S’rainin’

Al Denelsbeck

Or at least, it had been, for about three days solid I believe. While I wasn’t a fan of how often it rained in central New York, this weird North Carolina pattern of weeks of drought and then days of rain is unbalanced and not the best for the plants, but at least we have the rain barrels to try and even things out.

But while it was wet, I took a little time to use the conditions.

rosebud in wet conditions
There are several rose bushes along the front of Stately Walkabout Manor, and while their blooms often don’t get too photogenic for some reason, this bud jumped out, helped by the raindrop-laden leaf in the background. It was actively raining as I took this, albeit lightly, but it limited the amount of time I’d spend in the open with the camera.

blue lobelia Lobelia erinus blossoms heavy with raindrops
The same conditions held for the blue lobelia (Lobelia erinus) hanging from the front porch, though I could get under the overhang for some perspectives, just not all of them. The goal here, of course, was to use that nice round raindrop as a lens, which worked okay, but not ideally. The range of sharp focus is devastatingly small, in the realm of millimeters, and working freehand like I was, this required standing absolutely rock-steady without moving a hair from position – something that I actually cannot do. So instead this meant timing the trip of the shutter to right when I wobbled into sharp focus, and as you can imagine, I have a lot of misses.

So I got a smidgen smarter, and once it had halted raining for a bit, returned with the flash unit instead of using the dim available light to try again.

blue lobelia Lobelia erinus blossoms under heavy raindrops with one acting as lens
That’s a bit better, even when it dropped the background into darkness, but it did this because with the flash, I could stop down to f14 and improve the depth of field, which also gave me a slight edge on my wobbliness. Unfortunately, the softbox shows up a little too distinctly in the raindrops, especially the lensing one, as big white circles (but at least they’re circles and not some unnatural-looking shapes like rectangles or octagons or something.) Note, too, that these colors have been tweaked more to the natural hue, since the camera cannot actually capture the blue of the flowers.

[There’s a small mistake here as well, not really visible because I cropped slightly: I’d inadvertently bumped the camera controls and this was shot at 1/400 second instead of 1/200. Unfortunately, the flash does not synchronize properly at 1/400 because the shutter is not open fully when the flash goes off, so part of the frame goes dark – unless you’re using a synchronized ‘focal plane’ setting, which this flash doesn’t even have. Best to always keep flash pics under 1/200 second shutter speed.]

The rosemary hanging from the opposite side also got the treatment.

raindrops on flowers of rosemary Lamiaceae
This time, I got lucky enough that I could frame a sprig of rosemary within the drop, providing more context for what the plant actually is.

By the way, you may see this technique with prominent flower blossoms centered perfectly in good light within the drops, and bear in mind that there’s a significant chance that they’re carefully staged photos. Using a drop as a lens requires a subject that’s a specific distance and position behind the drop, lit well of course (not usually the case when the raindrops are still present,) and naturally not a dead or lopsided or otherwise unphotogenic bloom. Notice what I said up there about the roses? It’s actually challenging to find flowers (and leaves) that look as pristine as we want them to, without even trying to find a drop in front of them that’s in the perfect position. This is not sour grapes, and I’m sure some of the photos are ‘as found’ – I’m just relaying my experience in pursuing such subjects, and there’s a lot more to it than it seems.

One more from the lobelia, when I returned much later on at night while it was misting heavily.

blue lobelia Lobelia erinus blossoms under heavy raindrops
No lensing this time, but better light overall – since I’d backed off for better framing (this with the Sigma 180mm macro,) the light from the softbox went wider but also dropped off, so the aperture was instead at f10. The myriad drops got very well-defined and it even looks almost like direct sunlight, so I’m pleased with it. And I got something in conditions that normally limit nature photography, too.

Sorting finds n+14

Al Denelsbeck

Finished another sorting job last night, 1,600+ images, and so another load of sorting finds, pics that weren’t featured at the time that they were taken, is now awaiting our attention. We’ll do these in chronological order.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis sheltering between two camellia leaves at night while in the process of shedding
The camellia trees/bushes/whatevers, for some reason, aren’t as popular sleeping spots for the Carolina anoles (Anolis carolinensis) as the Japanese maples, even though the anoles can frequently be found hunting on the camellias during the day. There was one notable exception, a half-size anole that liked one particular branch of a camellia near my office door, and on this occasion it was actually in the middle of molting, shedding its skin in the tattered rags manner that they do. I hadn’t realized this in the headlamp, but the flash revealed it. Roughly half the time, the anoles either hear me approaching or take note of the headlamp and so are awake for my shenanigans, but rarely even twitch – they just remain alert in case it’s needed.

The property plays host to this particular plant, which is kind of cool looking.

collection of orange jewelweed Impatiens capensis blossoms at night
These are orange jewelweed (Impatiens capensis,) and they tend to bloom in late fall, as well as being a sparse vine, so they remain unnoticed until the blooming season. These appear almost entirely within The Puddle, the small overgrown pond in the middle of the backyard that, throughout the summer, might be a little marshy but only resembles a hollow filled with trees and vines and reeds; it looks more like a very small pond in the winter when much of the foliage has died off (and, reportedly, there is an old fountain buried in there, though we have yet to expose it.)

orange jewelweed Impatiens capensis blossoms at night decorated by dew
Orange jewelweed is also one of the plants that appear to exude excess moisture from certain parts of the leaves, and don’t ask me what this is about, but at times it adds a little charm.

The nutria are semi-regular visitors for the corn that we throw down, and I caught one during their chronic scratching sessions.

adult nutria Myocastor coypus scratching vigorously on pond edge
We’ve never seen anything scratch as much as nutria do, which is why we labeled the mated (we think) pair that visits, ‘Itchy’ and ‘Scratchy.’ We can’t tell them apart, so the first one to appear is always considered Itchy for convenience, and since they only occasionally show up together, it kind of makes us think Scratchy is a rare visitor, even though they could simply be alternating appearances.

