Head of the line

Al Denelsbeck

I had a selection of photos from the other day that I needed to post about, and was trying to get motivated to write that one up, when the thunder started about the same time that the Lightning Tracker on my smutphone went off again. It had gone off before, but the center of activity was too far northwest and typically such cells draw farther north as they pass, but this time the strikes were more aligned with crossing directly into our area, and of course the thunder was encouraging. So, out I went to the neighborhood pond again, and thus the existing photos and post idea get pushed back, because lightning.

We’ll start with a short video clip that gives a better impression of the significant activity.


You can hear the exuberant green treefrogs calling, delighted at the conditions, but most of the background rumbling is the gusty wind on the built-in microphone instead of thunder – I hadn’t intended to shoot video and thus went without the proper mic. The bulk of the electrical activity was apparently cloud-to-cloud and thus only the occasional rumble of thunder was heard. Except for one particular strike:

lightning strike near edge of frame
So you know, the camera is aiming roughly west-northwest, at 18mm focal length so pretty wide field of view. We can go in closer for a better look at the detail:

closer crop of previous lightning image
The video expresses it accurately enough: there were very few visible strikes, so I was glad to capture something. The bang of thunder from this one, coming much later and thus indicating that the strike was several kilometers away, managed to silence about half of the treefrogs, which was amusing – I wish I’d been recording that. Less than 30 seconds later they’d all kicked it back in again.

lightning strike just outside of the frame
This is a crop from the right edge of another frame, demonstrating that most of the activity was more north, and I probably should have been around the pond further trying to capture that, though how much I would have seen is debatable – nearly everything was within the clouds, which were low and moving fast. But then there was this one:

distinct visible lightning bolt out west
This is full frame, and had I switched to shooting north, I wouldn’t have captured this one at all. As it was, I was personally looking up at the clouds above when this struck for mere milliseconds, and the peripheral view I had of it made me suspect it was a visible bolt, but it wasn’t until I got back and unloaded the card that I could confirm it (with this much activity, I wasn’t wasting time chimping when the camera could have been capturing more.) Let’s go in for a closer look:

tighter crop of previous image of strike
Not my best of course, but still cool – I’m always glad to get a distinct bolt from any lightning session, because it often doesn’t occur. I’ve gone years without decent pics, so, yeah.

Soon after this the rain was starting up, and I knew from the wind it was likely to get fierce, so I quickly packed it all up, but not before witnessing two separate flashes, both a little south of this one, that registered blue-green through the clouds. That had me curious, because it’s always this lavender hue – the only time that I’ve seen blue-green was from a blown transformer, and I didn’t hear any sign of the loud reports that usually provokes. Was it atmospherics? Unique conditions? Some other kind of lightning bolt? I have no idea, and I was prepared to dismiss the first occurrence until the second, more distinct, confirmed it.

As it was, I got fairly soaked on the five-minute hike back to Walkabout Studios, and the camera bag, all equipment removed, is currently drying in front of a fan – I’d treated it heavily with water repellent months ago, so no biggie. But never let equipment sit in a wet bag, or even a slightly damp one; the risk of humidity infusion into equipment is too great.

Okay, we’ll be back to the regularly-scheduled post (or at least the planned one) shortly.

Probably not many

Al Denelsbeck

Tomorrow, May 20th, is another holiday: Were Those Really Seeds Day?, the day we look at all those pots and patches we’ve been watering regularly and wonder whether those packets of tomato or lupine seeds that we got many weeks ago were actually seeds, or just sand and fine stream gravel, maybe the floor sweepings from some metal-working shop.

I admit that I’m not really cut out for gardening. After expending a lot of time and effort into prepping and planting and all that, I expect to see positive results soon, and average germination times just kinda get under my skin. But then, as the ‘average’ time passes and I’m trying to determine if those little leaves are something that I actually wanted or another set of weeds or grasses, I start wondering why I’m wasting my time. And seriously, I doubt even 25% of the contents in those packets are viable seeds of any kind, and I can’t be the only one. It’s not like I can complain about getting robbed, given that each packet costs like 89ยข, maybe as much as a couple bucks, so getting a little envelope of crumbs from the bottom of the toaster isn’t unexpected, really. It’s my fault for believing that something useful can be purchased for that price.

