavior of the wildlife that uses the ponds throughout the year, at all times of the day and night, and so patterns emerge. We have yet to determine how regular they are, but we see shifts going on.

This morning we saw the arrival of a great blue heron (Ardea herodias) for the first time in weeks, which also made me realize that the green heron has not been around either. I understand this for the most part, since the shielding of the water’s surface by the duckweed and cow lilies makes it nigh impossible for fishing birds to actually see prey, plus the fact that nothing larger than minnows are within the main pond in the first place. But I took advantage of the visit all the same; the heron seemed wary and I didn’t try to get closer and chance scaring it off.

I shot a bit wider here for context. It’s hard to see clearly, but to the left is a flat patch of open (though obscured) water near some trees, and this is actually the narrow channel between the main pond and The Bayou; the kayak fits through behind the two thin trees close together, between them and the tree with the dark foliage behind them.

Last night we left the light over the kitchen sink on overnight, since a cluster of at least six tiny juvenile green treefrogs (Dryophytes cinereus,) none of them bigger than a finger joint, were using the window as a hunting ground. I missed the shot where four of them were all on the same small pane of glass, but at least did a handful of frames as they scampered about enthusiastically.

It would be a nicer portrait if it wasn’t as filthy (the frog or the glass,) but whatcha gonna do? Okay, sure, clean the glass inside and out while they’re not there during the day, if you’re anal about it, but the frogs are still going to be ratty since they’re mildly sticky at the best of times – they’re kids.

By the way, the ruckus with the grey treefrogs that I mentioned last night? It went on the entire time that I was recording, and is interspersed liberally with the voiceover track – the only saving grace to this is that the natural background noises of the video clips has been retained too, so the frogs just kind of blend in unless you know the species well enough to know that you shouldn’t be hearing them this perpetually (or at all) during the day. I’ll tell you how bad it was: I always start recording with 4-6 seconds of silence for the noise reduction filter, to have a baseline of the ‘microphone hiss’ to be deleted from the track, and couldn’t actually achieve four seconds of silence. Little bastards. The noise gate function, which removes sounds under a certain decibel threshold (like intakes of breath) works fine – for periods of otherwise silence. So when I’m not talking, all is quiet, but every time I’m speaking I have a background of breeks punctuating every sentence or two. You’ll hear it tomorrow, since I saved the video for the Estate Find of course.

It hasn’t rained for days…

August 6, 2025August 6, 2025 Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

… but now that I have some serious video that I need a voiceover for, it’s raining. We did this on the last one, didn’t we?

Literally a meter from the door

Yes, it’s/they’re more likely female I think, but whatever. Just shut up.

Actually, the white thing is a bucket catching rainbarrel overflow, so I popped the second one into it and carried them both down into the yard well away from my door – we’ll see if this works…

* * *

EDIT: No, it did not work – before I even finished this post, they abandoned the bucket and crossed the yard to get back to the rainbarrel. I mean, we’ve had eggs and tadpoles in the same buckets, they seem to believe they’re fine for such purposes, but noooo, they gotta have the rainbarrel as a perch while audio is being recorded. Dumbasses, nobody ever listens to these, it’s not your ticket to fame…

Some night finds

August 6, 2025 Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

Just a couple of things found while poking around at night, nothing earth-shaking.

The orphaned white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) fawns were mentioned in the previous post, and we found that they are not only regular visitors, they sleep over from time to time. These were taken from the vicinity of the door to Walkabout Studios.

Notably, this is not with the long lens, but the 18-135 at 135mm – they were perhaps a little over ten meters away, and likely confused by the headlamp since they normally don’t allow even a slightly close approach. The grazing one even required me to make several distinct noises just to get it to look up.

Focus is only by the reflections of their eyes in the viewfinder, so it’s not precise, plus I was shooting wide open at f5.6 so depth-of-field isn’t there either. Still, they remained without fleeing, even when they prevented me from checking the denizens of the various Japanese maple trees that evening, including the one at the edge of the frames here.

