Out of proportion

Al Denelsbeck

Boy howdy, peanut-brittle and sausages, do some of these posts take way more time than they really should! But I’ll go into that later. Right now, we have a simple (!) follow-up on the anole front.

After finding the adult Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) snoozing in the oak-leaf hydrangea in the previous post, I’ve been keeping an eye on that particular lizard, because it’s been making it easy – it returns to the same spot every night, and can on occasion be found foraging on the bush during the day.

adult Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis sleeping upright in oak-leaf hydrangea Hydrangea quercifolia
While I have yet to witness this in action, I’ve found that the anole takes its perch near sundown, while there is still plenty of light in the sky, but at that point is deep brown, blending in with the dried flowers remarkably well – it is only after night falls that they turn quite pale. I’m only guessing, but I suspect this is because, after the birds bed down themselves, there’s no reason to be camouflaged and they can adapt a color that optimizes their temperature for the night, and/or collects dew faster. But as I’ve said before, lizardology ain’t my degree, I just takes da piccies…

adult Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis sleeping upright in oak-leaf hydrangea Hydrangea quercifolia
We needed another angle on that same one, showing the one foot just splayed against the dried flowers; the anole appears to be supported solely by its two left feet hooked onto the branches. But what’s that down there?

likely white-banded crab spider Misumenoides formosipes investigating tail of sleeping Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis
We have what appears to be an opportunistic white-banded crab spider (Misumenoides formosipes) literally sizing up the anole, or perhaps just posing for a novelty photo like the typical idiots with wildlife in national parks; there’s no doubt that the anole would scarf the spider up immediately if it were awake. Have your fun, little spider, your days are numbered.

More interesting, however, was Saturday’s find on the butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii.) It was basking on a leaf when I spotted it with my hands full, and when I returned with the camera it was spooking into the Japanese maple.

newborn Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis seeking refuge in Japanese maple
That’s pretty much a newborn anole, the first appearance of any this year, and this is perhaps the best sense of scale that I obtained (so far, anyway) – the pale curve in the background is a standard-sized planter, maybe 30cm across, but a video clip from last year shows a better comparison. I have no idea how long after birth they might remain deep in concealment before venturing out like this, but I’ve been keeping my eyes open for just such appearances so this is certainly among the first few days of being in public, as it were. Given this one disappearing into the maple, I figured I’d lost my chance for a decent shot for a while, and I wandered off seeking other photo opportunities. Yet just a few minutes later, as I came back around the butterfly bush, it was basking in almost the exact same location that I’d first spotted it.

newborn Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis basking on leaf of butterfly bush Buddleia davidii
If you know butterfly bushes, you know that leaf is perhaps 100mm in length and no more than 20 wide; this spud is tiny. But unlike its discretion only a few minutes previously (which might have been provoked by carpenter bees visiting the flower clusters,) this time it largely stayed put, and I could get a variety of angles as long as I moved cautiously.

newborn Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis perched near new buds of butterfly bush Buddleia davidii
I would have liked it to have taken up a perch on the flower clusters themselves, but the anole probably knew instinctively that this wasn’t good camouflage or shelter, so for now we just have this pose near a smaller budding cluster. But we need to see the detail from this frame, at full resolution:

very close detail of newborn Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis
The length of this head is roughly the width of a standard pencil, and yet, seen this close, there’s virtually nothing that distinguishes it from an adult many times its size, except maybe the spindly legs; it still possesses the mosaic scale detail and even the proportions of the adult, and the mottling makes it seem way older than a few days or so. A typical housefly would be a hell of a mouthful for this fella – maybe someday I’ll get some pics along those lines. I tried, even with video:

It’s funny: I recognize the issues with doing handheld macro video, but I have yet to find decent ways to surmount them. No, there are no stabilizing rigs that can handle a heavy DSLR and still allow things like tilting forward on demand. I would say I’d design one and market it to other macro videographers, but that’s not a lucrative market – few of them have any more money than I do.

But I know you’re skeptical over the behavior that I mentioned and illustrated in that video, not exactly sure that I’d actually seen what I claimed, so I present another example, an animated gif (pronounced, “grrrr-ATE”) of four frames from just a bit earlier.

animated gif of newborn Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis doing territorial display
I realized what I was seeing just as I was snapping the first frame and so kept going, unable to switch to video fast enough, but this is adequate. That dewlap, while not exactly displaying like an adult, is undoubtedly extending a little. And no, this is not a ‘swallow’ or anything, because I saw it more than once – in fact, I’d first seen it, almost disbelievingly, last year and vowed to capture video of it but never got another opportunity. It’s so cute when they act tough.

