Exactly as scheduled

Al Denelsbeck

Since today is Thin Out The Blog Folder Day, I have several images that I was saving just to have something to post for the holiday, because normally, there are no excess images in there – I’m remarkably efficient in my writing, and if I prepare an image for the blog, you know damn well it will be uploaded without delay. So let’s see what I chose, months ago, to save for the holiday.

whitebanded fishing spider Dolomedes albineus on mossy wood
It was back in March when I found this, so you know I plan ahead. It was very small and the detail images that I have aren’t exacting, but it appears this is a juvenile whitebanded fishing spider (Dolomedes albineus,) pretty well camouflaged on a fencepost. I wouldn’t even say that the leg span exceeded 20mm – they get a whole lot larger. Let’s take a closer look at that coloration:

whitebanded fishing spider Dolomedes albineus camouflage pattern
You gotta admit, that’s a pretty good job of looking like moss and lichen, so, go natural selection!

female buff-colored mallard Anas platyrhynchos with five ducklings
In April I did a quick fartsy-ish shot of Buffy the female mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) and her brood, down from the nine that hatched – I’m pretty sure that four of these were the ones that followed the beaver and its branch back in that video, but don’t ask me which one abstained.

The next four images are from a trip to the NC Botanical Garden in May – I was planning on returning, but it just hasn’t happened yet (see repeated comments about heat, and that fact that it’s usually Monday when I feel like going and they’re closed Mondays.)

red-bellied watersnake Nerodia erythrogaster suspended in weeds
This smaller-than-average red-bellied watersnake (Nerodia erythrogaster) was chillin’ suspended in the limbs, if you can call them that, of some small plant alongside the water. The access to frogs was trivially easy, so I imagine it’s quite a bit bigger now. The snake, I mean – the plants only eat frogs in winter…

multiple geometric clusters of rhododendron flowers
We’ve seen a closer look at some of these rhododendron flowers back then, but this image shows off the health and symmetry of the flower clusters. I rarely see displays this photogenic, with no dead flowers or notched petals to be found – as long as you’re not looking at the leaves. I said don’t look at the leaves! Geeezzz…

prickly pear Opuntia humifusa blossom and pad
This is a little more notable in that the NC Botanical Garden only features plants native to North Carolina, and this is indeed a native cactus: a prickly pear (Opuntia humifusa.) Contrary to appearances, that spiked pad does not slap down and whack birds feeding at the flower. Yet. Give it time – go natural selection!

unidentified hanging seed pods
I have no idea what these are, but they were trying to hide from me under the leaves – they should know better. I picked an angle to give a little more drama to the pic. Whaddya mean, “This isn’t what I think of when I hear ‘drama’ in regards to nature photography”? What does it make you think of?

great blue heron Ardea herodias looking curious
While I was stalking the beavers one evening (we’ve left the botanical garden now,) a great blue heron (Ardea herodias) was watching me suspiciously and, I thought, a little rudely. I’m sorry, those leggings do not go with that thong…

raindrops suspended in needles of bald cypress Taxodium distichum
Same pond, same day, just the other end – a recent rain left some drops suspended in the needles of a bald cypress (Taxodium distichum.) This is High Fart, this is.

And finally,

North American beaver Castor canadensis gnawing on bark chip
I took a few captured frames from video clips to use with the latest beaver post (as well as, naturally, this carefully-planned holiday) and decided on a different image back then, leaving this one for today. I can safely vouch that that is not a harmonica. Yet. Go natural selection!

Okay, that cleans those out, and I can assure you that no stray or older images remain in the blog folder. Professionalism, that is.

Can I take your plate, or are you still working on July?

Al Denelsbeck

It’s time for the month-end abstract so, hurry up.

backlit spider web with iridescent diffraction
This month we have a grab shot as I was wandering around the neighborhood pond waiting to see if the beavers were going to show. Looking towards the setting sun, this spider web was backlit brilliantly and I had the long lens affixed, so I fired off a couple of frames hoping to nail the focus tightly enough. This frame not only had the focus, it also captured the diffraction from the gossamer strands (which I admit I shamelessly boosted a little in saturation because so there.) And I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I’ve already confessed to heinous crimes for which Mariska Hargitay will be hunting me down, so I’ll just pile on and say that the laser beam that the web is anchored to is instead a strand of fishing line, because too many fisherman cannot entertain the idea of not casting from underneath tree branches. You’d think this wouldn’t be that hard to grasp…

The whip of guilt

Al Denelsbeck

July has been a slow posting month, for several reasons – the heat, mostly, and getting deeply involved in video editing. But I’ve also just – not felt like posting. Perhaps it’s good that I didn’t, because the mood might have come through and you wouldn’t have the scintillating content that you normally do.