Each year, I vow I’ll do better, and start some seedlings indoors early or make use of the greenhouse, and each year this somehow never goes according to plan. I did indeed start a tray full of tomatoes and cardinal flowers in March, many of which actually sprouted, all of which died. There’s a whole stretch of wildflower, coneflower, and milkweed garden down along the fence, according to the packets, but damned if I can tell it apart from the rest of the yard. Many years back at the old place, I planted a bunch of ‘mixed wildflower’ seeds that produced two aster plants and a stand of dog fennel, which is in no way considered a ‘wildflower,’ though it served some purpose in hosting lady beetles for the summer.

I’m also a little suspicious of the various ‘plant foods’ and fertilizers out there. I’ve added them to the pots of various plants – in the proper amounts, so drop that protest – and have never seen any difference at all, and then, depotting the remains to re-use the pot, I find all those little food pellets still intermixed in the soil. Shouldn’t they have dissolved or something, or did I just buy a bunch of surplus beads from retired art teachers?

Mind you, most of the existing plants around Walkabout Estates are doing fabulous, having greeted the spring with gusto – except for my three butterfly bushes, the ones that I count on for photo subjects, which are doing perfect imitations of the people that comment, “TL;DR” for any post that contains more than a paragraph. We’re talking the classmates that felt beautician school might be too challenging for them. The hosta plants out back are getting ready to challenge Godzilla, but my butterfly bushes appear to be ‘restocking’ the shelves at WalMart. I don’t get it.

Even worse, we maintain a compost bin, much of which gets added to the soil that we use for any new plants or seeds. Which means that without fail, a half-dozen or so squash plants appear within days, solely from what we discarded from last year’s meals. Those bastards are more than happy with the conditions, but we weren’t ever trying to grow those. I’m not good with that kind of mockery.

So, yeah, tomorrow’s a perfect holiday for me to get into, and maybe I’ll get another seed packet just to examine under the microscope, see if I can prove they all came from the seat cushions of movie theaters. It would probably be more productive than my gardening.

I’m pleased

Al Denelsbeck

You didn’t think I was just going to leave you with one eclipse pic, did you?

I’d been eyeing the weather reports all week, because we’ve been having spates of thunderstorms and sudden showers, and they called for partly cloudy conditions Sunday night when the eclipse was occurring, so I wasn’t getting my hopes too high. Nonetheless, when the day had remained mostly sunny, I went down to the lake near sunset to catch both the sunset and the moonrise, if possible. Sunset proved to be almost completely clouded out, and there were visible dark bands along the eastern horizon where the moon was to appear, so I was a bit surprised to see the pink head crowning from the trees.

pink moon just peeking over trees
Apparently, the dark band I was seeing was thinner humidity than it appeared, perhaps enhanced by the Belt of Venus, but hey, I was happy with it. As it rose, the moon passed in and out of several cloud bands, fully obscured for a minute or three, then revealed again. I managed a few pics.

pink moon clear of horizon
If I’d been after lunar detail, I’d have been out of luck, but fartsiness? There was enough of that to work with.

The moon climbed out of its pink phase and into gold, still quite photogenic, and while I didn’t intend to do a whole gallery, in 22 minutes I snagged plenty of keepers while the clouds played supporting roles.

gold moon with thin cloudy accents
As the conditions darkened, I watched a bald eagle cruise over the foreground water and catch a fish, but the shutter speed would be too slow for any moving subject, and I waited in vain for the eagle to rise in front of the moon. Such opportunities are far fewer than you might suspect, given that the moon takes up a tiny fraction of the visible sky, even if you only count up to 25° from the horizon – I know, I’ve tried this for decades, with both sun and moon. But I went wider for a landscape shot, even if it was portrait orientation.

gold moon leaving reflection on Jordan Lake
The moon wouldn’t enter the umbral phase of the eclipse for a few hours yet, and the penumbral is boring, so I went home and unloaded the initial images, making a quick post before returning for the real action – if you can count a shadow advancing far too slowly to discern as “action.” And there were still patches of thick clouds in the sky, here and there, as the time drew close, including a smallish bank doing a striptease with the moon as things should have been noticeable.

clouds almost obscuring moon right at beginning of umbral eclipse
Large portions of the sky remained clear, however, so I figured, as slow as things went, I should still get enough photos to make it worthwhile. Soon afterward, the clouds dropped away, except for a pesky one in the lower corner which wasn’t actually a cloud.

distinct umbral phase of lunar eclipse
This was the Tamron 150-600 with a 2x converter, using a remote release and mirror lock-up with about a five-second delay, and I did numerous frames during this period that I then zoomed way in on, using the LCD on the back of the camera, to examine for critical sharpness. Once I had it as sharp as I figured it was possible, I left the focus ring there (manual focus of course) and used that throughout. Well, not quite true, because from force of habit I reached up once to tweak the focus, forgetting that I’d already gotten it as sharp as possible, and then had to do it all over again. But this only happened once.

