Two of three

Al Denelsbeck

No, I didn’t go out to the lake for more photos, and it sure isn’t happening today as the side effects from Tropical Storm Ophelia have produced rain for about sixteen hours straight. I just realized that some of the photos from that last outing didn’t really fit in with the others (of which there are still plenty,) so I broke them off. Someone once told me raptors and arachnids don’t mix, and I’ve always remembered that sage advice. Who said it, I haven’t the faintest…

As I was walking along the lakeshore, there was lots of movement from the sand right near the water’s edge, quick but tiny – so small I had a hard time making out what they were from a standing position. Pausing and looking carefully, I eventually determined that some of them, at least, were tiny spiders, and I took a moment to snag a few frames.

minuscule wolf spider Lycosidae on wet sand along lake edge
I’m calling this a wolf spider (Lycosidae,) but that’s based largely on the body structure because I couldn’t see the eyes well enough – I doubt the overall leg spread topped six millimeters. I wasn’t inclined to get out the macro lens and get wet scrambling around on my hands and knees for the shot, plus I was still watching for raptors, so this was with the 150-600mm; I had to back off a little to get into the short focus range of 2.5 meters. Not bad for that, really.

A little later on, I’d taken a seat on a small rise, still sandy but dry, and noticed another spider, about twice the size, scampering along near me with her egg sac. This time I went ahead and affixed the Mamiya 80mm macro, but was shooting handheld without supplemental lighting.

still small wolf spider Lycosidae with attached egg sac
Several of the spider species carry around their egg sacs attached to their spinnerets – this one might have been 12 mm or so in spread, so I’m trying to imagine how small the spiderlings are when hatched. With that eye pattern, I’m fairly confident this is a wolf spider, and they typically carry their young around on their abdomens for a while after hatching, though without strong magnification I’d never know it. Maybe I should plan a session looking for things like this…

stacked image of tiny wolf spider Lycosidae with attached egg sac
Since I was shooting in available light and it was getting on towards sunset, this was wide open at f4, and is actually a ‘stack’ of two frames: one had the abdomen sharp, one the cephalothorax. Where would we be without Photoshop, or in this case, GIMP? Well, shooting with the macro flash unit at f16 and doing an even better job, really.

And finally,

waxing crescent moon with 'trailing' clouds
I knew the moon would be visible, and eventually located it among the scattered clouds. I waited for some to pass, and snapped this at the right moment, giving me the impression of a cannonball in flight. And now you can’t unsee that either.

One of two (or maybe more)

Al Denelsbeck

These are images from the first of two visits to Jordan Lake this week, and I’m not absolutely sure there won’t be a third before I finish the post for the second, but even if not, there are a serious number of pics. So let’s get started.

osprey Pandion haliaetus wheeling overhead showing entire underside
These are from Monday, which was more active yet still not as much as I’d hoped – I don’t expect anything to beat this day in June but it would be nice. And like the osprey (Pandion haliaetus) above, occasionally one of the birds out there would provide a nice pose.

I’m still after a good shot of the point of entry for a diving osprey, which remains difficult. I had made a minor change to the autofocus system, assigning a ‘lock’ function to one of the buttons on the back right under my thumb, so when I saw a bird starting to dive, I could lock autofocus and prevent it from hunting or grabbing the background horizon as the bird was about to hit the water. As yet, I have not been able to use it, because the autofocus has to be correct first before I can, and so far it’s been hunting just as I was trying to track the osprey’s descent. This might be partially my fault, because I still have to shift my grip slightly to hit the button and it may be causing my aim to wander slightly – this could be enough given the distance of the birds and thus the small AF target, but generally things are happening fast at that point and I’m not really concentrating on evaluating technique.

Also not helping is exposure compensation, to some degree illustrated below:

osprey Pandion haliaetus just before entering water after a fish
You see, I have some over-exposure dialed in for birds against the bright sky, which works well for images like that at top, because the brightness of the sky (and how little of the frame the birds take – that one’s significantly cropped) would cause the exposure functions in the camera to darken things down to ‘average,’ middle-tones, so I over-expose to keep things at the proper brightness – generally 2/3 to one full stop. But then, as the bird crosses the horizon and has a much darker background, this function is making things too bright and actually slowing down the shutter speed. That’s probably not the case here, as we’re about to see – it’s probably just focus wandering.

osprey Pandion haliaetus immediately after splashing down
Because this is a split-second later, same background conditions, and this time the focus locked on just fine and the action is adequately frozen. Still trying to, not perfect this, but at least improve it significantly. Boosting the ISO may help, but there’s a balance point between speed and quality, and I’m playing with that too. I was all ready to do some experiments the following day, and of course then the birds were pretty much not hunting at all.

