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.

Tripod Holes 41

Al Denelsbeck

monochrome photo of flowers spilling over wall at night
N 28° 8’49.32″ W 80°38’37.62″ Google Earth location

Part of the challenge of doing these posts has been seeing just how specific I can get about a location, and this one is within a meter or so (though I probably should have more decimals in the Lat/Lon coordinates for that.) I knew the rough location and started cruising through Google Earth, and with Street View and some comparisons I’ve pinned this down to the exact location, so you can be utterly confident when you visit. This was nearly twenty years ago though, so those flowers probably aren’t there anymore.

Once again in bona fide black & white film, Ilford delta 400 to be exact, out at night with an Olympus OM-10 and only winging it at exposure times, but this came out just fine for that. Perhaps a tad overexposed, but not egregiously so – if I recall correctly (and why would you doubt it?), the wall was a pale cream color offset by the white accent tiling, the flowers yellow, while the almost-directly-overhead streetlight provided good contrast and brought out those textures, far better than if it had been further away or across the street or something.

I was trying to recall if this was the same night as another particular shot, and eventually dug out the negative binders to check; it was. This wasn’t far from a set of train tracks and I wanted a time exposure of the train passing, but had no idea of the schedule other than, ‘at least once a night.’ I was likely stalling when I took this frame, waiting for the train, and had given up and moved on, no small distance either, when I heard the train whistle and rushed back to get the tripod set up in time for a single frame. I did better later on.

Also along this same road, someone’s massive grapefruit tree extended well out over the sidewalk (this being Florida, but of course you knew this because I gave you the link and coordinates,) and some nights I’d steal one when they were ripe. These tree-ripened grapefruit were fabulous, if a bit sticky, though I used to feel a little bad about helping myself until, a few weeks later, I glanced through the fence there to find the ground littered with rotting grapefruit, so I’m guessing they weren’t missing the ones I scarfed down. But emboldened by the fresh flavor, I also found a ripe orange tree and helped myself to one of these, a huge mistake because despite its lovely appearance, this orange was simultaneously bitter and sour, and I mean horrendously so. Crime doesn’t pay (all the time, anyway.)

Okay, for not trying very hard

Al Denelsbeck

I was on my way to bed yesterday morning (hush) and decided to peek outside for a moment. The moon was bright and clear and looked pretty close to my target phase: catching sunrise or sunset on the central peak within Tycho crater, which I admit I still don’t understand because I’ve already done it a few times now, but it’s an obsession I guess. I really wasn’t inclined to tackle a proper session, with the tripod and remote release and mirror lockup, but I thought, Just attach the long lens and wing it handheld – it’ll only take a minute. Of course, I was using the wheedling, singsong little internal voice I can never resist, so…

The moon was at the wrong altitude for stability, making me hold the camera at an angle that I wasn’t used to and couldn’t stay very steady in, and even manual focusing was a chore, but I fired off several frames, both to give the stabilizer in the lens a chance to work its magic, and to adjust focus every few frames to try and nail one – the moon is too small in the frame for really exact focusing, especially when the camera isn’t steady, and the focus screen has a resolution limit anyway, so refocusing frequently improves your chances (or mine at least) of a decent frame. And it worked – just once.

full frame shot of waning crescent moon at 600mm
This is the entire frame, so you know what I was working with, and in a more-or-less level view to boot. Now we go in to full resolution, rotated to use the layout better.

full resolution crop of waning crescent moon showing sunset and shadow on Tycho's central peak
Juuusst a little degraded from using ISO 800. but not that bad – cameras really have improved in the higher ISOs from what they used to do. The large crater on the shadow terminator down towards the bottom, the one with another little crater on its wall, isn’t Tycho, it’s Maginus; Tycho is just above it and slightly left, smaller but obviously deeper and clearly round. And you can just make out a tiny bright speck in the center of the shadow thrown by its own wall, but if that isn’t enough, that central peak throws its own shadow within the crater. I’d say I got the timing right. Meanwhile, more towards the top of the frame we have the line of Montes Appeninus, the lunar Appenines, emerging from the shadow pointing towards the crater Eratosthenes.

I’ve remarked how often the sunsets around get boring, with the atmosphere simply not providing anything for colors or textures, but it’s much worse on the moon, naturally; there might be a very faint hint of dimming and color shift from the sun before it disappears over the horizon, from a vestige of gases attracted by the weak gravity of the moon, but that would be it. No one’s had the chance to see it – all lunar expeditions took place in ‘midmorning’ of the lunar day (remember – a lunar day is 29 Earth days long) because the widely-varying temperature of the surface is best then. Moreover, the Earth remains in the same place in the lunar sky perpetually, given a little play from the lunar libration or wobble, but it can be seen to rotate. Those photos and video of ‘Earthrise’ over the moon were taken by the orbiting Apollo Command Modules.