I had brought The Girlfriend out to see my subject here, and she suddenly told me to turn around and check the center stem of the hosta plants about a meter away. She’s getting to be pretty good at this herself.

newborn Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis on stem of Hosta flowers
Yep, another newborn, and perhaps slightly bigger in size than the first, but not by more than 10%, and I would have to see them side-by-side to confirm it anyway. You know I’m pleased; I love the idea that Walkabout Estates is home to a colony of this species. Now if I can just get some meerkats established…

Even while it knew I was right there, this one scampered up in plain sight atop one of the big hosta leaves and posed, and I went a bit wider for a slightly more scenic shot:

newborn Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis in middle of large Hosta leaf
Will I be able to tell these two apart in any way? Not likely, though I perceived this one to be a little more active than the other, and will endeavor to observe them closely enough that I can distinguish them by behavior – not holding my breath, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

We’ll close with one last shot of the second one, deciding for whatever reason to scamper up the flower stems again and shelter in among the seeds, though whether this was due to my presence or not I can’t say; it certainly danced around quite a bit before it chose to climb up there.

newborn Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis nestled in among seed pods of Hosta plant
Even if you have no idea what the seeds are, they seem to communicate their size better and give more of a sense of scale, but maybe it’s just me. I missed my video opportunity here, though I hadn’t known it was going to happen, since as the anole gained the seeds its coloration deepened into brown; I do have a goal of illustrating how quickly they can change color, but it often takes some provocation that I’m not likely to induce myself. Many years ago in Florida I witnessed a territorial dispute between a Carolina and Cuban anole, and the Carolina changed into deep brown within about two seconds, which immediately caused the Cuban to rush it. Still not sure what this said, but I definitely vowed to capture something similar one day. Maybe this’ll be the year.

Sleep is the meridian

Al Denelsbeck

Mr Bugg and I had a sunset outing to Jordan Lake yesterday, which was unsuccessful in capturing a sunset – it occurred, but not in the slightest bit photogenically. Before that, we were checking out what kind of other activity was available, which also wasn’t much, and mostly too distant for the efforts. But I’ll include a couple of frames for the sake of it.

symmetrical splash of osprey Pandion haliaetus entering the water, with no sign of the osprey
This is the splash of an osprey (Pandion haliaetus) entering the water, perhaps the sharpest that I’ve captured (so far,) and with only the barest hint of the osprey showing at all. It was a nicely symmetrical splash though. The bird gave little warning of beginning the dive and autofocus didn’t lock on until it hit the water.

The same bird, successful in its fishing efforts here, climbed out and circled around to pass nearly overhead, and so I was firing off frames of its approach.

osprey Pandion haliaetus passing overhead with fish capture
I thought that I had exposure compensation dialed in for shooting against the sky, but apparently not for this sequence, and thus it’s a bit dark and moody, not at all helped by the sun angle. Clicking on this image, however, will bring up a larger one at full resolution, just to see the detail – the autofocus wasn’t behaving perfectly yesterday, but well enough for some nice frames.

And now we switch subject matter and go to ‘today,’ even though, according to my personal timeline, these were still yesterday, taken in the wee hours of the morning – I am available to answer further questions as needed. Mostly, what I needed to post was the first appearance this year, or the first that I’ve caught anyway (but we all know that I miss nothing) of a behavior I was seeing a lot of last year:

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis snoozing on dried flowers of oak-leaf hydrangea Hydrangea quercifolia
I played around a bit getting an adequate flash angle without disturbing things too much, to which this Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) lazily opened an eye, repeatedly, before closing it again, rendering me inconsequential – I’m quite used to that. It’s draped on the dried flowers of the oak-leaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia,) which seems to be a preferred perch for night basking at least. To the best of my knowledge, this habit of sleeping suspended up in branches or flowers occurs during hotter days and is a method of gathering dew overnight, though it has to be said that this is about a meter from a full birdbath below, so it’s not like water is hard for them to find, meaning I could be wrong about this. Maybe it’s just akin to how cool we suddenly find hammocks in the summertime.

