Estate Find LII, oh so late

Al Denelsbeck

Like, twelve hours later than my typical posting time – I am wracked with guilt. But to play on your sympathies, I haven’t been feeling well the past day or so, and so snuck in a couple of naps when I should have been working on this video. And of course, video editing takes so damn long in the first place, or at least, it does for me…

To add to that, nothing particularly new with this one, mostly experiments with a different video rig for night shooting, showing the refinements that still need to be made.

Further refinements will be along before too long; I said I had two methods to improve things, and the second has shown great promise already – but now we’re all out of Estate Finds, so I guess you won’t see that after all…

camcorder, video mic, and flashlight on inexpensive video stabilizer
A note about these cheap little video mount/stabilizers that you see here, basically a mount for the camera hanging from a handle: the point is that the weight of the camera acts as its own gravity stabilization, something that can also be done with a decent weight extending below the camera itself – you need something well below the fulcrum, which in this case is the handle that the other things are attached to. The problem that I created was that the flashlight weighs as much as the camcorder, almost entirely eradicating the weight below the fulcrum. I am in the process of changing the position of the flashlight – the mic is far too light to figure against this noticeably and can stay where it is.

camcorder on inexpensive mount/stabilizer with flashlight and video mic, marked to show key controls on camcorder
Another factor, though much less significant, is the location of the controls on the camcorder, the video start/stop button (marked in red) and the zoom control (blue.) The Canon HFS100, like many such little units, is made to be held in the right hand up near your face, with your hand through that strap on the body, so the thumb rests on the start/stop and the forefinger on the zoom control – but of course, dangling low from the left hand on that overhead handle puts those controls in a more awkward position. Not bad, if you’re not in the habit of using your right hand to steady the rig better, until you need to move said hand to operate the controls, which is what caused some of the fumbling seen in the video. With the flashlight moved to the bottom, this may no longer be necessary – we’ll see within a few days.

The absolute best improvement so far has been the Canon HFS100’s ability to maintain focus, meaning I don’t need to be doing it manually like I do with the Canon 7D DSLR, and this helps hugely. It’s not always perfect, especially when tracking, giving priority to its built-in stabilization instead, but it snaps in pretty quickly when the movement reduces enough. Also useful, the camcorder can be used with the external HDMI monitor that we’ve seen before – some of these clips used that, some didn’t. I’m also intending to try using a monopod, provided I can rig it so the tilting of the camera is not restricted, but that will be more modifications, since the handle mount/stabilizer has no attachment point. 3D printer to the rescue…

Now, there were several things that did not get captured on video, since we went down a few times at night to redistribute corn without the rig in hand – isn’t that always the way? I’m hoping to correct this very soon, possibly even tonight after this posts, but the rig won’t be updated yet.

And that wraps up this year’s weekly post topic, since it’ll be next year before Friday rolls around again and we’ll be on a new weekly topic. This is not to say that I won’t sneak in the occasional Estate Find anyway, because c’mon, but it won’t be weekly. And I’ll be back with more video refinements soon enough.

Over to others

Al Denelsbeck

I’ve been busy as all-git-out recently, no time for much of anything else, especially blog-related, so I’m doing a quick hand-off to a couple of videos that fit well.

First off we have George Hrab, he of The Geologic Podcast over there on the sidebar or indeed right here, with, “I Don’t Believe in christmas,” a song of his from many years ago and quite pleasant, belying the impression you might have gotten from the title. But we have a conundrum as we do so, because his original video from 1990 (?!) features the full musical accompaniment, making it much richer in my ears, but the video quality is less than stellar, shall we say? Bank surveillance footage of the suspect, is the right impression. He redid the video in 2022 with about a 7,000% increase in quality, but this time around, he was doing it live with unaccompanied folk guitar, which I’ve never been terribly fond of. So, both are below: choose whichever you like, or listen to both and tell me I’m full of shit, or don’t listen to either of them and tell me I’m full of shit anyway because, hey, it’s the webbernets and exactly the place for that.

Next up we have Tim Minchin, who’s been featured here once before, and I really should have more of his stuff, but somehow his appearances and videos thereof never seem to cross my path, and I have to go looking for them instead. His song, taken from a live performance in Australia, is, “White Wine in the Sun,” and please note: Each year, proceeds from the sales of this song at this time of year go to benefit those on the autism spectrum, so please feel free to download it from the service of your choice.

[There are several versions of this out there too, but this one appeared to have no intrusive horseshit YouTube ads – now you know why I host my own stuff on Vimeo.]

That’s all for now, so I’ll leave you with a heartfelt Happy Holidays, for whatever holiday you choose to celebrate or indeed if you celebrate none at all and can thus consider that a holiday thereby creating all sorts of logical issues. I’m glad you’re here to read this, and I’ll provide something more soon. Ish.

