Tag: white-tailed deer

One step behind

Al Denelsbeck

I’ve been trying to get this video finished and uploaded for a couple of days now, and just tonight I had finished it off but, before I had even uploaded it, obtained even more clips that really should have been added. Instead, they’ll be along within a few days – otherwise I’ll never catch up. And yes, this is more backyard pond video.

This is to note that I added the mounting plate to the bottom of the custom rig that goes on the bottom of the cheapo video mount/stabilizer, the bit that I forgot when designing it – it was a simple addition, permitting the use of a monopod or tripod with the flashlight mount. And it works quite well.

I made a small mistake in the main design, in that the flashlight needs a little more vertical play for best aiming, but otherwise everything works great. It’s also easy enough to handle and doesn’t require a few minutes of preparation like using the off-camera monitor does. I still need work on my smooth handling and especially shifting my grip (even if it’s just remembering not to do it while the video is recording, or editing that bit out when I do.)

Audio, however, is still under refinement. I tweaked my normal settings for the voiceover track here, possibly nothing that you’d notice but I think this makes it smoother and easier to edit – Audacity has a ton of settings and I’m slowly learning what works best, but I’ve cut my editing time in half while also improving the quality, so that’s a win. Onsite audio is another matter, and I’m toying with a couple of ideas. The clips I got tonight (that you’re not seeing yet) made me realize that I might want the parabolic dish instead, despite the fact that this cuts the lower frequency tones a bit. I also want to try out a couple of ideas for cutting the background road noise; one is to find the frequencies where it’s strongest and simply cut that band out (potentially making the audio seem strange,) and the other is to record a background baseline on another recorder, separated from the video rig, and use that to subtract from the audio track on the video. In theory, this will wipe out all of the background traffic noise, but in practice? Plus there’s the whole idea of setting up a separate recorder, and most especially, synching it to the video clips which would be started and stopped at will. This might be a stupid idea.

Overall, however, I’m pretty psyched that I can walk out the back door and get stuff like this. As long as I don’t encounter any bears…

Let’s catch up with the wood ducks

Al Denelsbeck

I know I tend to cycle around the same handful of photo and video subjects herein, but let’s face it: I have easy access to several different forms of wildlife without even leaving the property, so this is what I’m going to have the most photos of, as well as being able to observe behavior better than I ever have before. At least I haven’t fixated on just one subject…

So yes, it’s the wood ducks (Aix sponsa) again, with video of course, and it’s a little long because I haven’t done an update in more time than I thought.

Some notes about the audio: the Azden shotgun mic, at one point, was producing a lot of hiss and crackle, likely from bad contacts within the XLR to 3.5 adapter cord, but I think that’s corrected now – I have no way of monitoring the audio that’s being recorded by the 7D, so this stuff sneaks in. For various clips, I switched back and forth between the Azden and the parabolic dish with the Sony lavalier mic, finally settling on the Azden based on some tests with thunder. Both, however, produce a certain level of background hiss in combination with the 7D. I won’t go into detail here, but I found a way to correct this to some extent, though it was imperfect for some of the clips in this video and will be refined further with subsequent work. It’s also time-consuming.

Meanwhile, we have some images of the players.

trio of male wood ducks Aix sponsa, one perched in tree, catching late afternoon light breaking through trees
Like I said, they usually avoid the light that makes their iridescence shine, so I’m always on the lookout for when they don’t, though conditions don’t always allow the best views.

male wood duck Aix sponsa perched in tree catching afternoon light
This is naturally cropped a bit, since I can’t get this close even with the 600mm – working on various ideas for that. I need something like this (shamelessly snagged from the webbernets):

small cubby disguised as bush, from unknown online source
… though I’d either have to get into it long before any ducks (geese/deer/nutria/etc) showed, or have a tunnel access – not happening anytime soon. I’m still considering a couple of viable options, but the biggest aspect right now is having an opening for the long lens that also allows a bit of tracking yet doesn’t attract the ducks’ attention; this might be nigh impossible.