While out with the headlamp, I took a look around back to see what was happening back there, which wasn’t much, but I did find one of the frogs hanging out by the pond.

American bullfrog Lithobates catesbeianus just chillin'
Finding a frog just chillin’ near the water isn’t even slightly uncommon, but the species is a new one for here: this is an American bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus,) the first I’ve seen in the backyard, and not a small specimen at that – perhaps a little smaller than my fist. I would have thought the pond was a bit too small for their tastes, and have not confirmed yet that it is a resident and not just on vacation here. I mean, it does kind of resemble me on the beach.

Since it never even twitched as I leaned in, even closer than this, I carefully detoured around (there was a small tree in the way) to the front for the dramatic portrait, being careful not to let the camera or my arms into the beam of the headlamp, which is what normally alerts them to a ‘dangerous’ presence and sends them vaulting back into the pond. I was more successful than expected at this.

American bullfrog Lithobates catesbeianus in direct portrait
This is full frame using the Mamiya 80mm macro, so you know I was close – roughly half a meter away from its nose, and even got the chance to adjust the flash for better lighting than the original frame. You’d think it was a lawn ornament – until I was a little incautious while getting back up and it sailed into the pond in one great leap over its own shoulder. But now I’m curious to see if its actively sharing the little water source with the resident green frogs, and how many of those remain. Plus I’ll have to sit out in the evening with the audio recorder and see if I can snag the calls of either species, but especially both, for the comparison.

Wrong hemisphere

Al Denelsbeck

I went out briefly very early this morning (like 3 AM) and noticed the crescent moon had a reasonably close companion, but wasn’t inclined to set up for a photo session at that hour. I forgot about it until reminded this afternoon, and took a look at Stellarium to see what the companion was, and what it would look like tonight/early tomorrow morning. Turns out to be Jupiter, which will have switched positions with the moon in regards to the plane of the ecliptic. That means they would pass in the intervening time, so I switched off both the Ground and the Atmosphere options in Stellarium, eliminating both the view of the Earth and any dayglow from the sun scattering from the atmosphere, creating what one would see if floating free in space far from the planet. Then I played around with the Date/Time menu until the moon and Jupiter passed the closest.

screen capture from Stellairum software showing Jupiter/Moon conjunction
That’s 5:08 PM local time, which of course is still broad daylight, but worse, the moon sets at 3:17 PM, about an hour hence as I type this; at present, it’s too close to the horizon for me to see it with all of the trees in my area. Knowing exactly where to look, I might have been able to spot Jupiter against the blue sky. But then I zoomed in on Jupiter’s appearance during this conjunction, and saw this:

screen capture from Stellarium software showing trapezoidal pattern to the Jovian moons
That would certainly have been a great thing to capture, but there’s no way in hell to see the moons during the day, except for maybe a total solar eclipse. For years, all I ever saw were the Jovian moons in a straight line with Jupiter, because the orbital patterns of Earth and Jupiter put us mostly along the plane of Jupiter’s ecliptic. But now we’ve moved more and the plane is tilted to our view, so the moons can now shift higher and lower, allowing for something like this. If I were in, like, India at least. Ah well, so much for that.

[At some point I’m sure I can capture a similar pattern from the moons, just not with a conjunction, but I doubt I could get our moon, and Jupiter, and the Jovian moons in the same frame anyway, given the huge difference in light levels, so it could only be a candidate for the Photoshop Picture of the Day, er, Astronomy Picture of the Day. Same thing.]

[ADDENDUM: I just checked, and Jupiter, Venus, Mars, and Saturn will all be in the sky during the total solar eclipse of April 8th, 2024, though the latter two will be fairly close to the horizon. I plan to be within the viewing corridor for that event, so I may be a busy little photographer during the few minutes of totality, with as many cameras in use as I can manage. This could be interesting….]

Tripod holes 28

Al Denelsbeck

fartistic high-contrast monochrome image of pool in sand
N 35°14’12.95″ W 75°31’41.43″ Google Earth location

A few weeks back, I presented my favorite true B&W image; this is my second-favorite, though the rankings may swap depending on my mood, so be warned. And this is largely as-shot, with perhaps a slight tweak to brightness and contrast, but nothing that I couldn’t easily accomplish in the darkroom. A friend and I were out at the Outer Banks, specifically a beach access south of Hatteras Lighthouse in Buxton, NC, and I was carrying a film camera loaded with Ilford HP5+ because I was in that phase (and likely will be again.) I realized that the sun reflecting from the still water might make a nice focal point and fired off a frame or two; the bright light coming into the lens shifted it from a ‘normal’ exposure to quite a bit darker, which improved the moodiness of the image magnificently.

