Tripod Holes 44

Al Denelsbeck

unidentified hermit crabs in beach grasses at Fort Fisher, NC
N 33°57’37.10″ W 77°56’31.87″ Google Earth location

The best time to see something like this is early morning, and it should be clear that the barnacle-encrusted shell in the middle is housing a hermit crab – they all are, actually, and they typically forage at night to early morning in the beach grasses immediately adjacent to the waterline. I’ve only ever been there in summer though, so I can’t say for sure whether you can see them in other seasons, but I don’t think they hibernate – colder weather might just make them remain in deeper water or something. I don’t have a resource to identify hermit crabs, but looking at those legs, I’d be inclined to say these are thinstripe hermit crabs (Clibanarius vittatus,) which seem to be very common on the Atlantic seaboard. They’re aquatic, but as long as they keep some water within their shells to moisten their gills, they can forage on land for a while. This was right at the mouth of the Cape Fear River where it drained into the Atlantic Ocean, so brackish water – I’ve found shrimp several kilometers further upriver.

A little trick: if you see any shell of this approximate shape (typically whelks or conchs,) on land or under the water’s surface, and the opening is facing down, it’s probably occupied – the weight is opposite the opening so empty shells will usually be turned upwards by wave action. Even if the crab gets overturned, it knows that facing down is ideal and won’t waste any time righting itself when it feels that it’s safe to do so. Depending on the size of the occupant, when withdrawn the legs may be way up inside, almost entirely out of sight, so never assume such shells are empty if you’re collecting them.

They will usually withdraw when they sense danger, but within a minute or two, if things remain quiet, they’ll emerge only partially, observing the surroundings for a short while, before they fully extend their legs and get back to business. I waited out a couple of the larger ones to see what they did, and watched as one trundled right over to the ‘cliff’ (not half a meter tall, but impressive to these guys) where the turf had broken away from wave action, and without hesitation plunged over. The shell clattered and rolled across where the soil gave way to the beach sand, then sat motionless for a couple of minutes before the occupant re-emerged and continued on its journey; it had withdrawn in a split second as the shell toppled over the edge and apparently such knocks don’t have any serious affect.

The number of crabs on the beach that morning (thirteen years ago) was staggering – the grasses were literally crawling with them, and I endeavored to do a wider shot to show this, but the grasses were a little too thick and the crabs too small (ranging from 1-4 cm,) so all that really showed were paler blobs that could have been rocks or chewing gum or anything. Video would have worked better, but I didn’t have the ability at the time, and not the time on subsequent returns. Maybe next year.

Not unexpected

Al Denelsbeck

Yesterday, the Immortal-So-Far Mr Bugg and I went back down to the lake to see what was going on, which was, “Not a lot.” We got a handful of photos, and spotted four different bald eagles though in pre-sunrise conditions, so far too dark to be worthwhile in the slightest. However, there was one particular discovery that bears highlighting here. Maybe. I don’t know – are you even reading?

The lake level was way down, probably the farthest that I’ve seen it, and as we approached the tree that housed the productive woodpecker nest last year, I was sharp-eyed enough to notice that it looked a little different.

broken dead tree that used to house a woodpecker nest
That may not be enough, by itself, to illustrate what I mean, though the shattered drunk in the foreground might give a clue. But here it is from last year while the nest was active:

tree with woodpecker nest
Taken from the opposite side, of course, but the difference should be obvious. The nest opening was between the two distinct branches extending to the right out over the water, and it appears to be just below those that the break occurred. It was inevitable, and while it did not seem to be occupied at any time this year, I’m still glad that this happened in the fall when it wasn’t likely to be in use.

I did, of course, start examining the shattered fallen portion of the trunk to see if I could find the nest hollow. After a bit of back-and-forth, looking for those side branches which had broken off, I picked a section and rolled it over, and there it was:

hollow of red-headed woodpecker nest Melanerpes erythrocephalus in section of fallen dead tree trunk, even showing downy feathers
The debris in the ‘floor’ of the hollow was fairly indicative, but the couple of grey downy feathers still adhering to the wood confirmed things well enough to me. The bark had been long gone for years, but the impact broke away most of the underlying ‘outer’ wood as well. Still, from top center extending out to top right is the root of an old, smaller branch, which is visible as a stump in most of last year’s photos, such as this one:

adult and fledgling red-headed woodpeckers Melanerpes erythrocephalus checking out surroundings
From this, you can tell that the nest opening was about even with that stump, making it roughly 25cm deep.