Just a few minutes later, this one swam off but was spotted up at the upper end of the pond; we rarely ever seen anything up there, but the tattered condition of the duckweed, with the occasional trail cutting through it, tells us that somebody is going up there regularly, probably at night. It could be the nutria, it could be the beavers, it could even be muskrats – we’ve seen them all. But this time, it was definitely Itchy. Unless it was Scratchy.

nutria Myocastor coypus appearing to shovel duckweed into its mouth as it swims
I was shooing freehand with the long lens, which is absolutely not the time to be shooting video, but I wish I had been, since this one appeared to be shoveling double-handfuls of duckweed into its mouth as it swam. Not terribly surprising, since they’re herbivorous, but it was an action that I haven’t seen and seems slightly odd (and a bit uncouth.) This is of course a tight crop and suffers from that a little, but you can still make out both forepaws visible in front of the snout.

white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus fawn at edge of pond
We have several white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) that are semi-regular visitors, also after the corn, but they don’t come as frequently as expected. Still, there are the orphaned ‘Pirate Twins,’ and a doe with her single fawn, all almost full adult size now. And one other, but since we’re doing this in chronological order it’ll have to wait. This was one of the twins I believe, for once captured while I was in the lawn rather than from the deck or upstairs bathroom, and it’s waiting to see if I’m going to pose a threat. It looks overcast or late, but it’s just under the deep canopy, because a minute later I also got this:

collection of yellow-bellied sliders Trachemys scripta scripta and eastern painted turtles Chrysemys picta picta sunning themselves on Turtle Island
As the overnight temperatures dropped at the beginning of this month, the turtles suddenly reappeared in their usual spots on Turtle Island when the sun was available, and while this is a nice pile, it’s a far cry from the record (so far.) These are all yellow-bellied sliders (Trachemys scripta scripta) and eastern painted turtles (Chrysemys picta picta) – in fact, there’s only one painted that I’m sure of, the little guy right there in the center with the red markings, but a couple others might be present.

Now for one curiosity that I didn’t post at the time.

unexplained gaps in the rainbow effect of eyes of green mantidfly Zeugomantispa minuta
Back when I was doing the detail shots of the green mantidfly, I got a couple of frames that showed these strange ‘dashes’ in the rainbow diffraction effect from the compound eyes. Now, dark spots from compound eyes are common, usually called ‘false pupils’ and likely resulting from a visual path straight down the tubes of the ommatidia – the colors all come from the reflective interior sides of these deep tubes and so vanish when you have a direct view. But this is an exceptionally weird pattern for false pupils; I’ve seen them as a singular spot of course (mantids,) and a pattern of multiples for things like butterflies and cicadas and ambush bugs, but never a set of well-defined crescents. Does this come from shooting straight down from above the head? I have no idea, but it shows up well within the diffractive pattern at least.

Okay, so now we return to the deer.

male white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus six-point buck on edge of pond
The distinctive thing about this one is that it’s a buck, which have been exceedingly rare, especially considering how many does and fawns we’ve seen. This is only the second in the main part of the backyard, though another was spotted in the distance on the far side at the edge of The Bayou, and I have a skull from a looked-to-be-complete skeleton in that immediate area – that’s been it, much unlike the old place where they would often congregate. This was actually dusk, and the light register shows it, so I also tweaked it to demonstrate the difference.

male white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus six-point buck on edge of pond, color tweaked
It would take far too much work to look like full sunlight, but at least this shows how blue the light goes at these times, or under deep canopy; red and yellow get absorbed quickly, but blue scatters a lot, so outside of direct light the tones change significantly.

So that clears a few more out, plus it adds to the image uploads for October – which aren’t done yet. In fact, I’m going to go out right now and see about adding a few more on top of what’s already planned (it’s about 1:50 AM on a very misty night.) Stay tuned.

End run

Al Denelsbeck

That’s a sporting term, isn’t it? Shame how these get into our vernacular…

So the saga of computer headphone port repair dragged on much longer than it should have – I just wanted to be able to use headphones on my computer! The parts arrived about a week ago, and I realized that they weren’t actually going to fit onto the printed circuit board that the old ones were soldered to. So, since the audio header connection, a nine-pin cord that looked exactly like an onboard USB connector, was only feeding the headphone and microphone jacks, I decided to wire directly into that instead of the board, and just pin the jack down underneath the board. Spent no small amount of time both tracing the paths from the circuit board and looking up the pinouts of the header (the thing that tells you what each pin is for,) before I soldered the new socket to the audio connector cable. Put it back together, tried it out – zilcho.

Got frustrated by that, put it aside for a few days, tackled it again yesterday. Found a different source of info, and realized in going through it carefully that there are two types of audio jacks, one dedicated to HDaudio from a motherboard – that was what the original had, but not what I’d purchased. And they weren’t cross-compatible, since their wiring was different. Well, shit.

Contemplated trying to find the proper jacks, and also whether or not I could simply insert one of my new jacks into the speaker system (plugging the headphone plug into the speakers instead of the computer,) which abruptly made me realize that I was going about this the wrong way.

Here’s the deal: most standard headphone jacks have a ‘presence’ feature, that detects the headphone being plugged in and kills the sound going to the speakers, and I’d purchased five of these. So all I really needed to do was interrupt the signal with one of these before it even went to the speakers through the normal connection, and so the latest project was born, my ‘middleman’ bypass.

parts for speaker system bypass for headphones
Simple, really: two five-pin 3.5mm sockets (from the five just purchased,) one 3.5mm male plug, some wires, and a housing, which was designed and printed on the 3D printer last night. The housing was about as small as it could get and really should have been just a tad bit bigger, but I made it work.