Some better views of that buck, during a different visit:

white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus buck sporting very fine single antlers
I think those delicate little antlers indicate that this is this season’s brood, less than a year old, and whether this was any of the fawns we saw visiting earlier I cannot say. It wasn’t inclined to pop into the brighter light, I can say that.

white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus buck sporting very fine single antlers
The folklore when I was growing up in central New York, where deer hunting is a religion, was that the number of points on the antlers denote the number of years old the deer was, which is total nonsense, one of the many reasons I pay little attention to what people tell me unless they’re an actual biologist.

Back to the ducks.

quarter of wood ducks Aix sponsa catching near-direct sunlight on pond and showing variety of colors in plumage
Can you see why I want to get closer? The colors that pop up from this species, especially the males, are stunning, post-modernist renditions that vary depending on how the feathers are sitting. Plus the iridescence on the head that changes with the light angle (which is hell to try and mimic if you’re painting it.)

Even though the geese have only been back for about two weeks, we can already get a lot closer to them than the ducks will allow, in part because geese don’t fear too many things, and they only slipped off to a safe distance when we approached the pond edge to put down more corn, so they could actually see us do it. This allowed them to associate us with corn and thus become slightly more habituated to us, though nowhere near as much as earlier in the year. The wood ducks, on the other hand, simply fly off when they see us virtually anywhere in the yard and so never even get the chance to habituate; it appears to be possible, but we’re not sure what it might take, nor are we sure that we really want to do this, given that they’re hunted routinely and so should be wary of people.

Anyway, still examining options to get closer for better pics and video – we’ll see what happens.

Estate Find XLV

Al Denelsbeck

We hope you’ll join us in welcoming back our old friends – unless of course they’re not actually our old friends, in which case we welcome some new ones, even when they’re not as friendly.

As I said in the video, the Canada geese (Branta canadensis) have been missing from the environs since May – the last time they appeared was to bring by their new brood (or complain about it,) and then they simply stopped showing up. Parenthood, I guess.

Canada goose Branta canadensis returning to backyard pond
This was about the time last year that we first started seeing them, though, so perhaps it’s their normal schedule. They showed no recognition of us, so we’re thinking these are a different flock than the ones coming by earlier in the year.

[We’d semi-habituated the earlier ones by offering corn, and they took to this quickly, coming up close for handouts. The ones that appeared this week show no inclination, and made their way further off across the water as we approached the pond edge. A couple of them seemed to pause and pay attention when the corn started pattering on the ground, though, so maybe this might be only a matter of time.]

trio of Canada geese Branta canadensis remaining wary at approach of photographer
By the way, I mis-spoke in the video when I said the patch of sunlight was coming at late afternoon. It was actually early morning, and facing largely east, but the sunlight was a patch reflecting off of the storm door on the porch, I think. I knew this, but in handling umpteen different video clips I forgot which one I was using. More are coming, too. Meanwhile, go back and watch around the 3:42 mark in the video for one goose to ‘goose’ another right in the ass to get it to move on a little.

With the weather getting crisper, the wood ducks have changed their habits too, being out more into the sunlight a bit and hanging around longer, but they’re still largely morning and early evening visitors. The geese, however, come later in the morning most days and may be back and forth all day long, being seen the most in late morning and typically just hanging out on the pond as if bored.

five Canada geese Branta canadensis almost lined up as they drift off
Now, I’ve spoken before about doing most of the pond shots from the upstairs bathroom window, because it has a pretty good vantage and is fairly subtle, though at times I suspect the wood ducks have seen me up there. For a while, I couldn’t even do any photography if I hadn’t have opened the window before they arrived, because they heard and saw it opening and took flight. This is their rough perspective:

view of back of Stately Walkabout Manor from the perspective of anything on the pond
The bathroom window in question is the dormer to the right of the chimney so, you know, this is not exactly an obvious threat. I enlisted The Girlfriend’s help in getting some pics from down at the pond edge to see just what the ducks could see, and it’s far less than I thought.

view of bathroom window with author behind camera within
From having seen the ducks get spooked right as I was adjusting the zoom, twice, I thought they could see my arm moving. But what can you see here? Okay, let’s brighten it up a little (lot.)