Freaking holidays, man

Al Denelsbeck

So, with today being the winter solstice and thus having the fewest daylight minutes of the year, we celebrate that the days are now getting longer from here, as it’s typically put, which goes to show you how we can’t handle our own language; they days are the same length that they always are, except for a few picoseconds, but the axial tilt of the planet means the ratio of daylight to not-daylight is the widest it can get, in favor of the not-daylight. Back in June we had the same thing only in the other direction, but I never feel like recognizing that the daylight hours are now losing their commanding lead over darkness.

Anyway, for this momentous event (and because I’ve been busy with many other things and thus not photographing much of anything,) I tried to see if there were any sunspots visible, but by the time I recalled that I should be trying, the sky was hazing up and the sun had descended behind the trees – see that bit about axial tilt, above. So I opted for cheating, and went back into the folders for a pic taken on the summer solstice back on June 21st. And couldn’t find any. In any folders. Did I really go for that day in the summer and not shoot anything? I mean, nothing at all for several days on either side, even. Was I doing something then?

Finally, I found one, and it helped answer the question.

crescent moon and Venus through arched window in early morning
In the Space folder I found this, only it was from the 22nd instead. Just a quick grab shot early in the morning through The Girlfriend’s Sprog’s window, after waking up on their couch – the crescent moon with Venus tagging along, but this was one of only two attempts not marred by motion blur due to slooooww shutter speeds in the dim twilight. What it indicates, however, is that I’d traveled back to the old Less Stately Walkabout Manor to do some work, preparatory to selling it, an overnight trip so I had time to get everything done – I couldn’t sleep there because there wasn’t any furniture and I’d had enough of inflatable mattresses for a while. The summer solstice (the day before) was spent partially on the road, but mostly painting and fixing odds and ends. No wonder I had no pics.

Anyway, my head’s been bothering me all day, so this is what we get. Enjoy the holiday and looking forward to the sun rising earlier and staying up longer, like… well, not a teenager, that’s for sure, nor some old fart. Who rises early and stays up late? Probably those insufferable ‘go-getters’ or people relying on narcotics. No analogy that works well here. But enjoy it anyway.

Recall those wicked winters…

Al Denelsbeck

… what, five days ago, when the temperature dropped to -6°c overnight, and got barely above freezing during the day?

Yeah.

six adult yellow-bellied sliders Trachemys scripta scripta basking on Turtle Island in 21 degree c weather
It was 21° as I took these this afternoon. North Carolina, man…

Six yellow-bellied sliders (Trachemys scripta scripta) had piled onto the limited real estate of Turtle Island to enjoy the sun, showing that they’re adept at detecting the air temperature even while the water temperature was still recovering from its ice shield just a few days back. Are they triggered by the sunlight to at least poke their noses up and test the air? I admit, I’m impressed.

Not five meters away, a floating log was hosting its own collection.

seven eastern painted turtles Chrysemys picta picta basking and stacked on floating log in 21 degree c weather
Seven here, in this case eastern painted turtles (Chrysemys picta picta,) all less than a third of the mass of the sliders – their belly plastrons were roughly the size of my palm. Waste no time.

We go in a little closer.

three eastern painted turtles Chrysemys picta picta and one yellow-bellied slider Trachemys scripta scripta basking on floating log in sunlight
Actually, as I uploaded this I realized I was wrong: you can see by the stripes on the face of the ‘taller’ one on the left that it’s another slider instead. I’m pretty sure all the rest are painteds.

The Carolina anoles (Anolis carolinensis) had also wasted no time, and were scurrying around in many places, but I caught this one basking on the grape arbor we erected late this summer.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis basking on nylon stringer of grape arbor in 21 degree c weather
We used some old nylon rope as the stringers, but we’ll probably replace it before spring. The anoles, however, have already expressed their delight in this simple structure, and will probably lose their shit when the grapes leaf out and the insects are plentiful. Since I ended up evicting several that were sleeping in the matted leaves in the base of the pots that held the grape plants all summer (while we waited for the cable provider to get around to patching the line across the yard, right alongside the arbor – you can piece the story together from there,) I’m glad that they’re seeing the benefits of the arbor at least.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going for a swim…

Estate Find LI

Al Denelsbeck

As we come to the penultimate Estate Find for the year, I have to admit that, while a few of them were punted or downright skipped, there was still a surprising amount of new finds, observations, behaviors, and so on. And here we add another new species, at least to me and to the blog:

