Profiles of Nature 59

Al Denelsbeck

We’re trying to keep the post count up, so of course another Profiles was going to sneak in. You only have yourself to blame*

great blue heron Ardea herodias herodias frenching some unknown fish
Today we have the honor of meeting Enkhtsetseg, currently quite high in demand as an animal trainer for movies without a CGI budget. – you can interpret “animal trainer” in two different manners because they both work, just don’t use it in the third manner because you’ll get excoriated. Enkhtsetseg always knew that she would become famous, only she believed it would be for booking a major press conference at a landscaping company or something equally brain-dead, so she’s a bit gratified that it’s only for getting cats to cough up hairballs on command for the cameras – not entirely unlike many press conferences, now that we think about it, though much less audibly annoying. She takes no pride in her work, however, knowing that this only leads to abuse by employers, so she’s perfected the attitude of, “It’s this or nothing,” which makes them willing to pay much more for her services. You know it works. Seen here, she’s coaching her star pupil for a scene in the upcoming live-action version of Finding Nemo – yes, she’s getting paid up front. Enkhtsetseg has trained animals for appearances in such films as Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Bachelor Party, The Shawshank Redemption, and Balls of Fury; if you look carefully, you’ll notice that a pond, fountain, or punch bowl is always visible nearby, which is where she coaches from. What? Wait, you thought Enkhtsetseg was the bird in the photo?! That’s stupid – who could imagine a bird as an animal trainer? They can’t even talk. She candidly admitted for our interview that, like many in Hollywood, she struggles with substance abuse: on her way home each night, algae harasses her. Calm down – we left out the gag about juggling her career, so you’re actually ahead of the game right now. Ingrate. Besides, you thought she was the bird, so who are you to talk? Enkhtsetseg will never admit it, but her favorite term to use routinely while having no idea what it actually means is, “dado head.”

You should be thanking us – we started the Profiles just shy of three years ago and are only up to 59, instead of the number it could have been. We think a nice gift card is in order. Or we could be back next week…

* Why, we’re not sure, but it works better for us this way.

Living in the past XXV

Al Denelsbeck

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis clinging to plant sprig
For as many photos as I have of Carolina anoles, I can easily recall the circumstances of this one, because of the distinctive ‘comma’ pose (helped by how it was framed, I’m sure.) I’d gone through the NC Botanical Gardens for a while and had seen not the faintest hint of anoles, which was rare, and I was on my way to the parking lot when I spied this one clinging a little awkwardly to a flowering sprig – that one hind toe seems to impart a faint hint of precariousness (incorrectly, as it turns out, because they can sleep hanging upside down from those same toes.) The soft lighting, the sharp eyes, the emphasis on one color, and even the implication that the anole is focused on something else that isn’t the photographer, just add to it. So we get to see it again.

We need some others

Al Denelsbeck

I first began this post just after Memorial Day in this country, which didn’t spark these thoughts because I’ve had them for a while, but it brought them up again at least. It’s a federal holiday, one of only a handful, intended to honor and respect members of the US military who died in service. We also have Veterans’ Day, which honors those who served, especially those still living, with little distinction save for being honorably discharged. Now, I’m not going to trash these sentiments and I don’t disagree with them on the basic principle, but I do find it curious how much we celebrate aggressiveness and, pure and simple, killing others.

“But these men protected everyone in this country, including you, from aggressors!” comes the inevitable protest, which is how these holidays are virtually always portrayed, publicly and subconsciously. Except we haven’t had to protect this country since 1945, and even then there’s a bit of fudge factor to be considered: our involvement in WWII was a) not a primary intention of Japan, only to try and assert their control over the Pacific, and b) not at all an intention of Germany, which was concentrating on Europe. Let’s face it: occupying and controlling a large and populous country on another continent is beyond the capabilities of any country on earth, and has been for centuries, but still, we’ll let this one slide. And all other conflicts since then have been foreign policy decisions intended to either influence world trade, hamper the efforts of other powers, or most disturbingly, make some grandstand display primarily for our own citizens (i.e., Grenada) without any even residual threat to the US; a lot of people (with no distinctions of nationality) died over what were only crass manipulations rather than “the defense of our country.”