view of bathroom window, lightened to show author within at camera, by The Girlfriend
This is the exact same image as above, just brightened considerably, and you can just make out my arm, the lens, and the microphone (and my mug of course.) I’m considerably less convinced that the ducks could see a damn thing. And no, there are almost no occasions when the light is coming directly into the window – most times the ducks are too early for the sun to break through the trees, and in the evening the sun is well behind this spot. There have been just two occasions when the sun was illuminating me in there, and I was careful not to move more than a hair. We’ve also seen the ducks spook over nothing apparent at all, and as I said, their average time scarfing corn is less than 100 seconds before they scatter, invariably, so it almost seems they have a ‘hazard limit’ to how long they’ll be onshore.

Now, the change to shooting position:

view of back side of Stately Walkabout Manor with lattice removed from under deck
See the difference? It’s the patch of missing latticework from underneath the deck, which permits roughly a 30% closer vantage than the bathroom window, and if you look closely, you can see the silvery leg of the tripod in there, at least in this light, though this was taken much earlier than I was attempting to shoot; this was taken aiming close to due west, the sun being almost directly to the left, and by the time I was doing the initial tests the sun had moved a few hours onward, more behind the house. Near as I could tell, the goose and the wood ducks could still see me in there; I wanted to be further back and deeper in shadow, but the narrow gap meant I would restrict the field of view more by doing so. Part of the reason I was doing this was to open up the view, most especially of Duck Island which is normally obscured by the trunk on the right here; the other reason was to get closer without spooking the critters. Anything else would require a complete blind to be set up, and then I’d have to be in place well before anything showed because I wouldn’t be ale to get to it unseen. This spot is bad enough: getting into it (from the right side, behind the chairs and camellia bush) is still tricky and fraught with the possibility of spooking the ducks, plus it’s hell on my back since the space is less than 150cm. Just bare earth down there, no room for even a stool, and I’d have to remain for an hour or so. I’ll probably just stick to the bathroom.

Sorting finds n+14

Al Denelsbeck

Finished another sorting job last night, 1,600+ images, and so another load of sorting finds, pics that weren’t featured at the time that they were taken, is now awaiting our attention. We’ll do these in chronological order.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis sheltering between two camellia leaves at night while in the process of shedding
The camellia trees/bushes/whatevers, for some reason, aren’t as popular sleeping spots for the Carolina anoles (Anolis carolinensis) as the Japanese maples, even though the anoles can frequently be found hunting on the camellias during the day. There was one notable exception, a half-size anole that liked one particular branch of a camellia near my office door, and on this occasion it was actually in the middle of molting, shedding its skin in the tattered rags manner that they do. I hadn’t realized this in the headlamp, but the flash revealed it. Roughly half the time, the anoles either hear me approaching or take note of the headlamp and so are awake for my shenanigans, but rarely even twitch – they just remain alert in case it’s needed.

The property plays host to this particular plant, which is kind of cool looking.

collection of orange jewelweed Impatiens capensis blossoms at night
These are orange jewelweed (Impatiens capensis,) and they tend to bloom in late fall, as well as being a sparse vine, so they remain unnoticed until the blooming season. These appear almost entirely within The Puddle, the small overgrown pond in the middle of the backyard that, throughout the summer, might be a little marshy but only resembles a hollow filled with trees and vines and reeds; it looks more like a very small pond in the winter when much of the foliage has died off (and, reportedly, there is an old fountain buried in there, though we have yet to expose it.)

orange jewelweed Impatiens capensis blossoms at night decorated by dew
Orange jewelweed is also one of the plants that appear to exude excess moisture from certain parts of the leaves, and don’t ask me what this is about, but at times it adds a little charm.

