Shocked, but pleased

Al Denelsbeck

It took me a couple of days to get to it, but I managed to sit down and design the flashlight mount for the cheap little camcorder mount/stabilizer, and then get it printed on the trusty 3D printer. I designed it in six parts, mostly so the height/angle of the flashlight beam could be adjusted to match the center of the camcorder’s field of view.

Rendition in Blender of original design for flashlight mount underneath camcorder stabilizer
The shocking part? Everything fit perfectly, with no modifications needed at all. The parts all fit together tightly when cleaned up from the standard printing schmutz (mostly from the supports necessary for ‘suspended’ pieces,) the flashlight snapped neatly and firmly into the two mounts that were perfectly spaced, the entire rig slides tightly onto the camcorder stabilizer, and the beam adjustment works exactly as intended. This is unprecedented for me – usually I have to tweak and reprint something.

Custom 3D-printed flashlight mount for camcorder stabilizer attached to stabilizer and camcorder
Well, okay, one caveat: I forgot to add a mounting socket on the bottom to allow using it with a monopod or tripod. This is a simple piece to add onto the rig, the weak point being that it won’t have mounting pegs because the sides are already printed. It will be glued into place, but I’ll probably also add a few screws in from the sides since this will have to be sturdy.

Custom 3D-printed flashlight mount for camcorder stabilizer
Now, the camcorder mount/stabilizer is a pretty common model and so the rig that I designed should be able to be used by others, and I will probably upload it – but the flashlight isn’t, and the mounts are very specific to its design, so perhaps not a lot of people would be able to use it anyway. Unless they’re semi-adept in Blender or some other 3D design program and can do the necessary modification for their own flashlight (mine is a Duracell 700 Lumen 3 C-cell zoom LED that appears to be discontinued.) And of course, how many people need the powerful zoom flashlight to be able to video critters at night?

custom 3D-printed flashlight mount for camcorder stabilizer, on its side to show beam adjusting screw on underside
This is the rig on its side so we can see the screw for adjusting the height of the beam – I snagged this nut and bolt off of Thingiverse rather than attempt to design my own, since I know I can’t. The rear flashlight mount isn’t even attached to it – the mount just slides up and down easily and sets atop the screw.

The big question, naturally, is: Does it actually work? Well,

Again, this is without a monopod or tripod, held slightly above waist high and usually just leaned against my belly. The monopod mounting socket is already printed but not yet glued to it.

Meanwhile, as I mentioned before, there is another video option, but that’ll be along a bit later on, after we greet the new year. Patience…

Remember, remember, the end of December

Al Denelsbeck

Or something like that. It’s time for the end of the month abstract, is what we’re sayin’. Unfortunately, it looks like this:

mist droplets in webbing in front of unidentified spider
See, there were only about two things that I shot this month that looked even vaguely abstracty, and we’ve already seen those. I toyed with several different subjects, none of which even faintly worth the time, before finally getting these shots, which work, but I’ll be the first to admit that it’s a token effort.

mist drops in web in front of unidentified spider
Now, later on today, I might be able to rustle up something better, and I have a handful of images (and possibly a video) planned for another topic anyway, so this isn’t the last chance. But I have a deadline for these – self-imposed and completely meaningless as it may be, I still consider it a good habit. Granted, displaying images that I don’t have to make excuses for would probably be a better habit, so perhaps I have a resolution for the new year.

Still, I’m hoping that it didn’t escape your attention that the dark shape in the background is the creator of the webbing that these mist drops cling to, and that it even shows up lensed reasonably clearly in some of the drops of the first image…

At least I’m good at it

Al Denelsbeck

semipalmated plover Charadrius semipalmatus crossing tidal flat in silhouette
Why is it the holidays all come bunching up together? Isn’t someone smart enough to pick parts of the month or year lacking holidays, and fill in the gaps?

But I’m as much a slave to it as any other nature & wildlife, critical-thinking, 80s music blogger, and so we take the time to recognize that it’s Question The Value Of One’s Own Judgment Day, not to be confused with Question The Value of Judgment Day Day, which is an enormously brief holiday since there is absolutely none at all – it’s unfortunate that far too few people ever celebrate that one, or indeed, question a lot of things that they really should. We have plenty of posts on those topics, however.