I could poke around out front, though, and made another discovery.

I was wondering who cropped the occasional flower heads from the orange milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa,) stupidly never thinking of it being a caterpillar – I kept believing the deer were doing it, and have been routinely treating this cluster of plants with deer repellent. But this is exactly what the flowers are here for, since this is the larva of a monarch (Danaus plexippus,) the species we were hoping to attract.

We purchased these flowers a couple of months ago and they seem to be doing fine. Hopefully they’ll go to seed, but either way, we may be adding a lot more – doing our part to help combat the monarch decline. With luck, this larva will make a chrysalis on the plant or nearby, so I can monitor it.

By the way, those bright contrasting colors (for both the larvae and the adults) are indeed aposematic, “keepaway” warnings to predators, since the species is toxic to eat – and they get their toxicity directly from these plants. Well, not this patch specifically, but the milkweed family in general.

I looked, by the way, and this was the only specimen that I found, which is curious, but might only mean that I’m terrible at spotting them.

And one that wasn’t hard to spot, despite being minuscule.

The black knight butterfly bush (Buddleja davidii) that came with us from the old place absolutely exploded this season, as did the almond tree – both have doubled their mass since transplanting, approving heartily of the conditions here. We made a small mistake with this one, in that we didn’t know there was a thriving calla lily plant right next to it until it bloomed this spring, and they’ve been fighting for the same space. But the butterfly bush is doing its job in attracting not just the pollinators, but the predators of pollinators, including this tiny crab spider (Family Thomisidae.) I’m not sure it could have a more contrasting coloration against these blooms, but whatever – it usually sits nestled down between the blossoms anyway. I’d have to look very carefully, but the only pollinators that I’ve seen at these flowers are far too massive to serve as food for this guy, though presumably it knows what its doing, and this is far from the first time that I’ve seen tiny crab spiders on the plants.

That’s all for now, but I have a ton of video clips to edit for this week’s Estate Find, and I should get another post or three in before then.

Estate Find XXXI

August 1, 2025July 31, 2025 Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

Falling back on my ‘safety’ choice this week, since nothing exciting or unique presented itself, even when I went out looking. I might have had some lightning, had it not started raining just as I was heading out.

After spotting a very young fawn on the property some weeks back, we saw no young deer at all, though we suspected that at least one of the deer visiting for the corn was a parent with her fawn stashed away safely somewhere until it was old enough to be weaned. Yet we went for quite a while with no sign of any young’uns, then a singular appearance with mom, and then nothing. Until about a week ago.

These are, naturally, white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus,) and there were actually two fawns, but of course one of them wandered out of my ability to frame them together as soon as the camera was in hand. As alert as they appear here though, they weren’t very concerned with my presence up on the deck, and soon continued foraging; I even missed one of them attempting to nurse with mom discouraging it.

After a few minutes, I did something incautious and the fawns spooked, bounding away for only a short distance, probably discouraged from this paranoid behavior by mom who was still foraging industriously. They regrouped in another portion of the lawn (a term I use loosely since we let the backyard go unchecked.)

Actually, to get them all looking up simultaneously, I had to make several whistles and clicks until they got too curious, otherwise I always had at least one with its nose buried in the tall grasses. And again, this didn’t last long.

I’m not 100% sure of the actions of the one fawn here; while too many people would claim it was going for a kiss, I suspect it was trying to sample what mom was eating, which she did not oblige. The fawns’ behavior was split between a certain air of independence, sometimes wandering quite far from mom, and the typical neediness of a juvenile. Someone that knows deer better than I could potentially use this to pin down their age.

Speaking with a neighbor recently (okay, texting,) we found that she had a couple of orphaned fawns visiting her backyard regularly, believing that the mother had been hit by a car and died off the back of her property. We might have seen one of them a little earlier, since a lone fawn had come by to forage among the ducks’ corn.

