It’s still cool

Al Denelsbeck

It’s kinda funny how abruptly your perspective may change. I’ve been getting reminders of what today is the anniversary of all week, and to a distinct degree, I wasn’t all that motivated to recognize it – and then the rational part of my brain kicks the emotional part in the ass and tells it to go back to worrying about bad drivers.

What I’m talking about is that today is the sixty-first anniversary of the first human in space, this being Yuri Gagarin, who happened to be Russian. Despite my relative disregard of most things somehow deemed ‘newsworthy,’ I have been well aware of Russia’s reprehensible and utterly pointless invasion of Ukraine, and have quickly gone from a general ambivalence about Russia itself to outright despising it for its actions. But this is nonsense; that actions originated with Putin, with little doubt, and while it’s unclear how much of the ruling class is of like mind, the invasion can’t really be attributed to “Russia,” any more than insisting on the value of a border wall can be attributed to “America.” Moreover, it’s neither here nor there; Gagarin’s flight happened a few generations before this ‘administration’ came into power, and even if Gagarin himself would have been wholly in favor of the invasion (he died in 1968,) it has no bearing on what he accomplished, indeed, what the entire Soviet space program accomplished.

That’s the weird thing that we have a hard time getting over, because we want to slot people into simple categories, and I still fight with this all the time despite knowing that it’s stupid. This very trait is coming more and more into focus with the current ‘woke’ culture in America, which concentrates on playing st. peter and pronouncing final judgment on any and every public individual. But everyone is capable of both beneficial and detrimental actions, and trying to determine the ultimate tally (or much worse, considering that any detrimental action outweighs all others) is asinine and counterproductive – I went into this at length before. Gagarin might have been a closet baby-eater, or even given funds to Pat Robertson, but he was still the first human in space, and nothing takes that away from him. The point really is, it was an amazing accomplishment (with most of the credit deserved by the technicians and scientists in the Soviet space program,) and that’s what we should be recognizing: the accomplishment, not how it weighs on the grand scoreboard of anyone or anything.

[I feel the need to point out that, of all the various ‘firsts’ regarding space programs – first human in space, first female in space, first lander on another planet, first space station, etc – the Soviets/Russians hold nearly all of them. Pay attention to how often we here in this country qualify our accomplishments with “American,” as well as clinging to our major accomplishment, landing on the moon (not a planet,) in fierce denial of how many others we came second in. It’s pretty amusing.]

It would be easy to sidetrack onto other, semi-related topics (I know – I just deleted a couple,) but the message within this post is, regardless of anything else, 61 years ago today, humans entered space, and we’ve been advancing our knowledge and abilities ever since. It’s certainly far more worthy of notice than a National Day of Prayer or some other complete waste of effort.

* * *

Last year, I mentioned wearing my Vostok 1 commemorative pin for the day, and failed to follow up on that, because someone did indeed ask what it was; I was brief (no, really) but informative in my response. There’s less likelihood that I’ll run into anyone today, and the potential for a more jingoistic reaction following my explanation remains, but I can cope with that.

Crappy lemonade

Al Denelsbeck

As mentioned earlier, there was an outing scheduled for the other day, that I had to postpone by two hours, and like far too many bosses on an early Friday afternoon, the sun had vanished and wasn’t coming back. It also wasn’t anywhere near as warm as it had been earlier in the week, so things weren’t looking too promising. But you know what they say about when life gives you lemons…

It was Mason Farm Biological Reserve (again,) before most spring growth had really gotten into its swing and with a dearth of animal life. In searching for anything at all to make decent photos, I spotted a cluster of white in the woods well off the path, and traipsed over there to investigate. It turned out to be a stand of Atamasco lilies (Zephyranthes atamasco,) also called rain lilies or easter lilies – supposedly common, but I don’t recall seeing them before.

Atamasco lilies Zephyranthes atamasco against flood bog
Portions of the Reserve were still flooded from the recent rains, being a lowland bordering a decent creek, but the footing was largely solid. These were large for wildflowers, though about average for lilies I guess – big enough to attract attention from 30 meters off, anyway.

cluster of Atamasco lilies Zephyranthes atamasco
They weren’t really enough to offset the grey of the day, but they remained better than most subjects visible.