Meanwhile, I have chosen to celebrate this one by trying to determine which three images of mine are going to be entered in a local contest next month, which fits the bill marvelously. I mean, I know what I like, but how far afield are my own tastes? Am I properly considering the fartistic aspects of those in the lineup? Are the judges leaning more towards ‘classical’ compositional traits, or more viscerally ‘pleasing,’ or what, really? Actually, I recall that it’s a ‘People’s Choice’ situation so I can probably forget about trying to hew to particularly recognized art styles, but then I can stew over what sorts of people will be doing the voting instead. Classic art prints (boats on the water at sunset)? Bold color accents? Cute animals (I’m kind of limited on those, unless we can count lizards as cute)? Abstracts? Slug sex? All right, I’m comfortable with ruling out that last one…

And then, the prints will also be for sale during the exhibition, so there’s the matter of pricing. This is ever-so-slightly a tourist town, but it’s off-season, so chances are we’re only talking local buyers.

Does everyone who exhibits their work go through these kinds of questions? I imagine it’s fairly common, but I’d like to meet the ones who have their answers pretty quickly and confidently. Meanwhile, just writing this is telling me I’m likely overthinking it; just pick a few representative pieces and be done with it – there will be other opportunities, and maybe this one will provide some guidance. I plan to be at the reception, so I can perhaps gain a little feedback there.

Shit – now I gotta figure out what to wear…

Ticking away

Al Denelsbeck

I’m sitting here reflecting on perspectives, somehow believing that something profound will be produced by it and yet not really finding anything that isn’t trite, and the reason for this is, this marks the end of the seventeenth year of the old blogoblob. Reaching the age of seventeen, personally I mean, seemed interminable, and now I’ve been posting for that period of time. Weird.

I looked for some trivia related to seventeen, and only pulled up some South Korean boy band, and the US magazine of course (never actually read by seventeen-year-old girls, but always much younger than that – by seventeen they’d switched to Cosmopolitan in the belief that it was more worldly.) Neither of those was something I wanted to even attempt working with, so I let it go.

What I can say is that this marks the 3,233rd post, with at least nine of those being interesting. I could have put a list of some notable (to me, anyway) ones up here, but that would take a lot more time and it’s been taken up with far too many other things lately, but perhaps I’ll slip it in for the year-end retrospective or something. This year also set a record for images uploaded, and for a short while I was mentally fretting over too many of them not being my own, but that is no longer a concern; the previous record was 1,037 in 2020, while with this post we have 1,116, and a few more will sneak in before the end of the year.

This has also been the year of video, with 34 being uploaded specifically related to wildlife photography and/or this blog, plus a few others here and there; thirteen of those were Estate Finds as well. Most pleasing was capturing the wood duck broods (multiple times,) the epic snake battle, a yellow-bellied slider in the act of laying eggs, the hyperactive juvenile nutria, and of course, the saga of the mallard ducklings we raised. Refinements in the equipment, techniques, and editing are still being made.

[I have to note that, after knowing there were at least four distinct turtle nests in various places of the yard, not one of them seemed to produce any young – I was checking routinely. Two of them might have been raided by predators, based on faint evidence, and I’d found other examples of this, but two remained pristine. Just have to keep trying…]

So now we have a few photos that didn’t get into posts earlier.

dusky Canada goose Branta canadensis occidentalis barely visible behind thicket of yellow cow lilies Nuphar lutea shrouding the pond surface
The dusky Canada goose (Branta canadensis occidentalis) that was a regular visitor for a few weeks can be seen peeking out from behind the thick forest of yellow cow lilies (Nuphar lutea) that almost completely covered the pond surface in the height of the season. Not too long after this image, the beavers began harvesting those lilies and they nearly disappeared, then rallied and bounced back, then got harvested again. Somewhere in there, the dusky stopped visiting and never returned; while we have numerous geese now raiding the corn we throw down, none of them are the dusky subspecies.

numerous feeding pits of ant lion Myrmeleontidae larvae in sandy soil
These are the feeding pits of ant lions, which are the larvae of several species of lacewings (Myrmeleontidae) that are highly predatory at this age; I had a huge colony of these under the overhang alongside the outside door to walkabout Studios. The larvae sit at the bottom of these steep-sided pits that they construct themselves, waiting for insects (primarily ants, surprise surprise) to wander in and find that the sides are quite unstable and slippery, whereupon the ant starts to slide towards the waiting larva; their death slide is often assisted by sand flung by the larva. I had intended to do a detailed post and/or video, but never got around to it, and so this solitary image languished in the folder.

