Well, it’s something

Al Denelsbeck

Today is Darwin Day, and unlike last year, I actually have something for the day – just not much. Again, the reminders have been coming up in my calendar for the past week, and that hasn’t been enough to inspire something meaningful, but I do have a handful of observations that have provoked some speculation, if only because I’m not properly educated about the subject (or indeed, any.)

We’ve been keeping an eye on the visiting wood ducks (Aix sponsa,) which they’re doing their best to thwart – they’re secretive little waterfowl. And it’s all being done from a distance, usually through the back windows, because they won’t allow even moderately close approaches, and my presence up on the deck (50-70 meters distant) is usually enough to send them under cover, at least. But a few traits stand out regardless, and it makes me wonder about how they evolved.

male wood duck Aix sponsa venturing out into sunlight
First off, the males have remarkable coloration, as noted before, and it becomes even more appealing when they get into direct sunlight – but the females are distinctly drab (that’s a duck joke.) This holds true for many bird species, and the speculation is that the coloration of the males indicates their health and robustness, a message to the females that they’re good husband material. Songs also seem to fit this bill (just full of them, aren’t I?,) not only demonstrating healthy lungs, but their repertoire might indicate experience, a bird that has survived more travels than most. Yet the brilliant plumage, at least, comes at a cost, because it makes them exponentially more noticeable to predators as well, and this is especially so with birds that develop long and elaborate plumage during mating season, among them peacocks. The belief (because how could you possibly prove this?) is that the benefits of finding a mate and passing on their genes outweighs the hazards of making them more noticeable and perhaps hampering their flying agility.

Wood ducks have iridescent feathers, meaning the colors really stand out in bright sunlight, but they have a tendency not to appear in bright sunlight very often – from what I’ve seen, they try to cross open water rather quickly and spend a lot more time in shadow where the iridescence fails and the feathers appear black.

male and female wood ducks Aix spoansa showing both coloration and habits
The females are a lot harder to notice, and yet, they also stay in shadowed overhangs a lot more than the males do; from initial observations, the males check out the surroundings first, with the females following many seconds later. What I think is happening here is that the males serve as the decoys (nonstop puns,) going first into potentially dangerous areas to see if they draw unwanted attention, with the females following only after nothing has happened for a little while – not long, but about five to fifteen seconds in my experience. It makes sense (but again, is hard to prove): without the females, no reproduction is going to take place, no matter how fit and wonderful the male might be. And males working to draw predators away from the females and/or young has been witnessed many, many times before. Even if they die while doing so, once they’re already mated, their genes are being passed on by protecting the females and young – and that’s what natural selection accomplishes. Keep the lineage going.

two male wood ducks Aix sponsa flanking a female as they head towards safer waters
Most of the wood duck visitors to the main pond are pairs, and as they retreat towards areas that they feel safer within (for instance, when I’ve been rash enough to let them see me,) the males always lead the way, with the females following or sandwiched between flanking males like seen here. As far as I’ve been able to see, even when they fly off in alarm, it’s the male in the lead. It’s usually not hard to see such details, you only have to be paying attention.

Now, as for why the males have that overhanging, rebel-scum helmet on their heads? I’m not even going to try and explain that one. Sometimes such things are only for display, and it’s possible that it helps differentiate them from the mallards that they hang out with; it might also provide some advantage to their flight. I have seen how the white stripes actually break up their profile when they’re in overhanging branches, but the coloration of the females (the mallards too) is much more effective: it can be easy to spot the males, but it often requires the binoculars to determine that the females are around too, even when they’re in open water right alongside the males. One would think that it could perhaps be better for the males to attract as little attention as the females, yet there remains the whole “I’m a good choice” message that needs to get across too, and this is highly present throughout the avian kingdom. It must be working.

Just because, part 54

Al Denelsbeck

Stepped out at dusk last night, then stepped back in to get the camera and shoot a couple of frames.

nearly full moon at late twilight with intervening branches
Well, it was more than a couple, because I was both focusing manually and freehanding the long lens, trying for an exposure that would bright out the branches against the last light in the sky; I have a lot of discards. It would have been better about ten minutes earlier, though I hadn’t spotted it then. You can see that the moon is overexposed here, just barely retaining some of the surface detail, but I think it carries the idea well enough.