While I purposefully avoided extraneous elements, the unintended result was that scale becomes almost impossible to determine, potentially even being an aerial photo of a coastline, at least until you find the seagull tracks entering and exiting the pool at the bottom. Curiously, while I usually call this, “Tidal Pool,” it’s not, and appears and disappears in the same location from time to time. From looking at the aerial photos and bolstered by my own hazardous experience (yes, that’s the same pool,) I’m inclined to say it’s a drainage swale from further inland, perhaps only brackish despite its proximity to the ocean. So if you go to this location hoping to duplicate (or, dog forbid, improve upon) my image here, be warned that you may never even see this fleeting puddle.

Limited success

Al Denelsbeck

About seven weeks ago, I was at the neighborhood pond without my camera (hush – it was a spur-of-the-moment thing) and spotted a green heron, not too unusual, except that this one seemed to be half to two-thirds normal size. Even the young tend to be just shy of adult size and weight when they leave the nest, and this one was displaying adult plumage. An example of dwarfism in avians? I honestly didn’t know, but I wanted a photo of it. Thus started my quest to find it again, returning semi-regularly armed with the camera and long lens, which naturally meant that I saw no signs of it again.

Until today.

small adult green heron Butorides virescens perched on semi-submerged branch
Only thing was, this time I wasn’t trying for wildlife, and while I had the camera (duryea!), I wasn’t carrying the heavy, bulky long lens with me, because I also had an infra-red camera along – long story, but I’m kinda on assignment for some particular images, and it isn’t even a dedicated IR camera, but the ancient (in digital camera terms anyway) Canon Pro90 IS, which will do infra-red in a pinch. So this image was taken with the Canon 7D and 18-135 STM instead, and limited by 135mm, I was forced to creep closer while not appearing to creep closer. The heron accepted this for a while, and then decided discretion was wiser and all that, and flew off, but I could see that it just cruised around the point of the island in the pond. So I hiked back, ditched the IR for the long lens, and returned.

I did eventually track it down, but significantly father away now so the edge of the long lens was diminished, and the choice of backgrounds and positions almost nil.

very small adult green heron Butorides virescens perched on snag
The main issue with both of these, which I knew I’d be facing the moment I first saw the bird weeks ago, is that there is no way to determine size or scale. What I really need is another green heron of normal proportions immediately alongside, close enough to be in the same frame, or really, any other bird of recognizable size. The chances of achieving this are small, given that I’ve only seen two or three green herons at the pond this entire season, and no evidence of nesting activity so not even any young to be venturing out soon.

During all this I sweated out roughly a liter of fluids, though not from the enormous exertion of getting these photos, rather from the stifling heat; that’s the heron panting in the first photo, and it was svelte and holding still, so you can imagine the effect on my fat ass (well, if you’ve met me in person anyway, since I don’t publish the photos that show reality.) This is part of the reason you haven’t been seeing much here (the heat I mean,) but only part. We’ll see if that can be corrected soon.

Just because, part 52

Al Denelsbeck

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis peering down from upper branch of Yoshino cherry tree
Just a quick one from today, finding a Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) stretched out on an upper branch of the Yoshino cherry tree, the same one that I’ve been trying to protect from the Japanese beetles – it would be nice if this guy was eating those, but I’m not sure anything does. After finding the lizard there, a bit higher than I stand myself, I misted the leaves nearby because it’s been hot as shit here recently and I thought it might like a drink; my reward was this expressive pose, though at the same time the reptile’s skin darkened to a medium greenish-brown from the pale green that it was when discovered. What this means, I do not know, but I suspect we might be married now…

Tripod holes 27

Al Denelsbeck

North American manatee Trichechus manatus surfacing for food in Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park, Florida
N 28°47’57.33″ W 82°35’16.94″ Google Earth location

This plot is as close as I can get it with the trees in the way, though if I was there again I could tell you within a half-meter. Not that it matters, because you might see something similar from many different spots, and anyway this particular model is likely not still waiting there.This is a North American manatee (Trichechus manatus,) or at least the head of one, found (easily) in Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park, far too long of a proper name, in Homosassa Springs, Florida – the “Ellie Schiller” part has been added since The Girlfriend and I were there in 2009. We had been making our way south along the West/Gulf coast of Florida and had stopped in two locations previously to try and spot manatees; we’d actually been successful at the first, though it was from a distance without the best lighting and we saw what is typically seen, a snout peeking briefly above the water. This is so unprepossessing that it could easily be mistaken for a turtle, and if you look closely at the image here you can see the waterline around the nostrils that denotes what’s above and what’s below the surface.