But I’m getting over all that, so let’s see what’s been found in the past two weeks that I simply never did anything with until now.

green heron Butorides virescens scratching cheek
Out, for once, earlier in the morning trying to see more birds, it was still too damn hot and few of them were showing, but I did snag this green heron (Butorides virescens) scratching its face. It remained very aware of my presence and didn’t let me get much of a better angle, but it wasn’t one of the juveniles that I was hoping to see anyway, so there.

northern flicker Colaptes auratus foraging on ground
Same morning, with the still-a-little-golden sun at my back, a northern flicker (Colaptes auratus) was foraging busily on the ground. I could hear some odd squeaky noises from the tree overhead and suspected there were young up there, but I saw no signs of what was emitting the sounds, and this one never flew back up there with food, so it remains a mystery – forever, now. Man that’s depressing.

possibly juvenile green heron Butorides virescens nearly camouflaged in weeds
possibly juvenile green heron Butorides virescens in original file colorMuch later on a different day, a green heron was being subtle and nearly escaped attention in the shade while working the water weeds on the edge of the pond. The larger image is tweaked from the color of the original, where I still had white balance set to ‘Sunlight’ and thus was a bit blue from the natural color of deep shade, as seen at left. I’d rather adjust color in post-production than let the camera figure it out, because I’m more accurate – I know what I’m looking at, and not just using an algorithm to ‘average out’ the various colors. But there was something about this particular heron that made me suspect it was one of the juveniles that I’d gotten video of two weeks previously, though I couldn’t really pin down what – behavior, mostly. On examining the frames afterward, there’s some faint evidence that I was correct; we’ll go in close on this same image (that makes three times) to get a peek at the head.

possibly juvenile green heron Butorides virescens showing baby down
That looks like the last vestiges of baby down on the head, which seems about right, timewise. Yet this was the only glimpse that I’ve gotten of either since the initial video. Then again, it’s been hot and I haven’t been over there much.

female double-crested cormorant Nannopterum auritum perched on old piling against pond scene
On the same day (in the same lighting conditions,) a double-crested cormorant (Nannopterum auritum) perched, as usual, on the old dock pilings, and I went a little wider for the scenic aspect. I’ll point out here that the reflections in the water provide specific shapes and colors, which can serve as useful backdrops or contrast for your subject; as you can imagine, the cormorant wouldn’t have stood out as well had it crossed over into the reflections of the trees, so yes, I shifted position until it fell into that gap. I could also have moved so that the cormorant itself was in the green, but the reflection in the water remained in the blue, providing a small discovery for those who glanced at the image too quickly (but no one does that, right?)

That’s enough birds – let’s do some bugs.

giant robber fly genus Promachus with housefly prey
I spotted this giant robber fly (genus Promachus) while I was misting the basil plant, because they’re hard to miss, but didn’t realize it had prey until I leaned in a bit closer. Giant robber flies (that’s the real name, and there are numerous species) look absolutely nasty, and they are, but only to other flies – they’re pretty mellow around people, and will occasionally land on you if you’re holding still. They don’t bite or sting, so let them do their job clearing out the insects that you don’t want around. Unfortunately I caught the wings perfectly edge-on here and it made it look like it has none. I’ll do better next time…

Nearby, a Chinese mantis (Tenodera sinensis) was also preying around the basil plants, and received the benefit of the misting.