This naturally also fails to address the behavior of far too many of our soldiers and leaders, which targeted noncombatants and civilian centers for various reasons, but none very honorable. If you have a uniform on, it’s apparently not terrorism or genocide, and our own military, at the very least, isn’t the slightest bit concerned with examining its own faults regardless of its stated policies.

We have been fostered within this country to treat our military with respect, as if all of their actions are altruistic and absolutely necessary, and the vast majority of our government spending goes towards defense – despite the well-known fact that defense spending is rife with waste, misappropriations, and pork barrel projects. Meanwhile, those within the military are steeped in a hyper-masculine, testosterone-driven environment in order to kill or die without question – funny how we somehow seem to feel this is necessary for ‘defending’ our country.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not a pacifist who feels that every conflict will be solved with love and diplomacy. Yet to hear far too much of our population voicing it quite proudly, none of the conflicts will either, which is obviously a bit flawed. We consider it patriotic to celebrate death, under the guise of ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ and ‘independence’ – but in the US we really don’t celebrate life, or peace, or really just about any advancements that we’ve made, as a country or as a species, and certainly not federally or nationally.

Yes, we have Martin Luther King, Jr’s Birthday, which is a step in the right direction, as well as Juneteenth to celebrate the eradication of slavery – which only became a holiday two years ago. It would be nice if these were trends towards recognizing more positive and beneficial acts, and not just lip service regarding the abysmal attitude towards equal rights that’s been maintained for so long within this country – the holidays are deserved, certainly, but the cynical part of me doubts the sincerity of the reasoning, and can’t help wondering how much of it is simply a manner of saying, “We’re cool now, right?”

But what about the real accomplishments, the significant advances made, the mere recognition that there are peaceful methods of interacting, with other countries as well as within our own? Could we use a bit more emphasis on being a rational, thoughtful species and not the celebration of our base aggression? War should, at best, be considered a necessary evil, and I’m not entirely sold on the ‘necessary’ aspect, but we should be nearly ashamed when we actually have to resort to it. Certainly, several of the more recent conflicts would have been avoided entirely had we possessed this attitude, specifically our multi-decade involvements in Iraq and Afghanistan that had no clear goals and no supportable function; motivations to send troops anywhere would likely be minimized when ‘war president’ would be seen as an abject failure of statesmanship rather than as patriotic.

So what could we be focusing on instead? I’ve always been in favor of recognizing the accomplishments, insights, and policies that advanced us, rather than the specific people who made them – it’s more focused, and takes away the ire of the Woke crowd that wants to examine everyone’s personal history with electron microscopes. To that end, I suggest a handful of things that we could be celebrating, that provided indelible and perpetual benefit to us, completely devoid of tribalism, questionable historic events, and avoidable bloodshed.

Antibiotics, anesthesia, and the various non-intrusive manners of determining what’s happening within a living being. I don’t have to spell out the enormous benefits, do I? I mean, they’re only used millions/billions of times daily.

Electricity and electromagnetism. Not directly related, but our understanding of both of them contribute hugely to the quality of life that we have today. Yet a very large number of people don’t understand that electromagnetism is light, radio waves, microwaves, and so on – they’re the same thing, just different wavelengths.

Atomic physics. Everything from the constituent elements of atoms to the peculiar properties of quantum mechanics. Abruptly, this tied together chemistry and cosmology, starting a trend towards understanding the unification of universal forces.

Astronomy and cosmology. Our entire concept of the universe changed radically, several times over, within the past century or so – there’s some really intriguing and remarkable discoveries throughout these fields.

Evolution and genetics. Besides the obvious contributions to biology, they also bolstered medicine and vaccines to an enormous degree; the recent COVID vaccines and their blindingly fast development were only possible through a deep understanding of RNA. A subset of this is Paleontology, and the rapidly expanding knowledge of our own ancestry.

Semiconductors and Microprocessors. Seriously.

Space exploration. It’s easy to say that we’re not gaining any real benefit from what’s happening on Mars and Jupiter – many blowhard congressman have – but we have to recognize that the programs have also provided satellite communications, real-time weather tracking, GPS navigation, and yes, even spy satellites, which have their hand in avoiding conflicts by reducing a lot of surprises; WWII would have been entirely different with space-based reconnaissance. Moreover, it’s what can protect us from going the way of the non-avian dinosaurs when another massive asteroid comes calling – though it has to be a lot more advanced than it is now.