And I missed one particular opportunity.

tail of plane appearing in front of blurred eclipsing moon
I realized just a little too late that a distant plane, on approach to the nearby airport, would pass in front of the partially eclipsed moon – again, this is extremely rare. Because of mirror lock-up, I had to hit the shutter release twice with several seconds in between, and the delay wasn’t enough while also being too much: the rig was still vibrating from the mirror slap and I tripped the shutter just a fraction of a second too late, so you’re seeing the tail and wingtip of the plane at the top edge there. Dammitall.

Just so you know, four more planes all passed within a few widths of the moon that night, and I snagged a bare portion of one’s nav beacons at the edge of the frame, but nothing worthwhile.

When the eclipse was roughly 2/3 advanced towards totality, you could still see the shape of the moon from the shadowed portion, and I adjusted exposure to bring this up distinctly.

partially-eclipsed moon exposed for shadowed side
As a comparison, the clear partial eclipse image above (the one without the plane) was 1/160 second, f11, at ISO 800. This one is 1.6 seconds, f8, at ISO 1600. That’s a 10-stop difference, and since each stop doubles the amount of light coming in, that means the light in this image is 1,024 times the amount of light in that one above. Okay, that’s technically not true, because there was far less light coming from the moon itself, but that’s what the camera was allowing for, anyway. It’s an illustration of necessary exposures.

Eventually, we reached totality.

totally eclipsed moon with two companion stars
This is just over an hour from the image further up that’s partially obscured by clouds, which was about when the umbral phase should have started – the exposure is 0.8 seconds, f8, at ISO 3200. That means plenty of grain, but with the minimal detail that could be captured anyway, it wasn’t really harming things – I’d need a big-barrelled telescope to get enough light to allow a lower ISO without inducing motion blur just from the passage of the moon (or a tracking motor,) and even then the adapting to the camera probably wouldn’t allow this kind of magnification. It’s very fussy, but someday I may have a digital sensor set up for a proper tracking telescope and produce something better than this. It’s actually in motion, but slower than the eclipse…

Yes, those are two stars in the frame, and one of them is the one I told you about earlier.

As the eclipse was approaching totality, I was playing around a little with video, but the frame rate of video means much shorter exposure times, and even with expanded ISO, what I captured was a bare glimmer of grey from the uneclipsed portion, slowly disappearing – there was absolutely no sign of the shadowed portion of the moon, so I didn’t bother with one idea that I had, which we’ll come to in a moment.

total lunar eclipse with fairly bright exposure and background stars
While waiting for that aforementioned event, I played around with exposures to see how bright I could make the moon without stretching out the shutter speed so long that there was motion blur and I lost detail. This was at 1 second, f8, ISO 6400, and I might have pushed it a hair further, like about 2/3 stop or so, but not more than that. It works for me.

Without the video option, as the moon moved in to eclipse that lower star, I settled for sequential frames.

totally eclipsed moon eclipsing background star
This is just as it was disappearing. Partially because of the shutter speed and the mirror lock-up delay, it was about nine seconds to the next frame, and the star had completely vanished by then. I misjudged how fast it would actually disappear behind the moon, but I’m still glad that I stuck around for this attempt at a double eclipse, about half an hour after totality was achieved.

I decided to pack it up after that, but fired off a couple of frames to try and mimic the brightness that the moon appeared to have by naked eye, and this comes closest I think:

total lunar eclipse at roughly visible exposure
A lot smaller in the sky of course, and that remaining star (HIP 76106) was about 5.5 magnitude, just visible to the naked eye in good, dark conditions. I feel comfortable with this exposure because, as I was leaving the lake, I glanced up the road to check for traffic and the moon caught my eye, even through the car window – a dim glow, not too distinct.