It was a windy day, making the lake surface choppy but providing plenty of thermals for the raptors to glide within, and the vultures were taking full advantage of it, even though I wasn’t paying much attention to them. But I did watch one approach a perched osprey in the distance – and so did the osprey.

turkey vulture Cathartes aura approaching osprey Pandion haliaetus perched in dead tree
As close as they appear here, it’s a line-of-sight kind of thing and the vulture is a lot farther from the osprey than that. Vultures aren’t too territorial and I’ve never seen or even heard of one harassing anything else (that was alive, anyway,) but the osprey appeared none too sure of that as it approached.

turkey vulture Cathartes aura circling around and landing behind osprey Pandion haliaetus perched in dead tree
But the vulture, used to perching in entire flocks, just wanted a spot of its own in the inviting tree, and the osprey wasn’t fazed by that, once the vulture had taken its perch. This was a turkey vulture (Cathartes aura,) though the black vultures were also quite present that day.

A little later on, the osprey had left and more of the vultures were taking up the tree. I just liked the moment in time captured here:

trio of turkey vultures Cathartes aura in various locations on dead tree
I looked closely at the original frames, and there’s just enough resolution to make out the red heads, making these all turkey vultures. However, in hanging out and waiting, I’d taken a seat on the sand of the lakeshore not too far away from the decimated carcass of a large fish, and my stillness and the overhanging shade tree convinced a black vulture (Coragyps atratus) that I wasn’t around, and it cruised in to land nearby. It saw me at the last second, because I was raising the lens to track it, but this wasn’t enough to discourage the bird and it simply veered off a little and landed farther away.

black vulture Coragyps atratus trying to determine if the photographer poses a threat
It had landed perhaps 15-18 meters off and eyed me warily, but there was carrion there, and it didn’t take long for the large bird to start sidling closer, not hopping as they often do – this required a little more caution, so it stalked carefully, but not too slowly really.

black vulture Coragyps atratus portrait against lake
I still had compensation dialed in for shots against the sky, so this was a little bright and has been darkened slightly in post, which makes the lake look that way. But even the sound of the shutter wasn’t deterring the vulture.

black vulture Coragyps atratus working on carcass of dead fish on lakeshore
Seriously, there wasn’t enough left of the fish to make a decent snack, but the vulture wasn’t absolutely sure of that. This was taking place not ten meters away from where I sat, yet the bird wasn’t overly concerned. Soon, about five more vultures saw the activity and came swooping in, but as I raised the camera they all said, “What, are you nuts?” (or reactions to that effect) and veered off, only one landing much further off before deciding it wasn’t worth it and taking off again. My model here soon followed, and as I type this, I realize that it should have become a Profiles of Nature. Ah well – I have enough birds in those anyway.

There were also at least five bald eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) present, though mostly at great distances, just close enough to make out age-specific markings but little else. One came reasonably close for a portrait, revealing as it did so how old it was.

third year bald eagle Haliaeetus leucocephalus wheeling overhead
The stripes along the face are indicative: this is a third year juvenile, and will gain its adult plumage next year. I’m not sure that I had an example of the third year plumage this clear, but I do now at least.

At least one pair of adults were cruising past in the distance at one point, and individual adults later on, but I couldn’t say for sure whether these were the same ones or not – they did at least seem to prefer the same spot, well down the lake from me. But then, just a tad closer, another pair started wheeling around close together – very close, at times, and then they started ‘interacting.’ The following animated gif (pronounced, “IN-kor-EKT-lee“) is a sequence of seven consecutive frames shot within two seconds as I watched.

animated gif of two juvenile bald eagles Haliaeetus leucocephalus, likely second-year, harassing one another
The potshots, of which there were several, were unmistakable, but at no point did either veer off and change direction or anything; since I’ve seen this before, I’m inclined to say this is play behavior among siblings, practice for the real actions of harassing other birds like osprey for their fish, one of the ways eagles get their food. We’ll illustrate these two a little better.