unidentified orbweaver Araneidae with wrapped captured firefly Lampyridae in web, still flashing
Here we have an unidentified orbweaver (Araneidae) with a captured firefly species (Lampyridae) that was still flashing regularly within its bonds; I was out without a tripod so I couldn’t do any longer exposures to capture this display. Even I look at this image and think the spider is facing away from the camera, but no, you can see the eyes when you look close. Soon after this, I read an article that described how some spiders would keep fireflies alive in the web because it attracted other fireflies to be captured, the arachnid equivalent of Uber Eats. I was thinking of doing a post on this, but never got any further pics or video and thus this one also sat there in the folders.

flower spike on recovering butterfly bush Buddleja davidii
When we moved here a year ago September, we brought three butterfly bushes (Buddleja davidii) from the old Walkabout Estates, one of which did okay, one thrived so fiercely we don’t walk too close in case it grabs us, and one struggled. So when that one finally produced its first flower cluster following the move, in July, I took note of it. It still didn’t get a firm foothold, but in late October it popped out a measly three blossoms while everything else was entering the autumn dormancy:

trio of singular blossoms on rallying butterfly bush Buddleja davidii
While I definitely like and want to feature some images, they go unused because I’ve been featuring too much of the same subjects and try to maintain a variety, so we have ones like this Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) fast asleep while clutching its teddy twig:

juvenile Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis sleeping vertically on Japanese maple, clutching twig
To be honest, I could still be featuring the anoles routinely; not only are several living it up in the greenhouse, the weather got warm enough today that a few are scampering around the yard, while some turtles are basking on their own island.

And we close with another ‘avoided for the sake of variety’ images, a wood duck (Aix sponsa) portrait when the light and the pose was right, which is a challenge for such a wary, spooky species. One of these days I’ll find a way to be closer and not have to crop so tightly, but for now, this is what we have. And thus we enter in year eighteen with plenty more challenges to tackle and species to capture. Once again, thanks for coming by!

adult male wood duck Aix sponsa perched in tree on Duck Island in late afternoon golden light

Estate Find LII, oh so late

Al Denelsbeck

Like, twelve hours later than my typical posting time – I am wracked with guilt. But to play on your sympathies, I haven’t been feeling well the past day or so, and so snuck in a couple of naps when I should have been working on this video. And of course, video editing takes so damn long in the first place, or at least, it does for me…

To add to that, nothing particularly new with this one, mostly experiments with a different video rig for night shooting, showing the refinements that still need to be made.

Further refinements will be along before too long; I said I had two methods to improve things, and the second has shown great promise already – but now we’re all out of Estate Finds, so I guess you won’t see that after all…

camcorder, video mic, and flashlight on inexpensive video stabilizer
A note about these cheap little video mount/stabilizers that you see here, basically a mount for the camera hanging from a handle: the point is that the weight of the camera acts as its own gravity stabilization, something that can also be done with a decent weight extending below the camera itself – you need something well below the fulcrum, which in this case is the handle that the other things are attached to. The problem that I created was that the flashlight weighs as much as the camcorder, almost entirely eradicating the weight below the fulcrum. I am in the process of changing the position of the flashlight – the mic is far too light to figure against this noticeably and can stay where it is.

camcorder on inexpensive mount/stabilizer with flashlight and video mic, marked to show key controls on camcorder
Another factor, though much less significant, is the location of the controls on the camcorder, the video start/stop button (marked in red) and the zoom control (blue.) The Canon HFS100, like many such little units, is made to be held in the right hand up near your face, with your hand through that strap on the body, so the thumb rests on the start/stop and the forefinger on the zoom control – but of course, dangling low from the left hand on that overhead handle puts those controls in a more awkward position. Not bad, if you’re not in the habit of using your right hand to steady the rig better, until you need to move said hand to operate the controls, which is what caused some of the fumbling seen in the video. With the flashlight moved to the bottom, this may no longer be necessary – we’ll see within a few days.