That was a pretty good photo session, all from significant luck, some decent equipment, and a bit of experience with previous eclipses – I’m not complaining in the slightest. Even about the plane…

Visibly different, part 20

Al Denelsbeck

Sometimes – sometimes – it all comes together nicely. I can appreciate it the few times that it does.

total lunar eclipse of August 16 1989 on crappy print film
First off, this looks so crappy because I didn’t feel the need to try and clean it up, mostly. Some of it is due to age, however, and the general shortevity (that’s a word, honest) of print film/negatives. But this is the first total lunar eclipse that I’d photographed, and dates from August 16th, 1989 – technically, it may be the 17th, since it appears this might be right at the end of totality sometime after midnight (Stellarium is wonderful.) Since I only had the Witnnauer Challenger with its 50mm lens then, I borrowed a Pentax K1000 with some unremembered zoom telephoto – this image was likely taken at either 210 or 260mm focal length, just from knowing the options available at the time. It was film of course, so no display of the results afterwards, and thus only a guess at exposure, which the film scanner may well have tried altering, but I know motion blur was in there solely from the progression of the dim moon, and likely from the tripod as well. Later on that same night, I’d capture my first “Wow!” photo*.

You know what’s coming, don’t you?

total lunar eclipse of May 15 2022
Yes, this is from two nights ago, Sunday the 15th, so there’s just shy of 33 years in between. While skimming through negatives a bit over a week ago, I came across the top frame, part of a sequence, and knew the eclipse was coming up this month, so I figured I had my ‘Visibly Different’ example for the week, provided it all panned out – the weather reports were not too reassuring on that account, and even the preliminary frames at moonrise didn’t make me feel comfortable. The clouds were scattered but actually obscuring the moon right at the start of the umbral phase, so I missed the initial darkening of the ‘limb,’ but they cleared for the run towards totality.

The changes between the two frames? There are almost too many to count. The lens of course: the latter was shot with the Tamron 150-600 at 600mm, but with a 2x converter, so closer to 1000mm, but with the multiplier that’s more like 1600 (both of these images are full-frame, by the way.) Changing ISO on the fly meant I could switch to 6400 rather than being stuck with Kodak Gold 400-2 like the top pic, and I could chimp at the exposures to ensure that I was getting decent results – I could even chimp at the initial frames, as the partial eclipse progressed, to ensure focus was as tight as possible. A solid tripod, set low to the ground for stability, a cable release, and mirror lock-up, all to eliminate as much vibration as possible**. A lot of this comes courtesy of previous experience too, having already suffered the shortcomings of certain practices.

There will be more coming along shortly, but I wanted to get the weekly topic taken care of first.

* If you went to that link and read the description, you might have noticed the line, “over a decade ago,” which I find amusing since it’s over three decades ago now. But that page was first written in the early 2000s, and I wasn’t recalling the date of the eclipse, so I played it safe. I could correct it now of course, but it still remains accurate, if a little misleading. It’s a reminder of how long I’ve had this website, though.

** Just the normal operations of an SLR camera, digital or not, induces vibrations, and these can be visible at high magnifications or long exposures. The worst is mirror slap, as the reflex mirror flips up out of the way to allow the light from the lens to reach the focal plane, where the sensor (or the film) resides. Mirror lock-up is an option on most decent SLR cameras – I even had it on the Canon Elan IIe – which flips the mirror up well before the shutter opens, to allow time for the vibrations to die down. With the 7D, this is manually timed: one press of the shutter release flips up the mirror, and the second trips the shutter, so the delay is up to you, and I was using around five seconds for most of the frames the other night. When you’re looking through the viewfinder and you can see how long the vibrations last from just nudging the camera, you’re convinced of the value of this option. But remember to turn it off at the end of the session ;-)

Routine patrol

Al Denelsbeck

While this doesn’t happen daily, I frequently do a patrol of the sprawling acreage of Walkabout Estates to see how things are coming along (as well as watering all the ‘tended’ plants, which can take some time anymore.) It’s not the best of ideas to ‘watch plants grow,’ really, because they’re better off being seen at least a week apart, but it’s necessary to know what might need tending.

potted hydrangea
I think this is an ‘Early Rosa’ variety of hydrangea, but whatever – it’s The Girlfriend’s, and it got an early start in the greenhouse so it’s positively bursting now. It’s potted, and staying on the back deck to keep it away from the deer, who completely stripped another hydrangea that we had out front – we thought fatally, but it appears to be bouncing back now, and gets regular treatment with the deer repellent.