I couldn’t let it go at that, because today is Expend Way Too Much Effort On a Pointless Project Day, which I do have to admit that I celebrate far more frequently than just on October 29th – at least once a month, but probably more than that, and someday I’ll try to calculate how often this is, in the spirit of true dedication. In recognition, I took a few of yesterday’s photos of the ‘outer’ wood that had broken away from the base of that branch stump, and compared it to several of the photos that I obtained last year to try and confirm that I had exactly the right hollow. That this makes no difference to anyone is exactly the point, which I suppose makes this not entirely a pointless project and so I’m kinda shitting on the holiday – don’t tell anyone, I’ll get branded a traitor or something. I never could confirm this (matching the wood, I mean,) but there are some markings that give a lot of weight to being correct; the wood around the nest opening had broken away someplace else, and I hadn’t looked for it because I had forgotten the holiday was today. But there were still plenty of fresher, paler scratches on the section I had examined to show that something had been clawing at it fairly recently, courtesy of all the parental activity at the opening, which is one method to identify an active nest. This is vaguely visible under the fledgling in the image above.

More photos – just a handful – will be along shortly.

What? Pictures? Get out!

Al Denelsbeck

Yeah yeah, I know, terribly unprofessional of me to neglect the blog, but I’ll tell you what: you can keep my honorarium this month. Deal?

That aside, I did indeed take a few photos yesterday, which means only an hour or two ago. It’s a clear night.

waxing gibbous moon
I’d seen the moon last night, uh, two nights ago, and knew it was too soon for… you know… so kept it in mind for tonight, uh, last night, whatever. But the key moment fell sometime during the day it appears, because Tycho is fully illuminated here – it is the distinctly round crater at lower left, well beyond the terminator. Though as I examined the photos, I thought I’d check and see what other craters might be seeing sunrise on their central peaks, if any. And now we focus on Bullialdus, the one that sits by itself in the dark mare southwest of center (not the one centered along the terminator, with light catching its floor – that’s Archimedes.) Let’s take a closer look.

waxing gibbous moon centered on Bullialdus crater, showing possible hint of light on central peak
This is at full resolution, at roughly 1000mm focal length (the Tamron 150-600mm with the not-quite-2x teleconverter,) with Bullialdus centered. And yes, it seems there might be a hint of a light spot centered in the crater, but it’s not conclusive.

So I waited a half hour, and went out again.

waxing gibbous moon centered on Bullialdus crater again
I made the mistake of not noting my previous exposure when I went back out, and had been changing the settings drastically for reasons that will soon become apparent. So this shot is slightly less exposed than the previous, though it does seem to confirm that the first hint of sunrise is catching the peak in the center (which is not as distinct as Tycho’s, but hey.) For comparison, Bullialdus is about 61 km across and has a central peak system that rises a little over a kilometer, while Tycho is 85 km across with its peaks rising 1.6 km. Bullialdus is older and more degraded, but it’s not clear if astronomers have any real idea how old it is – younger than the mare it sits within, obviously, but that doesn’t narrow it down much.

But because of this exposure boo-boo, I went out again to do a bit better.

waxing gibbous moon centered on Bullialdus, brighter this time, definitely showing sunrise on central peak
Yep, it’s clear – it’s sunrise on Bullialdus’ peak, and appears to be just happening as I took these shots. Now granted, had you been standing there you would have seen the sun break the lunar horizon some time before, hours perhaps – it’s going to be a while after first light before enough is reflected from the peak to be seen from Earth, but this is what I got with what I got, equipment-wise. Which is not quite true: I have a semi-decent telescope that would do a much better job, but I have yet to get off my ass and get it in spec. It almost happened tonight, because there were multiple things to be seen, but laziness prevailed.

1000mm shot of SaturnI had checked Stellarium before I went out, to be sure I wasn’t missing something cool like the ISS passing in front of the moon, and so I knew that the semi-bright star just above the moon was actually Saturn, and thus shot a few frames of that. This is also full resolution, so you can compare it in size to Bullialdus – I could just barely make out the oval nature of the planet in the viewfinder. But I admit that I used the moon to focus sharply, chimping at the image previews under high magnification to try and get the sharpest pic possible. Saturn is a whole lot dimmer than the moon, so while the Bullialdus frame immediately above is 1/125 second at f8, ISO 800, the image of Saturn at right is at 1/13 second, f8, ISO 3200 – over five times brighter. And Saturn’s moons still aren’t visible.

