Will do for now

Al Denelsbeck

Wright Brothers Memorial in Kill Devil Hills with cooperative clouds
I think this will be the tail-end of the beach trip pics, as well as the last for the year – never really got a ‘proper’ trip in, with one thing or another, but at least my brother finally got down here to see the Outer Banks for himself, as brief as it was. We grew up with Jersey beaches, which are in an entirely different universe (a more crowded and overdeveloped one,) though he’s had exposure to some Florida spots. As the image indicates, we did hit the Wright Brothers National Memorial, and while I have plenty of images from previous trips there, the clouds were cooperating this day so I shot a few frames (including some goofy ones that you’re not getting to see.) And I only had to dub out two other visitors from this one.

sanderling Calidris alba contemplating existence
As mentioned earlier, the beaches themselves were nearly empty, of both people (which was great) and wildlife (not so much.) I did a few fartsy shots, enough to register “beach,” but not a lot else. This is a sanderling (Calidris alba,) the most common sandpiper in the area, probably venturing off on its own to pass gas. But this is misleading, because we didn’t smell anything because not far off was a small flock, and I caught them as they took flight in a reasonably dynamic shot, though it could be better.

small flock of sanderlings Calidris alba taking flight from shoreline
This is cropped from a wider frame, and I did another ‘panoramic’ version that may eventually get up into that banner slideshow at top. They’re small birds and thus take flight so quickly that the opportunity for cool ‘launch’ photos passes in milliseconds – I was lucky they faced more-or-less towards me as I fired off the frames.

There was a mix of gulls as well: the laughing gulls that you’ve already seen, a few that I wasn’t exactly sure about (given the change in plumage that several species go through at this time of year,) and a few really distinctive ones, both in coloration and size.

great black-backed gull Larus marinus mellow in the shallows
The dark wings and back, the pink legs, and the size all paint this as a great black-backed gull, nearly twice the size of the laughing gulls and five or six times the size of the sanderlings. I’ve only ever seen them a few at a time, at the most, hanging out with other gulls as if they’re chaperoning, and this is possibly the closest approach that I’ve captured (and I wasn’t even using the long lens.)

The beach we chose wasn’t even decent for shelling, much less finding coral or shark’s teeth, so I did a couple quick farsty shots with what there was to find.

shell fragments and stones leaving trails in sand from receding breakers
Don’t try telling me you see the edge of a doubloon or something in there – I’ve already checked. The sparse amount of wildlife activity put it slightly above Oak Island, but not enough to warrant return visits.

I did mention that we didn’t get up for sunrise, nor did we make the attempt to do any starfield exposures – we were up in Manteo by that time and not about to trek down 30 kilometers or more for the truly dark skies. I have to admit that I was completely surprised by the new bridge into Rodanthe, since I hadn’t seen even a hint of it the last time I was through that area, but I understand it completely; the area north of Rodanthe is notorious for washouts during storms and maintaining the roads, at times, required significant effort and cost – it’s the only direct route to the mainland. The entire region sits only a little above sea level and Rt 12 is often only a few hundred meters from the water’s edge, so storms can overcome the dunes and submerge, bury, or even disintegrate the asphalt – we were there three weeks after former-Hurricane Ian, which was far from a direct hit on the Outer Banks, and there remained a spot where seawater was still on the road. When the NOAA or weather service says, “evacuate,” don’t argue.

On the way out, we did two little stops, one of which we never expected to be photogenic and thus we left the cameras in the car, but were a little more prepared for the second, which I usually stop at – that would be Creef’s Cut in the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. That produced the Amanita (maybe) mushroom from the previous post, and another not-so-little find:

