{"id":35420,"date":"2023-10-04T17:26:51","date_gmt":"2023-10-04T21:26:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=35420"},"modified":"2023-10-04T17:26:51","modified_gmt":"2023-10-04T21:26:51","slug":"randomness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2023\/10\/randomness\/","title":{"rendered":"Randomness"},"content":{"rendered":"

I mean, not totally<\/em> random – you’re not going to see author portraits or product photography or what I’m eating right now or some outfit that I bought only<\/em> to do cheesecake selfies in and never actually wear. But random for my typical photo subjects, so you can let your hopes die down now. I’ve got a shitload of sorting to do and several other projects on the burners, so here’s a handful of photos with no theme or anything, just to maintain content and not let people think I died or switch to FaceBlerch or something.<\/p>\n

\"quartet
The Girlfriend and I did a few days out at Washington, NC last week, and so I returned to Goose Creek State Park<\/a> – she went too, but this was her first time so she wasn’t returning. Out the car window, I fired off a couple of quick frames of a quartet of yellow-bellied sliders (Trachemys scripta scripta<\/em>) all posed identically on a log. I was shooting wide open and depth-of-field naturally suffered, and while I was adjusting the aperture they all became too suspicious and slid into the water. But we’ll go in closer for a moment.<\/p>\n

\"pair
See? I did nail focus, just on a very specific area. But I’m betting you didn’t register the curious stain on the head of this one, likely indicating sitting for a while with just its eyes and nose out of the tannin-laden waters of the drainage channel.<\/p>\n

Just a little further on The Girlfriend spotted a pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus<\/em>,) which turned out to be at least a trio of them, but they proved difficult to photograph.<\/p>\n

\"pair
Light was dim under the tree canopy, and I was shooting at some distance handheld, not to mention how hyperactive they were, so this is the best I got. I’m reasonably certain these are this year’s brood, a pair of juveniles hanging out together, with a parent skipping along nearby. The park strikes me as a good place for woodpeckers, and we were told to keep an eye out for otters too;<\/strong> we didn’t see any, but I’ll be trying again as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

\"pair
Both of these remain unidentified, though I consider the one in front to be a mallard hybrid (Anas platyrhynchos<\/em>, or perhaps Anas platyrhynchos X<\/em>,) while the one in the back might<\/em> be a juvenile North American ruddy duck (Oxyura jamaicensis<\/em>,) but that is largely based on the size and the fact that I’ve seen them there before<\/a>, since those markings don’t really match. It looks like a female mallard, but it’s far smaller than it should be with full feathering – perhaps an example of dwarfism? Check out the mottled feet on the maybemallard (another potential indicator of hybridization) while the other one appears banded.<\/p>\n

Shot the moon for giggles while out there.<\/p>\n

\"waxing
This is decently sharp given handholding and the heavy haze, just barely showing at this exposure – the day had been spent close to overcast, which went full overcast at sunset, so I was surprised to see this later on. But that’s all from this trip – not a lot of time was spent photographing, but I might dredge up a couple others later on. <\/p>\n

So, let’s see, local shots. We have this guy.<\/p>\n

\"tiny
The oak-leaf hydrangeas (Hydrangea quercifolia<\/em>) still host various critters, but I was a little surprised to see this minuscule Copes grey treefrog (Dryophytes chrysoscelis<\/em>) – it is literally the size of my thumbnail, but spooked as I was trying to slide my paper measuring scale into the frame, so you’ll have to take my word for it. This size indicates that it’s likely this year’s brood, but I never saw any sign of them in the backyard pond, so it either snuck past me or migrated from a little ways off. Maybe it’s just last year’s, and has been growing slowly.<\/p>\n

But that’s huge compared to the next guy.<\/p>\n

\"unidentified
I saw this under the desk lamp one night, mistaking it for dust but it wasn’t moving from its spot several centimeters below the light, so I fetched the reversed 28-105 and held my hand out underneath it. I’m not even going to try to identify this spider, but a gnat could have given it a run for its money, and that’s the edge of my hand that you’re seeing here, those cables being the fine hair thereon. I’m glad we have species like this around – otherwise the ridiculously-small insects might get out of control.<\/p>\n

Okay, back to work…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I mean, not totally random – you’re not going to see author portraits or product photography or what I’m eating right now or some outfit that I bought only to do cheesecake selfies in and never actually wear. But random for my typical photo subjects, so you can let your hopes die down now. I’ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[2701,2439,6117,6903,6562,7244,2700,952,953,6116,2828,6963,169],"class_list":["post-35420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-photo","tag-anas-platyrhynchos","tag-copes-grey-treefrog","tag-dryocopus-pileatus","tag-dryophytes-chrysoscelis","tag-gibbous-moon","tag-goose-creek-state-park","tag-mallard","tag-north-american-ruddy-duck","tag-oxyura-jamaicensis","tag-pileated-woodpecker","tag-trachemys-scripta-scripta","tag-washington-nc","tag-yellow-bellied-slider"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35420\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}