But we hadn’t seen this yet, and were continuing on our path south when we suddenly passed the state park and decided to turn around and check it out. This was quite fortuitous since it is, among other things, a manatee rehabilitation center and one of Florida’s many warm springs, so the manatees were there in abundance, this one in particular coming right up along the shore under a viewing stand to await the scheduled feeding. Thus, captive, but about as close as you could possibly get, so if you want to see what a manatee really looks like, this is one of the better places, short of the tours at nearby locations where you’re allowed to snorkel with them. The Girlfriend doesn’t consider herself a nature photographer (I know, right?) but is more than happy to do so when the subjects are nearby and photogenic, while the definition of that word is stretched a bit when talking about manatees, just slightly above a formless blob and what I tend to call, “the beginnings of evolution.” Which isn’t true at all, and they used to be land mammals, but I can be cruel like that. I include, however, a shot of The Girlfriend getting her own shots, taken from the viewing bleachers in the same spot.

The Girlfriend aiming down at a captive North American manatee Trichetus manatus in Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park in Homosassa Springs, Florida
This is the visual of a story that I still tell, by the way, because The Girlfriend stood there motionless without snapping any frames for a while, and eventually I asked her what she was waiting for.

“I’m waiting for it to open its eyes,” she told me.

“They are open,” I replied, and they’re wide open in the top pic as well; manatees have quite small eyes for their bulk, and that’s as big as they’re gonna appear.

Now, some comments about the locale. The northern to central parts of Florida are riddled with warm springs; the geology is ‘porous,’ largely subterranean caves, that take the drainage from the swamps of southern Georgia and carry it underground until it pops up in various openings throughout Florida. Because they’re deep enough to be sheltered from surface temperatures, the water stays roughly the same temperature year-round, about 23°c – this is pleasantly cool in summer but nicely warm in winter, and thus the manatees love it, and will follow the channels up from the ocean to the spring sources in winter; despite their bulk, manatees can not handle colder temperatures. I say all this because the park sits directly over the mouth of one of these springs, and I mean directly: an underwater viewing area is suspended smack in the mouth of the spring. That’s the octagonal building with the pale green roof immediately west of the plot that I provided, and in those photos you can see the water darkening as the bottom (only a handful of meters deep until that spot) begins to drop off into the cavern system. As I type this, the aerial photos used in online Google Earth and the default in the program actually show manatees in the water. It’s easy enough to zoom out and follow the path of the springwater out to the nearby Gulf, and you’ll see the gate that keeps the injured or ill manatees within until they’re healthy enough to be released.

Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park is also home to an education center and a small zoo, so definitely worth a stop. There’s a boat tour that you can take from the visitors’ center off of Rt 41 (you can follow that narrow, winding channel east from the plot too,) but you can also just drive over to the zoo area.

Two small side notes: the slide film I was using did not come up with a good color register, either from age or (more likely, since I kept my film refrigerated) a bad batch, so the colors have been improved here yet still suck. And North American manatees are also known as West Indian manatees, a name that I’m surprised is still in use; the “West Indies” is a relic of Christopher Columbus’ stupidity and “Indian” isn’t even considered appropriate for the indigenous people of North America. While I find a lot of the ‘Woke’ actions recently to be overreactive nonsense, anything related to the region being considered the ‘Indies’ should have vanished long ago.

June’s last gasp

Al Denelsbeck

Just three four last photos before I close out the first half of the year, and start all of the associated maintenance.

In doing my routine patrol of the front forty of Walkabout Estates today, I was musing to myself that I hadn’t seen any Carolina anoles (Anolis carolinenesis) up there for a while, like several days; there are at least two, in two different locales. Not troubling, but curious.