Further on in a perpetually flooded channel, a very old fallen trunk was playing host to some opportunistic plants.

wild violets and grasses growing from semi-submerged dead tree
Getting back far enough to show the setting meant minimizing the already-small wild violets (Viola papilionacea,) but you know what they look like and the cluster of growth in the log was what I wanted to illustrate. There had been plenty of fresh water added not a week earlier and it still looked like that – the flow just wasn’t impressive. Small disturbances hinted at minnows within, but nothing wanted to show itself, and certainly no frogs were calling or basking.

The only thing that showed serious activity, aside from a cluster of sparrows, was a trio of juvenile eastern grey squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) that had been tussling with one another at the mouth of a hollow trunk, though they ceased before I could get the long lens affixed. They still scampered around almost randomly, though, and I took the opportunity to shoot down the length of the log as one appeared at the far end.

juvenile eastern grey squirrel Sciurus carolinensis peeking from opposite end of hollow log
They yet appeared closer, and posed semi-cooperatively, though they didn’t resume the wrestling that I was hoping to get.

pair of juvenile eastern grey squirrels Sciurus carolinensis pausing at end of hollow log
I remained ready, and at least captured a sequence of typical sibling behavior when the closer one decided to head back down the log.

sequence of eastern grey squirrel Sciurus carolinensis trampling over top of sibling
There was plenty of room to go past alongside, but trampling over top was obviously more fun, though you can see evidence of a likely swat-in-the-ass bestowed by the littermate. As the youngest of four kids, you know I can relate, no matter how distant those memories are.

But… yeah, that was about it. Not going to update the gallery pages with anything from this outing – my little roadside stand isn’t raking in enough for a comic book. It’ll get better soon enough, though.

Because I like frustration, I guess

Al Denelsbeck

While going through several older slides and pages of negatives, I decided I’d sit down and catalog the various trips to Florida that I took, trying to tie rough dates to the countless images that I had. First off, let me say that what I’m referring to are the trips taken while I resided in North Carolina; I’d lived in Florida from 2002 to 2004, and did plenty of photos then but, due to numerous circumstances, very little travel across the state, so some of the images that I’m quite pleased with date from before that residency.

I’ve never bothered with a journal or anything of the like, so reconstructing dates is usually accomplished by comparison and events that I can pin down better, such as determining the launch of a satellite during one of my earlier trips (the first, actually, since going down with my family from New York in 1978, and I can pin that down because I’d recently seen the initial, theatrical release of Star Wars*, to give a specific example.) Many of my slides have date stamps on them of when they were developed, and during those times I got my slides developed quickly, so close enough. But sometimes there is no date stamp, and of course negatives have nothing of the sort. Nor did I get the negatives into books promptly, so they’re not in chronological order, which would have helped immensely.

Which means there’s an early trip in there that it took some time to pin down as 1995, mostly from my employment records – I’d started a new job late in 1995 and didn’t have vacation time, so it must have occurred before the switch. As for pinning down a month, well, I doubt that’s going to happen, though I know it was in the late spring through summer months, because the dive off Key Largo happened then.

While doing all this, I was also regenerating my triptych for each, the rough path and various stops around Florida. I think most of it is accounted for, between my memory and the date stamps, but there are a few tantalizing gaps. For instance, I’m still curious about the evening photo outside Jacksonville, which is a weird place to be at that time – normally it would be morning on the return leg, because I had at least seven hours of driving ahead, so presumably I stopped someplace that night, but where? No photos that I’ve found back me up. Also, there seems to be a huge gap along the west/Gulf coast, last known photos probably being Venice Rookery. I know I’d have planned some stop between there, halfway down coast, and the cross-state leg to Jacksonville, but where? It might have been Hillsborough River State Park – I recall some stop in there being too boring (and the weather too grey and drizzly) to shoot much of anything. I’d been working from a list of birding locations downloaded off the internet for that trip, I know. Teasing my memory is another brief side leg, probably on the way down, someplace on the northeastern portion of the state, a floodplain/swamp area so thick with mosquitoes they were getting in the photos. I had thoughtfully applied the DEET repellent before leaving the car, and was cursing it because it failed to keep the little bastards at bay, but then I realized that, swarming as they were, they weren’t landing, so it worked, as long as the constant whine and vision incursions were tolerable.