[There’s another disassembled 3.5mm male plug in there, used just to ensure continuity during soldering – much easier that trying to get a test probe on the proper contacts within a socket.]

headphone speaker bypass from the rear
Back view: the wire from the plug that goes into the computer sound card entering, and a socket for the external speaker system alongside.

headphone speaker bypass unit, front view
Front view: just the socket for the headphone plug. This is the one that allows or breaks the connection to the speaker socket.

headphone speaker bypass unit mounted on monitor riser
This is in place, mounted to my monitor riser right ahead of the computer mouse, so even more convenient than using the front port of the computer. Yes, my monitor riser is homemade, since I had a very specific clearance before the top of the monitor hit some shelves above the desk.

headphone speaker bypass mounted, with headphones plugged in
And in use. It works perfectly, and allowed me to switch to a different speaker system with much more appreciable bass (the headphones were already a bass-heavy set.)

All of this had to be completed successfully today, naturally, because it’s International Enough is Enough Day, the day to either finish long-standing projects or realize that they’re requiring far more effort than they’re worth – mine was kind of both. The left channel on the external speakers had been out for well over a year, I believe, and I finally got that settled, only to lose the use of headphones in an unrelated way. At this point, everything’s back to proper working order, and even improved (a better sound card on the computer, better speakers, and a more handy plug for the headphones.) Doing it this way meant that the onboard sound controller on the motherboard is now not being used at all, which is probably good because all other onboard controllers have been pathetic, and I’m using PCI cards for video and network connection as well.

Fascinating, right? Yeah, I’ll be back with more normal typical content soon.

Mum’s the word

Al Denelsbeck

All right, it’s been long enough since the last one, so we can get back to this saga from a few days back.

The Girlfriend bought a selection of chrysanthemums, but before they were planted they were clustered together on the front lawn, and it wasn’t long at all before the Carolina anoles (Anolis carolinensis) discovered the charms of these. In going past one afternoon, I spotted one perched rather conspicuously on the blossoms.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis perched on chrysanthemum blossoms
It was aware of my presence, but only as spooky as they normally are, which wasn’t much; as long as I didn’t get too close or loom or anything, it was willing to ignore me, and occasionally pose.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis perched on chrysanthemum blossoms
It certainly had the right idea, because the flowers were being routinely visited by numerous small pollinators, just the right size to make a mouthful, and as I took a seat to watch the anole’s perambulations among the blooms, I saw the it scamper suddenly just out of sight for a moment, before reappearing with a capture.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis perched on chrysanthemum blossoms with recently-captured meal
It could easily have remained out of sight, so I have to consider this professional courtesy. These captures, which I’ve only witnessed just a few times, happen quite fast and even on video there might not be much to see – I’d probably have to go with a high-speed shutter to see anything more than a few milliseconds of action. Once they snag something, however, they might spend five to thirty seconds working the meal around until it can be swallowed, and I don’t know how much of that is actually chewing the meal into acceptable condition, though I’ve gotten the impression that it’s more getting it into the gullet in the right orientation. Which this wasn’t:

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis on chrysanthemum blossoms with prey sticking from between lips like a cigar
You have to appreciate the cigar-chomping, Edward G. Robinson aspect here (why I named the image HeyYouMugs.jpg,) and of course the tiny little teeth, which I’m fairly certain are only there to help keep the prey from escaping.

That wasn’t enough to sustain the little lizard (only about half of adult size) for long, and it quickly resumed the hunt, disappearing and reappearing among the flowers, on occasion seeming to be trying to avoid my attentions, and at others brazenly tramping right across the tops.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis peeking between chrysanthemum blossoms
Of course, I took the opportunities for some fartsier images when they happened.

Curiously, the anole also took an interest in a small wasp that came around, which I would have thought it might avoid.

Fraternal potter wasp Eumenes fraternus feeding from chrysanthemum bloom
Unfortunately, BugGuide.net doesn’t have enough keywords attached to their images to make searching more efficient – it usually finds matches through post titles or text – so I had to find this one through the Ecosia search engine. This is a fraternal potter wasp (Eumenes fraternus,) quite small as far as wasps go and so possible for a medium-sized anole to gulp down – I just would have though that it would be avoided because of the possibility of being stung. Perhaps the anoles are relatively immune to the venom, or knows it’s weak for this species, or are adept enough at capturing to avoid the stinger until the wasp is incapacitated, but the anole was definitely creeping in for the capture before the wasp uncooperatively flew off. While I was on BugGuide, I discovered that these are the species that make the little (6-10mm) clay pots that I see from time to time, as nurseries for their young, and since I knew where an old one was I got an image of this just to illustrate:

old mud nursery pot of fraternal potter wasp Eumenes fraternus, already hatched out
This one has already hatched, so it’s missing the distinct neck that they have – I’ll find another before too long.

I eventually abandoned my observations of the anole on the mums, but the next day, we found that another had joined in on the hunt, and the two anoles didn’t seem at all concerned with one another’s presence, no territorial warnings or anything, so I’m guessing at least one of these is a female.

pair of young Carolina anoles Anolis carolinensis hunting on chrysanthemums
The one in the back was pretty mellow, barely moving at all, while the one in front was actively patrolling each of the plants that we had. Soon after this, it reversed direction because it saw a potential meal on one of the yellow ones.

unidentified skipper Hesperiina feeding from chrysanthemum blossom
There are far too many of these kinds of butterflies with very subtle differences in markings, and I failed to obtain enough images to differentiate, so all I can say is this is a variety of skipper – which is fun in itself. This is – get ready – Order Lepidoptera, Superfamily Papilionoidea, Family Hesperiidae, Subfamily Hesperiinae, Tribe Hesperiini, and Subtribe Hesperiina. Seriously, that’s enough to get an entomologist all sweaty. The front anole spotted it and began stalking its way across the mums in pursuit, providing a nice pose along the way:

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis posed across multiple chrysanthemum blossoms
The light was softer that day, heavy haze, and so the catchlight in the anole’s eyes isn’t a sharp dot, but a reflection of the greater sky (potentially blocked by me and the camera.)