Among those, we could probably generate fifty or so new holidays, all focused on achievement – I realize that they’re primarily science-based, but you know, that’s where we make achievements. Should they all be federal holidays? Of course not, but when it comes down to it, we only have a handful of federal holidays to begin with, and most of the others are recognized and cultural but not ‘national.’ Everyone in this country knows when Groundhog’s Day is, for fuck’s sake, but how about the names of just half of the people responsible for the things in that list above? How about even when the Wright Brothers made their historic flight? We really could stand a bit of better focus here, more emphasis towards positive accomplishments, even just fostering interest in how things work. That’s something that I could salute, at least…

Tripod holes 51

Al Denelsbeck

juvenile sarus crane Antigone antigone in Sylvan Heights Bird Park, Scotland Neck, NC
N 36° 8’41.23″ W 77°24’51.27″ Google Earth location

Boy, did we need something cute after last week’s offering! The Girlfriend looked over my shoulder while I was editing this photo for inclusion, and so I asked, “Remember this little squirt?” She most assuredly did, and with good reason. Twelve years ago, we were paying our first visit to Sylvan Heights Bird Park, standing on the deck looking out over the duck pond with little idea of all the different species we would see. Abruptly, The Girlfriend began making desperate sounds to attract my attention while somehow forgetting that she knew actual words, the cause being this young sarus crane (Antigone antigone) that was following one of the park employees up the path like a puppy. On her return, the worker cooperatively brought her charge over for some portraits, a dangerous move around The Girlfriend because the temptation to bundle up the baby crane and steal away home with it was obviously great. I can’t say that I blame her; just the size was enough (it stood roughly 65cm tall,) but that muppet-felt blonde hairdo? C’mon…

I highly recommend Sylvan Heights Bird Park, because it’s very cool, filled with some pretty exotic and fascinating species, and you can get surprisingly close to many of them, including within some of the flight cages. It’s unfortunate that it’s a little ways off from any metro NC area save Rocky Mount, but you won’t regret the trip, especially when you hear a kookaburra in real life.

Living in the past XXIII

Al Denelsbeck

portrait of crab spider Tmarus angulatus
Yeah, another spider, but seriously, this was going to come up because it’s my favorite spider portrait. So far, anyway. Listen, I know that “favorite spider portrait” is a phrase that most people maintain really shouldn’t exist, but if you’re gonna do it, you might as well take a little pride in it sometimes, right? And to my warped brain and I, this worked; the light angle and intensity were right to bring up all those subtle variations in both coloration and shaping, with a catchlight in the eyes to boot, focus was bang-on, and even the position is dynamic and distances it from the typical ‘clinical illustration’ style of most arthropod images. It also helps that this is one of the few species with a pair of prominent eyes, which makes us relate to them better, just about ignoring all those other eyes that some inner sense tells us shouldn’t be there. But on top of all that, there’s the knowledge of the negligible size: the overall length with the legs stretched out in this manner is 15mm, making it just 1mm between the main eyes. Take out a ruler and look at that, and know that the whole spider appeared to be a dark stripe atop her rolled-up egg shelter.

That egg shelter says something else, too, in that not everyone found her ugly. Perhaps I’m identifying too much here…

Utterly robbed

Al Denelsbeck

night time exposure showing Orion and plane trail
My calendar has been reminding me of the Geminids meteor shower for the past week or so, which was due to peak overnight last night, but the temperatures have dropped significantly for the past week as well. Since the Geminids are touted to be one of the better showers and we had nice clear skies, I finally got motivated to bundle up, go out, and try.

And indeed, it was a notably active shower, more so than I’ve seen since 2001, and I witnessed at least eight distinct meteors in the hour that I was out, probably more – I wasn’t counting. Don’t get excited about that one up there in the upper right corner, because that’s only a plane – you can see the strobe dots along it periodically. The truth is, I didn’t catch one, again – there’s no point in building suspense over that.