But yeah, this is the kind of stuff that I do, for reasons unknown, though I feel satisfied when I’ve pinned things down. It hasn’t been enough to make me start keeping a travel journal, though, so your call on the psychological conclusions over that.

.
.
* I just feel the need to offer this little insight, since this is a trivial post anyway. When Star Wars (no, not “A New Hope” – it did not gain that subtitle until years afterward) was released, it was all done on 70mm film in big reels, with a limited number of those to distribute. Once the first theaters to receive them had finished their scheduled run, they shipped the reels off to the next theater on the list, and of course, the major cities all got them first. We did not live near a major city, so while Star Wars was released in May, it did not hit our area until August. The way that we knew what was currently playing at any given theater was through the newspaper listings – few theaters then even had a recorded message to let people know the titles and times, those came sometime in the 80s. In fact, my brother and I traveled to a little theater a couple of towns over that somehow nailed a ‘print’ (that’s industry jargon) long before it hit the larger town that we normally viewed movies within, probably the only time I ever attended that theater, and the memory of it vied with my knowledge of the town, perhaps ten years later, when I worked there and I knew there was no theater to be found – much later I determined that there had been, but closed down in the interim.

I saw Star Wars three times in the next year, the only movie I’ve ever done that with. One of those was at a drive-in, a terrible experience in nearly all accounts, and certainly not worth it in high summer when the sun sets too late to really squeeze in two showings of a film, so the first starts before it’s dark enough to see the projection clearly – you couldn’t even read the opening crawl. Stupid idea all around.

The other two

Al Denelsbeck

I told you this was coming…

The Girlfriend and I did a brief trip to Jordan Lake a week back, just checking out conditions before it turned cold (again) – there really wasn’t much to see, and the light angle was wrong even if there had been, but I did a quick snap of the pine pollen turning the lake edge into something from a horror drama.

pine pollen staining water and trees
That’s not one of the mentioned subjects, it’s a bonus, like how products advertise “10% more!” than a measurement 10% less to try and sound generous without doing anything (or, you know, like everything from Apple.) Below is the intended content.

Since she hadn’t seen it, we did the minimal hike over to check on the osprey nest, which showed no activity at all even though, to my eye, it looked like it was active.

nest of osprey Pandion haliaetus
We watched it for a minute or so, hoping to see someone peek their head above the rim, and of course I shot a couple of frames for closer examination when back home. But I had lowered the camera (the lens gets heavy, okay?) when I suddenly spotted someone arriving, which happened quickly because the surrounding trees prevent a decent view of the skies further from the nest. I swung the camera up hurriedly and fired off a few frames as soon as I got the bird in the viewfinder, knowing that the autofocus probably hadn’t tracked well, but hoping anyway since I had a scant second.

osprey Pandion haliaetus arriving with nest material
As feared, it wasn’t sharp – this is full frame and it gets no better when cropped, but at least I snagged the arrival with a good talonful of nesting material.

Now, often enough with birds, it’s the male that builds the nest and uses it to convince the female that he’s a good mate choice, but there are variations and I’ve never confirmed this for osprey (Pandion haliaetus,) so I can’t assure you that this is the male – the plumage on this species provides no clues. This isn’t far from Walkabout Studios, but it’s not a quick jaunt either, so staking out the nest to watch for mating behavior isn’t a casual effort. Not to mention that this vantage is easily visible to the ospreys too, and may make them antsy, so brief visits are better, at least until I’m sure that eggs have been laid. But our construction foreavian went ahead and distributed their new material as we watched.

osprey Pandion haliaetus arranging nest material
It flew off not too long afterward though, possibly because of our presence, more likely to keep working on the nest until sunset, maybe a little of both, but we took our cue and headed back. One down.