[By the way, we use recipe #2 here, because it was the only one that wouldn’t spoil immediately, and boy howdy does it work – I mixed a batch middle of last summer and it protected countless plants. The deer will try a few leaves and realize it tastes wretched, then mostly ignore it for the rest of the year, though we reapply after heavy rains. One batch lasts a while, and I only dilute it into a spray bottle as needed.]

The hydrangea flowers are looking vibrant.

closer look at 'Early Rosa' hydrangea flowers
I prefer blues over pinks and reds, but this is fine, and variety is necessary.

Nearby, the hosta is taking over.

hosta forming backdrop for lawn ornament
Formerly planted, I had to pull out two of these plants to open up the fence for the shed to come in, and they remained in pots and thrived, so we left them there. Despite not being in the greenhouse, they got an early start themselves and both now spread like a meter wide, forming a nice backdrop for one of the lawn decorations – you know I was pushing for a heron/egret.

empty greenhouse shelves
The greenhouse sits almost forlornly, only housing a trio of starter pots to keep them away from the squirrels – everything else is out now, and most of it transplanted into the yards.

potted basil plants starting to recover
The basil plants out front struggled with both a cold snap and a slug attack, but appear to be bouncing back now, which is great because both The Girlfriend and I love basil. A large number of seeds are also planted in pots and making their start now. I miss the soil at the old place, which produced a forest of basil and allowed us to make our own pesto one year (which came out great!)

oak-leaf hydrangea hydrangea quercifolia showing flowers
Finally, we have two oak-leaf hydrangeas (Hydrangea quercifolia) in the yard, which you’ve seen before, and they’re blooming out nicely now. This one in The Jungle is spreading madly and healthily, but the one along the front walk needs to be shaped, and that can take place after these flowers fade. The flowers aren’t anywhere near as pretty as the Early Rosa up there, but the leaves turn gorgeous colors in the fall, not to mention the bushes get several times the size, so we’re good.

And, uh, you did notice that there’s a critter in every photo, right? That’s the other thing that I’m patrolling for, and will give you an idea what I find. All of these really came from just today, and just the yard, though with a little more time I’d probably achieve more variety.

Not even 24 hours

Al Denelsbeck

rising moon with 'ring' line of clouds
Man, I didn’t even make it a full day with an empty ‘Sort’ folder before adding to it, and I’m far from done for the evening. People tell me I’ve got a problem, that I “need to seek help,” but that’s nonsense – I can quit any time I like.

Just not right now – there are more images to capture. Can’t let someone else get them while I don’t. Plus it’s just photos; there are worse addictions out there. Not like this even is an addiction. There’s no comparison really. It’s a waste of time to even discuss this.

No, this is not the eclipse – it’s just after moonrise, with some handy little clouds to add character. Would you have passed this up? Okay then…

By the way, conditions are still up in the air (Ha!) It’s not clear what the clouds are going to do in the next few hours, so decent pics are far from guaranteed. We’ll just have to see…

You got a problem?

Al Denelsbeck

Tonight was sorting night, because I’d finally gotten enough photos in the folder to make it worthwhile, so I put on the Geologic Podcast and hemmed and hawed over whether each image made the cut or not – over a thousand before sorting, if you must know, though how many I retained I haven’t bothered to tally. I know there’s one post scheduled to appear, if by, ‘scheduled,’ you mean, ‘not scheduled, but eventually,’ and I edited the photos for that before the sorting began. And typically, I found a handful of others to feature, some of which I now include, because I hadn’t noticed the details until the sort.

parent Canada geese Branta canadensis with five goslings in water
This one I’d already prepped for a post, though I had nothing specific in mind other than, “This is the goose family I saw one evening.” Canada geese of course (Branta candensis,) with this year’s brood. We go in for a closer look.

quintet of Canada goslings Branta canadensis cruising between parents
No big deal, just passing by, no concerns. This is just the setup.

quintet of Canada goslings Branta canadensis with the first taking notice
And then, the first in line seemed to notice me on shore with the long lens, as if to say, “Is that legal public observation, or does the focal length now constitute invasion of privacy?” You may think I’m reading a lot into it, but I’ve seen that look before. You know, people really don’t like long lenses on public beaches for some reason…

quintet of Canada goslings Branta canadensis all starting to notice
In the very next frame, now three of them were doing it, with one more kinda getting into the spirit – I hadn’t noticed this at the time, or I would have started getting creeped out. You see this and you start to wonder if you can convincingly mimic an alert karate stance.