And another version, different exposure and framing.

nearly-full moon alongside branches barely visible against the sky
Slightly better exposure on the moon, but I actually had to lighten the sky a tad to keep the branches from being too subtle. This actually was a very specific adjustment to the Curves in GIMP, my editing program:

screenshot showing minor adjustment to Curves function in GIMP
The menu on the right shows a histogram of the light levels in the image, the underlying grey peaks all clustered towards the left side – this indicates that the image is almost entirely dark, and while the moon looks quite bright in contrast to the dark sky, it’s closer to the register of the background color of the blog, plus it takes up very little of the frame. I wasn’t after that, though, but brightening the sky color, and I didn’t want the moon to get any brighter as well. So I clicked a pointer onto the adjustment curve, that diagonal white line across the histogram, right at the outside of the histogram peaks, in effect blocking off everything brighter than those. They I added a second pointer below that, in the middle of the peaks, and brought that up slightly; this brightened the sky while leaving both the moon and the darkest tones, the branches, alone. And of course I cropped it into a vertical.

I’ve often said that full moons are boring, but they can work with other factors in the frame, like the branches here, and anyway the moon isn’t exactly full – look at the bottom edge. Still, it’s more full than it was three days previously, when I did a more direct exposure:

waxing gibbous moon on very clear night
I’d noticed that the contrast seemed especially distinct that night and fired off a few frames then too, with this being the sharpest. I never trust autofocus for moon shots, because it’s often not precise enough, and will take several frames with tiny adjustments to the focus ring to get one tack-sharp.

But yeah, it’s the moon – wow.

Now we’re talking

Al Denelsbeck

red-shouldered hawk Buteo lineatus perched in good light
The saga of the red-shouldered hawks (Buteo lineatus) continues apace, as The Girlfriend spotted something specific when one landed in the backyard trees, two mornings ago, confirmed with careful examination with the binoculars. Unfortunately, it didn’t persist long enough for me to bring the camera out and didn’t repeat its behavior later that day, or anytime that I was watching on the following day. But this morning, one at least was quite cooperative.

As I mentioned within, I’d spotted two potential nests much earlier, also in the backyard, but this is neither of them. Instead, this is not quite straight out the back of the house, right at the edge of the pond. I expect this view to become almost completely obscured once the cypress trees leaf out in the spring, but maybe we’ll get lucky. I’ve done a little scouting and there are a couple of vantages that may remain open, though so far none that allow the height of the deck to provide a better view. All I can say is, we’ll see. The nice thing is, the hawks are so complacent about our presence that I can probably pick any spot in the yard and they won’t be bothered – wish I could say the same for the wood ducks.

likely mated pair of red-shouldered hawks Buteo lineatus perched on dead tree in distance
This one came from the day that the nest was originally confirmed, narrowly missing becoming an Estate Find. This dead tree overlooks the bayou-like stretch of the pond, obviously much further off, but it appears to form the boundary of their home territory; I can hear other red-shoulders giving their own territorial calls further off in that direction. But yes, we now have no reason to believe they’re not a couple, especially having seen them both on the nest simultaneously.

I should be using either a video or a gimbal head on the tripod for further attempts, but neither is intended for lenses this long anyway, so I can’t guarantee rock-steady results in the future. I also need to see about eliminating the hiss in the audio, which appears to be the fault of the camera, because I’ve used the same mic with a standalone audio recorder and it was much better; however, I’ve also done separate audio recording while shooting video, and syncing them up is a right bastard. Have to work on refining some part of this technique, anyway.

What the hell?

Al Denelsbeck

Stepped out last night and caught this noise coming from someplace across the pond, but centered in a couple of different regions. It surged and faded, at times going completely silent, so I’m sure it was critters of some kind, but I’m just not sure what. Take a listen before we go any further:

Noises in the night

I had to increase this by 10db and it’s still quiet – headphones are recommended. You’ll also have to do a little self-editing, because I have no way of doing this myself, but there’s recorder hiss of course, and then the lowest hum in there is from traffic not far enough away (I’m always amazed at how far car sounds travel – it’s annoying.)

My guess is frogs, though it was almost exactly like the muttering of ducks – it’s just that I’ve never heard them this active after dark and never going on that long, plus it’s too repetitve. It was quite warm last night after an almost-hot day, and this was still early evening though well after sundown, about 8:45 PM EST. Right in the middle, you can hear a solitary croak from one of the chorus frog species, the sound of someone opening a creaky cupboard, but the others are something that I’ve never heard before, perhaps only from not being on the side of a pond at the right time of night, the right time of year. If you recognize it, let me know – I’ll be doing my own searches.