full-frame view of two juvenile bald eagles Haliaeetus leucocephalus interacting in distance
This is one example of the frames I was capturing, uncropped to give you an idea of the distance involved and my view through the camera – yes, this is at 600mm, so they weren’t much more than specks to the naked eye, difficult to determine that they were indeed eagles (mostly by the wings held flat while gliding, and the slower speed of their flapping pattern when they weren’t.) Now we’ll look at the same frame a bit tighter.

pair of juvenile bald eagles Haliaeetus leucocephalus, probably second-year, demonstrating harassing behavior
The one on the left is clearly a second-year juvenile, but the one on the right might be a first-year; speckling on the head and underwings may or may not be present. Still, since it didn’t try to flee under this harassment but continued on its path, I’m leaning towards these being siblings just goofing on one another.

Without more action to be seen, I eventually wrapped it up and headed home. But then a bit later on as I was doing yardwork, I spotted another raptor sitting in a tree about a hundred meters off, grabbing the camera and long lens again and slowly stalking it. The stealth turned out to be unnecessary, since the hawk wasn’t paying the least attention to me or the various neighbors who marched by directly under it.

juvenile Cooper's hawk Accipiter cooperii perched nonchalantly on dead branch
I was initially identifying this as a juvenile red-tailed hawk, partially because I’d heard one call only a few minutes before, but on closer look I’m pegging this as a juvenile Cooper’s hawk (Accipiter cooperii) instead – the red-tail’s belly band is missing. It was big enough for a red-tail and acting like one – normally the accipiters are quite shy and avoid people quickly, and this one couldn’t have cared less not only that I was standing right underneath it, but conversing with neighbors as I was doing so (this is never my doing; I remain silent when stalking critters, but too many other people fail to understand this concept, and I’m polite enough not to ignore them or glare at them.) Anyway, if you want to understand my identification uncertainty, take a look at the photos for juvenile Cooper’s hawks, and then sharp-shinned hawks, and finally red-tailed hawks.

That was only part one. More on the way.

Coupla portraits

Al Denelsbeck

Just a pair of portrait perspectives taken yesterday – nothing deep or meaningful.

hummingbird clearwing moth Hemaris thysbe resting on butterfly bush Buddleja davidii
Late yesterday morning I was surprised to find a hummingbird clearwing moth (Hemaris thysbe) remaining perched on the blossoms of one of the butterfly bushes (which I keep forgetting are now Buddleja davidii, and not Buddleia – quite an annoying change, to be honest.) While I’ve actually never seen either Hemaris species holding still at all, I know they must alight to sleep and it got kind of chilly that previous night, but it was also late enough (with enough full sun) that the moth should have been well-awake and warm by that point. It remained in place long enough for several close portraits and detail shots, and even while I was removing old, dead blossom clusters, but then was gone when I turned back during this task. I’m glad it stayed long enough at least.

And then, much later:

pair of juvenile green treefrogs Dryophytes cinereus perched on empty planter
A pair of tiny juvenile green treefrogs (Dryophytes cinereus) were hanging out together on a planter on the front walk in the evening, and very nicely got together in the frame as I was shooting. From the size difference, I would say that they were different broods, but the largest (in the back) wasn’t even half adult size – nothing handy for scale, though the planter wall itself is only 10mm thick, if that helps. Which means the foreground one could perch comfortably on your thumb.

Amusingly, I rotated the planter gently to try and achieve a head-on view of both, but they remained oriented the same way, turning as the pot did to keep facing in their original directions. It’s counter to expectations, because they were both sitting there unmoving without any apparent focus, but they both definitely wanted to be facing that way. Pardon me.

Tripod holes 38

Al Denelsbeck

boat on small inlet/bay on Ocracoke Island, NC
N 35° 8’35.12″ W 75°53’9.32″ Google Earth location

Ocracoke Island, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, is an interesting place, and on several visits I saw this exact same tableau – I couldn’t tell you exactly when this particular image was taken, but sometime in the early nineties is close enough. There was something evocative about it to me, and when you go to the aerial view you’ll start to get an impression why. First off, Ocracoke is a very narrow island, so you can call this a creek if you like, or an inlet, or a bay, but it’s safe to say the length of this body of water isn’t significant in any way. Moreover, there are no houses or structures of any kind in the area, and barely a path to this mooring spot without even a dock, basically in the middle of nowhere on an island that’s 85% undeveloped and bare. It just seems odd that there was always a boat there, and if you use the Google Earth program to roll back the dates, you can see that it’s there about half of the time, still.