golden silk orbweaver Trichonephila clavipes in Creef's Cut, Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge
This is a golden silk orbweaver (Trichonephila clavipes, formerly Nephila clavipes,) and this is one of the few images I’ve obtained of them that shows the color of the silk. While I can get inordinately close to spiders for detail shots, this wasn’t as required for this species, because it’s huge – the colloquial term is ‘banana spider,’ both for the coloration and the size; the body length can get as long as your little finger, which makes the leg spread as large as your palm and the web itself over two meters at times. This one wasn’t quite that big, but it was also at eye level and not far off the path; I’ve rarely encountered them so easy to reach, usually finding them either well overhead or out in marshy areas with lousy footing. In fact, I think the last time I was able to get so close, it was one that my brother had found when he visited me in Florida nearly twenty years ago, suspended right at chest level where he almost walked straight into it; the exuberant cursing (he’s even more accomplished at this than I am) brought me over from a nearby trail. That one was nowhere near as big as this one, who was kind enough to be well off the trail.

By the way, if you went to that link under the species name (and why not?) you might have noticed the sizes: females up to 50mm, males up to 8mm. That’s like your little fingernail. Make all the comments you want…

[Vague, confused noises]

Al Denelsbeck

It was a few years back that I decided I wanted a gallery of latest images on the website, primarily stuff that wasn’t featured on the blog, but also just a demonstration, to those only visiting the image galleries, that I was routinely producing new content even while the galleries themselves weren’t being updated. Updates to the galleries tend to be spaced pretty far apart, because I do them as a large collection and the structure of the site (which I still like) doesn’t make additions simple or quick. So, with some digging around, I found a slick little script and created the Latest Images page.

Some time last year, I found the script wasn’t working due to updates of some kind or another (HTML and browser standards, not my own updates,) and attempted to replace it. This was far easier said than done, and after much playing around with formatting and script details that I didn’t understand, causing navigation icons to appear in wildly random locations, I gave up and found an online source to host it, permitting an embedded window on my site. Fine for now, but I didn’t like outsourcing.

Only a day ago, I tried again, and made no further progress than I had earlier in finding a simple script. During this, I thought to myself, Shit like this is always a simple plugin through WordPress. But I only run WordPress for the blog, and the site itself is simply html. Then it occurred to me that there was no reason why I couldn’t host the Latest Images on a blog page rather than a site page. I mean, who cares?

Yes, there was a simple plugin for WordPress to do what I wanted [Slideshow Gallery Lite by Tribulant], and while it was a bit fussy to format, it was many times easier than my previous attempts to customize a script. So it’s up now, with new updates (that I’ve been stalling on because I wanted to just get rid of the outside host) right here. Not only linked on the previous pages from the main site, but also in the menu at the top of this page.

I admit that I’m often confused with how incredibly complicated doing some simple tasks, or finding some relatively basic scripts, can be. Tons of slideshows out there, sliders and bootstraps (whatever the fuck those are) and all that – but one with a thumbnail gallery? What, are you nuts? Surely, you want some kind of elaborate fading and perhaps a 3D effect instead? This is why I’m glad I decided against doing webdesign for income.

Completely unrelated, we have an image from the Outer Banks trip, because where else am I going to put this? Near as I can tell, these are a variety of Amanita muscaria mushrooms, and toxic/psychoactive, but I could be wrong. Still, they matched the descriptions and photos that I’d seen years ago of “what to avoid,” and this was the first I’d seen that even came close, so I had to snag a few frames. I don’t like mushrooms and wouldn’t engage in collecting wild species if I did, so why I even paid attention to this info is beyond me, but here we are.

possible Amanita muscaria, or maybe not

Dogfight!

Al Denelsbeck

On the recent trip to the Outer Banks, we didn’t have a lot of time and the weather was still a bit chilly from the cold snap only a day before, thus I didn’t get a lot of photos. However, there was one sequence on the beach (somewhere near Salvo) that deserves some attention, especially since the lens stayed locked on in focus throughout most of it despite the hectic nature. We were near a collection of seagulls and sanderlings, just hanging out, when a sudden commotion erupted and a flock of seagulls broke into song started wheeling around madly. We could see that the lead gull had something in its beak, we couldn’t possibly make out what with the frenetic action, but one particular follower was hell-bent on not letting the lead keep it. I just fired off frames as I tracked them.

laughing gulls Leucophaeus atricilla dueling over pizza
These are laughing gulls (Leucophaeus atricilla) transitioning into winter plumage, and quite noisy when it comes to disputes. With close examination of the frames, I determined that the treasured possession was a partial slice of pizza, so give them credit for that at least. These are all cropped tighter since I had the 18-135 mounted and they weren’t that close, though one pass did bring them almost onto a collision course with us. They’ve also been brightened in post since I hadn’t set exposure compensation for the beach.