Speaking of mimicking, I note that the mother was not doing this, meaning they weren’t taking her cue, as is their wont, so why I was suddenly getting the side-eye, I can’t say. Maybe they were all Nikon supporters or something. Maybe it was the cargo shorts. You never know.

Casual shooting

Al Denelsbeck

Between being deep in projects, and not really motivated by the same ol’ photo subjects, I haven’t been doing a lot of shooting. I mean, there’s plenty to see around Walkabout Estates, but I’m trying to branch out a bit and do new things, which will likely require a trip someplace, while see that bit about projects. But I’m getting a handful of subjects while I’m kicking around here.

likely pregnant Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis on planter
Right out front, a Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) has been appearing regularly on or near the Japanese maple, and I’ve been watching its girth carefully. By now, I’m almost certain: it’s a female, and she’s pregnant, though you didn’t hear that from me. Of course, I am very unlikely to see any follow-up to this, because she isn’t about to give birth on the front steps, so I won’t get confirmation until the newborn ventures out, probably weeks from now. It’s still good to see the progression though.

A few meters off, another was perched on one of the branches where I’d attached a mantis egg case.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis perched on branch with Chinese mantis Tenodera sinensis ootheca
This was the ootheca/egg case that didn’t seem to fare well this year, and with the anoles hanging out so close, I’m skeptical of the fate of the survivors as well – they’re too likely to be anole food. That’s how it goes, though.

You’ll notice how dark this one is, and it’s almost certainly due to the nights being chilly so the anole was darker to absorb more solar radiation in the morning. My suspicion that this was also a female was soon dismissed, however.

likely male Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis displaying dewlap
Several days back, while observing an anole on the back fence, it started displaying with its dewlap, like seen here. Typically, this is either a territorial or courting display, but at the time, I could spot no other anole (which doesn’t mean a lot) and the displaying male seemed to be more oriented towards me. I had a vague suspicion that this display was intended for me, telling me to get lost, though I’d never heard of them doing it for humans. And then today, this one did the same, and again, I found no indication of another anole – indeed, this one had been basking until I ventured too close, and the overall color doesn’t fit with the other reasons for displaying that I’ve seen. So now I’m on a quest to determine if this really was the case.

In the early evening, I spotted my next subject and vowed to go in and get the macro rig, then forgot about it for a while. When I finally returned, it took me a little bit to find it again, and once I did, the subject was reluctant to give me the poses that I was after.

male magnolia green jumping spider Lyssomanes viridis under leaf
This is a male magnolia green jumping spider (Lyssomanes viridis,) which I haven’t seen too often before. Unfortunately, this frame is slightly confusing, and I apologize for that, but between the gusting wind this evening and the spider’s reluctance to keep facing me, this was the best that I got. You can tell it’s a male through the oversized chelicerae, the long appendages with the brown stripes running down them, and the pedipalps, the smaller arms flanking the chelicerae with the club ends that are the same hue. While I glimpsed this during the session, I didn’t capture a decent image of the wandering eyes. The wind kept video out of the question, so I let this one be after a handful of shots.

Out front, I was delighted to spot something in a drain trough that I’m not sure I’ve ever spotted in NC, which is curious since they appear all throughout the area. So I captured it for a quick closeup session.

ring-necked snake Diadophis punctatus coiled up in terrarium
This is a ring-necked snake (Diadophis punctatus) – very slender, narrower than a pencil, and only a bit longer; I think this one topped out at about 25cm, but I didn’t try measuring it. It was definitely not complacent about being handled, writing constantly and defecating on my hands (the smell of which takes forever to eradicate,) and it got only slightly more cooperative in the terrarium – it took long enough to get the head out into plain sight. I wanted one other detail, but it wasn’t going to happen without a lot of playing around or, for preference, a handler, but The Girlfriend doesn’t like snakes, even as small as this one was, and wouldn’t have appreciated the aromatic treatment of her hands. So I have just the barest illustration for you.

tailmof ring-necked snake Diadophis punctatus showing hint of yellow underbelly
The belly of ring-necked snakes is a brilliant lemon yellow, even more vivid than their necks – one day I’ll show this better. But I wanted this one to stick around and it was already pretty anxious, so I released it immediately after these images into the same location as found, and we’ll see if it appears again later on.