In just a few minutes, a bank of clouds began rolling in, faster than they appeared, and my session was over.

clouds beginning to obscure waning crescent moon
But for giggles as I was typing this, I decided to see if the moon was again visible, even though Tycho would be in shadow and thus even photographing the moon at all was totally pointless. What I’ll do for the story, though. It was indeed up, clear enough though still showing a little color cast from being lower in the sky – but easier to handhold the camera for now. So, this is not quite 23 hours later:

waning crescent moon the following morning
Tycho, Maginus, Montes Appeninus, and Eratosthenes have all vanished into the night, with greater definition from some new craters – Copernicus is that prominent one just above the middle. I’d combine the two images into an animated gif to compare them directly, but again, it’s late in my personal day and I don’t feel like messing about. Take note of this, however: While we get these sharp definitions and distinct shadows from the lunar features at times like this, we can immediately refer to the edges of the moon to realize that none of these features are as high as we imagine them, only producing a faint wobbly variation from a perfect sphere when seen edge-on. It’s not like the craters peter out towards the ‘edges’ – if anything, they get much denser, as the far side saw, and sees, a lot more bombardment than this side. Had the moon rotated in relation to Earth, we could watch these features roll into view over a period of several nights, comparing the ‘profile’ view with the contours that appear at different light angles, but nope – this is the face we see, period.

Sorting finds n+6a

Al Denelsbeck

The first batch of the latest sorting finds, with a second to come a little later on – I found several this time, but I had gone through just shy of two thousand frames, so not unexpected really. Right now we’ll do arthropods.

ailanthis webworm moth Atteva aurea on orange milkweed Asclepias flowers, showing iridescence
I don’t see these a lot, but they’re distinctive and easily recognizable. This is an Ailanthus webworm moth (Atteva aurea) on the flowers of some variety of milkweed (Asclepias.) Even BugGuide.net says that the markings on the wings are black and white, but this isn’t quite true; the dark portions are actually iridescent blue when seen in the right light, which I managed to capture here. All portions of the wings are iridescent, actually, though this is normally very hard to see, especially since the overall length of the moth is about 15mm.

Ailanthus webworm moth Atteva aurea on orange milkweed Asclepias flowers
The species has been featured here before, kinda – the species name has been changed in the 13 years since that post, because onward marching science and all that. I included this comparison photo to show how the colors usually look, and those markings always put me in mind of the flower decals that people were gradually no longer putting on their Vanagons as I was growing up, or the nonslip appliqués that those same people put in their bathtubs after they had kids. Seriously, they were, like, all over the place (man,) but manufacturers started moving away from slick porcelain for tubs and killed the industry overnight. The time passages in the second half of that sentence don’t align, do they?

Those were taken during a trip to the NC Botanical Gardens, which also produced these two.

possible Hentz orbweaver Neoscona crucifera gathering detached webbing in late morning
Suspended over a thicket of tall flowering plants and thus out of reach of visitors, an orbweaver was engaged in a curious activity. First off, I believe this is a Hentz orbweaver (Neoscona crucifera,) but this is the only angle that I achieved so I can’t confirm. But like many orbweavers, these make their webs at dusk and dismantle them at dawn, more or less – this was way past dawn and the spider was far too visible to marauding birds, though nothing happened while I was there. She (very likely female) was trundling along one of the main support lines of her web, gathering up loose strands in a ball ahead of herself.

possible Hentz orbweaver Neoscona crucifera with much larger ball of detached webbing
What I think happened, before I wandered along, was that she went along the outer edges of the web on the main supports, cutting loose all of the attaching points of the ‘wheel’ portion (why do they call it ‘orb’ weaving? It’s flat!) except for one side, and the retracting webbing just snapped against the remaining strand, seen here. Then she gathered up all the loose strands to eat them and recycle them for the next evening, though the main supports remained in place. In fact, we have those same kinds of supports alongside our front porch right now, even though the orbweaver that made them hasn’t been seen for over a week now.

And a non-arthropod one.

molted covert feather of either osprey Pandion haliaetus or bald eagle Haliaeetus leucocephalus floating on water
Spotted not too far offshore during one of the lake trips in late September, I initially took this to be an osprey feather (Pandion haliaetus,) but now I wonder if instead it wasn’t from a juvenile bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus.) The cupped shape and downy portion at the base make this a covert, one of the body feathers, and because of the white I thought osprey, but juvenile eagles sport mottled markings until age four, and this was a decently-sized feather for a covert. I should have waded out (or in I guess) and picked it up – I have yet to find any eagle feathers, though I keep looking.