[Briefly: the auto-exposure function of the camera defaults to a middle range of brightness for an ‘average’ scene, but both the sky and the beach are brighter than average, so the camera typically darkens them down. Thus, we need to change it back to what it should be, and I always provide the simple adage, “If it’s bright, make it brighter,” e.g., overexpose from the default to correct for the camera’s assumptions. Except that I didn’t here. I’m failing my own lessons – how bad does that suck?]

laughing gulls Leucophaeus atricilla dueling over pizza
This is only a guess, but I suspect the one in possession of the pizza was lower on the pecking order than its pursuer, and this was simply not allowed. The pursuit went on a surprisingly long time.

laughing gulls Leucophaeus atricilla dueling over pizza
This should have been video, but I barely had any warning, and it all would have been farther away in the frame anyway.

laughing gulls Leucophaeus atricilla dueling over pizza
They look very close here, but I can’t say that this is accurate; they may simply appear that way from lining up, or they might actually be that close. The action was too fast to tell.

laughing gulls Leucophaeus atricilla dueling over pizza

laughing gulls Leucophaeus atricilla dueling over pizza
This is only about half of the sharp frames that I got, as well. I just wanted to give an adequate impression.

laughing gulls Leucophaeus atricilla dueling over pizza

laughing gulls Leucophaeus atricilla dueling over pizza in identical positions in flight
They’ve all been in sequence except for the one above, which technically belongs in the fourth slot, but it’s my favorite so I saved it for almost last. You just have to appreciate the identical poses here, an aerial ballet. I take no credit for this: they were moving way too fast to plan or spot such a thing.

laughing gull Leucophaeus atricilla making off with pizza
I close with a detail shot, which is not the gull leaving in triumph – we never saw the resolution, to be honest, but got distracted by another commotion from the rest of the gulls. Did this one get to eat in peace? Did it have to relinquish the pizza to the pursuer? Did they work out an equitable arrangement? We’re never going to know. What do you want, responsible journalism or something?

Just takes the right motivation

Al Denelsbeck

I knew this holiday was coming up and was wondering if I’d be able to celebrate it effectively, but I should never have doubted myself; I’m up for such challenges. So since today is Spot a South American Rodent Outside of a Zoo Day, there weren’t a lot of choices on how to tackle this, but one in particular stuck out, and I managed to finish the video clip in time to recognize the holiday. The story lies within:

For the record, this is a nutria, sometimes called a coypu (Myocastor coypus.) They’re not native anyplace but South America, though they’d been introduced to North America for both meat and fur farming. My understanding is, they’re still farmed for meat in a few places in Louisiana because, you know, Louisiana, but for the most part the ones that can be found are the distant ancestors of escaped and released individuals, decades ago.

Back in 2000 I believe, I’d done a ‘fishing’ trip to Portsmouth Island and noticed the trails through the high marsh grasses, wondering what had made them; they were too big for muskrats or opossums, too low through the grasses (almost like tunnels) for deer, and the island not wooded enough for beavers, not to mention surrounded by salt water. It was only when I was on my way back on the ferry that a local resident informed me these were produced by, “nutra” [sic], frustrating me since I would have staked out some likely areas the previous nights. A few years later, I’d heard they could be seen in the evening twilight from the deck of a restaurant on the Nag’s Head causeway, and mentioned such to my brother on the way over this past trip. Perhaps an hour or so afterward, after finding the same trails through the grasses around Bodie Island, we encountered Junior here. The video title is tongue-in-cheek of course, since the photographing and videoing of this individual was effortless.