On the same warm day as the one daylight shot from the previous post, I also chased a Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) around Walkabout Estates, if by, ‘around,’ you mean, ‘among a handful of fenceposts not two meters apart,’ and it’s me saying it so I do.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis basking on fence
Full confession: I only noticed it fleeing at my approach, having failed to spot it before then, but in my defense I wasn’t really looking either (I was actually watching for the reappearance of the racer, so the ground, not the fence.) But I remained motionless, knowing anoles, and sure enough it popped back into sight within a few seconds and resumed its basking location on the fence. I kept my movements slow and could get in pretty close before it started getting a little twitchy, whereupon I backed away just as slowly and let it enjoy the solar radiation. I was there to run the siphon hose anyway, so stepped outside the gate to do so. On returning, the anole was beginning to think it should be blending in better and had changed color – not too thoughtfully, given the substrate, but it’s likely instinctual anyway.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis quickly turning green
Color change in anoles is more linked to environment and mood rather than ‘camouflage,’ but if the mood change is between, ‘absorbing sunlight,’ and, ‘fleeing predation,’ the difference may be moot. There isn’t two minutes between these two frames, to give a faint idea of the timeline, though I’ve seen them change in mere seconds. That time, it was a faceoff in Florida between a Carolina anole like here, and the brown anole that’s crowding them out in that region. Both of them were doing their territorial signalling with the underchin dewlap, neither giving an inch, but then the Carolina changed from bright green to dark brown within two seconds, which prompted the brown anole (that’s actually the species name, Anolis sagrei,) to launch itself at the Carolina and start a mad chase around the tree. Curiously, the territorial coloration seem to be different, so what exactly the Carolina anole said with this change to dark brown, I couldn’t tell you.

But my subject here had decided I wasn’t quite what it wanted to see so close. Deciding to vacate its basking spot, it slipped up the backside of the fence posts, frequently peeking out to check if I had gone.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis on fencepost having just consumed an ant
While this might be construed as commentary, I’m pretty sure my model had just consumed an ant while slinking up the fencepost, and was working it down – far be it from me to interrupt a meal. I even readied myself for video in case it spotted more ants, something that I want to capture on film, but it was not to be that day. There is little to no warning of it happening anyway – I know, because I’ve seen it a handful of times – and for something the size of ants it takes only a fraction of a second. Something like a moth, more of a mouthful, may take some effort to scarf down and present more opportunity, but I still have to be ready when it happens. Maybe someday soon I’ll do a stalking session with a longer lens, see what happens.

That catches me up, though there’s a student outing tomorrow so we’ll see what that might produce.

Can’t keep up

Al Denelsbeck

I go through the winter struggling to find things to post, with virtually nothing to photograph, and then when spring arrives and I actually have a small lineup of recent photos, I’m busy messing with other projects. Go fig.

No, it’s not that bad – most of these are, what, two days old? But yeah, they could have been up a little sooner.

We had another spate of warm weather, including overnight, which certainly is enough to get one’s hopes up, yet there is a frost warning for the next two nights, so I’m still not going to plant anything yet, and the treefrogs are probably getting sick of this shit and preparing to move to Florida, after getting so well established at Walkabout Estates too. Can’t say that I blame them.

After one warm night, they could easily be found in various locations during the following day, loathe to go secrete themselves anywhere.

adult green treefrog Hyla cinerea snoozing in Japanese maple
This particular green treefrog (Hyla cinerea,) sporting a fashionable bronze hue, might have been kinda forced to be out, since the Japanese maple that it’s napping within had been removed from the greenhouse the day before, and the frog might have been tucked into the mulch in the pot. There were plenty of others around the yards, though, so I’m not ready to take blame just yet. Later that evening as the nocturnal treefrogs began to get active, we have an entirely different pose (and pupil dilation, for that matter) from the same specimen.

adult green treefrog Hyla cinerea in dynamic pose
This one is kinda of revisiting two previous images, the one found here and of course the gallery photo, though neither one of them has that distracting twig in the background. Aren’t I supposed to be advancing my skills?

pair of green treefrogs Hyla cinerea on interior walls of greenhouseEven if it had been removed from the greenhouse, there were/are still more in there, evident as night fell. I left the door open for a little while that night in case they decided they wanted out, but really, they’re better off within as long as their metabolism remains slower – there are few bugs for food, but the heater will keep the temperature from dropping too low until we’re quite sure the frosts have ceased for the season.

There were quite a few more out in various locations, most of which I’ll spare you because, seriously, I think there’s a few hundred images of green treefrogs in previous posts, and now I should concentrate on getting more behavioral photos (though I haven’t avoided these, I just haven’t witnessed much at all.) But we’ll do the slightly fartsy stuff for a moment.

juvenile green treefrog Hyla cinerea at base of tulip leaf
This little juvenile posed reluctantly for me when I first ventured out, perched on the edge of a planter on the back deck, but when I came back around it had moved into a more camouflaging position and I used the leaf (I think it’s a tulip) for more of an indication of depth and scale. Body length maybe 30mm or so.