But the annoying part is, I saw at least two that should have easily been within the frame, and several more that might have made it in along the edges. Naturally, the most distinct meteors that I saw fell well outside the field of view of the camera, which is frustrating when you’re out there but, really, only to be expected; the camera can only see a small portion of the sky at once, so the odds work against you automatically. It is sorely tempting to say, Oh, shit, there was one over there! I’ll re-aim the camera to that point now that it’s already past, but it’s a fool’s game. One that I admit I played a couple times last night, too, when multiple meteors passed through the same region of sky and made me believe there was some sort of pattern occurring. There’s no reason that I know of that such a thing can happen during a shower, but honestly, it worked: I saw two that were right within the frame when I did this. Only, there’s not the slightest hint of them in the resulting images.

night time exposure of Orion with really close plane trail
No, c’mon, you know that’s another plane, on approach to the nearby airport. I saw it coming well before it would have entered the frame, and fired off an exposure just for its own sake. Only, just after the plane had passed from the frame, I saw a meteor cut through immediately to the right of Orion, right beneath the plane’s path. Not bright or long, but distinct. Do you see it?

Do you see it now?

inset of night time exposure showing no sign of meteor that should be prominent in the frame
It was right there, but I can’t bring up even the faintest hint of it at all. The takeaway is, my settings were inadequate to capture something that dim, brief, and fast. These are roughly one-minute exposures at ISO 3200, f8, which I would have thought would be more than enough, and pushing it further would have started the sky glow taking over the frame and drowning out any hint of the dimmer meteors. However, you see the results, so I guess I’d better approach this differently next time. The one thing that I did accomplish last night/this morning was to know that my settings were wrong, because I know there were two in the frames. So, next time, it will probably be the f2.8 lens at ISO 6400, and only ten second exposures or something – testing this, of course, is a little difficult.

The funny thing is, I have captured some meteors previously in what I thought were much worse conditions, so I’m faintly confused.

But so it’s not a total loss, here’s an animated gif (pronounced, “git-OW-da-heer“) of eleven frames all aimed at one spot to the north-northwest.

eleven frame animation of night time exposures showing drifting clouds
I know one of these frames should have contained another meteor, pretty much right smack in the middle, but again, not the faintest sign. So the cloud movement is a nice touch if nothing else, and you can see the circular motion of the stars from aiming north; Polaris, the north star, is the brightest one at lower right. This region of sky, to my limited experience last night, saw the most meteors, with the region around Orion being the second-most. Curiously, nearly all of the ones that I saw were at less than 45° from the horizon, with nothing apparently crossing ‘overhead.’ I also tended to see them in ‘pairs,’ two appearing within seconds of each other with long stretches of nothing in between. Seriously, you could have chased plenty of different ‘patterns’ last night, most likely in vain since they were only coincidences and nothing more.

Meteor showers generally come from the Earth passing through the old trails of comets, encountering the dust emitted by such as they came close to the sun and became more active, so they are a pattern in and of themselves, and two more exist as well. Such showers get their names from the radiant, the area of the sky that most of the meteors appear to be emanating from (in this case a spot near the constellation Gemini,) and this is because that region is directly forward in regards to the Earth’s passage at that point, so you’re looking ‘straight ahead’ as the Earth enters the debris trail – in my experience, this doesn’t account for much because, again, big sky. The other pattern is that more appear after midnight, this due to the rotation of the Earth and that it’s now facing more ‘into the stream.’ But as for other patterns that might help explain or predict the timing and location, as noted above? Not to my knowledge, though it remains possible that certain densities of the dust and particles exist along the comet’s path due to how active it got and so on. Mostly, however, it’s just because we automatically seek patterns and so often find them when they don’t actually exist, and I can also vouch that it’s sorely tempting to engage in superstition too, willing a meteor to appear when you’re aimed at it or even just thinking, One more frame – I’m bound to get one this time. Our minds are weird like that.

Ah, that’s better!

Al Denelsbeck

Feeling kinda rushed? Trying to get a lot of things done and realizing that you’re way behind? Calculating your remaining time to the holidays and cursing math in general? Well, it’s not at all your fault, because today is You’re Supposed To Be Behind Day, another one of our eminently useful (and timely!) national holidays! Yes, this is an intended and perfectly natural thing, invoked magically by the very intrinsic nature of holidays and thus far more dependable than any religion has ever been. Take a deep breath and relax, revel in the day that’s been created just for slackasses, and let your worries vanish! Regardless of whether it all works out in the end, or even if you find yourself permanently ostracized from friends and family because you ended up giving gifts wrapped in WalMart bags, today it’s not just all right, it’s what you’re obligated to do.