Unfortunately, it was a little too eager, the skipper a little too alert, and as the anole closed in, the skipper sailed off and avoided becoming a meal, leaving the anole there looking at the empty blossoms for a moment.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis atop chrysanthemum blossoms after having just missed a skipper
But the saga wasn’t over yet. The anole climbed atop the same two blossoms seen at lower left and took up its position, remaining motionless but alert. And within a minute or so, a skipper returned (same one? I have no way of telling) and alighted in what can only be described as a taunting and disrespectful manner:

unidentified skipper Hesperiina perched straddling tail of Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis on chrysanthemum blossoms
While I am 90% certain that the skipper simply didn’t recognize that the danger was there, likely only alerted to movement (which is how ambush spiders eat so easily even when failing to blend in with the flowers,) this put the anole in a predicament: a meal so tantalizingly close, yet behind it and easy to be disturbed by any movement of the anole’s tail. This would take finesse.

unidentified skipper Hesperiina straddling tail of Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis atop chrysanthemum blossoms
Careful now – slowly, slowly – no sudden movements until ready to leap…

I’d actually switched to video at this point, but the anole wasn’t aware enough of its tail and moved it laterally instead of just sliding it forward, which the skipper might have missed. But likely, the tail touched a leg and the skipper was off before the anole was even ready to leap, and so the clip is a few seconds long and not worth the effort of editing. Had it been of a successful capture, that would have been different.

I know, I know, I’m showing my bias by favoring the death of the skipper over its deft escape – the lepidoptera always get the short end of the stick. But let’s be real: a lot more people would say, “Oh, yuck, a lizard!” than, “Oh, yuck, a butterfly!” so where’s the bias now, huh?

Okay, fine. To make it up to you (and because I have no other place to put this and it would sit in the blog folder for a long time,) we’ll have another from later that evening. I’d been seeing these little butterflies perched somewhat prominently at night, usually on the Japanese maples, and finally decided to get an image of the patterns on the underwings.

sleeping crescent butterfly Phyciodes showing underwing patterns
Now, this was a challenge to identify. I mean, what do you search under? “Map pattern butterfly”? (Which I did try.) “Scribbled”? “Graffiti”? Feel free to enlighten me as to how to describe that pattern, though I did eventually locate it through a lot of image searching – only to be surprised at the result, since it’s an exceedingly common butterfly that I’ve photographed many times before, one of the crescents (Genus Phyciodes.) I’d just never seen the undersides of the wings before; they alight during the day with the wings remaining splayed and down, only holding them vertically at night. Both patterns are cool, you must admit, but the topwing is easier to search for. And after finding this identification, I was compelled to confirm it, and the next night I found another sleeping and nudged it until it dropped its wings momentarily, confirming that stippled orange-and-black pattern.

Okay, that’s out of my system. I’ll try to keep it a few days before I feature the anoles again.

Estate Find XLIII

Al Denelsbeck

Got a double for this one, though one (at least) has been seen before, so we’ll start with that one. This is, once again, a capture of the Magic Bucket of Variety, which had been quiet for a while before turning up this guy as the weather has been getting crisper. I’m still at a loss as to why so many things end up dropping into this trash can – I’d suspected that maybe they were drawn to the fumes from the towels and rags that I was using for alcohol, solvents, and resin printing cleanup, the reason the can is in the outside stairwell in the first place, but the only trash in it this time was a solitary tissue that had been in there for weeks.

red-bellied snake Storeria occipitomaculata in bottom of Magic Bucket of Variety trash can
We’ll get scale pics in a moment, but know that this was a pretty damn small snake – I’ve probably seen bigger earthworms. This is one of the many colors that red-bellied snakes (Storeria occipitomaculata) can achieve, yet I admit that I like the grey better. Although I have to give full credit to this one, since once I captured it (a long and painstaking process as you can imagine,) it behaved remarkably well for the ‘studio’ shoot, actually just a shallow basin lined with dirt that’s easy to shoot over and past.

red-bellied snake Storeria occipitomaculata with tongue extended
I always like to capture the extended tongue with snakes, and often this can be tricky, since they do it only as the mood strikes them and it’s faster than it looks, too frequently being retracted even as I trip the shutter. Faced with potential danger, they may not extend it at all – it’s their air sampler, like our noses, and most used in finding prey. This one, however, was very curious about its environment and flicking the tongue frequently, so I had my choice of frames.

red-bellied snake Storeria occipitomaculata with tongue extended, and author's fingertips for scale
And there’s my scale shot – even smaller than expected, isn’t it? But as small as it is, it could easily escape the dish that I was using for the ‘setting,’ so I was doing these pics in the bathroom, which offers significantly fewer hiding places than anywhere else I might choose. This didn’t prove to be the least bit necessary, as the snake mostly stayed put in one spot, occasionally turning in slightly different directions, but otherwise complacent and thus easy to photograph.

head-on shot of red-bellied snake Storeria occipitomaculata with tips of tongue barely visible
This was the most difficult that the snake had been, since I had one frame where it gave me this direct head-on perspective before it turned slightly away, and f13 (with the Sigma 180mm macro) wasn’t anywhere near enough depth-of-field to get the eyes in focus too. However, capturing the bare tips of the tongue extending from the mouth like fangs is more than compensation enough.