Chinese mantis Tenodera sinensis cleaning water from forelegs
There are a handful able to be found in the yard now, if I look closely, and they’re about 3/4 adult size, pushing 70-80mm in length. They almost always appreciate a misting, especially in this weather, and you can see a water drop in the crook of its foreleg if you look closely. But seeing that ‘nose’ makes me realize that we haven’t had watermelon in a long time…

Chinese mantis Tenodera sinensis coated in water droplets
This one was over on the clethra bush, which was new this year and seems to be doing great, but I think I went a little overboard on the misting. There are no ill effects to be had from this, and believe me, some of the rains we’ve had recently were far worse, but the dramatic appearance works pretty well. You can tell from the dark eyes that this occurred at night, unlike the previous mantis. This image was shot eight days (well, nights) ago, and the mantis is still there as of this afternoon, probably gorging on the carpenter bees that adore the clethra flowers.

Since we’re getting back into the most prevalent species on the blog again, we’ll now have a green treefrog (Hyla cinerea.)

green treefrog Hyla cinerea with discolored nose
For a few days, this little guy was spending the daylight hours tucked into the ginger lilies that are getting established in the backyard, which seems typical – green treefrogs have a favorite hidey-hole for a few days, then move on to other locations. I would presume this helps them avoid predators somehow, perhaps from the ones that locate the frogs by their feces or something, because I would think that anything that finds a treefrog and eats treefrogs will simply eat the treefrog, and not have to come back later for dessert or something, but we’ve established by now that I’m not a herpetologist. That also means that I can’t answer why the nose is discolored in this manner – I’m guessing some kind of healing injury – but it sure changes the impression, doesn’t it? It went from simply being a frog to having a bit of a Durante-vibe (oh, look it up, whippersnapper.) I haven’t found this one since to see if there’s progress in healing.

And finally, the most recent images, from just last night.

very moody sunset sky
Initially, I had a tighter crop of this one lined up for the month-end abstract before I realized that I had a better candidate already in the pipeline. After an abortive attempt to get some lightning pics and yet another horrendous downpour that still didn’t cool things off enough, the sky at sunset finally got pretty elaborate and I managed to time it right – I’ve said before, sunset after a clearing storm tends to be a great time for pics.

These are so colorful that we need another variation.

dynamic sunset sky over pond
It has a nice tropical vibe, if you don’t look at the foreground leaves too closely – this is once again over at the neighborhood pond. I missed the opportunity to capture some of the residual thunderheads in this light, though you can see the barest evidence of another down on the horizon. I also missed having a bat silhouetted against that sky, but not through lack of trying – the light was too low, the bat too fast, to snag a sharp image, plus I had a maximum focal length of 135mm with the lens in hand, which isn’t really enough for something as small as a bat unless they’re really close. Maybe someday.

But yeah, that helps catch up the image count for the month, at least…

You gotta be kidding me

Al Denelsbeck

When I started video editing, I went through several different programs trying to find one that worked reasonably well – twice, actually, because I began on a Windows system before switching to Linux and having to do it all over again. All of them had issues of some kind, but Kdenlive had the fewest, and the rendering options (converting the edited clips into a finished video file) was by far the smoothest.

But one issue that I dealt with, from the moment I started using it, was that of blinking during the preview playback. Constantly, like a bad phone connection. This made it hard to do some precisely-timed edits, because the screen may be blank during the crucial moments – even though the blanks lasted less than a second, if something occurred then and only then, I had no idea that it even occurred. I muddled through, and searched for answers.

And searched. And tried countless options, both to the program and the computer itself. I even ordered a faster video card with more memory (that didn’t work.) It was very frustrating, and I spent several sessions of troubleshooting, every couple of weeks, in pursuit of this little problem.

And then, just now, someone on a forum (okay, credit where it’s due: someone named, ‘sergergravelle,’) said, “move the Project Monitor to a separate window.” Really, just click on the tab and drag it outside. You can see it here, the little floating box to the top right (with the two birds) that looks like it was added as an afterthought, normally anchored nice and neatly just behind it:

screen capture of Kdenlive program
And just like that, the goddamn thing works like a charm.

Why? I don’t know – I’d think that the separate window would complicate things in the program and make it worse, but unlinking it from its ‘proper’ position fixed the issue entirely. Not a blip or cumberbatch. Perfectly smooth.

All this time. All these videos. For a trivial fix that doesn’t even make sense. I’m flabbergasted (as you can tell because I posted about it.) But nonetheless relieved and pleased.