The nutria are semi-regular visitors for the corn that we throw down, and I caught one during their chronic scratching sessions.

adult nutria Myocastor coypus scratching vigorously on pond edge
We’ve never seen anything scratch as much as nutria do, which is why we labeled the mated (we think) pair that visits, ‘Itchy’ and ‘Scratchy.’ We can’t tell them apart, so the first one to appear is always considered Itchy for convenience, and since they only occasionally show up together, it kind of makes us think Scratchy is a rare visitor, even though they could simply be alternating appearances.

Just a few minutes later, this one swam off but was spotted up at the upper end of the pond; we rarely ever seen anything up there, but the tattered condition of the duckweed, with the occasional trail cutting through it, tells us that somebody is going up there regularly, probably at night. It could be the nutria, it could be the beavers, it could even be muskrats – we’ve seen them all. But this time, it was definitely Itchy. Unless it was Scratchy.

nutria Myocastor coypus appearing to shovel duckweed into its mouth as it swims
I was shooing freehand with the long lens, which is absolutely not the time to be shooting video, but I wish I had been, since this one appeared to be shoveling double-handfuls of duckweed into its mouth as it swam. Not terribly surprising, since they’re herbivorous, but it was an action that I haven’t seen and seems slightly odd (and a bit uncouth.) This is of course a tight crop and suffers from that a little, but you can still make out both forepaws visible in front of the snout.

white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus fawn at edge of pond
We have several white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) that are semi-regular visitors, also after the corn, but they don’t come as frequently as expected. Still, there are the orphaned ‘Pirate Twins,’ and a doe with her single fawn, all almost full adult size now. And one other, but since we’re doing this in chronological order it’ll have to wait. This was one of the twins I believe, for once captured while I was in the lawn rather than from the deck or upstairs bathroom, and it’s waiting to see if I’m going to pose a threat. It looks overcast or late, but it’s just under the deep canopy, because a minute later I also got this:

collection of yellow-bellied sliders Trachemys scripta scripta and eastern painted turtles Chrysemys picta picta sunning themselves on Turtle Island
As the overnight temperatures dropped at the beginning of this month, the turtles suddenly reappeared in their usual spots on Turtle Island when the sun was available, and while this is a nice pile, it’s a far cry from the record (so far.) These are all yellow-bellied sliders (Trachemys scripta scripta) and eastern painted turtles (Chrysemys picta picta) – in fact, there’s only one painted that I’m sure of, the little guy right there in the center with the red markings, but a couple others might be present.

Now for one curiosity that I didn’t post at the time.

unexplained gaps in the rainbow effect of eyes of green mantidfly Zeugomantispa minuta
Back when I was doing the detail shots of the green mantidfly, I got a couple of frames that showed these strange ‘dashes’ in the rainbow diffraction effect from the compound eyes. Now, dark spots from compound eyes are common, usually called ‘false pupils’ and likely resulting from a visual path straight down the tubes of the ommatidia – the colors all come from the reflective interior sides of these deep tubes and so vanish when you have a direct view. But this is an exceptionally weird pattern for false pupils; I’ve seen them as a singular spot of course (mantids,) and a pattern of multiples for things like butterflies and cicadas and ambush bugs, but never a set of well-defined crescents. Does this come from shooting straight down from above the head? I have no idea, but it shows up well within the diffractive pattern at least.

Okay, so now we return to the deer.

male white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus six-point buck on edge of pond
The distinctive thing about this one is that it’s a buck, which have been exceedingly rare, especially considering how many does and fawns we’ve seen. This is only the second in the main part of the backyard, though another was spotted in the distance on the far side at the edge of The Bayou, and I have a skull from a looked-to-be-complete skeleton in that immediate area – that’s been it, much unlike the old place where they would often congregate. This was actually dusk, and the light register shows it, so I also tweaked it to demonstrate the difference.

male white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus six-point buck on edge of pond, color tweaked
It would take far too much work to look like full sunlight, but at least this shows how blue the light goes at these times, or under deep canopy; red and yellow get absorbed quickly, but blue scatters a lot, so outside of direct light the tones change significantly.

So that clears a few more out, plus it adds to the image uploads for October – which aren’t done yet. In fact, I’m going to go out right now and see about adding a few more on top of what’s already planned (it’s about 1:50 AM on a very misty night.) Stay tuned.