Now, you know how I said that the using the bathroom was unnecessary for the snake pics? That was not the case with this next one. Found in the yard yesterday and captured after several tries, our next contestant was in no mood to be a supermodel.

unknown tiny frog, possibly juvenile spring peeper Pseudacris crucifer
Another small one, I actually have no idea what species this is, because I’ve found nothing that matches. Given that it’s smaller than anything found in the region except a little grass frog (which does not look like this,) I’m going to assume it’s a juvenile and thus has not produced its adult coloration or pattern. Given that, my best guess is that it’s a young spring peeper (Pseudacris crucifer,) but I’m not committing to anything. And also quite small.

unknown tiny frog, possibly juvenile spring peeper Pseudacris crucifer alongside millimeter scale
Having been chased across the yard, and then again across the deck after I attempted to show it to The Girlfriend, this guy was in no mood to pose thoughtfully, and I think my average was less than two frames before having to fetch it in some location in the bathroom and return it to the dish – I need an assistant and critter wrangler (or a specialty terrarium that allows multiple shooting angles without intervening glass while preventing escapes or hiding spots – you can understand why this has not been constructed yet.)

unknown tiny frog, possibly juvenile spring peeper Pseudacris crucifer perched on dime for scale
Now we have the scale shot for the US, metric-ignorant population (even when most ammunition sizes are in millimeters – go figure.) That’s a dime that the frog is semi-obscuring, and it took quite a few attempts to get it to remain there, and even more to get a more-or-less portrait angle, since the frog resolutely wanted to face directly towards the back of the sink and the mirror – I could turn the dish, and the frog would turn to keep facing in that direction. Turn it again and reach for the camera, and the frog would sail out of the dish onto the sink.

unknown tiny frog, possibly juvenile spring peeper Pseudacris crucifer showing distinct lack of identifying markings
Which is where this one was shot, and only because every time I went overhead to get the back markings (or lack thereof,) the frog leapt away. But all four of these shots illustrate my difficulties with identification, because none of them show any hint of characteristics that would pin it down. No cross or triangle on the back like the spring peeper, no stripes along the eyes like any of the chorus frogs, no spot under the eye like the Copes grey treefrog, surprisingly warty skin for such a small specimen yet a poor match for any of the toad body shapes, no distinct toe pads like the treefrogs – I couldn’t find anything to work with. Feel free to enlighten me if you recognize it, before I name it after myself…

Off and on for the past couple of weeks, we’ve had something in the yard doing quiet but distinct calling, possible to locate down to within a half-meter before it falls silent, and there’s never been anything to see. That’s not surprising for any of the small frogs, which can hide behind two blades of grass. I haven’t yet grabbed the shotgun mic and tried to record them, and of course never saw what was actually making the noise – was it one of these? That might have assisted in ID, but right now, they’re isolated factors. We’ll see if I get audio later one – this one was certainly not going to be calling during captivity, unless I set up a really nice terrarium and held onto it for a while, but I released it back where found as soon as I was done with the photo session.

A question for the ages

Al Denelsbeck

We all know dreams can get pretty weird; I know my strangest tend to come if I’m running a fever, or alternately if I took a dose of naproxen sodium (the drug behind Aleve) before retiring. Otherwise, most of my dreams now are fragmentary and generally very mundane, ordinary events that might occur during the day.

The other night was different, and one particular detail stands out to me. You see, even when things get weird, I can usually tell the genesis of the weird elements from something the day before – something I saw, or heard, or pondered about, that planted the seed for my mind to latch onto later on and make an important, if nonsensical, element. Just not this time.

Within this dream, I was with an acquaintance, a NASA astronaut (no, I don’t actually know any,) in a shopping mall, getting loaded up to take a motorcycle trip someplace, though it was unclear whether this was my bike or not. Someone nearby overheard one of our comments and went off rather strenuously about some policy of NASA’s that he disagreed with, forcing another acquaintance and I to point out that he was going a bit overboard. And as this was happening, I glanced over at one of the nearby decorative planters that you’d find in malls and see that there’s a zip-lock plastic bag full of soup sitting there, full enough to resemble a small, brown pillow with indeterminate paler lumps within.

The curiousness of this registered on me as I was waking up, perhaps because I was still in a transitional stage, and my primary focus was, What the goddamn hell was this soup doing in my dream?

Where did it come from? I mean, not in the mall, but in my psyche? Why did my brain subconsciously feel that this was an element that belonged, or needed recognition? It’d be weird enough to find a bag of soup just sitting on some random flat surface in a mall, or even a vape shop, but this was created by my own brain and placed there to be seen distinctly while I was informing some stranger that he was sounding a little unbalanced (like I could talk.) I don’t particularly like soup, and so there are very few that I even bother with, certainly none that resembled this bag of thick brown goo, perhaps a gumbo, or some variation of lentil. And seriously, a gallon-sized zip bag? Like that’s not an accident waiting to happen…

Yes, I know some people believe that dreams are manifestations of something greater and mystical, usually the same people who believe crystals have wondrous powers somehow undetected by everyone except women in hemp dresses that use the word “patchouli” in complete earnest. No, I’m quite certain this is all from my own head, which might make it worse, really. Sure, pondering what this strange appearance possibly means on some higher plane, and how important it might be to find out in time, could produce some anxiety I suppose, but we’re talking about my own mind, the interior decorator of my dreams, that said, “…and right there, a bag of soup.” I’d like to think I know my brain, but not when it comes up with that.

We won’t talk about what birthday just passed not all that long ago, but maybe I’m being told to get used to the idea of soft meals…

While the weather allowed

Al Denelsbeck

I mentioned earlier that the Orionids meteor shower is supposed to peak soon, while right now, comet C/2025 A6 Lemmon is brightening and visible just after sunset, naturally to the west. We had perfectly clear skies on Saturday night, so I decided to try my hand at both, beginning with the comet.