Now back to normal useful entertaining typical content…

Not bad, for a smutphone

Al Denelsbeck

northern black racer Coluber constrictor constrictor in author's hand
It’s no secret that I am not a fan of smutphone cameras (or any other part of them for that matter) – they’re generally substandard and of course have too few controls. Though I admit that I haven’t tried any of the ridiculously expensive smutphones, because I have sense – I can’t fathom spending more, way more, on a freaking phone than I have on any of my used camera bodies. Despite my contempt, though, on rare occasions they can come in handy, such as when I have an angry northern black racer (Coluber constrictor constrictor) in my right hand and would have a difficult time with the Canon 7D. The Girlfriend is certainly not, in any way, going to assist in snake wrangling, besides which she wasn’t around this day. So when I saw the snake hurtle off like a shot from the front walk and managed to find it in the foliage of the garden, the only choice was the smutphone, and it did an acceptable job. You can even see the faint indication of the bite I sustained on my middle finger (one of three – racers aren’t complacent about handling, though they have itty-bitty teeth.)

Funny, World Snake Day was back on the 16th, and it had been over a month since I’d seen any snake at all despite searching, but within the past week I caught two in the yard, this one and a young eastern milksnake, a species I hadn’t spotted in forever – that smutphone image, taken at night but again with my hand full, was just what I expected and not worth publishing even here.

[I have to note that the snake’s position is not as it initially appears. The coil underneath the head is quite far removed from it, being the base of the tail; after the head, the body goes down through my hand and reappears from under my pinky, then curves in front of us back up and disappears behind my thumb, into the hand again, to emerge as the tail tip below.]

Can’t keep up

Al Denelsbeck

It started just two nights ago. After the rains, I could hear a few Copes grey treefrogs (Hyla chrysoscelis) calling nearby, including one that had to be in the backyard. I was checking on other things, so it took me just a couple of minutes to get to the approximate location, and by that time, she’d achieved her goal.

pair of Copes grey treefrogs Hyla chrysoscelis in amplexus
Seen here in the residual water atop one of the rainbarrels, this is a mated (more or less) pair; the male will stay clasped to the female until she finds her choice of pools to deposit the eggs within, whereupon he will fertilize them when they emerge. I was a bit leery of this pose myself, because this is not the place where I wanted eggs placed, knowing the water there will seep out within a day – there are actually drain holes to prevent this pooling, but the debris that you see tends to plug them temporarily. Still, while the frogs were sitting there, I did a better portrait.

pair of Copes grey treefrogs Hyla chrysoscelis in amplexus, head-on
Boy, the joy and excitement of impending parenthood, eh? Can’t you just feel the love?

A short while later when The Girlfriend had come down, the happy couple was nowhere to be seen, relieving me a little – since they weren’t even visible on the sides of the barrel or anything nearby, I figured they’d started making their way towards the pond in the backyard only a handful of meters off, a proper and inviting nursery with deep water, shade, and plants, that has hosted numerous amphibian broods in the past.

But no. The next day, I glanced at the pond to see if I could spot any eggs, finding nothing, but then looked at the overflow barrel next to the rainbarrel that the frogs had been on the night before.

eggs of Copes grey treefrogs Hyla chrysoscelis floating in rainbarrel
This was a meter or less from where I photographed the happy couple, in use because the drought made it necessary to collect as much water as possible when it did rain, but not at all the ideal habitat for little froglets. [Sigh]

That was taken with my [blerk] smutphone, but by the time I got free enough to do a session with a proper camera, it was clouding over again, so I collected a handful of eggs in the macro aquarium. By then they were already visibly developing.

developing eggs/tadpoles of Copes grey treefrog Hyla chrysoscelis
To give you a time frame, the images of the parent frogs were taken about 9:30 PM. and they had disappeared a little later on and were clearly not laying eggs by then. The eggs in the barrel were taken the next day at 1:30 PM, about fifteen hours later. Then I collected these in the aquarium, taking the photos at 8:00 PM, somewhere less than 22 hours after being deposited.