Estate Find XLII

Al Denelsbeck

You’ll notice that I corrected the roman numerals this time, after blowing it for the last two Estate Find posts – don’t ask me what I was thinking. And we have nothing new for this one, but we’ll feature two for the week anyway.

The first was done at the same time as the previous post’s pics, only about a meter or so away. I saw a flash of movement as I got closer, otherwise I likely would have missed this one.

juvenile green treefrog Dryophytes cinereus tucked down under water collected within base of elephant ear leaf stems
This is so bizarre-looking because this juvenile green treefrog (Dryophytes cinereus) had backed quickly down under the water collected at the base of the elephant ear leaf stems, which distorted the view a bit. I would have liked to have captured it above the water’s surface a bit, but the frog wasn’t cooperating.

That was with the Sigma 180 macro. I returned a little later with the 18-135, again watching the frog duck back down out of sight. This time the focal length allowed more of the flash’s light to get in there.

juvenile green treefrog Dryophytes cinereus tucked down under water collected within base of elephant ear leaf stems
I checked early in the evening too, but this guy had already headed out to do its damage to the local insect population.

And then we have more from the wood ducks, included again because the mob scene that now takes place really needs witnesses.

That is an almost disturbing number of wood ducks, and what’s startling to see is how they slip in almost unnoticed. They’re quite adept at using the existing cover to come in close, and will expand from a handful to a few dozen in mere seconds. And while occasionally we know what spooks them, such as the AC fan kicking on or the squirrels getting too excited, most times it’s a complete mystery why they suddenly all fly off, but it usually looks like one of them panics over something.

How many of these are the ducklings that we were watching earlier? It’s difficult to say, but if you look closely (especially right after they fly off farther into the pond,) you can see some males that don’t have as vivid or complete markings as the others, or seem a little smaller – these are likely some of the broods that were raised here this season. Most times, the pond is entirely quiet all day long, with the first calls that may be gathering the flock together starting in late afternoon. The video was shot just a little before sunset, but the ducks weren’t venturing out until the sun had dipped behind the trees, and it’s been made abundantly clear over the last year that this is completely intentional – it’s rare to see them in sunlight at all, so my attempts to get nice portraits that show off their iridescent feathers are usually thwarted.

Now, am I going to do a blind or something to get a closer, different vantage? Maaayyybe, though I’d have to be in position perhaps half an hour or more earlier and remain completely silent, with no movement showing, since we know how easy they are to spook. And simply the addition of the blind or camouflaging ‘stuff’ might be enough to make them too wary. I’ll think about it…

Mere trivia

Al Denelsbeck

As if most of my posts aren’t the exact same thing…

So, two purposes for this one. The first is a reminder that the Draconids meteor shower is going on right now and expected to peak tomorrow night, actually around 19:00 UTC on October 8th, which is 15:00 EDT, or 3 PM Eastern (because we’re somehow still observing this asinine clock-changing bullshit.) So okay, in the Americas, we probably won’t see much at peak unless we’re really lucky and one of those brilliant daytime fireballs occurs, but we can still be out when it gets dark enough and may see something. Will I personally get the chance? Probably not, but we’ll see.

The other purpose is to dump a few pics that won’t otherwise fit into a topic. The other day I went out to Goose Creek State Park to see if I could find anything, and the answer was, “Barely.” Really not much going on at that time, except for a handful of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) that viewed me with apparent confusion, unsure whether they should alert the authorities or not. One flipped me off with its tail as I attempted to get some captivating images.

young white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus swishing tail as it looks back at author
That nose came up really distinctly, like a gorilla offering a two handfuls of vanilla ice cream. Or is that just me?

When I got to the more scenic areas, the cloud cover was seriously rolling in and the light levels and color went to hell, so I was forced to skip any landscape shots. But I stumbled across an odd tableau of grasshoppers along one of the boardwalks.

trio of unidentified grasshoppers, potentially two males and one female, together on edge of boardwalk
It’s unusual to find a grasshopper that won’t leap away as you draw close, and quite rare to find a trio of them clustered together like this. I suspect that the larger one is a female, and the two smaller ones are courting males, but that’s just a guess. I also did a quick search to try and determine what species these were, but couldn’t pin it down from the photos that I got, all from this perspective. Possibly an obscure bird grasshopper, but that’s as close as I came. The sizes seem right at least.

