Just once, part 31

July 31, 2024July 30, 2024 Al Denelsbeck

Florinda coccinea and prey
This week’s entry is slightly fudged, in that I had featured the species in a post a few months earlier, only I hadn’t identified it then; I determine the choices for these posts by tags (in this case names) that have appeared just once, but technically, this doesn’t count. Too bad, because we’re using it anyway – seriously, it’s a cool shot that I was quite lucky to get.

This is a Florinda coccinea, a type of sheetweb spider that typically makes webs stretched between blades of grass, as this one was, and it’s often extremely hard to even know the webs are there unless it’s a dewy morning. To get this shot, I had to be lying on my side on the ground with the camera sideways, shooting horizontally underneath the web itself, and some idea of how tight the quarters were can be deduced by the dewdrop adhering to the spiders head; this is quite a small specimen, with adults averaging 3-3.5mm in body length – that’s half the diameter of a standard pencil. In getting ready to take this shot, i spooked the yellowish leafhopper nymph into the web and provided the meal for the spider, which may have helped me get this frame, since the spider was intent on the meal and far less likely to scoot under cover at my proximity.

A closer look at the same frame:

The dewdrop, which is roughly one millimeter in diameter, acts as a lens here that inverts the image behind and around it, and in this case down at the bottom, it’s showing the dew on the sheetweb above illuminated by the flash softbox, which was well above the web itself (and did a marvelous job of illuminating the scene, evenly and without harsh highlights or deep shadows – go back up and look at the mottled coloration on the spider’s abdomen.) In fact, at the top of the dewdrop, you’re seeing the reflection of the softbox itself – you can see the rig better here, though a couple years later I inadvertently fried the unit, which was a shame because it was almost impossible to replace and had worked so well. But the replacements all had a significant upgrade, which was a circular diffuser panel rather than rectangular, making the reflections of it much more natural looking when they occurred.

And take your heat with you

July 31, 2024July 30, 2024 Al Denelsbeck

July has been way too fucking hot, and while I would like to believe that the change in arbitrary labeling that we engage in will somehow make a difference in the climate, I’m a bit skeptical, especially since August has never been known as a cooler month. Yet here we are at the month-end anyway, which does at least mean we have the abstract to consider, and I’m going to do something a little different this time, since it leads into further frames that are not as abstract but still should be featured (from my own definition of “should,” anyway.) And so, we begin with this:

I’d let this one stand without exposition if I thought it was a little more mysterious, but I suspect it’s easy enough to tell that it’s clouds illuminated by a hidden sun. In this case, the outing this weekend was ostensibly to catch sunrise, but the sun rose hidden by a thick layer of clouds, and eventually peeked out long after official sunrise, announcing its imminent arrival in this manner. Yet even with all this, when it did appear, there was little color to be had from it.

Just yellow. Ho hum.

A little later on though, it was passing in and out of obscuring clouds, and in one such instance, I snagged a few frames as it was semi-obscured and filtered down to manageable levels. These revealed something interesting.

The only filter here is/are the clouds, which don’t seem that thick but dropped the sunlight down enough to focus on it with the 600mm lens without being blinded. And they also showed what appeared to be several sunspots, which I didn’t notice until I was back home and unloading the memory card. Intrigued by this, I dug out the solar film again since the sun was now high and direct, and did a few frames with the help of that. I will note here that this is so effective that finding the sun through the viewfinder can actually be tricky; no glare announces when you’re getting close to the mark, and trying to spot the sun directly so you can tell which way to aim only induces temporary blindness. So with one eye tightly closed and the other pressed to the viewfinder, you have to wave the camera back and forth in the general direction until the solar disc suddenly appears in the frame. But it worked as intended, and confirmed that there were indeed sunspots.

This, by the way, was underexposed by about a full stop, which lets the details show much better, but yeah, plenty of little spots to be found there. I’ll have to keep checking periodically, because now that I have the solar film, I have the chance to catch some really good sunspots if they appear, and we’re almost at the 12-year solar maximum. We’ll see what happens.