[Doing this, I was suddenly made aware that, when I reinstalled GIMP, the “Save EXIF data” setting was reset to ‘Off,’ and so the images edited for the blog no longer have them included – I had to go back to the originals for those. All those little things that have to be fixed when you rebuild a system…]

But Jupiter was up too.

Jupiter seen through thin haze of clouds, with some moons visible
Everything looked just fine by naked eye, more that bright enough, but the resulting image looked like shit. After a few test frames and a little playing around, I determined that this was not the fault of a dirty lens or anything, but a very thin haze of clouds in the vicinity, especially as they shifted between frames. They were completely invisible by naked eye, but then again, I was doing this from Walkabout Estates with a ridiculously bright LED streetlight coming from about 90° off, so we’re not talking dark skies here. The clouds didn’t go away as I’d hoped, and I (initially) wrote Jupiter off for the evening, even when the four Jovian moons were visible (though showing motion blur from the 2/3 second shutter speed used for this frame.)

Then I went back out to do those further Bullialdus photos, and refocused on Jupiter – this time the clouds had passed.

overexposed Jupiter distinctly showing all four Jovian moons
This is again full resolution, just barely fitting within my blog width guideline, and while Jupiter is blown out, the Jovian moons are distinct; bottom left to top right, they’re Callisto, Europa, Ganymede, and Io on the opposite side of Jupiter – it’s nice to see them leaving the straight-line perspective that I used to capture, because we were seeing Jupiter largely along its equatorial line, but now the orbits have progressed and a tilt in the lineup is visible, much like Saturn’s rings.

Jupiter at 1000mm showing some stripe detailI did do a ‘proper’ exposure for Jupiter itself, as well, and captured a moderate amount of detail, at least for a telephoto lens and not a telescope. I have a goal to capture the Great Red Spot, but it won’t happen with this rig, especially as the spot is shrinking and fading now. It wasn’t visible at this time anyway, but Jupiter rotates pretty damn fast and typically it will become visible at some point throughout an evening (I believe it starts coming into view around 3:15 AM, about 90 minutes from now as I type this.)

By the way, since they’re at the same resolution, you can compare the apparent sizes of Jupiter here and Saturn above, and know that Saturn is almost twice the distance from Jupiter than Jupiter is from the sun. The rocky bodies (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars) are all clustered close to the Sun in the solar system, with the gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune) spreading way the hell out beyond that – the scales are mind-boggling.

[Meanwhile, a brief explanation of why I’m stalling on the telescope thing: In and of itself, it’s a lot fussier to set up than the long lens and tripod, but should I desire to use the tracking motor, that has to be aligned with true north and is fussier still. Plus the scope needs to be allowed to reach something close to ambient air temperature, which means at least a half-hour when the temperature is as drastically different from indoors as it is tonight – it’s about 10° C right now, and dropping fast. Then, I can set about collimating/focusing it to actually get a clear view, and with the temperature changing, re-collimation would probably be necessary every 20 minutes or so. Essentially, I have to be psyched to spend a few hours on a dedicated session, and I just haven’t gotten motivated to that point yet – and if I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it in a much darker sky area than this, so that means traveling to a good spot too.]

Anyway, while I was out and actually pressing the shutter release, I thought I’d check on another subject that I’d been seeing.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis tucked into crack of crawlspace door at night
I’ve seen only one Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) in the past few weeks during the days, but when I think to check at night, I usually find this guy tucked into the crack of the door into the crawlspace of the house – immediately inside is the water heater, while a bit deeper is the house heater, so there’s some residual heat leaking out that it’s taking advantage of. How much longer this will go on I can’t say, though this may be the last I see of the species this year, unless one sneaks into the greenhouse. It’s funny – I saw this behavior plenty of times last fall, then not again until abut two weeks ago. As the conditions warrant, I guess.

I wanted to do this shot too while I was out.

gardenia blossoming even while leaves are turning
Two of the three gardenia plants in the Back Forty thought that the recent rains, coming as they did after a long hot drought, heralded a second spring and blossomed out – not exuberantly, but we have a handful of flowers even as autumn is beginning to settle in, which the background leaves indicate. And just now, I noticed the spider down at the bottom of the frame.

But then I went around the same bush for a different perspective on another flower and made a more surprising discovery.

gardenia blossom in late fall with green treefrog Dryophytes cinereus perched alongside in 10 degree weather
From my initial angle, the white stripe on the side was the only thing I could see, wondering what it was, until it resolved itself into a green treefrog (Dryophytes cinereus.) I tried a few frames, but overhanging leaves always prevented good light from reaching the frog. I’ve been seeing these a little more frequently than the anoles, true, and they seem slightly more cold-hardy, but it’s about time for them to tuck into someplace safe for the season. The winter slump is arriving, but hopefully I’ll get a few more pics of interest before it gets a firm toehold. We’ll see.