This specimen was the same size as an average beaver, which many passers-by thought it to be, but at least this one gave us a great view of the same kind of teeth while the resident beavers never did. Both my brother and I maintained a safe distance, able to vault onto the boardwalk before the nutria could charge us, should it be so inclined, and even my venturing down from the boardwalk was done after I’d passed within three meters and had evoked no response whatsoever – it’s clear this one was used to tourists, damn near oblivious to us. Right as I closed the video, the nutria marched directly to the boardwalk and passed underneath the feet of several people standing thereon.

I was certainly pleased with this capture for the brief weekend trip, and could happily celebrate today’s holiday because of it. Worked out pretty well, I’d say.

Oh, okay

Al Denelsbeck

After the previous images, you deserve something a little cuter, and I snagged this while in pursuit of those.

green treefrog Dryophytes cinereus on branch of trumpet flower Brugmansia
We’d been seeing this green treefrog (Dryophytes cinereus) settled in on a leaf of one of the trumpet flowers (Brugmansia) for days while the nights got pretty damn chilly, but last night when it was staying warmer, the frog decided to venture out again, and provided a pose against the huge blossoms of the plant, which have been thriving despite warnings about their dislike for cold.

By the way, I am never going to forgive biologists for changing the species from Hyla cinerea to Dryophytes cinereus – for some reason, I can’t retain that one in my head after memorizing the former and using it for years. I should just carry on like a cranky mother-in-law and keep using the ‘maiden name’ blithely…

Visibly different, part 43

Al Denelsbeck

A little too similar to last week’s entry, but hey – this is what I shoot, with these being very recent, only hours old.

I mentioned before that my family wasn’t at all ‘current’ with my pursuits, not being internet savvy (or having much interest when they were,) but my brother is getting better in that respect. So he’d never seen some of the older images where I was experimenting with UV fluorescence. After showing him some of those Sunday night, he immediately wanted to see it firsthand, knowing there might be some subjects in the backyard, and though I only had a weak charge in the UV flashlight, we went out looking. Turns out, one subject that he’d discovered earlier worked quite well, and I had to return last night to tackle it properly – more or less, anyway. He’d had to leave that morning so missed all the setting up and back-and-forth bits of it, which was just as well. These were the results.

marbled orbweaver Araneus marmoreus under leaf in visible light
This is a marbled orbweaver (Araneus marmoreus,) a significantly-sized spider that is uncommon around here – I’d found one in the backyard last year, and never found this one before my brother did. Body length (not counting legs) is close to 20mm, so tucked in like this, it pretty much covers a quarter. This of course in visible light, but under UV like it looks a bit different.

marbled orbweaver Araneus marmoreus fluorescing under UV light
This is what it looks like in the light of the UV flashlight – more or less. The digital sensor seems to have a different sensitivity to UV than our eyes do, where the magenta highlights look more blue. The brilliant purplish hues are simply the visible aspect of the flashlight output, including that enigmatic arrow down the side – it’s not there in other angles, and is merely a reflection. But the greenish hues are fluorescence, something in the chitin of the spider that absorbs UV and re-emits it within the visible wavelengths. This happens in daylight too, but is overwhelmed (to us) by the amount of visible light reflecting from the body. Why some arthropods possess these properties is still a mystery, and it’s not all of them, nor in the same manner, but it’s presumed to attract prey. Research is ongoing.

Attempting to reduce that strong magenta response, I also did a few exposures with a UV filter on on the lens, producing no visible difference. Back in my office, I shone the UV flashlight onto some uranium glass (which fluoresces brilliantly,) through the filter itself and without it, and saw no change whatsoever, so I have to conclude that either the wavelength blocked by the filter is well outside that produced by the flashlight, or my filter is nothing but cheap glass.