Too much of the same

July 30, 2024 Al Denelsbeck

I had an outing this past Saturday, once again down at Jordan Lake due to Buggato doing the choosing, and the activity there wasn’t impressive in the slightest – in fact, while sorting the images, I realized that I was taking far too many photos of ‘birds overhead,’ not only deleting the majority of them, but vowing from here on out to trip the shutter only when things looked quite promising. True action and behavior shots, excellent lighting and background, that kind of thing. There’s only so many photos of an osprey in flight that anyone needs, and I’ve exceeded that by a wide margin.

I was also amazed at how tattered many of the birds looked – not just molting, but with significantly damaged feathers, and I’m not sure if this was just a coincidence or if something had happened to contribute to this. In the case of this distant, pre-sunrise bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus,) the wings may simply be showing signs of molting, though I’m not sure about that tail.

The eagles seemed to have thinned down quite a bit now, though I suspect that once the ospreys migrated back into the area and began nesting, the competition caused the eagles to shift to different areas – or their own nesting may have been responsible, choosing nest sites in thicker woods farther from people. We glimpsed them a couple of times, but only at a distance.

Continuing the theme of feather damage, we have an osprey (Pandion haliaetus):

This was as close as any osprey came to actively hunting where we could see them, dropping into a stoop for a few moments before abandoning it as its prey went deeper (or revealed that it had a club.) Look at those tail feathers, though – that’s not from molting, but what it is from, I can’t say. The morning light was semi-cooperative at least.

At another location, I saw a head peeking up over the edge of the boat ramp, and so we stalked it carefully for a minute.

In the long lens, I was a little suspicious of that coloration, and subsequent full-body shots confirmed it: this is a juvenile great blue heron (Ardea herodias herodias,) this year’s brood – the brownish hue and the stippling are good indications. We managed to maneuver around for a better view before it spooked off:

This is only the second first-year heron that I’ve seen, or at least that I realized I’ve seen – at even a moderate distance, the evidence may be indiscernible. And I have yet to find a nest anywhere within decent shooting distance – I found a couple, last year, but they were hundreds of meters away, so far that atmospheric haze would soften the images, with no apparent way of getting closer. I’ll keep looking, though.

A short while later, another interesting specimen made a quick appearance.

This one was way off, so even at 600mm it was quite small in the frame. It’s clearly a turkey vulture (Cathartes aura,) but I’ve never seen one with any white at all in the feathers, so I was assuming that this is another first-year example. But the Cornell site doesn’t seem to agree: they list the juveniles as having a grey head (though immatures will go back to pinkish red like the adults,) and give no indication of piebald coloration like that seen here. So I’m again at a loss as to what we’re seeing – if that’s feather damage, it’s a lot of it.

But, another confirmed juvie was in evidence:

That’s definitely a juvenile red-headed woodpecker (Melanerpes erythrocephalus,) and I’ve watched the plumage change after the first year so I’m positive this is this year’s brood. Spotted when I heard a woodpecker drumming nearby, it flew off after a moment and a pair of adults took its place on the same limb, though they did not show any signs of recognizing the juvenile, much less feeding it.

They were silent, and sat idly together for a few moments, then one flew down to a dead tree and revealed a nest hollow, disappearing inside.

Notably, this is the exact same dead tree that hosted at least two woodpeckers nests two years ago, but split and lost half of its length late last year, right below where the nests had been. It’s still a good candidate given its nature and type of wood, but it also may not last a whole lot longer. I watched this nest opening for far too long, getting a bit stiff and achey holding the long lens on target, but the adult never re-emerged from the hole, so I’m assuming that she has eggs in there, or will very soon anyway. There’s not a lot of point in returning too soon, not until the young have hatched and feeding behavior begins, but I do want to start monitoring this nest again – not sure how well I’ll be able to, given how much is scheduled for the next two months, but we’ll see I guess.