I also could have used this for the month-end abstract for September, but I’d forgotten about it and was too deep in computer wrangling to make a lot of effort then, but here it is now, so you can pretend it’s the 30th if you like…

Randomness

Al Denelsbeck

I mean, not totally random – you’re not going to see author portraits or product photography or what I’m eating right now or some outfit that I bought only to do cheesecake selfies in and never actually wear. But random for my typical photo subjects, so you can let your hopes die down now. I’ve got a shitload of sorting to do and several other projects on the burners, so here’s a handful of photos with no theme or anything, just to maintain content and not let people think I died or switch to FaceBlerch or something.

quartet of yellow-bellied sliders Trachemys scripta scripta perched identically on log, Goose Creek State Park, NC
The Girlfriend and I did a few days out at Washington, NC last week, and so I returned to Goose Creek State Park – she went too, but this was her first time so she wasn’t returning. Out the car window, I fired off a couple of quick frames of a quartet of yellow-bellied sliders (Trachemys scripta scripta) all posed identically on a log. I was shooting wide open and depth-of-field naturally suffered, and while I was adjusting the aperture they all became too suspicious and slid into the water. But we’ll go in closer for a moment.

pair of yellow-bellied sliders Trachemys scripta scripta, one showing waterline stain
See? I did nail focus, just on a very specific area. But I’m betting you didn’t register the curious stain on the head of this one, likely indicating sitting for a while with just its eyes and nose out of the tannin-laden waters of the drainage channel.

Just a little further on The Girlfriend spotted a pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus,) which turned out to be at least a trio of them, but they proved difficult to photograph.

pair of likely juvenile pileated woodpeckers Dryocopus pileatus on same trunk
Light was dim under the tree canopy, and I was shooting at some distance handheld, not to mention how hyperactive they were, so this is the best I got. I’m reasonably certain these are this year’s brood, a pair of juveniles hanging out together, with a parent skipping along nearby. The park strikes me as a good place for woodpeckers, and we were told to keep an eye out for otters too; we didn’t see any, but I’ll be trying again as soon as possible.

pair of unidentified ducks, possibly hybrid mallard Anas platyrhynchos X and juvenile North American ruddy duck Oxyura jamaicensis
Both of these remain unidentified, though I consider the one in front to be a mallard hybrid (Anas platyrhynchos, or perhaps Anas platyrhynchos X,) while the one in the back might be a juvenile North American ruddy duck (Oxyura jamaicensis,) but that is largely based on the size and the fact that I’ve seen them there before, since those markings don’t really match. It looks like a female mallard, but it’s far smaller than it should be with full feathering – perhaps an example of dwarfism? Check out the mottled feet on the maybemallard (another potential indicator of hybridization) while the other one appears banded.

Shot the moon for giggles while out there.

waxing gibbous moon with surrounding haze
This is decently sharp given handholding and the heavy haze, just barely showing at this exposure – the day had been spent close to overcast, which went full overcast at sunset, so I was surprised to see this later on. But that’s all from this trip – not a lot of time was spent photographing, but I might dredge up a couple others later on.

So, let’s see, local shots. We have this guy.

tiny juvenile Copes grey treefrog Dryophytes chrysoscelis perched on leaf of oak-leaf hydrangea Hydrangea quercifolia
The oak-leaf hydrangeas (Hydrangea quercifolia) still host various critters, but I was a little surprised to see this minuscule Copes grey treefrog (Dryophytes chrysoscelis) – it is literally the size of my thumbnail, but spooked as I was trying to slide my paper measuring scale into the frame, so you’ll have to take my word for it. This size indicates that it’s likely this year’s brood, but I never saw any sign of them in the backyard pond, so it either snuck past me or migrated from a little ways off. Maybe it’s just last year’s, and has been growing slowly.

But that’s huge compared to the next guy.

unidentified gnat-sized spider on author's hand
I saw this under the desk lamp one night, mistaking it for dust but it wasn’t moving from its spot several centimeters below the light, so I fetched the reversed 28-105 and held my hand out underneath it. I’m not even going to try to identify this spider, but a gnat could have given it a run for its money, and that’s the edge of my hand that you’re seeing here, those cables being the fine hair thereon. I’m glad we have species like this around – otherwise the ridiculously-small insects might get out of control.

Okay, back to work…

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