single egg/tadpole of Copes grey treefrog Hyla chrysoscelis
This is now with the reversed 28-105; the actual length of the pre-tadpole is roughly 2mm. I was on the back porch with a focusing LED lamp, the slave strobe, and varying backdrops, also trying for a little dark-field effect to see if I could bring up any internal details better, which didn’t work very well. But this one, at least, showed the edges of the transparent egg membrane, itself in a jelly-like substance that helped them to adhere both to each other and to whatever floating stuff could be found, which around here is pinestraw – always pinestraw.

developing egg/tadpole of Copes grey treefrog Hyla chrysoscelis
With a change in light angle, we can make out some details, but of what, I’m not going to commit to. Ribs? Developing eyes? Is that dark line at top the actual mouth opening? The alimentary canal is the first thing to develop, fetuses (of most species) starting out only as a tube, so I know the mouth exists, but I’m not sure that’s it. And the reason that I tried a little dark-field backlighting was that I didn’t have an X-ray machine. I know, I know – “And you call yourself a nature photographer?” I’m working on it – maybe for my birthday.

After a few detail shots, I transferred everything I could snag from the barrel, and most of these, into the pond, retaining about six in the aquarium to monitor.

developing tadpole of Copes grey treefrog Hyla chrysoscelis ready to hatch
This is from 2:30 PM today, over 18 hours past the immediately previous images and 41 hours after finding the newlyweds. It would be easy to believe those are forelegs, if you forget that tadpoles have no legs at all for several days after hatching, and the hindlegs develop first anyway; those are likely gills/lungs, still semi-external for a short while. This one is still in the egg membrane, but hatched only a half hour after I got these pics.

deevloping tadpole of Copes grey treefrog Hyla chrysoscelis just before hatching
This shows the transparent nature of the outer skin, mostly around the tail, but we’re going to see more detail in just a moment.

Because at the same time that I got these, I checked the barrel and found a few tadpoles (that I’d apparently missed) already swimming around within and looking distinctly like tadpoles, so I collected a couple for the session.

very young tadpole of Copes grey treefrog Hyla chrysoscelis
Why these seem so much more developed than their brethren, I cannot say – to my knowledge, the conditions weren’t significantly different, but perhaps this is evidence of another brood that I had no idea was there. Only a day or so older, if they were. But we can just make out the transparent outer skin surface, realizing that the pigment sits well below the surface. I always get a kick out of this view, because to the eye, they look black – maybe a hint of detail through the belly, but from this angle, black. The mottled-brown-with-gold-flecks coloration only shows at high magnification.

belly shot of very young Copes grey treefrog Hyla chrysoscelis
And a belly shot – we can see that it’s been eating fine, at least, and that transparent outer shell is highly visible now. I’ve done closeups of those lips before; to the best of my knowledge, those dark markings are nerve endings to help it find food.

[In that linked post, I avow that tadpoles don’t have gills, but have since heard that they do. Except, I’ve never seen a gill opening like fish have, so I’m not entirely sold on this, plus I routinely see them surface apparently for air, so, yeah…]

I put some pond water in the aquarium to provide more food, and am retaining a handful to see how they develop, so more pics may be along in the next few days. It’s still just as hot on the porch as it is in the open, but it’s shaded at least, so while I still sweat like a pig getting these shots, at least I don’t get sunburned.

It’s overcast and rainy, so no showers

Al Denelsbeck

Got a glimpse of a star the other night, but other than that, it’s not the time to be trying to view a meteor shower, much less three of them. I’m not sure why I even post about them anymore.

Worse, it’s still hot as hell during the day – the rain comes in the evenings, but even then it doesn’t really cool anything off, the largest part of the reason why there have been no posts. But something’s in the pipeline at least, so you’ll have a new topic for the break room at work pretty soon. Patience.

Showers predicted, if it’s clear

Al Denelsbeck

There are two meteor showers peaking soon, the Delta Aquarids and the Alpha Capricornids, though both are taking place as you read this and have been for several days now – they tend to spread out a bit. Notably, the moon will be new on the 28th and is plenty dark now unless you’re up at like 4 AM, even then being a mere crescent, so provided the skies are clear in your area, the moon won’t be interfering at least.