[A note about comet names: They start with ‘C’ for comet, then the year discovered. That’s followed by the one-letter abbreviation for the observatory (or group thereof) used to make the discovery, in this case the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS,) a collection of five separated telescopes used in conjunction to detect asteroids of potential hazards to Earth. Since this is the sixth such comet detected by ATLAS in 2025, it has an A6 designation. This is followed by the common name, often the astronomer that made the discovery, but in this case the Mount Lemmon Survey, one of the organizations that examine the data from ATLAS.]

I made a couple of small mistakes in heading out for the narrow window between when it would be dark enough to see the comet, and it dipping below the horizon. The first was, I didn’t take note of the most visible stars nearby to orient with, and the second was, I didn’t take my old smutphone, which actually has a working compass; for some reason, my current one does not include such a thing (and good luck finding any list of specs, anywhere, that tells you what’s included and excluded before purchase.) So I knew my rough coordinates but not a precise orientation.

I was also working with the Tamron 150-600 lens and not a telescope, which would do a much better job if a) I had the tracking motor operational, and b) I had a decent way to attach a camera to it. I fought with the tracking motor for days last year, never quite understanding the controls or getting it working properly, and also found that the eyepiece mount for the scope stands off a camera too far for it to properly focus – I’d need to specially adapt a digital sensor to work properly. This is a large and likely frustrating project that I simply keep avoiding because I’m not a masochist.

But the skies definitely seemed quite clear at twilight.

post-sunset twilight over Pamlico River
Right at the horizon, the haze is building a bit, but even with this light there’s a star visible already (high center,) a good sign. After a moderate wait, I started my search.

I was also doing test shots for focus and exposure times, and one of my test subjects kept showing a curious artifact:

double star Cor Caroli captured through 600mm lens
This is 1/10 second at f6.3, ISO 6400, knowing that I’d want the shortest exposure possible to keep the motion from showing, especially looking almost due west. But that secondary image below kept appearing, not really looking like a defocused image or artifact, and it wasn’t until I returned home that I determined why: it really was a double-star.

screen capture from Stellarium showing double-star Cor Caroli and specs
Stellarium had the goods. It was Cor Caroli, and it didn’t even show as a double star in Stellarium until zoomed way in, but I managed to capture a hint of the spectral differences between the two stars. Note, too, that’s it’s only a double star from our perspective, the two being separated by roughly 29 light years.

The other bright point in the sky always showed a noticeable disc shape in my images when I zoomed in on the preview screen, leading me to believe it was Mars.

Arcturus through 600mm lens

The shape is likely only due to over-exposure, though. I noticed in the viewfinder that the target was scintillating wickedly, which is something not typically seen on the planets, but none of the stars should resolve as a disc, either. I did a test to capture this scintillation, only the second time I’ve done this, and it came out much better than expected.

scintillation of Arcturus captured by panning during time exposure, 600mm
To get this, I loosened the panning lock and rotated the tripod head until the target was just out of the frame, then locked the shutter open for a few seconds while I panned across, smearing the target entirely across the frame. The spectrum that this produced was fantastic, really showing off the colors and no longer looking ‘reddish.’ This was not Mars, but Arcturus (magnitude 0.15, so actually brighter than Mars at the moment, which is quite dim,) again determined once I got back home.

Not locating the comet or anything that looked promising, I began doing several time exposures in the rough direction, hoping to stir it up that way. And one of the things that I stirred up were satellites – really, a lot of them.

six second time exposure of night sky showing eight satellite trails and comet C/2025 A6 Lemmon at upper right
I enhanced this six-second exposure (again, f6.3, ISO 6400) to bring out the trails a little, though the two crossing right in the center should be visible enough; there are actually eight satellite trails visible in the frame, mostly because this was soon after sunset in the western sky and the satellites were high enough to still be reflecting sunlight.

And though I didn’t realize it at the time, I caught the comet, too, up there in upper right corner. A couple of frames later on, I did spot it in the preview, zoomed in slightly here.

time exposire showing comet C/2025 A6 Lemmon in upper center
Now located properly, I could set about trying to get a detailed shot. I still couldn’t see it by naked eye, and even knowing where to look in the viewfinder at 600mm it was barely visible, but I could frame it at least.

seven second exposure of comet C/2025 A6 Lemmon showing too much motion blur at 600mm, but visible evidence of the tails
This is a seven-second exposure, cropped a lot tighter now, and obviously way too long to be distinct, but at least there’s clear evidence of the coma and tail, and I even captured the greenish color.

I did a few frames at much shorter times, as well, but the tail about vanishes.

one-second exposure of comet C/2025 A6 Lemmon, losing most of the detail of the tail
Still a hint of motion blur in there at a mere one-second exposure, and only enough coma to distinguish this as a comet. I also shot a few frames in RAW mode too, to see if that edge would allow more detail to be coaxed out in editing, but nada. Really, the only solution is by tracking to counteract the motion of the Earth’s rotation and keep this smearing out of the frame (though I admit I haven’t tried image-stacking software to combine multiple exposures together, a common technique of astrophotographers and astronomers.)

[A note about this: Since the motion blur/trails are being caused by the rotation of the Earth, a tracking platform has to rotate the opposite way, at the same speed, aligned on the same axis – this means celestial north, or aligned precisely with Polaris, the north star. It doesn’t matter where the camera or scope is pointing, as long as the mount that it’s on is rotating the correct way. This means being able to see Polaris clearly, or precise altitude/azimuth alignments otherwise, though for a ten- to sixty-second exposure, it probably doesn’t have to be too precise. It’s still fussy to set up, and that’s if you know the motor is working properly – I spent all that time last year never getting the motor to act the way that it should.]

