Yesterday was officially the first day of spring – I could have let you know yesterday, but it would have been very late yesterday (like an hour ago,) and only if I’d scrambled, which I wasn’t inclined to do. But regardless of equinoxes and calendars and whatever silly flower someone might prefer, we have the only dependable guide to the start of this season, to wit:
Yep,
While grabbing something out of the yard tonight by the light of the headlamp, I happened to check out the backyard pond, because it’s reasonably warm and raining, which is usually enough to stir any resident frogs. And sure enough, at least one was sitting idly in the shallows, but another might have skipped into the water at my approach. So I went back inside and got the
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
As mentioned at the end of the previous post, I did indeed go out and get a few frames as intended, and then some more. And then I collected a particular subject for detail and did even more. But some of those go along with some video clips that I obtained as well, and editing the video is going to take a little time as it always does, so I decided to split these into two posts.
A couple of evenings
Mr Bugg and I had a sunset outing to Jordan Lake yesterday, which was unsuccessful in capturing a sunset – it occurred, but not in the slightest bit photogenically. Before that, we were checking out what kind of other activity was available, which also wasn’t much, and mostly too distant for the efforts. But I’ll include a couple of frames for the sake of it.
This
… or, what?
Hearing some activity from the nearby pond and it being a warm night, I decided to grab the camera, with just the Mamiya 80mm macro attached, and go take a peek at what was going on. Just so you know, all of the photos here were captured in less than forty minutes – one of those effortless excursions.
On getting close, it became apparent that all of the noise was emanating
The other day, I did finally get out to accomplish something, and successfully too, but I’m not really counting it as winter activity – I’ve definitely done better. The temperature got amazingly warm, and so I ventured out again in search of mantis egg cases (oothecas) to prime the property for spring. Of course, I had the camera equipment along, just in case, but subjects remained
I was asked if I was going to do a post regarding the pine pollen this year, and I considered this kind of redundant and basically said, Only if I get something remarkable. And now, I’ll let you decide, because damn, it’s been a heavy year. North Carolina is virtually
Posted with a nod to the Inestimable Mr Bugg, who told me weeks ago that he was going to do his ‘Frog Friday’ topic for August, but then apparently the server lost his posts until recently. Meanwhile, I waited on my various frog pics so as not to upstage him, and now appear to be copying him instead. Ah well.
Our first is the most recent, a peculiar portrait that I couldn’t pass
… 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