Around here, the humidity might be, but I’ll still likely give it a try at some point. Neither shower is predicted to be elaborate, though the Delta Aquarids can sometimes leave momentary trails behind. We’re also overlapping the earlier stages of the Perseids, which typically perform better, but again, early stages – their peak falls around the time of the full moon in mid-August, so you might as well try now.

As always, I’ll be here to show you what I captured, if anything, but don’t get too excited – my past experiences haven’t been remarkable in any way. One of these days…

Visibly different, part 30

Al Denelsbeck

We’re gonna jump the gun a little here and not post this on Tuesday as normal, because I’ve been putting this together over a period of weeks and don’t want to delay it even a couple more days. So let’s see what our opening image is.

North American beaver Castor canadensis peeking out from under log
This dates from 1991 and is a negative of course, not too long after having moved to North Carolina. I discovered, quite by accident, that the creek behind the apartment complex hosted North American beavers (Castor canadensis) by hearing noises in the tall weeds near the banks and coming across an absolute monster, at least 18 kilograms in mass, who was not at all concerned about my presence. I was not armed with a camera then, so it took several more weeks before I found they were still active briefly after sunrise and began staking them out, resulting in the image above. At that time, this was with the Wittnauer Challenger rangefinder with its 50mm lens, so getting this close was actually an accomplishment – granted, the first encounter would have yielded a better pic than this, and convinced me to carry the camera more often.

From the same roll, we have the typical view, a head plowing shallow ripples silently through the water.

North American beaver Castor canadensis cruising through creek
This eventually led to my joining the Beaver Project when I was employed by the local humane society, and despite observing lots of habitats, as well as doing dam remediation and giving public talks, the opportunities for more photos were few and far between. All told, less than a dozen images accumulated in a 30-year period. But that brings us to now.

tight portrait of North American beaver Castor canadensis gnawing on bark chip
It started in February, and saw some some decent improvements in May, but I’ve been pursuing the images and video as we go, fitting it in where I can. The Mammals folder in my photo stock has undergone a significant expansion, and the video clips have exploded. So let’s see a few more of those, and the new discoveries; settle in, it’s not brief.

While I should probably have spaced these out into multiple, smaller/shorter videos, I knew about the baby beaver and was endeavoring to obtain some slick footage – this took some time. I feel the need to point out that, in the past two months, the weather has cooled down once, for a couple of days, so all of these were obtained in sweltering conditions, thus the video title. I finally got some nice clips only a few days back and felt I could continue with the video editing, which by now had grown to a serious collection (there are 36 separate clips in there, spanning a few weeks, and those are just the ones I selected.) And of course, the video techniques and accoutrements are expanding, slowly perhaps, but progressing nonetheless – there may be another post regarding some of the details.

Here’s a better peek at the rig and conditions (and my yarmulke,) courtesy of The Girlfriend:

author behind telephoto camera rig with North American beaver Castor canadensis seen in background, by The Girlfriend
This was a fairly typical working distance, though perspectives and viewing angles changed a lot. The fuzzy thing above the camera is a ‘dead cat’ wind muff for the microphone (the little green light) and not my hairpiece blowing away. Shithead.

Still, a few details can only be glimpsed in the video, and I have some ancient photos that show things (slightly) better. Not only are these dating from 1992, they’re copy slides of original negatives which causes significant degradation and color shifting – this is as good as they get (and I did indeed look for the original negatives, but it seems they were lost somewhere along the way.)

detail of foreclaw on deceased North American beaver Castor canadensis
This is an illustration of the foreclaws, showing their powerful nails for excavating burrows in the banks. I don’t recall the exact circumstances, but this beaver was deceased and undergoing a veterinary exam, and I was able to get a few frames for exactly this purpose (though how I knew 30 years ago that I was going to do this post remains a mystery.)

hindclaw of deceased North American beaver Castor canadensis
And this is the hindclaw, showing the strong nails but especially the webbing – the hind feet are the principle propulsion when swimming. We noticed something while observing the baby beaver: while the adults could swim smoothly and glided through the water, the baby tended to kick harder and thus moved a little jerkily, allowing us to differentiate who we were seeing when the size and scale were impossible to tell.