MMM boy, another Estate Find!

Al Denelsbeck

First off, as the title hints, this is the three-thousandth post on the old Walkabout Exercise in Thinly-Veiled Narcissism; I really had planned to do something bigger, but nothing was coming to mind or hand, and now I’ve got this schedule to keep. Note that I formerly had a goal to reach this by the third week in September of last year, because reasons, but we’re way off that mark, aren’t we? Ah, well, we’ll all cope. So it’ll be pretty much a normal Estate Find post, but you can have a soda pop while you’re reading if you like.

This week’s find dates back a few days to the foggy morning featured in the previous post, when I went out looking for fun things to photograph, among them the subject that is about to be featured. I missed a few small songbird photos, mostly due to the light levels being too low for the shutter speed necessary for such targets, and got out about as far as that path would take me, the edge of the bayou-like pond area – beyond that it’s wading, and I don’t presently have the heavy-duty boots or waders that should be used for that at this time of year. On the way back, things were still pretty quiet, until I heard the odd noise, which I initially took for an unknown bird call, being a repetitive rasping squeak. I paused and looked around carefully, determined not to scare it off before I had the chance to photograph it, and eventually determined that it was actually gnawing. Ah, that’s better!

And it was coming, as I slowly determined, from just over the edge of the streambank that forms the back border of the property, just a handful of meters ahead. Listening carefully as I inched forward, I surmised from both the sound and the occasional ripples extending out into the water that the emitter was right there, and eventually got a peek at the top of a head. Figuring that it would bolt the moment I hove into view, I leaned forward with the camera raised and kept firing off frames as I got a glimpse of the eye.

North American beaver Castor canadensis gnawing on wood at stream edge, seen through foliage
This is a North American beaver (Castor canadensis,) which I knew had a lodge on the property yet hadn’t seen the occupant(s) clearly yet, but it was one of the goals for the morning so I was pleased. And to its credit, the beaver wasn’t too concerned with my proximity.

North American beaver Castor canadensis gnawing on wood at stream edge, seen through foliage
I was able to lean further out and get clearer photos – the beaver had to be aware of my presence, but it was being nicely complacent and I was being as unobtrusive as possible, given the appearance of the long lens and the sound of the shutter.

Eventually, it realized I wasn’t going away and might just pose a threat, and so it swam away from its meal, but not quickly and without diving, instead curving around out in the open where we both had a much better look at each other. I’ve seen this before: beavers can be very curious sometimes, and it still had deep water underneath that it could resort to if needed.

North American beaver Castor canadensis swimming in open water with curiosity
This was a decent-sized adult, so probably in the neighborhood of 10-12 kilos. I had to back the zoom down because it was too close for proper framing, and then I backed it all the way down to 150mm and switched to video.

Yeah, I wasn’t prepared to do video, so unsteady and without the proper mic, but there you go. I’d actually pulled the same stunt before, back in ’91 I believe, with the first beavers that I was witnessing directly – their curiosity gets the better of them, perhaps because the noise is too close to their own gnawing sounds, don’t know for sure. But it worked fine, and as I said in the video, this one closed to about four meters distant.

North American beaver Castor canadensis pausing to consider the noise the photographer was making
Now, you know what’s slightly annoying? I took The Girlfriend out there again the next morning to see what we could see, and the beaver that we barely spotted (same one? Don’t know,) refused to come within fifteen meters and dove twice in alarm, even though we were making less noise and virtually no movement. I have no idea what the difference was.

So, here’s hoping that I can top the previous experiences (and video) of the species this year. It’s at least a convenient location…

Up too early

Al Denelsbeck

One of the cats making a lot of noise this morning woke me up far earlier than I ever should have been, given the time that I went to sleep last night/earlier this morning, but once up, I noticed the nice pall of fog out over the pond and went exploring. One set of photos is going to wait until Friday’s Estate Find, unless I get something even better before then, but we can have these now:

pair of Canada geese Branta canadensis in lower, bayou-like pond
That’s a pair of Canada geese of course (Branta canadensis,) and I’ve been hearing them out of sight down in the lower pond, but never spotting them. The Girlfriend told me that they visited the main pond right out back while I was away the other weekend though – figures. I was working at a pretty good distance, probably in excess of 75 meters, so the fog had its chance to soften and bluify (it is too a word) the frame. Makes it fartsy.