Scattered, far and wide

July 28, 2024July 28, 2024 Al Denelsbeck

Ha! You thought we were done with these just because it’s been a few days? I still have plenty of random images in the blog folder, so they’ll go on for a while yet.

This came from better than two weeks ago, when the heatwave was still ongoing and the rains had just started to appear. One evening as the sun lowered, it highlighted some odd cloud shapes that I tried to capture, though the reduction of contrast in-camera meant the shapes didn’t show up very well. I only showcase these two frames to show that, due to the very hot and humid air reacting with the camera lens (which had been sitting in the air-conditioned house up until a few minutes before,) the lens kept fogging up; I would clean it, and it would return. So quickly and impressively that these two frames were taken only two seconds apart. Granted, converting this into an animated gif (pronounced, “gee-YER-mo”) did a job on the resolution and color registers – someone needs to make a better animation standard.

Worse, something that I’ve been dealing with for weeks, the viewfinder fogs up quickly too, especially if I keep my eye to the viewfinder, either tracking a subject or waiting for it to do something photogenic. Then I’m often trying to determine if it’s the viewfinder or the lens or sudden onset of old age that’s making my vision so blurry.

However improbable

July 28, 2024 Al Denelsbeck

Another holiday is upon us, and while I could celebrate it most days with a little effort, this time I have a nice example picked up yesterday (well, not literally, that’d be gross) to use. Yes indeed, it’s Nature Boi Detective Day, when we sit down and try to determine what produced some particular tableau found out in the wild someplace. This has come under attack from the moment it was conceived of course, for being both gender and age specific as well as unfriendly to urban dwellers, until it was pointed out that “boi” isn’t a real word so the definition of it can’t be used for tirades, plus we still have Mothers’ Day so go fuck yourselves.

All that out of the way, let’s take a look at what we’re going to evaluate today, shall we?

This was found near the edge of Jordan Lake during a student outing yesterday, though I used my sandal as the initial scale and this allowed me to paste in a digital one for reference. While this is obviously the aftermath of one animal being consumed by another, it’s not exactly clear whether this is feces after being washed out by hard rains, or the casting of some larger bird. It has the look of a typical owl or hawk casting, but a) it’s quite big, and b) those bones are pretty damn big to be swallowed whole. Some vertebrae can be seen in there, a few ribs it looks like, plus several smaller bones that I can’t place right now. I’m almost certain that I’m seeing both a femur/humerus (single long bone) and a tibia/fibula or radius/ulna pair (two longer bones together,) both in excess of 50mm in length, so this is much larger than a rat, which the vertebrae help confirm.

But given their position in the casting, especially smaller bones entangled in hair, while not laid out in rough skeletal form, this isn’t simply an animal that died there – this was digested. Yet those leg bones are whole and within the scat, so they appear to have been swallowed whole.

Given the size, it would appear to be at least a small rabbit in size, but I’m more inclined to say it was adult, while the color of the hair within points more towards opossum – I can’t say that I’ve dissected either but the proportions seem correct to me. Except that, nearly everything that I can think of that would tackle something that size (fox, coyote, wolf, hawks, owls,) is unlikely to eat their prey whole, and the meat would be stripped from the larger bones rather than swallowing them. Great blue herons will swallow their prey whole and they will indeed tackle some mammals – I watched one take a small muskrat once – but this seems both large and not a typical choice of meal for them.

So I’m leaning towards coyotes or wolves, though I’m not sure any wolves have ever been spotted anywhere near here – coyotes, however, are definitely around. Would a coyote swallow the legs of an opossum or similar-sized mammal whole? It seems awkward (and perhaps a little dangerous) but possible I suppose, and I don’t know enough about their eating habits to weigh in on this usefully. I did not start digging through the scat (again, I was with a student,) so I can’t vouch for the coarseness of the hair nor whether tail bones could be found, which might have helped determine what species this had been, though not what species had consumed it.

Feel free to weigh in if you have any input at all – it is still the holiday after all, and even if you’re late I promise not to turn you in.