Of course, I had to do a more thorough search to see what else I might find. We already knew about the arrowhead spider and even saw some evidence that first night, so I made the attempt.

arrowhead spider Verrucosa arenata in visible light
Arrowhead spiders (Verrucosa arenata) are significantly smaller than the marbled orbweavers, and this one was well above my head, nor was it able to hold still, apparently playing Tetris on its flip-phone. Let’s see what transpired.

arrowhead spider Verrucosa arenata possibly fluorescing slightly under UV light
Ehhhh, it’s not even clear if there was fluorescence, or if this is just reflections from the glossy body. We thought we saw a distinct line the previous night, but it’s not in evidence here.

However, when I turned and began shining the flashlight around at random, a strong response from the leaf litter nearby was evident, and I quickly uncovered a much better subject.

Apheloriini larvae under visible light
These are millipedes of the Tribe Apheloriini, but the taxonomy is still being hashed out and I can’t offer a distinct species. These are larvae; the adults have distinctive glossy black bodies with bright yellow legs, and can produce a cyanide-based compound for defense, thus the bright colors. But the larva have a better UV reaction, as I’ve seen before:

Apheloriini larvae fluorescing under UV light
One of them refused to hold still and the UV shots require a longer exposure, so we have a little blur from the one. Again, the bright magenta spots are merely reflections, just like in the previous image, but nothing that I’ve found yet beats their fluorescence. This was initially visible from a significant distance and was very bright to my eyes in the darkness. almost as much as some synthetic materials. Notably, this species is rarely seen in daylight and forages among the leaf litter at night, so it likely has no interaction with other arthropods that may be able to spot the fluorescence. But that’s all I can tell you about it, at least until you’re older.

One, twice

Al Denelsbeck

Almost have time now to get back into the gout of photos (and therefore post subjects,) but first, I have to tackle a photo project courtesy of my brother – if it works out, it will be the weekly topic tomorrow.

But first first, we have a quick shot from another outing to Jordan Lake this past weekend.

great blue heron Ardea herodias in twilight with fish on Jordan Lake
While watching the sunset perform as normal for this area (which means, not terribly well at all,) we saw this great blue heron (Ardea herodias) in the distance strike at a fish. We weren’t even sure it had snagged one, since it wasn’t displaying the normal gulping behavior afterward and we didn’t have the benefit of the long lens perspective seen here, especially since the fish was at times edge-on and at others reflecting the same background colors. But the reason for the absence of gulping was clear in the tighter crop.

great blue heron Ardea herodias holding captured fish by the tail
Fish have to go down head-first, so this was going to require an agile flip/toss to get into the right orientation, and the heron was perhaps waiting until the fish stopped struggling for a moment. It didn’t take very long, and unlike previous observations, this one managed to get it on the first try and the fish disappeared down its gullet in moments.

Which helped, because the air was still down there so the birds were performing poorly for our visit, and the one eagle that appeared and stole a fish from the vultures was too obscured by trees from our vantage to capture any images of. Still, I have more to show from this past week, so don’t give up and go to some idiot’s YouTube channel yet…

Not this time

Al Denelsbeck

[As a pointless side note, I checked my original title of, “Not yet,” to see if I’d used it before, and I had, so then I had to check this one and it was safe. In the process, I’d found that I had 46 post titles starting with, “Not,” which strikes me as notably negative but then again typical. Still, that’s not (heh!) even 2%, so not a problem. Yet.]

A quick one here, still busy. On this last beach trip, I made another attempt to emulate an image that I’d gotten years ago in the hopes of improving it, but the conditions weren’t right this day. It works, but not as intended.

small Atlantic ghost crab Ocypode quadrata camouflaging against sand
This is most likely an Atlantic ghost crab (Ocypode quadrata,) and quite small – not 15mm across the width of the carapace. If you can see these before they move, you have much sharper eyes than I do. This is kind of the image that I was after, showing how well they blend in so it’s more like the viewer finds the crab in the shot, though this was late afternoon and I wanted sunrise light; it would have helped if I’d gotten up for sunrise and not several hours later, but it had been a late night. No, I was not hungover – fuck off. Knowing that the light wasn’t ideal, I still went for the vertical, short DOF approach, and the lower contrast from high, soft shadows helps with the camouflage aspect. I’ll keep it.