The absolute best improvement so far has been the Canon HFS100’s ability to maintain focus, meaning I don’t need to be doing it manually like I do with the Canon 7D DSLR, and this helps hugely. It’s not always perfect, especially when tracking, giving priority to its built-in stabilization instead, but it snaps in pretty quickly when the movement reduces enough. Also useful, the camcorder can be used with the external HDMI monitor that we’ve seen before – some of these clips used that, some didn’t. I’m also intending to try using a monopod, provided I can rig it so the tilting of the camera is not restricted, but that will be more modifications, since the handle mount/stabilizer has no attachment point. 3D printer to the rescue…

Now, there were several things that did not get captured on video, since we went down a few times at night to redistribute corn without the rig in hand – isn’t that always the way? I’m hoping to correct this very soon, possibly even tonight after this posts, but the rig won’t be updated yet.

And that wraps up this year’s weekly post topic, since it’ll be next year before Friday rolls around again and we’ll be on a new weekly topic. This is not to say that I won’t sneak in the occasional Estate Find anyway, because c’mon, but it won’t be weekly. And I’ll be back with more video refinements soon enough.

Over to others

Al Denelsbeck

I’ve been busy as all-git-out recently, no time for much of anything else, especially blog-related, so I’m doing a quick hand-off to a couple of videos that fit well.

First off we have George Hrab, he of The Geologic Podcast over there on the sidebar or indeed right here, with, “I Don’t Believe in christmas,” a song of his from many years ago and quite pleasant, belying the impression you might have gotten from the title. But we have a conundrum as we do so, because his original video from 1990 (?!) features the full musical accompaniment, making it much richer in my ears, but the video quality is less than stellar, shall we say? Bank surveillance footage of the suspect, is the right impression. He redid the video in 2022 with about a 7,000% increase in quality, but this time around, he was doing it live with unaccompanied folk guitar, which I’ve never been terribly fond of. So, both are below: choose whichever you like, or listen to both and tell me I’m full of shit, or don’t listen to either of them and tell me I’m full of shit anyway because, hey, it’s the webbernets and exactly the place for that.

Next up we have Tim Minchin, who’s been featured here once before, and I really should have more of his stuff, but somehow his appearances and videos thereof never seem to cross my path, and I have to go looking for them instead. His song, taken from a live performance in Australia, is, “White Wine in the Sun,” and please note: Each year, proceeds from the sales of this song at this time of year go to benefit those on the autism spectrum, so please feel free to download it from the service of your choice.

[There are several versions of this out there too, but this one appeared to have no intrusive horseshit YouTube ads – now you know why I host my own stuff on Vimeo.]

That’s all for now, so I’ll leave you with a heartfelt Happy Holidays, for whatever holiday you choose to celebrate or indeed if you celebrate none at all and can thus consider that a holiday thereby creating all sorts of logical issues. I’m glad you’re here to read this, and I’ll provide something more soon. Ish.

Freaking holidays, man

Al Denelsbeck

So, with today being the winter solstice and thus having the fewest daylight minutes of the year, we celebrate that the days are now getting longer from here, as it’s typically put, which goes to show you how we can’t handle our own language; they days are the same length that they always are, except for a few picoseconds, but the axial tilt of the planet means the ratio of daylight to not-daylight is the widest it can get, in favor of the not-daylight. Back in June we had the same thing only in the other direction, but I never feel like recognizing that the daylight hours are now losing their commanding lead over darkness.

Anyway, for this momentous event (and because I’ve been busy with many other things and thus not photographing much of anything,) I tried to see if there were any sunspots visible, but by the time I recalled that I should be trying, the sky was hazing up and the sun had descended behind the trees – see that bit about axial tilt, above. So I opted for cheating, and went back into the folders for a pic taken on the summer solstice back on June 21st. And couldn’t find any. In any folders. Did I really go for that day in the summer and not shoot anything? I mean, nothing at all for several days on either side, even. Was I doing something then?

Finally, I found one, and it helped answer the question.

crescent moon and Venus through arched window in early morning
In the Space folder I found this, only it was from the 22nd instead. Just a quick grab shot early in the morning through The Girlfriend’s Sprog’s window, after waking up on their couch – the crescent moon with Venus tagging along, but this was one of only two attempts not marred by motion blur due to slooooww shutter speeds in the dim twilight. What it indicates, however, is that I’d traveled back to the old Less Stately Walkabout Manor to do some work, preparatory to selling it, an overnight trip so I had time to get everything done – I couldn’t sleep there because there wasn’t any furniture and I’d had enough of inflatable mattresses for a while. The summer solstice (the day before) was spent partially on the road, but mostly painting and fixing odds and ends. No wonder I had no pics.