But yeah, not a great day for activity at the park. I’d snagged this one before I left home, though:

six yellow-bellied slider Trachemys scripta scripta of varying sizes out basking on Turtle Island as the temperatures begin to drop
There’s six of them here, and they all appear to be yellow-bellied sliders (Trachemys scripta scripta.) As busy as Turtle Island was in the winter and early spring, the turtles stopped using it from late spring throughout the summer, though they’re back now. My guess is that, between the warmer water temperatures and the thicker foliage obscuring the sun more, the turtles saw no reason to be basking on the island, and were rarely found even on the logs that were receiving regular sunlight. But as the overnight temperatures dropped (and thus the water temperature as well,) they found that a good sunning session was welcome. There had been even more of them, but a few of them dropped off the island at my approach. We’ll see if we can top last winter’s record of nineteen on this little tussock.

That’s it for now; putting these up since I won’t have the video done too soon due to time constraints. It’ll get here.

See? Like this

Al Denelsbeck

After yesterday’s post that ended with damaging my brand new softbox, I repaired it, added some clips to keep the flip-up top from flipping up, at least when I didn’t want it to, and glued some coarse grit sandpaper to the top of the hotshoe to prevent slippage (it’s an accessory shoe that takes the PC cord, so I’m not doing this to the 7D body.) Then I went out to do some more tests, largely to make sure the flip-up top didn’t flip up when I didn’t want it to, and to see that the flash unit and hotshoe remained good friends.

While doing this, I pushed the count-of-bebby-anoles-on-the-property-in-one-night up to 49! I feel bad that I didn’t reach 50, because that’s a magical number donchaknow, and I really did try. Mind you, I’m purposefully excluding the full-grown adults from the count, because I’m taking note of the population boom, so the count was higher than that – or it could have been a little lower, since some medium-sized ones were in there and perhaps shouldn’t be, technically. I’m honestly not sure how fast the buggers grow, and have no way of differentiating them except in very specific circumstances like weirdly-damaged tails. Regardless, that’s a good number that I’m proud of, which only goes to show you how low my standards for pride are and, if you haven’t already looked at the image galley, this probably saves you the time now.

But okay, the flip-up top of the softbox was there for a reason, and it got exercised a couple of times last night, and this is one of the occasions:

pair of orphaned white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus browsing in yard at night
Those are the Pirate Twins, the orphaned pair of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) that visit semi-regularly, and I happened across them as I was driving the count up – curiously, they were in the middle of the yard and I’d apparently been going around them in a broad arc for a bit before I saw them. To their credit, they weren’t very spooked by my presence at all – wary, but they simply kept a certain distance and continued browsing. I’d credit this to being dazzled by the headlamp and not realizing that it was a person wandering around (I wasn’t speaking at all or even cursing, so you know I was in stalking mode,) but I turned a few times so the light thrown by the headlamp would have silhouetted me from behind, which is normally enough to send just about anything hurtling off from this sudden reveal, but these guys were cool with it.

Of course, the little Canon 300EZ flash doesn’t have much power, and I opened the aperture wide and boosted ISO way up to even get this shot – they were roughly 15 meters off, I think – but the softbox worked as intended, so it passed this test too. There’s just enough light to see that their spots have almost entirely faded.

