Needs a little work

With the weather being surprisingly warm and clear and a not-full moon shining down, I elected to traipse over to the neighborhood pond and try my luck spotting the beaver(s). This time I did not have The Girlfriend to wield a light for me so I could focus, since she’d gone to bed hours before, so I strapped a powerful flashlight to the lenshood of the Tamron 150-600 and did a quick test out read more

A handful of pond stuff

Just some images from a few relatively recent trips to the neighborhood pond. I’m not sure if I mentioned, but while over there several days back without the camera in hand, I spotted a green heron that was far smaller than typical, and I’ve been trying to get a decent photo of it since. Or even see it again, which hasn’t yet happened. But while attempting this, I’ve been read more

Visibly different, part 18


I have a special treat for you today – I mean, aside from this delightful image – in that you get to learn a little important history. What you see here is the first professional sale that I made, published in a magazine (ask your grandmother what those were.)

Well, it was similar to this, anyway – it might not have been this exact slide, and they certainly printed it way read more

No one needed to know

So, here’s how my thinking goes sometimes. I have a few images largely unrelated to other things that can thus be in a short post, and was considering when to put them up. These kind of things serve as a buffer between longer, info-heavy posts, and I do have one of those coming – but I also have the Profiles of Nature post tomorrow, and that does the job too. And I’m also read more

Cleaning out the fridge

I mentioned earlier that I might do this, and you’d hoped that I wouldn’t, I know, but here it is anyway because I’m sadistic. In sorting video clips, I realized I had a handful (well, 25) that I’d been pleased to get – they just weren’t enough to justify editing and uploading, and while I’d waited to see if I’d get some more to make a complete read more

More random stuff from the pond


Just a handful of photos, other stuff that I collected on the same days that I was shooting the great egret and the turtles. More or less, anyway – I actually returned to capture the above shot of newborn six-spotted fishing spiders (Dolomedes triton) because I didn’t have the macro flash rig along when I first spotted them. Unfortunately, the nice composition read more

Motherhood

Well, there is a mother and babies involved, but in exactly what way, I cannot determine – no matter which, it’s definitely creepy to our human perspective.

Out the other night by the neighborhood pond with a headlamp, tracking down a calling frog, I found a black shape on the trunk of a tree that, on close inspection, turned out to be a very large spider.


It wasn’t read more

There’s something about May

What was it now? Oh, yeah: it’s over. And in recognition of this, we have the month-end abstract.


Up early one morning exploring Our Hosts’ pond during our trip earlier this month, I took advantage of the morning twilight showing the water bowing under the trivial weight of the spider. And that’s all I’m gonna say because I apparently can’t type seven read more

Damn noisy neighbors

… but I can cope with this kind of noise.

A few nights back, not too long after some long overdue rains, The Girlfriend and I went over to the pond to see what sunset was doing, and as the sky darkened… well, the video explains it better.


This was peak activity, but unfortunately the batteries in my video light were almost kaput, so more of the lighting is provided by the headlamp and read more

The last shuddering gasp

These are the final few photos from the brief trip further south, not really fitting any particular category so don’t expect a theme (like you normally do.) Mostly random, while still being in my deplorable style and subject matter.

While I did an earlier post regarding birds, this anecdote didn’t quite fit in. Our Host had been showing off the various nest boxes around their yard and read more

1 2