This one was clearly larger and thus older than the pair still with their mother, the spots fading away. We knew enough about their habits to know that they don’t go independent that quickly, tending to stick together at least until breeding season in the winter, so we’d wondered about mom. There’s no easy way to tell them apart, save for a young adult doe visiting over the winter that had different enough coloration to distinguish her from others. Despite their overly-generic appearance, we’ll still try to monitor them as best we can.

By the way, this was written a few hours ahead of posting, so the photos were uploaded in July and thus beat the previous record by (at least) four images. I know you’re as excited as I am…

Last chance for July

July 31, 2025July 31, 2025 Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

It’s that time of the month again – you have until midnight to get what you need from July, because after that it’s gone. We tried to warn you…

And that means it’s end-of-the-month abstract time, though I think I’m abusing the definition of that word again. But here it is anyway, free of charge, so file your complaints appropriately.

After one of the heavy overnight downpours (which we still did not receive enough of,) the morning was sunny but drippy, and the sun reflecting from this raindrop caught my attention, which I then exploited with a small aperture to get the starburst. With the gap between the leaves, it has a kind of magical, E.T. vibe to it. Or at least it does to me – you derive what you will from it.

That’s the more abstract one. The less abstract one, that I like a lot better, is this:

Certainly more scenic than abstract, but the sunbeams in the morning haze/fog were doing their thing, and I maneuvered to get the sun peeking through. I like the impression that it gives, which is a bit inaccurate from what the backyard really looks like, and that’s fun when you can accomplish it.

I noticed before starting this post that, with only four more photos uploaded this month, we would tie with the highest number ever uploaded in July, which is pretty good considering how slow it was at times. So here are the other two necessary, from the World Snake Day trip that netted no snakes.

Again, more scenic than abstract, even with a little creative cropping, but I like it when vistas become so simplistic – it’s actually hard to accomplish most times.

We go much more abstract for the last, though:

For a while in the main gallery I had an image that looked like an ancient map, actually lichen patterns in tree bark, but the image quality wasn’t really up to snuff and I removed it. Ever since that time I’ve wanted to redo it, but never found the same subject in as great a state as that first. This wasn’t quite it either, though converting it to component channels and selecting only the Blue channel helps the abstract nature at least. It’s also an image whose Brightness Curve is remarkably even and runs the entire range, full black to full white with a peak quite well centered in the middle. Still, it could be better, and I’m remaining on the lookout for the opportunity.

I’ll be a little busy today for a while, so I’m not sure if I’ll get the chance to add to this and break the upload record or not – we’ll see I guess. I mean, i have plenty of other images I could simply dump here, but you know I don’t like just throwing things up.

Down on The Bayou

July 30, 2025 Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

That’s capitalized that way because it refers to a specific area; we have three ponds, interconnected, and the southernmost one (which we only own half of) resembles nothing more than a bayou, so that’s how we refer to it. Up until this morning, I’d only seen it from the marshy banks at the northern tip, which allowed a limited perspective, but today I took the kayak down into it for a better view.

Now, a note about this: While the three ponds are interconnected, it’s loosely. The upper pond connects to the main one behind the house by a narrow channel that we built a small bridge across, that if it weren’t for the bridge I might be able to navigate with a kayak, but only just. One of these days I’ll simply put the kayak in from the bank. The main pond behind the house is relatively easy to launch the kayak into and I’ve done it a couple of times, but it’s shallow and entirely visible from the banks so there’s not a lot of reason to. This connects to The Bayou by a very narrow channel that I watch the ducks navigate, but I was never sure that it wasn’t more of a marshy border area than a channel. Today I determined that it was indeed very shallow, enough to prevent paddling through it but the kayak could be ‘poled’ through by pushing against the bottom (which is thick enough mud that wading it would be quite difficult.) Yet I made it through, and took a few pictures while down there.