Another, not too far away, was not blending in at all on a piece of decorative driftwood.

juvenile green treefrog Hyla cinerea on driftwood
I’m a little torn on this one, as to whether it should go vertically like this or horizontal. The actual position was mostly diagonal, and I was far from shooting in any kind of ‘normal’ position to get this, so anything goes at this point. If you want an accurate effect, push your monitor off your desk (don’t be lookin’ at this site with no damn phones,) and lean over it bent almost double and cock your head at an odd angle. If the monitor landed mostly face-up then you’re close.

Anyway, I have two other subjects that’ll be along shortly, in case you’re weird and don’t like treefrogs, though why I should cater to you in such a case is beyond me.

Visibly different, part 14

Al Denelsbeck

female ruby-throated hummingbird Archilochus colubris at flowers within NC Zoological Park
Our opening image comes from 2005, from within the Sonora Desert exhibit in the NC Zoological Park in Asheboro, thus it counts as ‘captive’ and/or ‘habituated’ even though, like many birds, it had the run of a large arboretum area – your call on how to classify it, if it’s important. I’d seen this female ruby-throated hummingbird (Archilochus colubris) visit these unidentified flowers briefly, and so I maintained a discreet distance and waited it out. Sure enough, it returned, and I got my first hovering and feeding hummingbird shots. Considering that this was with the fairly basic Canon 75-300mm, not stabilized or fast or anything, I was pleased, and the profile perspective is nice.

So now we see where this led:

female ruby-throated hummingbird Archilochus colubris at blue salvia flowers
Not… hugely different, to be frank. Certainly better detail and lighting, but this is also a tight crop of the original, while the one above it is nearly full-frame. It was only five years later, this time at the NC Botanical Gardens in Chapel Hill, but it’s not captive at all, and likely not habituated either – this was a wild specimen visiting the salvia plants. Again, I saw an initial visit and staked the plants out, knowing that hummingbirds tend to return within a few minutes. And the equipment isn’t significantly different either – Canon’s image stabilized version of the 75-300 this time, though on the Digital Rebel/300D instead of slide film. Being able to boost the ISO to 400 easily (without switching films) gave the most distinctive edge, but being in a much quieter area probably helped. I distinctly recall that it was something like 33°c out there, in patchy shade in August, and I was sweating copiously. Note, too, that hummingbirds tend to visit only briefly, and pretty much randomly, so autofocus was out (especially with that complicated background) and a tripod pointless, so I was pleased to nail the focus this well.

It’s funny that I haven’t advanced beyond this, despite numerous attempts. I have plenty of feeder shots of course, but that’s both kinda cheating and not terribly marketable nor fartistic, so my goal has been to get them at flowers, preferably with good surroundings. To that end I’ve planted countless varieties of hummingbird attractors, few of which have thrived, and none of which have actually attracted any hummers routinely. As I type this (possibly long before it actually posts,) I’m prepping for a large bed of cardinal flowers this spring.

But I’ll throw in this next one for giggles.

female ruby-throated hummingbird Archilochus colubris approaching feeder in front of Mamiya camera
When I was getting ready to sell my Mamiya 645E camera body, I needed some illustrative pics of it, naturally, and it was the right time of year to stage this. So I set it up on the tripod aiming the right way, took a seat with a good perspective, and waited it out. Cooperatively, it only took a few minutes before another female came along, and I snagged this frame, then simply cropped out the feeder – dramatic! I’m also still after a good shot of the ruby-throat that gives the species its name, but that’s only found on the males, and curiously the light angle needs to be just right, or the feathers appear almost black. And no, direct flash is not the right angle – I know, I tried.

Monday multichrome

Al Denelsbeck

pink azalea blooms
Justa buncha pics, celebrating spring – little exposition, so the TL;DR crowd can have their safe space too. These azaleas are from the expansive lawns at Walkabout Estates.

Meanwhile, these aren’t big enough to show off much yet, but it’s a sign that the ginkgo tree (Ginkgo biloba) that The Girlfriend bought last year is doing fine.

new buds on ginkgo biloba tree
She just purchased another of these this past weekend, a dwarf variety that may remain potted on the deck.