Tripod Holes 43

Al Denelsbeck

unidentified greedy fish at coral reef near Key Largo, Florida
N 25° 6’31.47″ W 80°18’23.91″ Google Earth location

There’s a lot to unpack with this one, so here goes.

First, this may, or may not, be the correct location; I had no idea where we were at the time, but clues indicate that this is the spot. It was on a touristy snorkeling trip off Key Largo, Florida, and I recall the dive operator saying that only one small section of the coral reef was open to tour boats. Between the already-existing placemarks and the selection of boats visible in the aerial photos, I feel comfortable with this being the place, and the distance and position are close to what my memory tells me, anyway – it’s not like there were landmarks to be found. The particular photo came when I was in a school of fish and wanted to silhouette them against the late afternoon sun, and so dove towards the bottom, rolled over, and found that I wasn’t underneath them as planned, because they’d followed me down, probably expecting a handout. It might seem ominous, all of them looking directly at me in this way, if they weren’t as vapid-looking as fish always are.

This was in, I dunno, 1995? and I was touring Florida by myself, my first real photo excursion as I was considering getting serious about the pursuit. This was taken with one of those disposable ‘Fun Saver’ (or whatever) cameras though, and it shows.

patch of coral reef off of Key Largo, Florida
This is even better than the original, because it’s been color-corrected reasonably well – the original was quite blue-green. There’s no real subject here because I could barely see much of anything, as this post relates, so I was winging it when I saw motion or a nice blob of different colors.

But I can be more precise about photos taken soon afterward.

brown pelican Pelecanus occidentalis reluctantly moving aside in a Key Largo harbor
N 25° 5’23.42″ W 80°25’50.93″ Google Earth location

This frame was likely just a bit further north in the channel than what I’ve plotted, but I did this for a reason, so be patient. The brown pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis) got out of the way of the returning tour boat with exaggerated calm, allowing me to snag a nice portrait, especially for the Olympus OM-10, Vivitar 75-260 zoom, and Kodak Gold 400 print film that I was using at the time – the gentle surreal ripples in the background help a lot, I think. But immediately before this frame, I shot another pelican hanging out right at the mouth of the channel back to the tour boat dock. Nothing great here…

brown pelican Pelecanus occidentalis hanging out at mouth of channel into Key Largo Marina
… but it pins down the location pretty handily. I’d gone back and forth looking at various marinas and docks along the southeast side of Key Largo in Google Earth, trying to determine where we’d departed from, until I spotted the house at the mouth of the channel now plotted – you can see these walls, steps, and little private ramp right there in the aerial photos. Do I want to know how much that little piece of property on the end goes for? I do not.

But okay, fine, while we’re here…

sunset off docks near Sunset Cove Motel, Key Largo, Florida
N 25° 5’36.57″ W 80°26’39.43″ Google Earth location

I figure there’s no point in featuring Key Largo again in the lineup – not when I have so many other fascinating places to get to. This one was years later – 1999 I think – when I had a much better camera and was now shooting slide film. I had just checked in to the little rental cottages where I’d spend the night and, on coming out of the office, saw the sunset doing groovy things. I scampered to my car, snagged the camera bag and tripod, and hoofed it down to the little beach they had before the colors faded – this can happen pretty damn quickly. I had someone tell me that this image was Photoshopped, being too colorful, and I had to bring him the original slide to let him see for himself, though granted, I was using Fuji Provia 100 which is fairly saturated. I rarely alter my images more than a simple tweak for web display, because the entire goal is to do it right when out there, not correct it afterward. Not to mention that editors want to see the original as faithfully as possible.

I had not remembered what the entrance to the Key Largo Marina looked like, four years previously, and did not realize that I was staying so close to where I’d departed on the dive trip (in fact, I did not realize this until just now.) The next morning, after a nice little paddling excursion in one of the motel’s canoes, I drove further along the Keys Highway and paid a visit to the Florida Keys Wild Bird Center. I pack a lot into my trips.

Odd memories, part 28

Al Denelsbeck

It’s been slow in regards to nature photography and I’ve been embroiled in other projects, to the detriment of the blog. So I’m digging out an old draft that I almost-completed years ago to fill in a little, until I get some ‘proper’ content going. I should something more topical shortly.