My exposure to the varied duck species of North America has been fairly limited, and so I wasn’t in the habit of looking for the subtle differences displayed here until they became a little more obvious at that one point in the video. My go-to guide for avian identification has been The Sibley Guide to Birds, which has easily been the best desk reference that I’ve ever had; it features not just male and female plumage differences, but juvenile to adult and seasonal as well, plus range and calls. Nonetheless, it remained a little inconclusive in this case since the illustrations didn’t fully display that color difference between the cheeks and crown, while at the same time they enhanced the body feather variations, which are normally quite muted. Luckily, I had a variety of images that I could refer to, such as this sequence:

sequence of images of American black duck Anas rubripes and female mallard Anas platyrhynchos flapping wings in water
The duck to be identified in the back, with a known female mallard in the front, both flapping their wings simultaneously in close proximity and thus allowing both comparison and a glimpse at feathers normally hidden. We see the black duck has no with banding alongside the deep blue secondary feathers on the wings, and has white underwings; no other species has these two traits together. Leg and bill color and relative size also helps, and finding more images of the species online, including at CornellLabs’s All About Birds site. That said, it is far, far easier to flip through the pages of the Sibley Guide to compare plumage among many species.

profile of American black duck Anas rubripes swimming in backyard pond
We’re curious to see what else might be showing up in the future. Neighbors down at the opposite end of The Bayou have seen hooded mergansers in the past, and I’ve seen a flotilla of North American ruddy ducks not too far away, though those are certainly more inclined to open water. We’ve got one more Estate Find to go, though this really isn’t setting any limit on what can be added, just what I can still feature within the year. We’ll see, won’t we?

But cute helps

Al Denelsbeck

Another video here, which makes this the [insert accurate count here] one for the year – it looks like I’m branching out into videography more than a little bit. And yes, more of the same subjects, but listen: I’ve spent very long periods of time featuring insects and spiders and lizards and worse, so at least we’re dealing with something cute right now.

Semi-routinely, when we go down after dark to distribute corn for the morning duck frenzy, at least two nutrias are around, and amusingly, it’s at least one of the bebbies that comes up immediately upon hearing (or seeing, or smelling) the corn hit the pond edge – I have another clip that will show here eventually, when I have more of the night video to compile. Meanwhile, one of the stills, timed for the duck in the background:

one adult and four juvenile nutria Myocastor coypus on pond edge in late afternoon scarfing down corn
What we find curious is how little the adults seem to guide the behavior of the chillun. While any adults tend to maintain a distance as we’re near the pond edge or when we make any noise at all, at least two of the juveniles will boldly come up, though they can’t really see us in the headlamps’ glare, and start feeding onshore within five meters of us, sometimes even while we converse quietly. Which is weird, because I’ve spooked them by moving my arms and creating the faintest of noises from the nylon jacket rubbing against itself, but talking seems to bother them less. Go figure.

one adult and four juvenile nutrias coypu Myocastor coypus feeding on pond edge
And one of the stills that I got between clips, as the fourth juvenile comes ashore in the gap between the others. There is definitely one of them that seems much more wary than the others, and perhaps a tad smaller – that part’s hard to tell. Are these all the same litter? Not sure – they don’t dependably appear together at all, and in fact, it was a week or more before we were sure there were more than two. It’s also rare that both adults appear together. We’re still piecing together the observations as we go.

Let’s hope it’s the coldest

Al Denelsbeck

As intimated earlier, I did get out to do a few shots while the temperatures remained in the ‘frigid’ class, eventually peaking above freezing, but not by a lot. And while we’ve already well surpassed the record for images uploaded during a year, we’ll take any opportunity to blast it out of the water, because why not? The ducks were not only conspicuously absent for nearly the entire daylight hours, they apparently hadn’t made a run on the corn (which did happen right before sunset, however.) But one of the red-shouldered hawks (Buteo lineatus) has been hanging around hopefully, taking a chance whenever possible to stake out the yard until we actually see them there and chase them off – to the best of our knowledge, they have neither succeeded nor attempted to snag a duck meal, but we know they’re thinking about it.

red-shouldered hawk Buteo lineatus staking out pond edge looking for ducks on frigid morning
This gives a small indication of why they can be hard to see, and even harder to photograph as well – they prefer to sit well into the canopy, even when there are no leaves or needles, to obscure themselves close to the trunks, but we’re fairly familiar with what the trees look like in the backyard now, and usually spot the ‘clump’ where there hadn’t been one before.

This one allowed me to get almost directly underneath:

red-shouldered hawk Buteo lineatus staking out pond edge looking for ducks
Soon after this frame, the hawk vented forth a few quiet squeaks in protest before flying off to another location on the opposite side of the pond, but at least I got around far enough for a catchlight.