I’m going to throw these up here, just because if I don’t, they’re liable to sit in the folder awaiting another opportunity anyway, but be warned – it’s yet another Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis.)

large and rough-looking adult Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis sleeping on weeds
This one was not one of the count because it was clearly an adult, and a huge one at that, but I had to get the pic because it’s also the roughest I’ve ever seen, obviously having been in at least one major battle, but considering how many adults I found in the general vicinity, it could easily have been more. Given the size, there’s a chance this, or some of it, is due to simply age, but it looks more like scarring to me. I didn’t disturb him (I think it’s likely a male) to try for precise measurements, but I did use my fallback method:

large adult rough-looking Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis with author's hand for scale
By the way, the first of these pics was simply named, “KeithRichards.jpg,” because of course, which reminds me that I should do another roundup of the weird image titles that I’ve used. Betcha can’t wait…

Estate Find XXXIII: The secret is corn

Al Denelsbeck

Last week’s Find was still fresh on the, um, server memory thingy, whatever, when I got the first clips of this week’s. A few days later I was able to add to the stock, so we have a couple of days worth of observations, which also added in the number of other species appearing. So without further ado:

Now, this was not a total surprise, because we’d been down at the neighbor’s house late last year, one that lives further down The Bayou, actually just past where our portion ends, and had seen one then; just like this time, I had mistaken it for a beaver (only because I hadn’t seen the tail yet,) until the neighbor corrected me, but then never saw any sign of one again until now. I was a little surprised to find that they were this far inland, since my experience had only been with one on the Outer Banks, but here we are. And the beavers do actually come into the pond, or at least did for a while, decimating the yellow cow lilies as they did so, but those are growing back so it appears they’re not visiting much anymore.

The nutria seem pretty mellow about sharing their territory (well, except for the green heron,) but how are they with beavers, or beavers with them? Don’t know yet. The wood ducks also seem fine, though they didn’t show when I had the video camera going.

Most places you will find in the US, nutria are considered an invasive pest, and they can do a lot of damage, as well as carrying several zoonotic diseases that can transmit to humans. They were imported from South America for the fur trade and got established after escaping or being released upon the collapse of that trade, many decades ago. We apparently don’t have the same level of predators (or health hazards) here as in South America to keep their numbers in check, so the byword in many areas is, “Shoot on sight.” As far as The Girlfriend and I are concerned, they can stay here since there’s little they can damage, but we’ll see if their numbers start increasing significantly.

At least one has made an appearance every day this week, at different times, and I thought I’d seen a smaller one as well, but have not confirmed that yet. As for their lodge/burrow, no idea where that might be yet either, but I’ll keep an eye out.

But this time, I did the voiceover in the afternoon so the Copes grey treefrogs did not have a chance to contribute. Now all I have to do is work on dead air…

Some night finds

Al Denelsbeck

Just a couple of things found while poking around at night, nothing earth-shaking.

The orphaned white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) fawns were mentioned in the previous post, and we found that they are not only regular visitors, they sleep over from time to time. These were taken from the vicinity of the door to Walkabout Studios.

pair of orphaned white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus fawns overnighting on property
Notably, this is not with the long lens, but the 18-135 at 135mm – they were perhaps a little over ten meters away, and likely confused by the headlamp since they normally don’t allow even a slightly close approach. The grazing one even required me to make several distinct noises just to get it to look up.

pair of orphaned white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus fawns overnighting on property
Focus is only by the reflections of their eyes in the viewfinder, so it’s not precise, plus I was shooting wide open at f5.6 so depth-of-field isn’t there either. Still, they remained without fleeing, even when they prevented me from checking the denizens of the various Japanese maple trees that evening, including the one at the edge of the frames here.

I could poke around out front, though, and made another discovery.

monarch Danaus plexippus larva feeding on orange milkweed Asclepias tuberosa
I was wondering who cropped the occasional flower heads from the orange milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa,) stupidly never thinking of it being a caterpillar – I kept believing the deer were doing it, and have been routinely treating this cluster of plants with deer repellent. But this is exactly what the flowers are here for, since this is the larva of a monarch (Danaus plexippus,) the species we were hoping to attract.

monarch Danaus plexippus larva feeding on orange milkweed Asclepias tuberosa
We purchased these flowers a couple of months ago and they seem to be doing fine. Hopefully they’ll go to seed, but either way, we may be adding a lot more – doing our part to help combat the monarch decline. With luck, this larva will make a chrysalis on the plant or nearby, so I can monitor it.