We can’t have April without another appearance of these little flowers.

flowers of blackhaw viburnum Viburnum prunifolia
But this time, I can tell you what they are, since you’re old enough now: they’re from a blackhaw viburnum (Viburnum prunifolia,) which seems far too harsh a name for the pleasant little tree, but parents can be cruel.

But enough about the expansive yards here. How about a couple of photos snagged before meeting with a student?

red Japanese maple leaves against blue sky
This Japanese maple was backlit in places, so I maneuvered around until I could get a nice contrast of the colors, then cropped down pretty tight to concentrate on just a handful of leaves. If you stare too long you’ll burn out your red and blue retinal cells.

And then, considerably less color, but still cool – today’s favorite.

exposed tentacly roots of unidentified tree
I don’t know what this tree is right now, but I’ll find out. And I can’t determine why I like root systems such as this, but it’s probably something suppressed from my childhood that’s best left unexamined.

Man, I didn’t even break 250 words – whoops, there we go!

A test of patience

Al Denelsbeck

Not much of one, but enough, anyway. You’ll see what I mean.

So in checking out the back twenty of Walkabout Estates today, I noticed that the sound of a leaf fluttering in the breeze was being remarkably persistent, and I looked down to find a sizable black snake stretched out across the dried grasses and leaves, vibrating its tail in a warning manner. It’s not just rattlesnakes that do this, though they have the handy noisemaker to enhance it, but this one had some dried leaves and so it wasn’t quite as ominous. Apparently it had been sunning itself and was trying to tell me to get lost, even as it slowly nosed into a patch of grasses. I was (stupidly, once again) without my camera, so I didn’t have the opportunity to get photos of it stretched out, but it was at least 1.5 meters in length and 4-5cm in width, and so I considered it an eastern rat snake.

I went in and grabbed the camera and came out cautiously, to find the snake peeking out from where it had secreted itself – I got two frames before it drew back in again.

northern black racer Coluber constrictor constrictor peeking from ground clutter
That’s a standard garden hose that I was using to drain an overflow trough, and in midbody the snake was about twice the diameter. It withdrew right after this, so I went back in to get the long lens and tripod to do this right.

Unfortunately, the place where I had the clearest view and the best light (unlike the photo above) was also in the snake’s line of vision, and it could see me set up and squat cross-legged on the ground, so it wasn’t venturing forth as quickly as it just had. This became a test of patience, both of us trying to out-wait the other. Eventually, I could just see the nose of the snake within the shadows.

northern black racer Coluber constrictor constrictor barely visible behind grasses
I didn’t realize it at the time, but these photos made it apparent when I examined them closely: the snake had holed up in a drainage pipe, an extension of the downspouts from the house, completely obscured by the winter detritus – that explained how it had concealed its significant bulk so completely.

northern black racer Coluber constrictor constrictor peering from drainage pipe
After another minute or so, it advanced very slightly, just enough to show that it was advancing. We’re not talking fast, here.

Another few minutes, and the head was raising slightly.

northern black racer Coluber constrictor constrictor lifting head from ground clutter
Part of the problem was, every once in a while, it would waggle its head from side to side slightly, which I wanted to get on video, but this meant changing my hand positions and likely alerting the snake that I was still indeed animate, whereupon it would hold still again for a while.

northern black racer Coluber constrictor constrictor lifting head higher
By now, i was getting enough of a look under its neck to realize that this was not an eastern rat snake, but instead a northern black racer (Coluber constrictor constrictor.) Which was a little surprising to me, since I’ve never seen one anywhere near this size, impressive even for a rat snake. But it helped explain the time that was elapsing, since this species is cautious by nature.

northern black racer Coluber constrictor constrictor with head well raised from grasses
Naturally, with clear photos I could go back and compare the chin markings against those of the black racer that I’ve (twice) found in the vicinity. Aside from being noticeably larger (not outside the realm of possibility,) this one was marked differently, so I’m pretty certain it’s not the same.