To me, it gives some idea of the atmosphere of the island, which is a tourist destination yet brings to mind a seaside fishing village from a century ago in many ways. Sure, there are roads and hotels and souvenir shops, mostly around the little harbor, but there’s also someone’s boat tied up in the middle of a salt marsh far from any indication of owned property. Hopefully, the image is carrying the laid back impression that I always got while visiting.

Which has, woo, been a while. I was thinking that I hadn’t been down there since I moved back into the state, but I checked my image stock; I’d been back there with Jim Kramer in 2006, so it’s only been 17 years since my last visit. I gotta stop doing things like this – I don’t need the reminders of how time is passing…

This evening, even fartsier

Al Denelsbeck

Again, sunset looked promising, so to the neighborhood pond I went. Again, sunset didn’t live up to its promise, so I chased a few other pics while there.

Notably, the bats were active, and while I had only the 18-135, I got a couple of frames that worked. You get to decide which crop works best for this one, though – vertical?

unidentified bat against faint sunset colors
Or, horizontal?

unidentified bat against faint sunset colors
I was just winging it (heh!), not expecting to get too much with the shorter reach of the lens, the velocity of the subject, and the fading light, but I was pleased to pull a little wing detail out of a few frames. This is nearly full-resolution:

unidentified bat against almost no sunset color
Don’t ask me for the species, because I could see no color any better than this, plus I was unable to even judge size/distance. I did see a brief dogfight while there, two bats winding around so close together they overlapped in multiple frames, but what that was all about I can’t say, because I’m a discreet neighbor.

Plus, I chased a couple of other compositions while I ensured that the sky would get no less boring.

lone American sweetgum Liquidamber styraciflua leaf on water with reflections of nearby trees
Getting a sharp frame of this took some playing around, because the light was disappearing, but by intentionally underexposing I was able to get this. What I like about it is, the leaf is totally isolated on the water – the thick ‘stem’ is simply a reflection of a branch, but it’s easy to escape notice.

And finally,

unidentified dragonfly on water reeds against faint sunset reflections
As the color was fading from the clouds, I had to crouch and move around a bit to put it behind the dragonfly, but at least it’s more than acceptably sharp. For ten minutes of playing around all told, it works for me.

No chimping!

Al Denelsbeck

Isn’t that what Mama Celeste always said? Something like that, anyway. And you have to be a certain age to even have the faintest clue what I’m talking about…

I went down to Jordan lake today, for the first time in weeks, because really, it’s been too hot to do so otherwise. It was plenty hot today, but not quite “pass out after 30 minutes” hot. I didn’t stay too long, because “not quite,” plus there wasn’t a whole lot of activity, but I did get a few images anyway.

Here’s the story. Not too long after picking a vantage spot, because I’d already seen some osprey (Pandion haliaetus,) I witnessed one in the distance do a completely vertical dive, flare out at the last second, and crash into the water – my tracking, however, was off and I missed the action. Then I watched the bird attempt to climb back out again.

osprey Pandion haliaetus trying to climb out of water with large fish
This was the first attempt, but it never got fully airborne and settled back into the water after a few seconds, which gave me the distinct clue that the fish it had captured was quite heavy for the bird.

osprey Pandion haliaetus resting before second attempt to climb out with large fish
It took better than 30 seconds just sitting in the water, the longest I’d ever seen one treading water after a capture, before it made another attempt to climb out.

osprey Pandion haliaetus finally getting airborne with large fish
Which it did manage, but it took a running start, and the osprey covered at least six meters horizontally before managing to get the fish clear of the water. This image, not the clearest I’ve shot, shows why though: the fish was far too close to weighing what the osprey did (especially since birds have hollow bones and are much lighter than they appear, while fish tend to be pretty dense – no judgment though.)