The pond surface wasn’t completely frozen over, but close, and there were no indications that overnight visitors had been churning up the water to prevent this, either, so they apparently wrapped it up before the night wore on too far; we’d seen a pair of juvie nutrias cruising around when we distributed the corn at about 8 PM last night and opted to leave them to it. But the evidence that they’ve been visiting routinely is around, in a lot of places, if you know what to look for.

bald cypress Taxodium distichum knee with outer surfaces gnawed away
That’s a small ‘knee’ of one of the bald cypress trees, not far out into the pond, showing that something has been gnawing on it. Now, I believe we’ve seen this behavior from both the nutrias and the beavers, so this is inconclusive, though I think we’d lean towards nutria because they seem to only want plants and softer stuff, so this seems to be as far as they go with hardwoods. And while this wasn’t very far out into the water from the edge, another wasn’t at all.

bald cypress Taxodium distichum knee scalped by either nutria Myocastor coypu or North American beaver Castor canadensis, alongside author's foot
Yeah, that’s my foot alongside, showing that whoever accomplished this was right up on shore – which still doesn’t prove it was a nutria, though slightly more likely. Over on Turtle Island, however, the evidence was almost entirely in favor of beavers.

Turtle Island showing distinct trimming from North American beavers Castor canadensis
You can see the various small saplings truncated sharply, a habit that nutrias never display. And since we’ve seen a beaver feeding among the nutria bebbies one night, it’s safe to say they’re the culprit here.

Quite close to Turtle Island was something a bit curious, too.

ice on pond broken from underneath
Something broke through the ice, and from the underside as well, right alongside shore. And another, a couple of meters away.

ice on pond broken through from the underside
Both of these holes were roughly 30cm in diameter, so big enough for an adult beaver or nutria. I looked hard, and in no location on the frozen surface was any further evidence shown – no other breaks, no rough areas where the water had been stirred up just before freezing, and no apparent entry point. Plus, this wasn’t an area that I’d seen either species visiting, and no evidence of them having come ashore for any plants thereon. Curious.

While out, I checked on the greenhouse, which was getting nicely toasty under the administrations of bright sunlight, and the anoles within were showing no recognition that it was still below freezing outside.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis active within warm greenhouse during subfreezing temperature outside
There was no reason for them to be hesitant, after all – my glasses immediately fogged over as soon as I stepped inside.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis within warm greenhouse
Even without the sunlight, the heater within is set to keep things above 10°c, though last night it was fighting and only managed about 7° – that’s enough to send the anoles into some tight shelter to conserve their body heat, only to pop back out as soon as it was a bit warmer.

Meanwhile, the potted Japanese maple therein showed a couple of early scouts for the spring as well.

tiny first leaves of new growth on potted Japanese maple tree in greenhouse
Those are the colors of new leaves, right up on the very top, with some red buds visible down below. Funny to see this early, and I expect the bulk of them will still wait a couple of months to pop out, but a good sign at least.

And finally, I’ve been monitoring the almond tree to see when its last leaf will fall; it’s not there yet.

cluster of resilient leaves on top of almond tree
It stayed impressively green until after the second frost, when it finally started showing signs that it recognized the colder weather, but even with these temperatures and some strong wind gusts, it’s still hanging onto some leaves in a fashionable manner – I’m impressed.

And that was it for me – I’d exhausted both the most obvious photo subjects and my tolerance for the cold, which hasn’t been very high the past couple of days. But hey, what is that, eleven photos? I’m still keeping things moving here. And while I doubt this is the coldest that it’ll get this winter, especially with such an early start for this latitude, it would be nice if it was, wouldn’t it?

Anachronism

Al Denelsbeck

We need these right now – it got down to -6°c last night, and is only slightly better as I type this.

ripening Key lime Citrus × aurantiifolia alongside new blossoms of same in greenhouse
I took these only a couple of days back to illustrate how confused the Key lime trees (Citrus × aurantiifolia) seem to be, producing new blossoms right alongside fruit that was still ripening. Make up your mind!

ripening Key lime Citrus × aurantiifolia alongside new blossoms of same in greenhouse
This is in the greenhouse of course, and the heater within struggled last night but kept things at an acceptable temperature – there are still some limes and better than half of the lemons waiting for peak ripeness. By the way, if you’re wondering about the color, Key limes turn a bit yellowish when they’re ripe, looking like a half-ripe lemon or perhaps a cross between lemons and the ‘classic’ limes you find in the grocery stores. This color means they’re very close to peak.

There’s ice out on the pond, and I may get out there for some pics a little later on, when I’ve mentally prepared myself enough. My sinuses respond poorly to the cold, so there’s a certain level of discomfort to pain in going out in these conditions. I’m expecting great accolades for any images that result from that…

Found footage

Al Denelsbeck

I can’t believe I missed these clips when putting together the compilation. Well, okay, I can, since I forgot that I attempted to get some underwater footage of their zoomies with the Ricoh WG-60 waterproof camera, but the pond water was far too murky for that. Anyway, a brief interlude:

Listening to The Girlfriend’s baby talk is still amusing…

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