There’s not a lot to say about these, so I’ll just be clarifying which way we’re facing, in this case south deeper into The Bayou. The main tree in this pic was probably the one seen in that linked post above. Most of these are bald cypress trees (Taxodium distichum) and quite large, the canopy of which prevents a lot of sunlight entering at any time of the day.

Deeper into The Bayou but still facing the same way. I didn’t poke the paddle down to see how deep it was, but judging from the lack of yellow cow lilies, it was deeper than the main pond behind the house. Though this might only have been from the minimal sunlight.

This is turned around now and facing towards the main pond; the channel that serves as the link isn’t really visible at this low angle, but sits way back there under that shadow to the left.

If it wasn’t such a bear to get the kayak in there, I’d do this more often – quite a peaceful and evocative place. I like the single cypress paired with the absolute cluster of them here, and don’t ask me how this occurred.

No easy way to show scale, or even to measure it myself, but this is a monster tree – or maybe not, and it only seems that way because it’s visible bottom to top, unlike most of the others. This is pretty close to the connecting channel now, but that’s out of view off to the right.

Going a little fartsy here, but these white water lilies (Nymphaea odorata) were conspicuous in their solitude – this is the only example of them that we’ve seen on any of the ponds. The Girlfriend wants me to transplant these to the main pond, and I can’t blame her, since these are much nicer looking that the yellow cow lilies, but they may not be able to compete well. Still, we might just buy a handful of them and try to get them established.

Notably, I saw no ducks, no wildlife of any kind, while down there, which was curious. That was a large part of the reason why I ventured down there, but that’ll be a topic for a later post, or perhaps a few of them. For now, we get scenic pics.

Blatant disregard

July 29, 2025 Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

We have relatives over this week, so there hasn’t been a lot of time to find anything new, but while sorting, I did remind myself of this image, obtained the same time as this Estate Find, and set aside to be forgotten.

I mean, how could you resist this pose? The determination, the struggle against adversity?

This is here, by the way, in lieu of recognizing the holiday that fell today, which is Create Meaningless Content Day, a holiday that I find insipid and certainly something that I strive never to do, so we’re skipping the holiday this month.

A wee bit closer

July 26, 2025 Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

After confirming that we had Mississippi kites (Ictinia mississippiensis) living in the immediate area, and strongly suspecting that they’d raised a brood within a few hundred meters, we’ve been seeing them off and on, mostly wheeling overhead – the few times I’ve seen them perched, they didn’t remain long enough for me to get any photos of them. Until this afternoon, anyway.

A pair were hanging out and talking to one another, and one perched a couple of times on a dead tree within easy sight. The first time around, the bird flew off as I was trying to clear the condensation from the long lens, since it hadn’t been ‘primed’ by leaving it in a warmer location just so it wouldn’t do that – it’s been stifling hot and humid here, like most of the east coast, and lenses left indoors where the air conditioner could maintain a living temperature will of course fog up immediately upon hitting the outside air. But I left the camera nearby as I tackled a few tasks, and a short while later a kite regained the dead tree and I was able to fire off a few frames. The exposure compensation is set to +1 full stop, accounting for the brighter sky, and this is a pretty accurate rendition of what could be seen. Now, the bird could have been facing more into the light, but this is what we have for now.

It was also talking up a storm, and I wish I’d been prepared for video to record it, but you wouldn’t want to see what handheld long lens work looks like (or maybe you do.) So I have just one frame where it wasn’t facing directly away from the camera as it chattered.

At some point in the future, I hope to feature at least the recording of their calls, but I’ve never heard them calling at all when flying, only when perched, and that’s relatively rare – we’ll see what happens. It’s cool to see them remaining in the area at least.

Estate Find XXX

July 25, 2025July 24, 2025 Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

No, that doesn’t mean that it’s dirty.

I mentioned that I had two Magic Bucket of Variety finds this week, and this is the second, from a few days back. First I’ve seen in 21 years, since I was in Florida.