I couldn’t even tell you what brought this one to mind the other day [heh!], so this is a complete non-sequitur, and I apologize for derailing the blog in this manner.

I was 25 when I finally moved out of central New York, and by that time had had my fill of winter weather. The thing is, up there snowstorms are frequent enough that not only do most places of work expect you to be on-time regardless of how treacherous the roads are, but even if you could afford to avoid them entirely, it could mean remaining sequestered in your house for quite some time. Credit to the road crews: at the first accumulation, plows were out and clearing roads, so typically only a blizzard would move fast enough to produce roads that were not drivable, and this wouldn’t last longer than overnight in most cases. You learned how to handle snow, you kept real snow tires (none of this all-weather radial horseshit, which are total shit for snow driving,) and you judged how bad the roads and parking lots were at any given time.

I don’t even have a rough date for this; I can just say I was in my early twenties and was still driving my parents’ Ford Granada, which was not known for its traction. I was making a quick run over to the nearby mall one night, looking for magazines I think. At one end of the mall was a totally unused parking lot which most people just used to cut across to shorten their trip around to the back entrances closest to certain stores, like the Waldenbooks I was after.

It had snowed recently, “a few inches,” but the roads were clear and the mall parking lot had been plowed, so most of what any driver faced was wet asphalt – nothing to worry about. But as I rounded the back side of the mall, I found they hadn’t touched the cut-through parking lot, still pristine under a smooth blanket of white snow. A little slippery perhaps, but a) I already had experience in accumulations of that nature, b) maintaining a straight line usually presented few problems, and c) it was an empty parking lot, with nothing to hit even if I did start to skid or spin or anything – horsing around in snow-covered lots is a winter pastime in most northern states, and even serves as valuable practice in getting out of (or into) skids, learning about the breaking point of traction, and so on. So I just aimed the car across the white blanket and continued on.

No problems for several seconds, until I was reaching the far side (and a plowed, clear section alongside the building itself) when I realized the blanket wasn’t perfectly level. It sloped upwards gently at the end, and I knew what this meant. Plows don’t of course eradicate the snow, they simply push it off to the side, and in most cases this is no longer a fluffy, soft pile, but packed and chunky icebergs with a tremendous amount of resilience to them, often remaining for weeks after the rest of the snow had melted away. Over a period of a few storms, the snow had piled up at the top edge of this parking lot, and when the last storm had passed, it had disguised this ridge, a little under a meter high, under a deceptive slope of new snow, not visible in the night under the parking lot lights until you were close. Directly in my path was a barrier of what I knew to be dense and deep icebergs.

There was nothing for it; my speed was too high, I had already passed V1. I gunned the engine a little in the hopes of simply breaking through, counting on it being not too dense. This was not something I’d practiced.

And with a fierce crunch, the car ground to a halt, mired in the packed snow with the front wheels a solid 15cm off of the asphalt. Remember what I said about the Granada’s traction? It was a rear wheel drive at least and they were still on solid ground, but all they did was spin without the car budging a centimeter. I knew most of the tricks, rocking and slow starts and all that, but none of that was going to shift the front end suspended on a ramp of pack ice. Resignedly, I went into the mall to a payphone and called my dad.

[Yes, this was the eighties. Yes, there was a Hickory Farms stall in that mall. No, I did not own even one item of neon-colored clothing, you little asshole.]

It wasn’t that my dad could do much, given that he was driving a Fiat, I think. He arrived with the snow shovel and the kitty litter (for traction, not because we were stranded so far from facilities,) but these were inadequate for the predicament I’d achieved. We played around a bit, including his own attempts at rocking and so on, but not a damn bit of progress was made. I was quite aware of the potential for catcalls and derision from passing drivers, not long out of high school and in a redneck part of the state where that’s one of the prime activities among youth, but this was the quiet end of the mall and I may well have been being paranoid anyway. Someone else spotted our dilemma and stopped to help, or at least observe, since they were no better equipped than we, and to give you an idea of how bad the Granada was, at one point during our fruitless attempts while my dad was behind the wheel and I was outside to push/shift/direct/stand by helplessly, I heard an odd whirring sound and looked back to see the rear wheels, sitting on wet asphalt, spinning merrily while the car idled in gear, having too little traction to even engage the automatic clutch. Yeah, that would have been a clue as to the folly of picking an unplowed path, but this was one of the factors that told me how bad the car was.