Anyway, my head’s been bothering me all day, so this is what we get. Enjoy the holiday and looking forward to the sun rising earlier and staying up longer, like… well, not a teenager, that’s for sure, nor some old fart. Who rises early and stays up late? Probably those insufferable ‘go-getters’ or people relying on narcotics. No analogy that works well here. But enjoy it anyway.

Recall those wicked winters…

Al Denelsbeck

… what, five days ago, when the temperature dropped to -6°c overnight, and got barely above freezing during the day?

Yeah.

six adult yellow-bellied sliders Trachemys scripta scripta basking on Turtle Island in 21 degree c weather
It was 21° as I took these this afternoon. North Carolina, man…

Six yellow-bellied sliders (Trachemys scripta scripta) had piled onto the limited real estate of Turtle Island to enjoy the sun, showing that they’re adept at detecting the air temperature even while the water temperature was still recovering from its ice shield just a few days back. Are they triggered by the sunlight to at least poke their noses up and test the air? I admit, I’m impressed.

Not five meters away, a floating log was hosting its own collection.

seven eastern painted turtles Chrysemys picta picta basking and stacked on floating log in 21 degree c weather
Seven here, in this case eastern painted turtles (Chrysemys picta picta,) all less than a third of the mass of the sliders – their belly plastrons were roughly the size of my palm. Waste no time.

We go in a little closer.

three eastern painted turtles Chrysemys picta picta and one yellow-bellied slider Trachemys scripta scripta basking on floating log in sunlight
Actually, as I uploaded this I realized I was wrong: you can see by the stripes on the face of the ‘taller’ one on the left that it’s another slider instead. I’m pretty sure all the rest are painteds.

The Carolina anoles (Anolis carolinensis) had also wasted no time, and were scurrying around in many places, but I caught this one basking on the grape arbor we erected late this summer.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis basking on nylon stringer of grape arbor in 21 degree c weather
We used some old nylon rope as the stringers, but we’ll probably replace it before spring. The anoles, however, have already expressed their delight in this simple structure, and will probably lose their shit when the grapes leaf out and the insects are plentiful. Since I ended up evicting several that were sleeping in the matted leaves in the base of the pots that held the grape plants all summer (while we waited for the cable provider to get around to patching the line across the yard, right alongside the arbor – you can piece the story together from there,) I’m glad that they’re seeing the benefits of the arbor at least.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going for a swim…

Estate Find LI

Al Denelsbeck

As we come to the penultimate Estate Find for the year, I have to admit that, while a few of them were punted or downright skipped, there was still a surprising amount of new finds, observations, behaviors, and so on. And here we add another new species, at least to me and to the blog:

My exposure to the varied duck species of North America has been fairly limited, and so I wasn’t in the habit of looking for the subtle differences displayed here until they became a little more obvious at that one point in the video. My go-to guide for avian identification has been The Sibley Guide to Birds, which has easily been the best desk reference that I’ve ever had; it features not just male and female plumage differences, but juvenile to adult and seasonal as well, plus range and calls. Nonetheless, it remained a little inconclusive in this case since the illustrations didn’t fully display that color difference between the cheeks and crown, while at the same time they enhanced the body feather variations, which are normally quite muted. Luckily, I had a variety of images that I could refer to, such as this sequence:

sequence of images of American black duck Anas rubripes and female mallard Anas platyrhynchos flapping wings in water
The duck to be identified in the back, with a known female mallard in the front, both flapping their wings simultaneously in close proximity and thus allowing both comparison and a glimpse at feathers normally hidden. We see the black duck has no with banding alongside the deep blue secondary feathers on the wings, and has white underwings; no other species has these two traits together. Leg and bill color and relative size also helps, and finding more images of the species online, including at CornellLabs’s All About Birds site. That said, it is far, far easier to flip through the pages of the Sibley Guide to compare plumage among many species.

profile of American black duck Anas rubripes swimming in backyard pond
We’re curious to see what else might be showing up in the future. Neighbors down at the opposite end of The Bayou have seen hooded mergansers in the past, and I’ve seen a flotilla of North American ruddy ducks not too far away, though those are certainly more inclined to open water. We’ve got one more Estate Find to go, though this really isn’t setting any limit on what can be added, just what I can still feature within the year. We’ll see, won’t we?

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