But there’s something that’s not immediately apparent in that one, so we go to a later frame as they swam further out.

pair of Canada geese Branta canadensis in lower, bayou-like pond, showing distinct size disparity
They didn’t overlap above like they do here, so it was easy to miss the perspective thing, but the closer one is quite a bit smaller than the farther one. The species is known for having a range of sizes, though, and has now been recognized with not just 11 subspecies, but a separate, new species for the smallest variations, now known as the cackling goose. We are not seeing one of those here though.

These two were conversing quietly in their way until I came into sight, whereupon they decided to maintain a little discretion, and swam out into more open water just as a precaution. I wasn’t going to get any better than this, though, and so I let them be. There was also the possibility that the mallards and wood ducks would be along soon and I didn’t want to spook those either – they’ve been visiting off and on for the past two weeks now, though the wood ducks are maintaining their sneaky ways and not letting me get a nice, clear portrait shot yet. It’ll come.

Estate Find V

Al Denelsbeck

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis out in late January in pale grey coloration
If you’re seeing this, it means I failed in finding something newer or unique or somehow more exotic like I think the Estate Finds should be, when I went out looking yesterday, and so kept this fallback image. It is of course another Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis,) but curiously, one from just a few days ago as soon as the temperature peaked above 10°c after about two weeks of near- to sub-freezing temperatures – this was the day before the turtles had even ventured out. I’ve never seen one quite this pale grey, however, but I suspect that it was immediately before starting to shed its skin; I’ve seen them in mid-shed and the skin color supports this idea. But that distinct, straight-edged patch at the waist? Got me. Looks like someone trying to match paint colors unsuccessfully.

But yeah, I’m really aiming for subjects that I haven’t photographed thousands of times before. I’ll try harder…

Ta ta, January

Al Denelsbeck

And as January vents its last shuddering gasps, we dance happily on what will be its grave (just so it can see us do it) with the month-end abstract. Ss. Plural, actually, and they all have a theme, though they didn’t have to, but such is the nature of nature abstracts. Sometimes.

sun reflections on thin rough ice on pond
During the first of the cold days, we’d get some patches of ice on the pond here and there, and this is one of them, reflecting the sun – that was the angle that I approached at, though it would have been better with the sun at my back so there was less chance of spooking it, but my exemplary stalking skills were still up to the job and I got quite close. The starbursts are courtesy of a smaller aperture, of course.

Later in the month, we had a different composition.

Japanese maple tree loaded with snow
While we brought along four or five Japanese maples when we moved, there were still two that were already in residence, and you’ll see more of this one throughout the year, since it’s a wonderfully twisty and gnarly one right in the backyard. Some varieties drop their leaves readily as autumn passes through, and some want to retain them like little tree hoarders, thinking they’ll come in handy one day, and I suppose they did. Shows me, right?

And finally,

very rough ice on pond reflecting blue sky
This was long before any hint of snow, and I don’t know what causes ice to form so roughly – probably something to do with the last vestiges of duckweed or other plants and differential cooling. It certainly sounds like I know what I’m talking about.

And so we roll into February, which shouldn’t be spelled like that, with its closer deadline for the month-end and thus the distinct chance that I’ll do worse than this. Can’t wait!

No more nights like that

Al Denelsbeck

You certainly recall a few months back when I awoke quite anxious that my business cards needed updating, and I’m happy to report that this has now been taken care of.

This takes a surprisingly long time, even longer this time around. Part of that is, I have multiple designs for the cards, all example photos of mine, so I don’t change one, I change several. And part of it is due to routine graphics issues.

example business cardsIt’s actually been a while since I’ve changed them, and the last versions were done in Photoshop. I’m now using GIMP, which opens Photoshop files just fine, and have even loaded the obscure font that I like to use (Eras Demi ITC.) Except that Photoshop never could render that font in italics, so I had to copy it over from MS Word, and that disagrees with GIMP on what the ‘proper’ slant for italics is supposed to be (why is that, anyway?) Whatever – it meant I couldn’t just change the address, I had to retype everything. This also meant that I had to pick the font size that worked best too.

While doing all this, I decided that some of the older designs needed updating, especially with more current photos, and so I designed seven more, some of which are seen at right. Those were all easy, since the original photos all had not just adequate blank space, but low contrast and relatively smooth backgrounds that wouldn’t interfere with the laid-in text. Naturally, I’m aiming for complementary colors, and so I often try a couple different ones to see what stands out best. For most of the designs, this was a simple issue, and I’d like to think my choices are aesthetically pleasing, especially for the second anole image, the one that’s mostly black; the font color is actually a dark olive, but it seems to work well against the image itself, maintaining the ‘muted light’ and letting the anole head take precedence.