That was all it took, apparently.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinenesis posing on ornamental sweet potato leaves
This is the closest one, generally hanging out on or around the Japanese maple that sits close to the front door; in this case it’s on the sweet potato vines in the planter that’s immediately adjacent to the tree, flanking the front steps, which also holds (as you can see) some pansies. While cautious about my presence, the lizard nevertheless gave me a couple of poses as I endeavored to get the flower in there.

A little later on, while engaged in the ongoing Japanese beetle slaughter that marks summer around here, I found the other one, or at least an other one, on the front oak-leaf hydrangea. This one sat up high and retained its position as I scooped a handful of beetles off of lower branches into the soapy water.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis atop oak-leaf hydrangea Hydrangea quercifolia
Both were patient enough to allow me to go inside and grab the camera, since I did not have it in hand on either occasion – my hands were full with beetle patrol. [A little tip: Japanese beetles typically just drop off of their perch when danger threatens, counting on either taking flight as they fall or simply disappearing into the undergrowth. Fill a bowl with water and a little dish soap and hold it underneath, then tap the branches above or near the beetles, and they’ll usually fall right into the bowl. The soap breaks down the surface tension of water, preventing it from being repelled by the beetles’ chitin, and they’ll drown – without it, they may escape. And while you might question the efforts to slaughter insects by a nature photographer, this particular species is invasive, has few predators in this area, and can do a lot of damage.]

Back to the anoles. Suspicious of my switching vantage, this one started slipping down the layers of leaves, but in doing so came in my direction, so I got a few more frames.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis atop oak-leaf hydrangea Hydrangea quercifolia showing eyes aimed in two different directions
This is not just an expressive pose, but it is the first distinctive evidence that I’ve gotten that shows that anoles, like chameleons, can aim their eyes in two different directions as once; I’d often wondered, but the chances of seeing this are always slim, unless I somehow got one to pose in front of a mirror. There’s no reason why they couldn’t move their eyes independently, since binocular vision isn’t too necessary for them, but I’d never been sure until now. By the way, I cropped this image to include the entire tail, and so have to draw your attention to it.

One more, totally unrelated, but I’m not making an entire post over just this:

basilica orbweaver Mecynogea lemniscata in tentlike web structure
This little guy has had a web stretched between two potted plants on the back deck for a while, and I initially took it to be an orchard orbweaver because I couldn’t see the back of the abdomen clearly, but later determined that it’s a basilica orbweaver (Mecynogea lemniscata) – I’ve only seen them once before, but certainly recognize the pattern. And while they call it an orbweaver, which typically means a wheel-shaped web, this is more of a sheet web, and you can see that there are multiple layers to it with some curious strand patterns. On moving the plants earlier, I reduced the space between them to almost nothing, collapsing this web, and then returned them to position and the web sprung right back into its shape, the spider only twitching in preparation of fleeing. Good engineering.

Last night I had finished photo sorting over 1,500 images and run the internal backups, and then today I added another couple dozen photos so, do it again – it shouldn’t take too long this time. Though there’s also the post draft purge of the blog database, and e-mail purging, and some month-end maintenance, so I’ll be busy for a couple of hours – but at least I got one last post out for June.

Garden finds

Al Denelsbeck

fartsy shot of possible bigleaf magnolia Magnolia macrophylla
The other day I went out to the NC Botanical Garden for the first time in ages, to see what could be found. Notably, this was the first time in several years, I think, that I found no Carolina anoles during my visit, though we’ll make up for that shortly. There were enough other things to photograph, but like normal, I wasn’t looking for the ID plaques of what I was photographing, so most of my identifications here are tentative and subject to blaming the garden just for the sake of it. For instance, I believe the above image is a bigleaf magnolia (Magnolia macrophylla) – it is certainly distinctly different from the common magnolias around here, but we’re not here for a botanical lecture, just for fartsiness. We may not get that, either.

younger American five-lined skink Plestiodon fasciatus showing evidence of regrown tail
Not even minimal effort of fartsiness here, just a close view of my first find, an American five-lined skink (Plestiodon fasciatus.) The electric blue tail is a trait of juveniles, though this one was large enough I would have thought this would have faded by now, but we have clear evidence that it had dropped its tail sometime in the past and it was now fully regrown. Skinks can actually release their tails on their own, when it isn’t actually pulled off by a predator, and the detached tail will writhe exuberantly for some minutes, hopefully keeping the attention of the predator while the skink, now lacking some of the bright coloring, makes its escape. The tails will grow back, fairly quickly though I have yet to observe one dependably to see just how long it takes. It’s not overnight, but it’s within a season at least.