But luck was with me, in that the osprey turned towards me rather than away as it circled back towards a perch.

osprey Pandion haliaetus approaching photographer with large fish
I’m more than happy with this shot, but it gets even better.

osprey Pandion haliaetus doing water-removal shimmy while approaching photographer with large fish
This was as the osprey had finally gotten enough altitude to feel safe with the maneuver, and did its typical hard shake to rid itself of excess water, which always causes a dip in height. But even this isn’t enough – we have to go in tighter on the same frame.

cropped version of previous shimmy pic
Yeah, I approve. Feel free to tell me what the fish is if you like.

And then the mistake. I watched as the osprey continued circling and eventually got high enough, with obvious effort, to take a perch with the fish, well over a hundred meters distant so my view wasn’t all that great. Here I broke my cardinal rule, which is, “No chimping,” this referring to looking at the images on the LCD of the camera. There are two main reasons: one, that the tiny little preview won’t tell you anything crucial about the image, and two, when you’re doing that you’re not watching for more subjects or further developments. I wanted to see if the photos above passed muster while things seemed quiet, and I paid the price. Because I heard the alarm calls of an osprey and looked up too late to find, right out in front of me again, an osprey and a bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) in the air rather close together, with a splash in the water underneath. Apparently the eagle, from a perch I hadn’t discovered, had popped out to steal the fish from the osprey, who took off with it out over the water before abandoning it. Osprey are faster and more maneuverable than eagles, but not while burdened so, and eagles are lazy. However, the eagle missed the fish dropping and circled around without even dipping down towards the water, at least giving me a few decent frames.

newly adult bald eagle Haliaeetus leucocephalus with mottled plumage
The mottling visible on the head and tail, and under the wings, tells me the eagle is just four years old, molting out of its third year plumage into adult coloration. Nice enough shot for me, but I should have captured the harassment action, in addition to this, and missed it. Lesson learned, the hard way.

A little later on, I witnessed the same eagle (discerned by the coloration) and an osprey out over the water again, only the osprey had no fish – I’d been watching close enough to know that no captures were made in the area. It might have been the eagle being territorial, but we’re well past nesting season and the area was rife with ospreys, so I suspect the eagle thought the osprey might have had a fish and was giving chase, breaking it off just as I was trying to focus on both of them. But almost negligently, it turned back towards shore, then dipped quickly and snagged its own fish almost as an afterthought.

newly adult bald eagle Haliaeetus leucocephalus heading off with fish
See! You can catch your own, you lazy sod. I’ll leave commentary on this being our national symbol to others.

Things quieted down a bit following that, and after sitting out there for a while and seeing nothing else happening, plus the sweat running down my spine, I wrapped things up for the afternoon, but not before being a little fartsy with a perched osprey and a commercial airliner climbing out high overhead. Plus those clouds made me suspect the weather might turn uglier before too much longer. Still, this is okay for returning to the lake for the first time since late July.

commercial airliner cruising out high over perched osprey Pandion haliaetus

You know I’m good for it

Al Denelsbeck

Two follow-ups for this post, both of which I came across early this morning. The first is frivolous yet still formed this trivial frustration to me for, um, a while. I mentioned in a previous post that there was this distinctive theme music to Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, one of the first TV programs that revolved around naturalism and wildlife, and you are obligated by law to give this entire name because they always did – it was also among the first programs wholly sponsored by a single contributor, an insurance company, and they made sure you knew it. The host would resort to these incredibly contrived segues into a commercial, one of the most memorable traits of the show. The other, that everyone who watched it remembers, is that the host, Marlin Perkins, this soft-spoken and urbane gentleman always in a suit and tie, would display the tame and innocuous critters in a studio setting, and then pass the reins over to Jim Fowler, the younger sidekick who did most of the field work and would routinely get his ass kicked wrestling with anacondas and running from angry giraffes. Yes, this was absolutely the genesis of Crocodile Hunter some decades later, except not as unbearably smarmy or contrived.

Anyway, the point I made in that earlier post was that the show had this specific theme music that I could not find anywhere – my guess is that they did not secure the rights to it for subsequent home video release and switched to the closing or secondary theme or something. Stumbling across that very post again last night, I got motivated to search again, and like before, I was only turning up this other, super-mellow version – this was getting so bad that I was actually doubting my memory (which, granted, came from when I was less than 9 years old so, you know, decades ago,) when suddenly I located it! This was both a completion of this ludicrous task set for myself many years ago, and vindication that I’m not completely senile yet. I present to you the theme that I always remembered (shortened a bit here):

Theme from Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom

I had toyed with the idea of getting out the MIDI keyboard and reproducing it from memory, and now I wish I’d done so, because it would have been interesting to compare the two and see how close I’d come.