It took only a moment for me to recognize it, mostly because of those forelegs. We go in closer:

That is a giant water bug, and yes, that’s the common name, more brainiacally known as Lethocerus americanus – it’s sitting among the waste from resin printing. They’re a predatory semi-aquatic bug that spends a lot of time in the water and swims fairly well, and feeds on whatever they want, largely aquatic insects and minnows. They bear more than a passing resemblance to big cockroaches, in size and coloration, but that’s as far as the similarities go. As I said, those forelegs are a giveaway.

This is typical adult size, though they can get bigger – I measured this one at precisely 49mm, not counting their ability to fudge the body length, as we’ll see in more detail.

They’re curiously flat. with a raised ventral ridge under the abdomen, and can spend a decent amount of time above water; their efforts at running across the ground are definitely stilted and awkward, but they can fly quite well and are occasionally attracted to lights. Which might have been how this one was obtained; the outside door to Walkabout Studios has window panels at top, and some hours before my find I heard something large buzzing against the glass, so it might have dropped into the Magic Bucket and been unable to climb or fly out.

Colloquially, they’re occasionally called ‘Toe Biters,’ which is about as accurate as ‘hoop snake’ – they don’t bother people, though if handled improperly they could possibly deliver a sharp bite with that proboscis, which is used much like spiders do, to inject digestive fluid into their prey to liquefy the internal organs and suck them out.

We get a peek at the grasping claws at the end of the legs, which I had to disentangle from the paper towels in the Bucket. Obviously, they can grip their prey quite well with these.

Once while wading in Florida at night, I felt something start climbing my leg from the water’s surface, and I reached down and swatted it away, hearing the burr of wings as it hit the surface while attempting to fly off – it was likely one of these.

One of the other photos showed a glimpse of these, which I’m taking to be eggs of some parasitic insect attached to the exoskeleton of the water bug.

At this point I started to set up the macro aquarium for pics and video, which meant transferring the eggs within to another terrarium. The glass front that I added to the macro aquarium is necessary for sharper pics of underwater critters, since the usual plastic/polycarbonate is far from distortion-free and is always scratched.

This is a typical hunting pose for the species, grasping a twig or water plant and hanging down with forelegs at the ready, while a breathing siphon at the tip of their abdomen gets extended above the surface, allowing them to remain indefinitely like this (since they don’t have gills.) They’re also quite buoyant, and have to swim downwards to remain submerged if they’re not actively holding onto something.

We get a closer look at the eyes here, and how they differ from most other arthropods. Usually, the top surfaces of the ommatidia, the individual eyes in the compound collection, have curved surfaces like corneas over each, but here they’re smoothed out, likely to cut water resistance when swimming. Or maybe the giant water bugs just think it looks cooler.

Another view of those parasitic eggs, taking on a different light quality when under water.

So after the initial photo sessions, I wanted to see if I could get video of it feeding, and went out the next morning and snagged a bunch of minnows from the pond (as well as a ridiculous amount of debris, since no point of the water’s surface is actually clear.) Most of what I captured was tiny, less than 10mm in length, but I did snag one at least 30mm, a good meal for the water bug. And so I introduced these into the macro aquarium after setting up the video rig.

The water bug adopted a great ready pose after a few nudges, close enough to the glass to reduce distortion and allow good lighting, and then I waited for one of the minnows to swim within range. Every time it got close, I started the video and watched for the action.

Which solely consisted of the minnows swimming blithely past the resolutely immobile water bug, who apparently didn’t feel like feeding – the bright video lights may have had something to do with this. Even as the larger minnow practically cuddled up alongside the water bug, unaware of the potential danger, the water bug irritably shifted position and even swam off disturbed. After half an hour of this, I moved the macro aquarium into a larger terrarium (because, like I said, water bugs can fly) and left them in the dark. When I checked back a few hours later, the minnows were untouched and the water bug had left the water and was doing short flights in the terrarium, so I let them all go. Can’t say I didn’t try, though.