Eventually someone in a large pickup truck happened by. If you have a pickup in NY, you always have tow chains or a strap, you usually have four-wheel-drive, and you carry extra weight in the bed for traction; about 30% or better have mounts for snowplows on the front. These kind gentlemen hooked up to the rear of the car and yanked it effortlessly off of the snow embankment, taking all of three minutes to do it, and I thanked them profusely and gave them some money, a pittance really, for their troubles. I made sure the car could move on its own in the level part of the lot and helped my dad load up the stuff that he’d brought.

“What are you over here to get, anyway?” he asked.

“Nothing, anymore,” I said.

I think he believed I was either scared of driving or too wrung out to consider shopping. “The mall’s still open, you can go get what you’re after,” he pointed out.

“I just gave those guys all my money,” I replied, and got back in the car and headed home.

Tripod Holes 42

Al Denelsbeck

small green treefrog Dryophytes cinereus in pond in front of statue, Brookgreen Gardens
N 33°31’11.84″ W 79° 5’54.55″ Google Earth location

I could put you practically within my footprints for this one, because I remember pretty precisely where I was standing, at the edge of the spillover from this decorative sculpture pool within Brookgreen Gardens between Murrell’s Inlet and Pawley’s Island, South Carolina. This was a sculpture garden, filled with various works of art, and I was indeed doing some photos of them, including the one seen out-of-focus in the background – but if my preferred subjects happen to show up, I’ma do them too. Green treefrogs (Dryophytes cinereus) aren’t terribly aquatic – the name ‘treefrog’ provides a hint – but they can swim well enough and will use water sources as needed. So when I found one peeking out, I had to ensure that it was part of the composition. Brookgreen Gardens is a pretty nice place to check out, worth even a side trip – in fact, worth a few days there, which your entry fee will cover. I won’t guarantee that this guy will still be handy – the one in front, anyway; the one in back is likely still there wrestling his alligator. No that’s not a euphemism. You can even see right where I was in the post immediately following that visit, courtesy of The Girlfriend – I told you I could place you in my footprints. Though it took a little playing around to pin it down from the aerial photos, but, the default photos right now in both the online and installable versions of Google Earth show a blob right on the northern curve of the wall alongside the darker spillover that is precisely where I was standing – I’d speculate that the aerial photo actually captured me there, except The Girlfriend would also be in the frame and there’s no sign of that.

Pretty much right across the street sits Huntington Beach State Park, which we’ve seen in an earlier Tripod Holes, so again, worth the visit. Just, not so much for the beach vistas…

Your handy calendar

Al Denelsbeck

You know, I used to have a calendar on this site, but the plugin didn’t last through updates and I simply moved everything over into my personal calendar and now just pop in with stuff that you need to be observing.

Such as, the Orionids meteor shower is going on right now, but is peaking around the 21st and 22nd, with the 1st quarter moon setting at midnight right when the viewing is supposed to be improving and the meteors increasing in number. So they say, anyway – we all know my luck with such matters. One of these days…

And naturally, you recall that All Hallow’s Read is coming up, right at the end of the month (coincidental with some other holiday that I can’t bring to mind right now.) The ‘official’ rules are, you give out a scary book for Halloween (oh, yeah, that one,) which is fine, but we end up giving out any books that seem to fit the age range, especially since we have some fairly young kids that come around here. You can do this instead of candy, if you prefer this and have that health-conscious vibe going on (or ate all of the candy ahead of time,) or you can do this in addition to the candy, which is what we do. I would not suggest pressing the candy within the books, though.

We’ve been celebrating this now for a few years, and it’s quite popular with both the kids and the parents. A little tip: many kids tend to be shy and have this expectation of a fast and mostly silent transaction – hold out bucket, get chocolate, move on. The idea of stopping and perusing the offerings takes them out of stride, so be prepared to either help them with a choice, or encourage them to pause as long as it takes, or whatever. We found when we held out a selection of books, the kids would usually just take the nearest, so encouraging them to make a choice is almost necessary at times.

As I’ve said before, The Girlfriend is in charge of procuring, because she frequents used bookstores and thrift stores with this idea in mind, so actual cost runs maybe as much as a buck a kid, but usually less. Make sure you check the choices over carefully, though. This year, I’ll also have a small selection of 3D printed knickknacks for the kids, because I’m infected.

So join in yourself and help make this aspect of the holiday a common one, while giving the kids a more progressive and useful offering that is greeted a lot more appreciably than raisins. Meanwhile, keep watching the skies – no, not for flying saucers, but for real phenomena.