And not once did it ever twitch away from facing directly towards me. I was a good five meters off, to avoid making it hesitant, but this was obviously not enough. It has been fifteen minutes since the first peek out of the drainpipe, and no motion that it made was enough to attract anything’s attention.

northern black racer Coluber constrictor constrictor very extended from ground
Now another eleven minutes had passed, with the snake extended better than 20cm off the ground, and we’d reached an impasse: my sitting position wasn’t the best, and my right leg was in some serious pain, to say nothing of the 3D printer running on my desk that really shouldn’t have been unattended that long. Conceding the victory to the snake, I started packing up the equipment, but it wasn’t until I stood up that the snake finally withdrew into the pipe again. As I was shifting position, I thought something had hung up on my foot and was dragging around, until I realized that it was my foot, fast asleep and feeling nothing from my cross-legged perch. So, little lesson: make sure that you’re really comfortable when you do stuff like this. But hey, I made a decent attempt anyway.

The weather was quite warm today, so much so that I opened the greenhouse to vent a bit, and noticed some of the lizards scampering around – below is a juvenile American five-lined skink (Plestiodon fasciatus) that played hide-and-seek with me around the deck, but proved a lot easier to get a sharp photo of than the racer.

juvenile American five-lined skink Plestiodon fasciatus sunning on deck
That brilliant blue tail is a defensive mechanism, but not an indication of toxicity like the bright colors of many other species. Instead, it detaches easily when the species is attacked, and will writhe energetically for up to several minutes when it does so, hopefully attracting the attention of the predator while the skink slinks away. A new tail grows back within a few months, and it’s unclear whether the skink even feels the detachment. Only the juveniles have this bright coloration, though – presumably the adults have learned how to avoid attackers. I also don’t know if the adult tails detach quite so effortlessly, though I’ve definitely seen adults regrowing their tails.

Anyway, that was this afternoon’s encounter, and little lesson. I’m looking into a nice massaging lounge chair for my shooting blinds.

Don’t look at me

Al Denelsbeck

If you have noticed that any place where there should be video is instead showing some home page of Vimeo, my video clip host, this is not my doing, and I can only say that I just noticed it. I’m guessing Vimeo either has some glitch in its system, or has decided to change the way that embedded videos are handled without bothering to inform anyone. I’ll wait it out a day or so and see if it fixes itself, and if not I’ll see what I can do. Not looking forward to the prospect of changing over fifty embed links for all the clips that I’ve uploaded in the past few years…

This is why I consider keeping anything in “the cloud” to be stupid, and just asking for trouble. Servers fail, business go under, and in some cases, they simply help themselves to your info regardless. I’d rather control how and where my stuff gets stored, and yes, every one of those clips sits right here on my main computers, plural, and will get uploaded to a new host if necessary.

Anyway, sit tight, we’ll see what happens.

Be sure and tell ’em Large March sent ya

Al Denelsbeck

It was on this very day, seven years ago, in a deep fog just like this, that we had the first abstract we ever seen.

Well, okay, it was the first of the month-end abstracts, even though I didn’t know it at the time, and quite frankly, it puts a lot of those following to shame, and today will be no exception. So what do we have as March’s golden parachute?

long exposure of river oversaturated
Ehhhhh, it’s… showing the effort, anyway. Actually it’s a grab shot during the Eno River outing, slowing the shutter speed down to soften the water, but I was working without a tripod, allowing the image stabilization to keep it sharp, which was definitely pushing the function a little too far. And then of course I boosted the saturation just for drama. Plus I could do without that little branch on the right, which I missed at the time – cropping it out would take away the frame’s balance, though why (if I was already shamelessly GIMPing it all up) I didn’t just remove it in post, we’ll never comprehend.

How about another attempt? [Your avowals that this is totally unnecessary fall on deaf ears.]

twisty misshapen roots looking creepy
One of these days, I’ll determine what kind of tree this is, because I’ve seen it many times before, always on the banks of a river or stream. The roots are often exposed, though this may occur from erosion long after the tree is established, and always quite Cthulhu. I can’t believe that spellcheck actually has that in there…

Anyway, I knew this one was in the running for the month end, because of course it was – there are multiple faces you can wring out of it if you try, and probably even more if you’re partaking of various recreational pharmaceuticals. If you are, I’d suggest playing the sound file here while you’re at it. And upload the reaction video.

Aw, what the hell – we’ll revisit the first in only the Blue channel.

same river ripples in only Blue channel
That’s a bit more abstract, isn’t it? Or am I reaching?

1 … 87 88 89 90 91 … 318