The other follow-up is a lot more recent and far less self-centered. Just over a month ago I posted about spittleblower David Grusch’s testimony that the US government and/or military had evidence of crashed extra-terrestrials – according to vague and unnamed sources and all that typical horseshit. But a few days back Brian Dunning at Skeptoid tackled this same testimony, only with a hell of a lot more effort and research involved. Dunning was even more disparaging that I was about Grusch bringing up Roswell, but more specifically, he tracked down the origins of another of Grusch’s claims, which turned out to be… less than stellar, shall we say? Dunning also revealed that Grusch was significantly less ‘security-minded’ in interviews several weeks before the congressional hearing, as well as his close ties with the same ol’ UFO blowhards that keep appearing again and again with the same ol’ stories and the same ol’ utter lack of anything the slightest bit substantial. Long story short: don’t invest in those quantum-drive hovercars juuussst yet…

[Among those that look into UFO/UAP reports critically, there are a lot of red flags: Roswell, as mentioned, and all of the names Dunning relates as well as Leslie Kean, Billy Meier, Whitley Strieber, Bob Lazar, and Betty Hill; Majestic/MJ-12; To The Stars Academy; Skinwalker Ranch; and plenty of others. While I would never recommend simply dismissing anything out of hand, the frequency that these people and items have been tied to failed promises and proven bunk is telling all by itself, and association with or referral to any of them is simply bad news. Skeptoid had covered a lot of these, and so has Bad UFOs.]

Okay, now back to video editing…

Tripod holes 37

Al Denelsbeck

great egret Ardea alba in shallows of Portage River in Elmore, Ohio
N 41°28’33.98″ W 83°17’53.35″ Google Earth Location

We needed an Ohio one in here, and I liked this grab shot from 2014. The Manatee and I were returning from a game creators convention (he is, I’m not) and checking out some of the bike trails that he intended to be using a little later on, and while on one of these paths, on a bridge over the Portage River in blink-and-you-miss-it Elmore, Ohio, we spotted this distant great egret (Ardea alba) in a faintly surreal scene, mostly due to the light quality of the day. I like how it has a suggestion of morphing from water into sky in a faintly Escher-like way, and out of curiosity, I modified the image slightly just now to see if I could make it a little more surreal.

previous image with egret inverted
I was hoping to convey an image that inverted itself as you went towards top or bottom, but think it’s a little too subtle to carry that idea well enough. Ah well.

And one more thing: these are both altered, because the original was flatter with lower contrast and a slightly different color register – I’ve featured this before, though the images seen here are another variation. It involved some very careful adjustments with the Curves function, for instance bringing up more blue in the mid-highlights (the brighter water but not the cloud reflections or egret,) while reducing it – thus increasing yellow – in the lower registers, which meant the water at bottom of the frame. All three color channels were tweaked for these versions, trying to strengthen the image while avoiding making it look unrealistic. You’d have to tell me how well, or not, I succeeded.

Meanwhile, I don’t think The Manatee ever returned to this area on his bike trip…

First half

Al Denelsbeck

As mentioned at the end of the previous post, I did indeed go out and get a few frames as intended, and then some more. And then I collected a particular subject for detail and did even more. But some of those go along with some video clips that I obtained as well, and editing the video is going to take a little time as it always does, so I decided to split these into two posts.

A couple of evenings ago, the sunset looked promising (having rained a couple hours before) and I went over to the neighborhood pond to pursue this potential. As usual, the sky laughed at me and produced nothing at all of interest, but on the way back, I checked the oak-leaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia) in The Jungle and, sure enough, the resident anole there was just seeking its sleepy-spot for the night.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis on leaf of oak-leaf hydrangea Hydrangea quercifolia before retiring for the evening
I wasn’t planning on chasing this subject so I did not have the macro rig, and used the on-camera flash instead. This particular Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) has been seen and photographed numerous times before, including last year I suspect, and greatly favors this particular cluster of leaves at the end of a specific branch of the hydrangea. Since this was just after sunset, which is when they find their sleeping spot, I was interrupting the process here, but returned later on to check it out. You can see, out of focus in the foreground, some bare flower stems of the hydrangea, and it was to these that the anole retired. I had to go for a head-on perspective.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis on bare flower stems of oak-leaf hydrangea Hydrangea quercifolia after nightfall
As is often the case, the anole became aware of my presence, possibly because of the whine of the charging capacitor in the macro flash, so I couldn’t achieve any frames with its eyes closed, but it remained where it was all the same. We need to go in closer for a particular detail:

closer crop of previous frame showing dew on head of anole
Yep, that’s dew on its forehead, evidence of the dropping temperature. These were taken after I finished the previous post, but past midnight now so “early yesterday morning.”