unidentified carpenter bees visiting blooms of fruiting purple passionflower Passiflora incarnata
Against one particular building is a trellis that hosts some abundant purple passionflowers (Passiflora incarnata,) including several ripening fruit. The carpenter bees, however, were still visiting the past-peak blossoms, and I really have to do some detailed macro work of these when they’re at peak, because they’re one of the more peculiar flowers in the area, ideally adapted to have carpenter bees doing the pollinating. You can see it here a little, the umbrella-like stamens arching over and facing down to introduce the pollen to the bees’ backs.

leaves and buds of a probable hibiscus plant
I think this is a hibiscus in the early stages of the flowers budding, but again, just the aesthetics. I tried to make sure the leaves filled the frame appropriately.

milkweed flowers with possible honeybee mimic pollinating
I’m quite comfortable saying these are a variety of milkweed flowers, but not too sure about that “honeybee” – the head and eyes don’t look quite right, and I think this may be a mimic, but it never gave me the opportunity for more detail than this. Still, aesthetics.

sluggish unidentified carpenter bee on wild bergamot Monarda fistulosa
The flower is a wild bergamot, of which I approve because it’s what makes Earl Grey tea (I mean, aside from certain kinds of black tea leaves.) The carpenter bee was almost motionless atop it as countless others serviced the flowers exuberantly, and why it was so still I can’t say, though I did see it feebly try to ward off interlopers. Rough night? Counting to 100? Got me, but we’re here for the detail of the wings, which caught the light just right.

And finally,

eastern tiger swallowtail Papilio glaucus on wild bergamot Monarda fistulosa blossoms
The bergamot appears again, this time being visited by an eastern tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) – I believe, anyway, because they seem abundant around here and I see the black morphs from time to time, while the common yellow swallowtail does not have those. But let’s not forget about them aesthetics, the complementary colors all working together here. Who needs sciencey stuff when you have all that? Okay then.

Lazy swapping

Al Denelsbeck

I know people keep going on about this and it’s a bit tiresome, but it really is lazy to just swap out “ne” for “ly” and consider it a whole new month. “August” and “September” I can get behind, two entirely different words with almost nothing in common; you know you’re making changes when September comes around. With these two, you can only abbreviate them by dropping the last letter, a mere 25%, otherwise it can still be confusing. I propose we rename July to “Maxuary,” after a gerbil I once had…

Which means it’s time for the end of the month abstract, of course. “What could it be?” you ask breathlessly, to which I reply, Oh, for dog’s sake, calm down…

close up of blooms of wild carrot Queen Anne's lace Daucus carota
I’ve known these flower clusters since childhood as Queen Anne’s lace, which is somewhat curious in that it’s only known by this name in North America where we’re proud that we told the British royal family to get lorried, immediately afterward hanging on their every antic; elsewhere it’s known as wild carrot mostly, but Daucus carota for the pompous and pedantic. The deep purple flowers in the center are what the band took their name from, and exist mostly to make birds think there’s a bug there and waste time flying down to it, because the plant is easily amused.

But that’s not all that we have for the day! June yielded yet another that qualified, in the vague and formless structure of the term “abstract” in my head.

leaf of American sweetgum Liquidambar styraciflua floating near surfline on Jordan Lake
Despite it being high summer, this leaf from an American sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) got convinced that autumn was nigh and dropped vividly into the water, likely to the sniggers of its brethren still greenly partying up in the parent tree. Wankers. But this meant that it stood out distinctly when I was out there chasing birds, and thus gets featured here today, with the foam at the water’s edge included as an extra element. But we need a closer look.

detail of dead leaf of American sweetgum Liquidambar styraciflua
Not too shabby for being shot at 150mm with the Tamron 150-600, eh? I know you’re jealous, but if you’re nice to me, I’ll sell you a large print of the overall frame where you can see both the exquisite composition and the amazing leaf detail all together, and for an extra fee I won’t sign it and you can claim that you took it yourself in a casual, devil-may-care manner that therefore hints of even greater hidden talents and will surely get you laid. I’m that kind of guy.

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