That was enough messing about after the comet, which I knew I wasn’t going to improve upon that night. But later on, back home, I was burning off a bunch of fallen branches and debris and decided to get the camera out again, to play with the fire and also try for Orionids meteors.

night sky exposure over house centered on Delphinus
I purposefully framed it so the house and trees were peeking into view at the edges, lit by the fire. That diamond in the center is Delphinus, which means that the Milky Way is off to the right, mostly obscured and with too low an exposure to bring out distinctly. Not long afterward, I had re-aimed and added some branches that still had drying cypress needles on them to produce some sparks for light trails.

night sky exposure over fire with smoke and trails from sparks
I would have really liked a nice fireball Orionid meteor to have streaked through, to make a solid composition, but noooo. This is nowhere near Orion, but Orion is simply the radiant, where the majority of meteors seem to originate from, though they can appear anyplace in the sky, and in only one shower/storm did I notice a distinct tendency to come from the radiant (Leonids in 2001, and only right at the peak hours.)

By the way, I was watching the sparks, and they were very short-lived, winking out while still high in the air, so little risk of igniting anything else, but I was also out there long enough to monitor things anyway.

night sky exposure over fire with smoke and trails from sparks
Like doing trails of car lights on the road, there’s a knack to capturing fire sparks; as you can see here, the smoke also catches the firelight to an extent, and it was easy to aim too low to overwhelm the frame with sparks, making the background stars inconsequential – I have several frames like that. The wind conditions were practically nonexistent, another reason that I chose Saturday night for the fire. Also – since I ran afoul of this – get focus pinned down and leave the lens on manual, otherwise the camera is liable to hunt in the darkness and produce defocused light trails.

Now, achieving sharp focus? That can be really tricky, especially depending on the lens. For a shorter focal length/wider angle, usually it’s not too crucial, since the lens will hit hyperfocal distance easily and even faintly out-of-focus stars are small enough in the frame not to look bad; this becomes a lot harder with telephotos lengths, like the comet earlier in the evening. Generally, I pick the brightest star I can find, or occasionally the anti-collision lights of a radio tower over a kilometer off, to focus upon manually, then do a test exposure and chimp on the image afterward, zooming in tight to see how sharp the light is (the moon also works in this regard.) Once satisfied, I endeavor not to even bump the focus ring. This technique is a hell of a lot harder with a zoom lens that doesn’t have constant focus, meaning that as you rack the focal length in or out, the focus actually changes, making it impossible to go tight to focus and then back off to frame usefully; in such cases all you can do is focus at the focal length that you intend to use.

Last one:

night sky exposure centered largely on Pegasus
By this point I’d shifted and re-aimed and was trying solely for meteors, of which I (as usual) caught absolutely none. This is pretty close to centered on Pegasus, so high in the west-southwest sky; the Milky Way is obscured to the right, and Saturn hidden behind the trees to the left. Pretty good array of stars in there, and short enough exposures (10 seconds, f3.5, ISO 1600) to prevent visible star trails.

Conditions last night were scattered, and the forecast for later in the week, as we hit peak, are not encouraging, so this might have been the only chance I had for meteors, for days at least. Not that it typically matters anyway…

Nowhere is safe!

Al Denelsbeck

In the past two days, I’ve gotten a shitload of images, at least four post’s worth, so I’ll be working my way down through them over the next few days (hopefully without adding too many as I go.) Right now, we’ll stick to a minor bit of drama.

Going past the fireplace last night, I thought something looked off, and a closer look revealed why.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis snoozing on top of fireplace screen within Stately Walkabout Manor
Not really sure when or how the Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) got inside, though it really is inevitable, but it was quite amusing to find it snoozing atop the fireplace screen. Luckily, it never attracted the attention of Monster, who’s an avid hunter even though she’s never allowed outside.

Enlisting the help of The Girlfriend, we got a cardboard box and gently approached, attempting to either get it in hand or shoo it into the box. This went well for a moment, since the awakened anole jumped down into the box quickly, and then shot back out again – they can climb damn near anything, and now disturbed, it was intent on achieving a good hiding place. It launched itself to the floor and thankfully set off in an open direction, so it was easy to track. I got down and cupped it within my hands, yet it escaped before they were fully closed, but again, went out over the open wood floor. Trying again, I attempted to close off all gaps immediately, but realized that I wasn’t feeling a damn thing in my hands. A quick check confirmed this: my hands were empty.

Now, the living room is naturally dark, but I was using my headlamp and The Girlfriend has a flashlight in hand, and neither one of us saw it escape across the open floor, at all. It appeared to have just vanished. Near as I can determine, when it slipped my grasp it went straight under one arm where my view was blocked, and apparently so was The Girlfriend’s. I froze and checked everyplace carefully, thinking it might have gone to ground under my knees or even climbed my leg; my arms were bare so I would have felt it clambering up them at least. Yet, despite our careful checks and subsequent search of the entire area, no further sign of the anole was found. Nothing for it but to see if it showed itself again, preferably to us and not to Monster.

It was about midday today when it did indeed show itself again:

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis resting on steps within Stately Walkabout Manor
Those are the stairs up – it’s only on the second step, and not far from the nearest window. It is also about two meters from where it was last seen, so presumably it found a hiding place nearby.

This time, I got a large, smooth plastic water bottle, plus a long-handled bait net, and approached again, working on my own this time since The Girlfriend was at a class. But the anole, quite complacent until actually nudged, gave one false start and then dove into the water bottle with exceptional cooperation. It was a simple matter to take it out onto the deck and place it unceremoniously onto one of the ginkgos thereon.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis deposited on ginkgo Ginkgo biloba tree after being removed from Stately Walkabout Manor
Since the nights have gotten chilly, the anole might have thought it had a good thing going until I returned it outside, but the access to bugs and water is significantly better out there, to say nothing of the freedom from Monster (the other two cats might have followed it and even batted it around a bit, but they aren’t hunters at all and likely wouldn’t have killed it. Monster, though…)

Even more anole schtuff is coming soon, but I’m going to space it out a bit – luckily I have several other subjects to work with.