By the way, those bright contrasting colors (for both the larvae and the adults) are indeed aposematic, “keepaway” warnings to predators, since the species is toxic to eat – and they get their toxicity directly from these plants. Well, not this patch specifically, but the milkweed family in general.

I looked, by the way, and this was the only specimen that I found, which is curious, but might only mean that I’m terrible at spotting them.

And one that wasn’t hard to spot, despite being minuscule.

unidentified crab spider Thomisidae hunting on blooms of black knight butterfly bush Buddleja davidii
The black knight butterfly bush (Buddleja davidii) that came with us from the old place absolutely exploded this season, as did the almond tree – both have doubled their mass since transplanting, approving heartily of the conditions here. We made a small mistake with this one, in that we didn’t know there was a thriving calla lily plant right next to it until it bloomed this spring, and they’ve been fighting for the same space. But the butterfly bush is doing its job in attracting not just the pollinators, but the predators of pollinators, including this tiny crab spider (Family Thomisidae.) I’m not sure it could have a more contrasting coloration against these blooms, but whatever – it usually sits nestled down between the blossoms anyway. I’d have to look very carefully, but the only pollinators that I’ve seen at these flowers are far too massive to serve as food for this guy, though presumably it knows what its doing, and this is far from the first time that I’ve seen tiny crab spiders on the plants.

That’s all for now, but I have a ton of video clips to edit for this week’s Estate Find, and I should get another post or three in before then.

Estate Find XXXI

Al Denelsbeck

Falling back on my ‘safety’ choice this week, since nothing exciting or unique presented itself, even when I went out looking. I might have had some lightning, had it not started raining just as I was heading out.

After spotting a very young fawn on the property some weeks back, we saw no young deer at all, though we suspected that at least one of the deer visiting for the corn was a parent with her fawn stashed away safely somewhere until it was old enough to be weaned. Yet we went for quite a while with no sign of any young’uns, then a singular appearance with mom, and then nothing. Until about a week ago.

adult female white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus with adolescent fawn
These are, naturally, white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus,) and there were actually two fawns, but of course one of them wandered out of my ability to frame them together as soon as the camera was in hand. As alert as they appear here though, they weren’t very concerned with my presence up on the deck, and soon continued foraging; I even missed one of them attempting to nurse with mom discouraging it.

After a few minutes, I did something incautious and the fawns spooked, bounding away for only a short distance, probably discouraged from this paranoid behavior by mom who was still foraging industriously. They regrouped in another portion of the lawn (a term I use loosely since we let the backyard go unchecked.)

adult female white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus and her two adolescent fawns looking into camera
Actually, to get them all looking up simultaneously, I had to make several whistles and clicks until they got too curious, otherwise I always had at least one with its nose buried in the tall grasses. And again, this didn’t last long.

adult female white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus with her two unconcerned adolescent fawns
I’m not 100% sure of the actions of the one fawn here; while too many people would claim it was going for a kiss, I suspect it was trying to sample what mom was eating, which she did not oblige. The fawns’ behavior was split between a certain air of independence, sometimes wandering quite far from mom, and the typical neediness of a juvenile. Someone that knows deer better than I could potentially use this to pin down their age.

Speaking with a neighbor recently (okay, texting,) we found that she had a couple of orphaned fawns visiting her backyard regularly, believing that the mother had been hit by a car and died off the back of her property. We might have seen one of them a little earlier, since a lone fawn had come by to forage among the ducks’ corn.

slightly older adolescent white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus fawn looking into camera
This one was clearly larger and thus older than the pair still with their mother, the spots fading away. We knew enough about their habits to know that they don’t go independent that quickly, tending to stick together at least until breeding season in the winter, so we’d wondered about mom. There’s no easy way to tell them apart, save for a young adult doe visiting over the winter that had different enough coloration to distinguish her from others. Despite their overly-generic appearance, we’ll still try to monitor them as best we can.

By the way, this was written a few hours ahead of posting, so the photos were uploaded in July and thus beat the previous record by (at least) four images. I know you’re as excited as I am…

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