For the children

July 24, 2025 Al DenelsbeckLeave a comment

The Girlfriend and I were out in the backyard early this evening and we spotted a red wasp with deep blue wings skimming close to the ground right near out feet, and quickly discovered why, as a fishing spider suddenly broke its camouflage by scampering off madly. It was clear that the wasp was one of the spider hunting varieties, and had just missed nailing the fishing spider. I bent down and identified the spider, then shooed it off from the immediate location so the returning wasp would have a hard(er) time locating it again.

This was all for naught, because within a few minutes we saw the wasp again, practically right under the lawn chair that I was sitting in, and it had located the spider. The wasp flew off from our proximity, but it was too late for the spider. I ran and got the camera but didn’t have time to mess with the macro flash rig, so all photos are with the popup flash on the camera.

This is a dark fishing spider (Dolomedes tenebrosus,) about mid-sized in the range that they can be found as adults, so, 40-50mm in leg spread. I examined it and prodded it gently, finding that it wasn’t completely paralyzed, but could only manage feeble movements of the legs.

Here’s the deal: several different species of wasp, specifically the Family of Pompilidae or spider wasps, paralyze spiders with their sting and carry the still-living spider back to their nests, where eggs are laid within the spider’s body cavity, then the spider sealed up in a nursery cocoon. The eggs hatch out, and the wasp larvae feed on the spider in their initial stages before they dig their way out of the spider and then the nursery. The tube nests of mud that are often found under overhangs and within sheds are from one such wasp species, and I’ve long wanted to capture the act of one bringing a spider back to enclose it within the nursery. I was pretty certain the wasp would return for its prey, so I waited.

Sure enough, it was back within minutes, and quickly seized the spider and began dragging it backwards across the lawn. I thought it would simply gather the spider off and fly away with it, but surmised that the burrow was nearby and this was a waste of time. This was wrong, as it turned out.

After much playing around on BugGuide.net, I find it likely that this is a rusty spider wasp (Tachypompilus ferrugineus ferrugineus,) based on several esoteric details that I first had to look up to understand, then flip through several images to get a good enough view of. When you get:

T. f. ferrugineus is an eastern subspecies with black typically on the sternum, propodeum, and hind coxae

… and you don’t know what a propodeum or coxa is, then you go looking to find out just so you can then locate those within your photos and see if they match. Long story short: the dark base of the four hind legs, though it looks pretty bright here in the direct flash, are those key features – they’re not red like the rest of the body, so probably T. f. ferrugineus.

From time to time the wasp would fly off, probably because I was getting too close, though it never tried directly bothering me. It would return in a minute, examine the spider closely for a good spot to seize it, then resume its journey.

The trek actually got quite impressive, since the wasp dragged the spider backwards through the leafy debris along the edge of the deck for several meters while I kept it in sight. I even shot a little video, but the constant movement under the non-autofocusing video function of the Canon 7D meant that I was trying to maintain focus as distances changed perpetually, and it wasn’t worth the effort to put up.

The wasp brought the spider all the way to the deck steps, vertically up the sides (still backwards,) and across the top, then over to the molding on the enclosed porch.

And then, began scaling the molding vertically along the corner. You can see in this image that one of the spider’s fangs are extended, so this doesn’t seem to be the most prudent place for the wasp to grab the spider, but no issues occurred as I watched.

And I couldn’t watch a whole lot longer, since the wasp took the spider straight up the screen to the roofline, then struggled with the sharp overhang there and began shifting sideways to find better purchase. This was now getting out of easy reach of the lens and flash, save for getting a stepladder, and I still had no idea where the wasp was heading with its quarry, so I let it go at this point. Still, it had gone at least ten meters, horizontally and vertically – it was putting in the effort at least. Quite impressive to watch.

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