This specimen, by the way, is fairly comparable in size to the male seen in the video.

tail of deceased North American beaver Castor canadensis
The tail of course, and it’s just as leathery as you might imagine it, with limited flexibility, a lot like a diving fin. I don’t believe there are any muscles through the tail, just at the base of it.

teeth of deceased North American beaver Castor canadensis
The powerful and very sharp teeth, which continue to grow during the beaver’s lifetime and are worn down constantly by all the activity. I had a beaver skull at one time (actually, it may well have been this one) and can tell you that the lower incisors extend way down into the mandible. But that color is only on the front surface, a thick layer of enamel, while the inner portions are softer and wear faster, naturally producing the necessary chisel shape.

Certainly a noticeable improvement, and it didn’t build slowly over the years, but blew up suddenly when a prime opportunity and conditions fell together; I now have more activity and behavioral images/video of the beavers than all previous efforts with both the mantids and the treefrogs, which dominate my stock solely from being readily found in the yard. Apples to oranges of course, and behavioral photos of beavers always remained a goal (like most local species) but never an immediate, driving one. Yet if the wind blows that way, I’m along for the ride.

closeup profile of North American beaver Castor canadensis

Just shirkin’

Al Denelsbeck

Some activities, I can only tackle for so long before I have to take a break, and that may not be very long at all. Up until a month ago, I might have said this included, “Standing in a lake waiting for a neurotic baby bird,” (though that’s probably more specific than I would have been,) yet we see how that worked out, so maybe I should buckle down more. But then we wouldn’t have these.

It was still my ‘last night’ even though it was early this morning when I’d had enough of editing for a bit and stepped outside. The moon was just rising, so I made a session out of it – not very long, and I think this is the first moon I’ve shot since the eclipse. No, wait, that’s not true – it’s the first I’ve shot since the neurotic baby bird. Anyway:

last quarter/waning crescent moon
Nope, not the right time to catch sunrise/sunset on Tycho, which I probably should seek therapy about – Tycho is that crater down a little too far from the terminator towards the bottom, with the deep shadow that denotes high, sharp crater walls. It’s not very big really, and only seems prominent because of the ejecta rays visible in near-full phases. Still, the overall detail of the moon is nice, and the color indicative of the rising humidity that has made it overcast this morning. And, I did catch the last vestiges of sunlight on the central peaks of Purbach and Regiomantus craters, so I can feel accomplished about that (which someone needs to send me a little gold star sticker over, thank you very much.) To illustrate:

sunset on Purbach and Regiomantus craters on the moon
This is the kind of conditions that I try for at times, because it’s almost not clear that there is still light hitting those central peaks – I know with my monitor, it can disappear with a slight change in viewing angle. But the drastic overexposure that I took immediately before shows it a bit better:

sunset on Purbach and Regiomantus craters on the moon more visible in overexposure
full-frame shot of moon scaled to viewfinder sizeIt was this frame that made me go back and look at the ‘properly’ exposed version; I’d thought I was seeing a few different central peaks in the viewfinder, but it turned out to be just the mostly-flat floors of a couple different craters, including those towards upper left. Even with the 2x teleconverter, the details of the moon are small, and I struggle to pin down the sharpest focus in the viewfinder, because autofocus is too imprecise. But these were so dim that there’s no way I was spotting those peaks – the image at right is pretty much what I was seeing, or at least it is if you have roughly the same monitor size and resolution as I do, which is unlikely, but what do you want from me?

I have the drastic overexposure because I was playing around with another subject while I was out there, which required a much higher ISO to capture in a short-enough shutter speed before it moved again.

eastern cottontail Sylvilagus floridanus exposed by streetlight
The rabbits – specifically the eastern cottontails (Sylvilagus floridanus,) have been constant visitors to the yard as soon as it’s dark enough, and they’re so used to me being out there now that they only scamper off if I’m moving too quick, too close, or making too much noise, which is rare. This one was in the neighbor’s yard instead, about six meters off, well aware of my shenanigans with the camera and tripod – it was wary of me, though the movement that I was trying to thwart was not of it fleeing, but putting its head down to snag more clover. The light was from the streetlamp, closer than I’d prefer really (I’d rather have it dark in the yard,) but the catchlight in the eyes is from the neighbor’s porch light. Not too shabby for, you know, ambient light at two AM.

Anyway, back to the grind.

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