I have to close this with a portion of our decorations this year. We were trying to decide what to do with the skeletons when inspiration struck (though somehow this inspiration didn’t go too far afield – I’ll leave it up to The Girlfriend next year.)

Halloween decorations in the yard of a nature photographer

Halloween decorations in the yard of a nature photographer
[Gimme a break – those joints don’t provide full motion…]

You’re on it

Al Denelsbeck

male double-crested cormorant Nannopterum auritum looking grumpy
I shouldn’t need to tell you by now that tomorrow is National Grouch Day, and I fully expect you to be on your worst behavior but know you won’t anyway, you’ll disappoint me yet again. Yes, the day when we trod on the feet of optimism and blame it for putting them in the way, when we are perfectly justified in grumbling irritably at those cheery smirking bright-siders, when we turn off the news before their closing segment about some little kid trying to be cute. Just this once, dammit, we’re allowed to snark back at all those smarmy little bastards who try to ‘correct’ our justifiable peevishness and reply, “Not today, Happy Teeth! Today is my day, so put that in your herb tea!” They won’t listen anyway…

And even though it’s a national holiday, we won’t even get it off and have to work anyway, which is likely someone’s idea of ‘getting into the holiday’ even though they’re enjoying it themselves. I’ll let you figure that one out, if you feel up to it.

In the past, I’ve provided plenty of suggestions to help everyone get into the mood, which is more work than it’s worth, so this year, I’ll provide some quotes from the best grouches the world has known, to demonstrate that it should be more than a single day.

Blug Nuh-Uh: “Man, there’s got to be a way to make raw meat taste better than this.” (paraphrased)

Marse Ibid: “Polo, put a cork in it – you know you’re not ever gonna travel anywhere.”

Braximinio Guiseppeana: “Gutenberg! You can’t engrave worth a rat’s ass! The evening edition is gonna be late!”

Abernaminy Smithore: “Revere’s gonna fuck it up – put more men on the job.”

Lefleubitique Bon Non: “Pasteur, it’s the small stuff that wears you down every day.”

Emily Kinsumption: “Mr Darwin, do something with your barnacle collection or I’m throwing them out.”

Mamie Bockfarden: “Yeah, but what are you gonna do about it, Susan – vote?”

Dick Wembleystan: “Sure, the Outer Banks is great, Orville – if you like constant wind!”

Alois Furgenthaler: “C’mon, process those patent applications! The clock is ticking, Einstein!”

Norwood Snop: “Well, it’s that or nothing, Babbage…”

Duncan Blebbytits: “Who the fuck wants a bunch of photos of frogs and bugs?!”

Imagine where we’d be without all that, with just optimists leading the way? So stop grumbling to yourself tomorrow and let your raspy, phlegmy voice be heard! Just, don’t think it’ll accomplish anything…

I am the Al content generator

Al Denelsbeck

While typing up the previous post, I received an e-mail from my website host regarding the new services that they had to offer, but I didn’t let it distract me. Once posted, however, I took a quick look at it to see if there was anything of interest.

Disturbingly, three of the four new services featured Artificial-Intelligence-generated content: AI Website Builder, AI Domain Name Generator, and WordPress AI Assistant. Wow, how handy!

I’ve posted about AI twice before, though mostly on the broader, more hand-wringing (snerk!) aspects, and have two separate posts in the works regarding it as well, one of which may well be a podcast. I don’t consider it a good or bad thing, really – the topic is way too broad, anyway, so it’s more about what uses it can be put to, which is frankly not much. But it really says a lot if you find that you need it (or even want it) for any of those three uses above.

First off, if you find that you’re resorting to auto-generated content in any manner, the quality of your content has already degraded to the point that you should just close the site down entirely. Domain name? Uuhhheeerrrrmmmm, maybe? But only if you feel obligated to have a website but no great ideas for the domain – this generally means e-commerce or some such rot, and I’d be very hesitant over the copycat nature of any names generated. The website builder has some potential, only insofar as creating (or even updating) a decent site is extremely time-consuming and can make you go bleary-eyed pretty easily, but I think this is better served with templates and/or automated code generation, which I suspect WordPress has already covered anyway. [Believe it or not, only the blog is done on WordPress, and the rest of the site is my own creation, for whatever that’s worth – that may drive you straight into the arms of AI, I dunno.]