This also means that, should you encounter anyone that appears to have their shit together, you can (and better) berate them fiercely for being unpatriotic and disrespectful. Seriously, have at it – this post is here for you to wield for proof as needed.

So stop refreshing that tracking page, forget about trying to find out if your Significant Other likes taupe or even what the hell taupe is, ignore the fact that you’ve completely forgotten about Great-Aunt Mabel and her allergies to butter and flour – honor the holiday and go listen to a podcast or amuse the cat with a laser pointer. Our forefathers would have died for this very right had they made it to the battle on time.

This holiday is only for today, however – tomorrow, it’s back to the normal stress and anxiety. But don’t worry about that right now.

Living in the past XXII

Al Denelsbeck

close up of jumping spider in leaf shelter
My timing was both good and bad for this one. I’d seen a jumping spider wandering around on one of the potted plants on our back deck earlier, without thinking too much of it, but I was familiar enough with their appearance that when I came out a few hours later and found one of the leaves rolled up tightly, I knew it had just happened; peeking down the still-open end of the tube revealed the same spider (most likely, anyway) now ensconced within. A little earlier, and I might have seen her drawing the leaf closed for this shelter for her egg sac, while a little later and she might have been done with the eggs and have closed the tube completely. The magnification is high and the quarters are obviously tight, and she was deep enough in the tube to make lighting it almost impossible, but somehow the off-camera flash blasted through the leaf and illuminated her within, for much better results than I could have hoped.

I really would like to witness one drawing the shelter together in this way, but as you might imagine, that’s a very specific moment in time – or requires staking out a promising specimen and following her for dog-knows-how-long until she does so, if she deigns to do it with a photographer looming overhead. I know it looks like night here, but that’s the nature of shooting with a small aperture to have as much depth as possible, since the bulk of the light comes from the flash; this was taken right before noon in June here in NC, not exactly a time you want to just sit around in the sun and see if a particular spider actually does something interesting. Plus, I have done that, with virtually nothing to show for the weird sunburn and the headache. Still, one of these days…

Living in the past XXI

Al Denelsbeck

lightning over local pond
For years while living at the old place, I’d struggled with attempting to get lightning photos. The immediate surroundings were too cloaked by trees, poles, and wires, and I rarely got any kind of decent warning so I could travel to a more open and photogenic location. The electrically active parts of storms are notably fickle, usually only producing lightning for a short period of time and able to develop in unpredictable directions. So when we moved to the new place and had a pond not too far away, facing west (thus into most prevailing storms,) I was pretty psyched. Not to mention that I now had access to a lightning tracking website, so a little more warning.

The shot above, from 2015, came not 24 hours after successfully capturing a storm well south down on Jordan Lake, and after a sunset storm that was too bright to allow time exposures – just a busy period for thundercells. I took a chance with shooting vertically and including the tree branches and a portion of the pond for a reflection, and the storm obliged nicely, far more cooperative than any that I’d chased for years before. I mean, sure, it could have been a bit more to the left, but being among the branches worked pretty well.

And then I recropped the image to use just the reflection.

lightning reflection in rainy pond
Very little wind to disturb the water’s surface, and just a few raindrops as the front moved in. There are just enough ripples to say, “Reflection,” but not so many that the reflection becomes scattered and obscured; I really couldn’t ask for more. The full frame version at top has adorned the wall over my desk at Walkabout Studios for several years now.

I can’t recall for sure if it was this one, but one of the storms that I chased (okay, stood and waited for) developed into a wicked downpour, and even though the pond is less than three hundred meters in length, I heard the rain approaching across its surface, a rapidly-growing hiss that gave only seconds of warning. I am routinely prepared, however, and had the disposable rain poncho out and over myself and the camera bag before the drenching could take place, not to mention that the bag itself is heavily treated with waterproofing spray. This is never 100% effective, however, and so as a tip, I’ll say that you always get out of the rain as soon as possible, then remove all equipment from the bag and let it all dry thoroughly for several hours – moisture in the fabric of the bag can get driven into photo equipment very easily, and that’s bad news.

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