Visibly different, part 42

Al Denelsbeck

This is not going to be the most popular set of photos on the web this week. You have been warned.

One particular facet of spiders is how the eye pattern can be used to identify different Families, which can help pin down species, but by itself, it illustrates how much variation is visible within the arachnids, and to some degree it demonstrates the specialization of their habits and predation. While this is by no means a complete list, I have enough images to illustrate some of these differences. For instance:

eye pattern of Lycosidae
This is the pattern of the Lycosidae, which is primarily the wolf spiders, perhaps the most common Family where people can easily see the patterns – if they choose to look. This helps differentiate them from…

eye pattern of Pisauridae
… the Pisauridae, the nursery web spiders such as the fishing spiders, that may otherwise have a very similar appearance, habits, and habitats, even when the fishing spiders are mostly found near the water – I’ve found a few, like this one, far from any distinctive water source.

Both of these are ambush hunters without webs for capturing prey, as are…

eye pattern of Oxyopidae
… the Oxyopidae, or lynx spiders, showing a radically different pattern. Both of the previous species may actively chase down prey, while the lynx usually lie in wait near something that attracts their food, like flowers. But so does…

eye pattern of Thomisidae
… the Thomisidae, or crab spiders. Are you staring to see a pattern here? If so, you’re doing better than I am, because I can’t see how these different arrangements are specific to their needs. Except for…

eye pattern of Salticidae
… the Salticidae, or jumping spiders. Here, the large anterior median (front and center) eyes can easily be imagined to assist in judging the distance to their prey before they make the capturing leap. Yet, the Lycosidae and Pisauridae both run up on their prey blindingly fast, using their posterior median eyes that are only slightly larger than the others.

The smallest variation among the images that I chose for this post come from…

eye pattern of Theridiidae
… the Theridiidae, or cobweb spiders (which really do have eight eyes like the others, it’s just the outermost pair are clustered together on one little bump,) and…

eye pattern of Araneidae
… the Araneidae, or orb weavers. Orb weavers make the classic spiderweb, the wheel shape with a spiral pattern across spokes, while the cobweb spiders pretty much spin strands at random – by web design and location, at least, these two differ significantly, but their eye pattern gives no indication of this with only subtle differences. There are a handful of four- and six-eyed arachnids as well, but most are eight-eyed, yet the variations among these are radical. Why this, when so few have evolved a different number? I couldn’t tell you, but on occasion it’s helped me pin down a species.

But if you want a real difference, look no further than…

eye pattern of Opilione
… the Opiliones, or harvestmen, though most people call them daddy longlegs. Arachnids but not actually spiders, harvestmen not only have those meager two eyes on an afterthought eye-bump (there’s probably a more proper technical name for this that I’m not going to bother looking up,) but also a single-unit body plan, or at least the appearance of one because the waistline is more a suggestion than reality. And no, they do not possess the most potent venom of any arthropod, unless some individual has bought it on the black market, because they possess no venom at all – entomologists are not even sure that they’re not strictly scavengers and never hunt live prey (which, this time, the eyes would certainly support.) It is absolutely true, however, that as a whole they believe The Beatles are vastly overrated, which is why you should never step on them; this concept needs all the support it can get.

Okay, I’ll try to dredge up something cute shortly. You’re right to be cranky.

Sneaking in here and there

Al Denelsbeck

laughing gull Leucophaeus atricilla in winter plumage taking off
I just got back from a brief beach trip and have a few things to feature, but may not have a lot of time in the next week (while I get even more photos, perhaps,) so posts will come along as I find time. For now, we have what is likely a laughing gull (Leucophaeus atricilla) in winter plumage. The problem is, this particular species not only has different plumage between summer and winter, but different for the first few winters as well, plus a lot of similarity to other species of gull. Yet, I know they’re the most prevalent species on the Outer Banks and saw the others that were hanging out together, so I’m fairly comfortable that I have the right species at least. I just liked this image for how sharp it was while capturing the launch.

More on the way.

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