Estate Find XLII

Al Denelsbeck

You’ll notice that I corrected the roman numerals this time, after blowing it for the last two Estate Find posts – don’t ask me what I was thinking. And we have nothing new for this one, but we’ll feature two for the week anyway.

The first was done at the same time as the previous post’s pics, only about a meter or so away. I saw a flash of movement as I got closer, otherwise I likely would have missed this one.

juvenile green treefrog Dryophytes cinereus tucked down under water collected within base of elephant ear leaf stems
This is so bizarre-looking because this juvenile green treefrog (Dryophytes cinereus) had backed quickly down under the water collected at the base of the elephant ear leaf stems, which distorted the view a bit. I would have liked to have captured it above the water’s surface a bit, but the frog wasn’t cooperating.

That was with the Sigma 180 macro. I returned a little later with the 18-135, again watching the frog duck back down out of sight. This time the focal length allowed more of the flash’s light to get in there.

juvenile green treefrog Dryophytes cinereus tucked down under water collected within base of elephant ear leaf stems
I checked early in the evening too, but this guy had already headed out to do its damage to the local insect population.

And then we have more from the wood ducks, included again because the mob scene that now takes place really needs witnesses.

That is an almost disturbing number of wood ducks, and what’s startling to see is how they slip in almost unnoticed. They’re quite adept at using the existing cover to come in close, and will expand from a handful to a few dozen in mere seconds. And while occasionally we know what spooks them, such as the AC fan kicking on or the squirrels getting too excited, most times it’s a complete mystery why they suddenly all fly off, but it usually looks like one of them panics over something.

How many of these are the ducklings that we were watching earlier? It’s difficult to say, but if you look closely (especially right after they fly off farther into the pond,) you can see some males that don’t have as vivid or complete markings as the others, or seem a little smaller – these are likely some of the broods that were raised here this season. Most times, the pond is entirely quiet all day long, with the first calls that may be gathering the flock together starting in late afternoon. The video was shot just a little before sunset, but the ducks weren’t venturing out until the sun had dipped behind the trees, and it’s been made abundantly clear over the last year that this is completely intentional – it’s rare to see them in sunlight at all, so my attempts to get nice portraits that show off their iridescent feathers are usually thwarted.

Now, am I going to do a blind or something to get a closer, different vantage? Maaayyybe, though I’d have to be in position perhaps half an hour or more earlier and remain completely silent, with no movement showing, since we know how easy they are to spook. And simply the addition of the blind or camouflaging ‘stuff’ might be enough to make them too wary. I’ll think about it…

New York state of mind

Al Denelsbeck

I know, no posts for five days and I come back with that previous one. You’ve probably already switched over to some celebrity gossip site, haven’t you?

I blame it on conditions. For over a week we’ve been dealing with the side effects of some storm system and it’s been solid overcast the entire time – that’s simply not normal for this area. However, this is directly comparable to cloud conditions for damn near the entirety of New York winters – not temperature-wise, at least, it only got a little chilly, but the solid slate sky and believing you’re a ghost because you cast no shadow, that’s New York. So there’s the hit to the mood, but more importantly, it greatly reduces the photographic opportunities.

That said, I got a handful of pics today, before the sun broke out again, even. Nothing new, of course, but some pics nonetheless, so I’ll feature a couple here.

First, be it known that the Orionids meteor shower is going on now, but will peak the night of the 21st, which coincides with a new moon, so pretty much the best viewing conditions, especially as the humidity should now be dropping seriously and reducing atmospheric haze. I think we had a decent sky for only one night of the Draconids, about a week ago, and I wasn’t able to get out for that, so maybe this time. As always, if you don’t see a post about them, it means I had my usual shitty luck with meteors.

So in poking around the yard today, I happened to look closely at the elephant ear plants alongside the back walk and spotted this guy.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis tucked into groove of elephant ear plant stem
This gives you an idea of conditions, since this was midday and the Carolina anoles (Anolis carolinensis) should have been out running around scarfing up bugs – it wasn’t that cold, but apparently this one wasn’t good with it anyway. Funny – I was using the Sigma 180 macro and the edges of the stem, much closer and thus far out-of-focus, where blurring over the eyes of the anole, but as the aperture stopped down when the shutter opened, they cleared a little better.

A little later on I’d switched to the 18-135, and as I approached the plant again I saw the head of the anole duck back into the hollow of the stems, leaving behind only this hint of its presence:

single forefoot of Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis peeking from hollow of leaf stems of elephant ear plant
Rather desperate-looking, isn’t it? The anole, however, was only holding onto a near-vertical surface and not clutching wildly for a rope. Changing position slightly revealed a more complacent view.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis trying to hide among hollows of leaf stems of elephant ear plant
There are several different species of plant known as “elephant ear,” and I have yet to determine which this is – slack, I know. If it’s important to you, you can do some kind of Venmo or CashApp transfer to spur me onwards – it won’t work, because I don’t use the stupid things (people will use their smutphones for anything except actually talking,) but I’ll register the desire anyway.

The first hints of fall colors have begun, and I should be able to find some prime examples in a week or two. Plus I just missed a veritable shitload of wood ducks since the bathroom window wasn’t open when they arrived this evening – it has the best view, but they’ll both hear and see me opening it and fly off, so once they’re arriving it’s too late, but there were at least thirty descending on the corn – rather frantically and boorishly, really. Hopefully I’ll have some more pics of them soon.

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