Every night this week

July 26, 2024 Al Denelsbeck

Most times, Carolina anoles (Anolis carolinensis) sleep in the same location for a few days in a row, then switch to someplace nearby, but this one has been sticking to the seed pods of the hosta every night since I found it – sometimes head down, sometimes in the rain, but always tucked in like this. It’s cute.

What’s your sign?

July 25, 2024 Al Denelsbeck

I’m old enough to remember when that was a big factor in dating, though not quite old enough to have used it in such a manner. But in this case, it’s only in reference to two meteor showers due to peak in a few days, the southern delta Aquariids and the alpha Capricornids, both coming in right before the end of the month, which means anytime from this point on. Unfortunately, there’s still a third-quarter (half) moon rising in the wee hours when the meteors start showing up better, which is the case too often, but so it goes. I can guarantee certain results if you stay indoors, however, the same results as if I hadn’t mentioned them at all. C’mon, the temperature is going to be far better than any of the winter storms, so have at it.

As always, I will be back with any spectacular meteor images that I capture, but you know how that trend has been going (no, you likely don’t, but let’s just say that the trove of spectacular meteor images, like my sports trophy case, remains distinctly barren.) I keep hoping, though, which is far more optimistic than I normally am and which might be part of the problem. I don’t know how, really, but at this point I’ll settle for any explanation.

So go ahead and show me up – I’ll be happy for you. Really.

It’s admittedly disturbing that the best meteor trail that I’ve ever gotten, above, was achieved on perhaps my very first attempt with a truly inadequate camera, on print film, well over 30 years ago. Can anyone’s luck remain this resolutely bad? Or is there something radical that I’m doing wrong? I no longer have that Wittnauer Challenger, but I think I have an old Argus C3 ‘Brick’ that I could dig out…

Just once, part 30

July 24, 2024July 23, 2024 Al Denelsbeck

This week we have what I identified then only as an Oophaga pumilio, but it also bears the common names of strawberry poison-dart frog, strawberry poison frog, and/or blue jeans poison frog. Yes, it’s one of the poisonous treefrogs from South America, but it was not photographed on that continent, instead found within the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, NC. As such, it’s both no surprise that it’s only been featured once here, and then again, kind of inexcusable.

I mean, sure, I prefer to concentrate on species actually photographed ‘in the wild,’ in their own habitat and not captive in any way, but I’ve never traveled to any location where these could be found, and it’s rather unlikely that one will make its way here eventually. Yet the museum itself is easy enough to get to and I’ve tackled the poison dart frog exhibit several times, often with poor results – a flash is necessary, and the only choice is to shoot through glass and so reflections, distortions, and mucky glass is typical, and even when overcoming these, one still has to have a subject posed usefully without the face of some kid framed in the background on the other side of the terrarium. You’d think photographing such captives would be easy, but most times it doesn’t allow anything decent at all. Still, it’s been twelve years since this image was taken and I could certainly have gotten more if I’d made the effort. Admittedly, I don’t maintain comprehensive lists of species that I should be building up my stock of.

All that said, I’m fond of the pose that this one achieved, coming out from under its bridge to eat some billy goats, and the coloration is displayed nicely – you see where they got the blue-jean name from. The grunge on the glass was limited to the lower corner, and while I didn’t manage a catchlight in the eye, the lack thereof seems to enhance the menacing air. Which is nonsense of course – it’s a frog, it has two expressions: ‘awake’ and ‘asleep,’ while its ass-kicking ability is laughable at best. Well, except for that deadly poison thing…

Thank beavers!

July 23, 2024 Al Denelsbeck

That’s a phrase that I’m hoping will catch on – do your part, okay?

Naturally, the full phrase is more along the lines of, “Thank beavers for our knowledge of prehistoric arthropods,” or at least some of it – they almost certainly helped. Though it was likely the evolutionary precursors to beavers. And anything else that might have done the same kind of damage to the trees of the time.