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis on bare flower stems of oak-leaf hydrangea Hydrangea quercifolia after nightfall
I did a side shot to show the perch better, and I’ll point out that the tip of the anole’s tail extends out of the frame here. Since the anole is right back there again tonight, I just went out to get a specific measurement: about 85mm overall length, but from nose to vent (body length) it’s less than 40. Unfortunately, I found out how much of its complacency was due to not being able to see anything in the glare of the headlamp, because as the calipers got close to its nose and thus into the light, the anole considered this unkosher and bailed into the leaves below. I feel bad, but during the day the anole has full run of the entire area so it’s not ‘displaced’ or anything, just not in its favorite (for now) bedroom.

But back to the previous morning, when I realized the light would be better coming from the other side and juggled the bracket around accordingly.

head-on shot of Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis on bare flower stems of oak-leaf hydrangea Hydrangea quercifolia after nightfall
Much better lighting now, and look at the little toes just barely gripping the branch. But this all reminded me that I need to redesign the macro flash bracket in two ways. First, a much easier attachment manner than a screw-to-tighten quick-release bracket that attaches to the mount that remains on the camera body, because this requires more hands than I have; it needs to simply ‘click’ on, even if I have to tighten it afterward. Part two is that it has to be able to rotate laterally from this mount, to switch the flash unit from left to right easily, because I have to do this too often and it’s extremely awkward, again, for non-octopods. Pondering how to make all this work.

Meanwhile, another subject from the same night.

resident American bullfrog Lithobates catesbeianus outside backyard pond
This is the American bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus) that has taken up residence in the pond here at Walkabout Estates, and it’s about the size of my fist. It’s out every night, and quite complacent most of the time; if I don’t specifically get anything within the headlamp beam, I can often approach quite close. Quite close.

Extreme closeup of resident American bullfrog Lithobates catesbeianus
This is at maximum magnification with the Mamiya 80mm macro, sans the extension tube so not as close as it could be, but this places the lens within 160mm of the frog, and it didn’t twitch. I realized after I was finding this monster here that I was no longer seeing the three resident green frogs that had been in the pond, and suspect that they have fallen prey to this one – it’s big enough to take down mice and small snakes, and capable of it too. Then a few days back after one of the rains, I found a small green frog in the pond again. One of the residents that I’d missed? A new one? About to become another meal for Hugo here? I have no idea. One of these days I’ll snag this one just to get a weight, and I imagine it’s going to be a handful to manage this. I should probably have someone videoing it…

And two just from tonight, that I found in passing.

juvenile green treefrog Dryophytes cinereus splayed on side of blue planter
This juvenile green treefrog (Dryophytes cinereus) is about half adult size, hanging out on one of the front planters – I just liked the ready-for-action pose.

juvenile green treefrog Dryophytes cinereus deep within gardenia plant
And this one, same species, is about half of that size and directly across the front walk from it, nestled deep within one of the gardenia bushes. It seems to have taken up residence among the same plants that used to host one of the newborn anoles, who now appear to have moved on – possibly not far, but not within regular sighting anyway. I just try to track their habits and haunts, slowly getting an idea of what their traits are. But yeah, I do need to find some more variety in species around here… though that’s what the video will accomplish too, so hang on a bit.

Cut y’self

Al Denelsbeck

Many things happening this week, in many directions, so little of it was photography. Part of this was, I was getting some warning signs that my ‘Main’ harddrive was about to fail, and I replaced it, copying it over onto a new drive – but the program that I used took something like 27-28 hours to complete this task (just over a terabyte of info,) and I suspect it would have gone much faster had I done it by hand. And then, I was checking carefully to make sure that the info was intact before proceeding with my normal uses. Since this is the primary storage for my photos, this meant I was doing nothing with them until I was satisfied.