Dark of the moon

Al Denelsbeck

If you’re in the eastern half of the US or Mexico, eastern third of Canada, or anywhere in Central and South America, there will be a total lunar eclipse on Sunday evening (May 15th) – see here for times for your area. The moon will be passing deep into the Earth’s shadow, so totality will last over 90 minutes – you can use Stellarium to plot the directions and altitudes to see if you can lay out a nice tableau.

Present weather reports call for partly cloudy conditions here that night, so we’ll just have to see how that develops. Maybe I’ll be back Tuesday with some eclipse pics, maybe not.

I’d recommend focusing manually on the full moon before the eclipse begins, checking the images at high magnification as needed, and when you nail focus, lock that focus position and leave it alone. Bear in mind that, at totality, the exposure time may stretch out pretty long, long enough for motion blur from the passing moon to soften the image, so boost ISO as it goes closer to totality to keep the shutter speed as short as possible. Set White Balance to ‘Daylight’ to keep the colors accurate.

Screen capture from Stellarium plotting double eclipse
Stellarium revealed another little tidbit: somewhere just before midnight EDT, the moon will eclipse a 6th magnitude star while totally eclipsed itself – this may be worth capturing on video (lock that tripod tight!) While everything in the sky moves east to west, the moon is slightly slower than the stars, so the eclipsed star (HIP 76033 A, if you need to know) will disappear against the lower left portion of the moon, seemingly backwards. This is also why the lunar eclipse itself seems to progress backwards from the apparent motion in the sky.

So, have at it, and good luck!

near-total lunar eclipse of November 2021 showing distinct earthglow
This was last year’s, not-quite-total eclipse

Visibly different, part 19

Al Denelsbeck

pair of pileated woodpeckers Dryocopus pileatus in JN Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge
Our opening image today comes from 1995, my first trip alone to Florida, dedicated to nature photography. I was starting to get serious about it, but was still using older Olympus equipment and print film, and this was taken with a Vivitar 75-260mm lens. I was in JN “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island and lucked onto this pair of pileated woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus.) I was absolutely delighted, not just to photograph one for the first time, but to get a pair in such good conditions. I initially believed this to be male and female, but I now suspect, from appearance, that the one on the left is a juvenile. Pileateds are large, almost the size of crows, and have distinctive calls and habits, but they remained at least a bit secretive every place that I’d lived.

Notably, immediately after this visit, I went literally across the street to a wildlife rehab and education center, CROW (Clinic for the Rehabilitation of Wildlife) and attended a presentation that was conveniently scheduled for only a few minutes after my arrival. I was active in wildlife rehab at that point and took the opportunity to examine their facilities and efforts, including chatting with one of the presenters for a while afterwards. We did this in sight of a large outdoor cage housing a captive pileated, an adult male with an amputated wing that could not be released and thus served as a resident ambassador and conditioning assistant. The presenter there told me of the wild pileated that lived in the refuge and would come over from time to time to drum territorially on the main cage supports, driving the resident within nearly apoplectic since it could not reach the intruder on the outside of the cage to drive him off. Within minutes, I got to see this firsthand, though my camera remained in the car for some reason.

In the intervening 27 years, I’ve seen pileateds perhaps a dozen times, obtaining photographs somewhere around half that – one of the earliest posts here was about one visiting the place where I worked. It didn’t take too long before I considered the initial image up there to be pretty crappy, yet I wasn’t snagging any really decent portraits – better, surely, but not what I considered impressive.

Until last summer.

closeup profile of male pileated woodpecker Dryocopus pileatus
I probably don’t have any better illustration of my progress in photography than these, but let’s examine the significant changes. Equipment, surely (Olympus OM-10 with Vivitar 76-260mm versus Canon 7D with Tamron 150-600mm,) and finally getting a decent opportunity contributed hugely. At the same time, my ability to instantly recognize the calls, flight profile, and plumage as it passed in flight were major factors, as well as tracking the fleeting glimpses to realize that it had landed on the ground. And then, the careful and patient creeping forward, using treetrunks to disguise my movements multiple times, until I could get close enough to lean out slowly and fire off several frames; I wouldn’t say that this was my best accomplishment of stalking, but it certainly produced the goods. You can’t control luck, but on occasion you can control how well you exploit it.

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