This deep insight was prompted by seeing sights like this (including this very one) while checking out the neighborhood pond the other night:

While there was evidence very early this year of a single beaver in the pond, that one apparently didn’t stay long, and I’m familiar enough with the trees surrounding the pond to know that this bark damage occurred two years ago. Nonetheless, the resin was running quite distinctly from these yet-unhealed wounds – if resin can be said to ‘run’ and not ‘ooze infinitesimally slowly.’

[A quick note: sap feeds the inner tissues of the tree and is quite thin, only fractionally less so than water, while resin erupts from the bark and helps protect damaged areas from infestation, and is the consistency of almost-dried glue.]

But resin has the curious property that, once it’s buried in the right conditions, it continues to harden and can weather out millions of years as almost a gemstone, where we actually get ‘amber’ from. And amber, as anyone that knows their Jurassic Park can tell you, is where we get the detailed preserved bodies of arthropods of the time period when the resin was oozing.

I could not see any movement from the resin while I was there focusing, but the two ants (and many more) were noticeably active – no such luck in watching them get stuck for posterity. And I spot-checked a few other areas, but couldn’t find an example of a trapped insect. Nonetheless, it happens often enough to have given us a better record of arthropod species running millions of years back than we have of any other class on the planet. And it preserves them better than any other method of fossilization, too, since the exchange of moisture and the actions of microbes virtually cease when the subject is encapsulated. But it couldn’t happen without damage to tree bark in the first place, so thank the prehistoric equivalent of beavers, and bears, and deer perhaps – anything that can get the resin running. And you can thank clumsy insects too if you like, but that doesn’t roll off the tongue the same way.

* * *

A quick note if you’re like me and would like to have a genuine amber fossil yourself: the market is absolutely brimming with fakes, and you’re almost certainly not going to find a genuine one for less than a few hundred dollars. There are some simple tests that you can do to detect them, but of course, only if you can lay your hands on it, so online purchases are ruled out unless you can authenticate the source quite thoroughly. But even a cursory examination can reveal a fake; arthropods trapped in resin are stuck fast, usually by a leg or three, struggle, and gradually get rolled over and encapsulated. They are almost never in ‘good’ condition from all this, and usually share the amber with whatever debris also gets snagged in that time. If you’re seeing a nice, clean (and recognizable) mantis species in an action pose with little to obscure it? It’s more fake than Faux News, though considerably easier to digest. And yes, I found this out before dropping any money on such examples, and still don’t have a genuine one either. But feel free to send one along, you know, in appreciation of all the stunning content here…

Scattered, in all directions

July 22, 2024 Al Denelsbeck

Once again down at the lake (actually, most of the lake photos all came from the same day, but still unrelated and random,) I heard the passing of a jet and looked around, but didn’t think a whole lot of it because the lake sits near the approach corridors for the nearest major airport and this happens all the time. But then in the search for more birdlife, I looked almost directly overhead and saw this:

Well, not exactly this, because this was with the Tamron 150-600 at 600mm and cropped tighter for that – what I could see before raising the camera was just enough of a double-winged outline to know what I was looking at. I’ve only seen it in person once before, too, many moons ago in central New York. This is what mid-air refueling looks like from underneath.

Mostly, anyway – I don’t think they were actively refueling because the refueling boom (evidenced by that tiny little fin sticking out from the forward plane just ahead of the tail) appears to still be in stowed position, plus both aircraft were banking. The lead aircraft, according to my FlightRadar24 smutphone app, is a Boeing KC-135R Stratotanker from Tampa, while the trailing aircraft, according to my knowledge of military aircraft, is a McDonnell-Douglas/Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, which like many military flights, did not show up on FlightRadar24 – I was a little surprised to find that the KC-135 did, and also that it had come from Tampa and not Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, much closer in Goldsboro NC, because I know that they have an air refueling wing there.

According to the app, these aircraft were flying at 27,000 feet at the time, and while the trailing aircraft seems much closer, it isn’t by more than a hundred meters, probably half that – the Globemaster is a heavy-lifter cargo aircraft and is much broader in body width than the Stratotanker. But a neat capture for the day, and I almost missed it.

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