But overall, the thought that creativity is so lacking or hard or whatever that we want a generic algorithm to produce something that sounds about right, is really quite sad. If you can’t do the content, then get out of the practice – nobody needs sites that have nothing new or useful to say. I’m quite familiar with the feeling of obligation to have new posts, and inspiration isn’t always there – this is why there are few scheduled posts here, and sometimes gaps of several days. But AI-generated stuff serves only you, not anyone that comes to your site – it means your priorities and goals are all screwed up. The idea of easy public display of our talents, creativity, thoughts, skills, wit, education, and so on was what made the internet so cool and popular in the first place – and now we’re subverting it entirely for this? That’s pathetic.

I realize that the host is likely just pandering to the popularity of the topic – which is kind of pathetic in itself, though not as much as someone actually using those services. It still means the actual value of such offerings is next to nonexistent, and it would be much better if they had something of a broader use – these ‘features’ have no function nor appeal to me, and shouldn’t to anyone. Hopefully things like this will die down soon.

[Yes, there is a sly joke in the title, since that’s my name and not an abbreviation – it’s easy to miss if you’re using a sans-serif font…]

Sorting finds n+6b: The birds edition

Al Denelsbeck

So we continue with the new discoveries and rediscoveries from the last sorting session, things found while examining photos at full resolution to determine critical sharpness, or that remind me that I intended to do something with them and put them off in favor of a different topic. This one was a discovery: what’s wrong with this picture?

osprey Pandion haliaetus in flight with peculiar head
If you’ve ever noticed, I include the description with all images that generally tells you what you’re looking at, including the scientific names – this is to help search engines find distinct species and/or behavior. This is apart from the image title itself, which usually is just to help me find them, often being punny or an inside joke, but it also helps prevent duplicate filenames in the system because, you know, there are a little less than eight thousand images in the blog database alone – WordPress is good about appending numbers to duplicate names, but who needs “OspreyInFlight-76.jpg” or “ChineseMantisTenoderaSinensis-498.jpg” in there? Yet the descriptions often don’t reveal the small details of images that I want people to find, so cheating is difficult – [taps temple] always thinking. All that has allowed me to include enough text that you won’t accidentally find the reveal immediately below the image, so now I can tell you that (had you been looking, instead of reading all this dreck,) you should have noticed the peculiar whiskers that this osprey (Pandion haliaetus) was sporting, not at all its own but those of the catfish it was carrying off. This fact actually whizzed right by me on the first perusals after unloading the memory card, but registered during the sort.

Another one that registered was this:

first-year osprey Pandion haliaetus in flight still showing juvenile coloration on head
I can’t say for sure that this is the first I’ve captured, but this is the first I’ve noticed it anyway: those stripes on the head are juvenile markings, indicating that this is this year’s brood. I’ve seen them in the nest like this, but not out hunting, so it’s good to have these.

first-year osprey Pandion haliaetus in flight still showing juvenile coloration on head and reddish eyes
Here’s another juvenile trait: those reddish-brown eyes. By adulthood (which I suspect will be next year, though I’m not sure about that,) they will have turned pale yellow – if you want to compare these, you’ll probably be able to find some images of adults someplace on these pages (like, oh, that changing banner at top – you know you can advance that at will, right?)

turkey vulture Cathartes aura in flight overhead with backlighting showing new feathers coming in
This description, had you checked it out now that I’ve told you about them, gives it all away, but no big reveal here anyway. I generally don’t do many photographs of turkey vultures (Cathartes aura) because, well, they all mostly look like this: wheeling overhead, and I have plenty of those. But this time the sun being almost aligned behind the bird, while reducing the contrast and saturation significantly, highlights the new feathers coming in, those that aren’t as long as the others. Specifically, those about midway along the back edge of the wings, though there is also a pair towards the base of the back edges. Those out near the wingtips, all nice and aligned, aren’t new feathers but secondary flight feathers, and are supposed to look that way. This shows a trait better than I’ve usually captured, which is that birds usually molt their feathers out in matching pairs, left and right, so that their lift and flight abilities aren’t off-balance at least. And of course, they only do a few at a time so their abilities aren’t reduced too much. This isn’t conscious of course, just a genetic trait among, to the best of my knowledge, all birds, but it implies that somewhere in the distant past, molting had variations that got weeded out by natural selection, the birds that flew funny being laughed at by other birds and thus unable to find a date for the prom.

And one just for the sake of it.

closeup profile of green heron Butorides virescens showing off that eye, because
You’ve seen variations of this image earlier (haven’t you?) but I’ll let you figure out how to find the image description for this one – it explains why it’s here.

Just in case you’re keeping track, no, this hasn’t been the sixth sorting session since I started this topic – not every session yields some discoveries.

1 … 48 49 50 51 52 … 319