However, I took a few in that time period, I just didn’t unload them to the new drive for a bit, and we’ll see a couple now.

waning gibbous moon
At about 1 AM on the 5th I snapped this waning gibbous moon – actually, one of many frames, making readjustments to focus between each to snag the sharpest image possible. This is sized for the blog, but clicking on it will take you to a full-resolution (but still cropped) version so you can see the detail that was captured – just do it carefully, because it’s damn sharp.

A couple of notes, and for these, I was referring to the excellent Maps of the Moon site, and clicking on the color, topographic maps therein will give you plenty of detail. This can be tricky, because the actual appearance of details changes significantly with the light angle, plus you have to deal with the apparent tilt caused by the time of night you’re taking the images – the meridian lines that they provide can help a lot, yet careful comparison of nearby details is usually necessary. So I’m providing a marked version below:

marked image of waning gibbous moon
I was primarily focusing the lens with those three craters on the terminator, Theophilus, Cyrilius, and Catharina, because they provided the most contrast around small details, especially the central peak in Cyrilius. Except, as you’ll see in the full-res version, this wasn’t exactly a central peak (which it does have,) but the entire crater floor – it’s just too small in the viewfinder to resolve decently. However, my judgement for acceptable sharpness came from viewing the central peak in Piccolomini with the resulting full resolution images, because the bright spot of the peak and its subsequent shadow were distinct enough details to compare other frames against.

I note the position of Tycho here because, for reasons lost to time, I often have the goal of catching sunrise or sunset on its central peak (even though I’ve done this a few times before,) and here we can see we’re far from it – about three days, in fact. That’s three Earth days, because it’ll only be later in the same day on the moon, since a lunar day is 28 Earth days long. So I did indeed return three (Earth) nights later on the 8th, waiting until the moon had risen high enough for an unobstructed view here at Walkabout Estates. This meant the next images were shot at about 3 AM instead.

waning crescent moon
Once again, clicking on the image will give you the full-resolution version. If you’re good at spotting Tycho (the ejecta rays help) then you won’t need the following marked image, but I’ma provide it anyway.

[Side note: Every time I look at photos of the Tycho region, the ejecta rays that make the crater so distinctive seem misaligned, like they did not originate with Tycho but just off to the side. I don’t know why this is, but it appears on both hemispheres, so visible in multiple phases. The full-res photo above shows it better.]

waning crescent moon with markings
Yeah, I was a little too late, because the sun has already set on the central peak of Tycho – not even a vestige of light upon it can be discerned, and I played with the brightness a bit too. One of these days I’ll set up the telescope and tracking motor and do a time-lapse of the moon, see if I can actually capture the moment of sunrise or sunset, but in this case I suspect it occurred before the moon had even risen for my location, possibly even during the day. For giggles I have pointed out the end of the Montes Appeninus, or Lunar Appenines, a distinct mountain range on the moon that looked like a hair-thin line in the viewfinder – again, my focusing aid, but I didn’t trust this (the textured focusing screen prevents really crucial resolution, and forget autofocus,) and went with the same deal, refocusing between frames to choose the best.

Meanwhile, there’s a tiny detail that I could see in the viewfinder, don’t ask me how because it’s barely visible here at several times the size, but I’m putting it down to contrast. If you go over to the far right, at the moon’s south pole region, you can just make out a lonely spot of light from the sun just catching the tip of a mountain or the high edge of a crater – at present, the maps that I have aren’t detailed enough in those regions but I’d probably be guessing anyway. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has undoubtedly returned detailed photos of the region, because they’ve been surveying the poles for the possibility of ice deposits, but as yet I have found no access to those maps, plus who’s reading anyway?

I’ll close out with one last, actually among the first of the images from the second session, because it looks cool.

overexposed waning crescent moon showing earthshine and passing clouds
Some clouds were just clearing from around the moon and I quickly fired off some longer exposures to capture them, blowing out the lunar details but capturing a hint of earthshine in there – more detail would have been impossible without a tracking motor because the moon was moving during the exposure (a mere 1/3 of a second,) which shows in the full-resolution version that I have not bothered to link, so click if you want but it won’t do anything. Meanwhile, even this overexposed version shows no peak in Tycho – late late late.

More photos and other fun schtuff will be along shortly, including one that I’m probably just about to go out and get. You know where this’ll all appear.

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