Now, how well does any of this work? Does it make the slightest bit of difference, and if so, how slight? Probably not much at all, but I do at least get compliments on my cards, so there’s that. Would any design, or other aspect, lead to more sales in some way? Not very likely, but at least they’re not boring or too simple. Though someone might say I’m too fussy I suppose…

[By the way, the actual cards have more info than this, but I tend to leave a lot of personal info offline so it’s not readily available to snooping assholes, in case this hasn’t been obvious.]

Occasionally, my choices have led to more difficulties, however.

two examples of cards with more cluttered backgroundsThe top one, for instance, had more contrast, a bit of clutter from the branches, and necessitated laying in a drop-shadow behind the text to delineate the edges more – I’m still not entirely sold on this one, but I’ll probably print it anyway. The bottom one is fine, but I made a small change: the background to the right, where the text goes, has been dodged a bit, lightened from the original image to let the text stand out better – you can compare it to the left side, behind the woodpecker, to see how it originally looked. It’s very subtle and doesn’t look altered at all, so it works for me.

[You may or may not have noticed, but there is definitely a tendency for subjects to be oriented to the left side and looking right, leaving the text over on the right side. I can’t say for sure if this reflects simply my choices for card images or if I really do shoot the original photos more that way; possibly a little of both, because it seems more pleasing to me like this. There’s probably something psychological to be found underlying this, and if I get really bored I’ll attempt to figure out what it is. Feel free to speculate.]

And a few times, I have to abandon my selections.

rejected card design with red-headed woodpeckers
Now, I really wanted to use this design, because it shows behavior and seems to me to speak more of “active nature photography” or something like that. I mean, I really do shoot a lot of nature portraiture, but I’d like to have more behavior photos. This one, however, just couldn’t be made to work: the details and contrast of the trunk simply interfered with the text and made it hard to read, regardless of the color choice – you can see that the trunk transitions between light grey and deeper shadow, with lots of fine dark details. It would have taken too much alteration to eliminate that; I’d already dropped one previous card design for exactly that reason, because I don’t think images that look too edited send the right message. There’s also the fact that the woodpeckers crowd towards the center more, but I couldn’t frame them better for the card proportions – it’s already against the left side of the original frame, and cropping tighter would trim off portions of the adult woodpecker. Some choices simply won’t work.

I admit we’re a bit heavy on birds in this post, but there’s more variety when the other designs are included; these are just some of the new ones. Still, a mammal card would be nice, but my stock is notably low on good mammal pics – they tend to be more nocturnal around here and thus harder to get. Yet, prompted by these thoughts just now, I started rooting through my beaver stock, and so far haven’t found anything that would work. They either suffer from poor lighting (see above about nocturnal) or too much clutter from the surroundings. I’ll keep looking, though. I’m not going to resort to deer, since everyone has deer pics – it almost suggests that I’m not very good if all if I have to feature those.

[Leave it alone.]

So, yeah, you might think it’d be simple, but it takes a bit of thought and effort to master a new set of business cards. Or at least it does for me…

A figment of imagination

Al Denelsbeck

Photography has been a little slow for the past few days, though this is also due to my own lack of effort. Still, things occasionally pop up.

Take, for instance, the conditions on the pond a week ago today:

small tussock in middle of pond devoid of turtles
… versus today:

small tussock on pond flaunting eight turtles, one week after being frozen over
Seriously.

These guys (which would be yellow-bellied sliders, Trachemys scripta scripta, and eastern painted turtles, Chrysemys picta picta,) wasted no time when the temperature got up above 18°c today, even though lower portions of the pond still have some slushy ice. Having grown up in central New York, I still can’t get over how North Carolina winters behave, as indecisive as a squirrel in the street. Mind you, I’m not complaining about being out today without even a sweater on, but you know, if you’re going to take a two-week trip to NC during January, well, pack everything.

I have to show you a close crop of the above frame:

close crop of reflection from previous image showing perfect clarity
Just the reflection in the water in front of the tussock, where you can see the details of the turtles quite well. The way the pond is, even with a stiff wind it doesn’t have too many open stretches which would show distinct rippling, but still, that’s not too shabby. Come spring (which may be the weekend, dunno,) the various pond plants and algae will get a toehold and the surface will be much more obscured – it’ll be interesting cataloging the changes that the pond goes through during the year.

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