3 Free eBooks – December 2015

Like last month – one of the ‘books’ I picked for December was one referenced in the Ancient Egypt course from Coursera that I completed back in November; the follow up reading spilled into December. It was a challenge not to pick a book that included botanical prints…I switched to birds this month but couldn’t resist picking an artist (Charles Demuth) that did a lot of plant paint!

Haskell, Barbara. Charles Demuth. New York: Whitney Museum of Art. 1987. Available from the Internet Archive here. The title of the painting that I am including in this post (partial) is “From the Kitchen Garden.” The topics of his paintings included other topics too….a snapshot of different perspectives of the US and Europe in the first thirds of the 1900s.

The British Museum. Mummy: The Inside Story. Available from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine here. The mummy in this case is Nesperennub, a priest who lived at Karnak (Egypt) in 800 BC. The site is a series of slides (with pictures and explanatory text) about the modern way that mummies are studied….not by unwrapping. One of the amulets found near the neck of this money was a wedjat eye. One from another mummy was included in the images and clipped a portion for this post. Unfortunately – this site was removed from the The British Museum’s site when it was reorganized so now it is only available via the Wayback Machine. There are two other online tours (Cleopatra and Egypt in the Old Kingdom) that can be found by clicking on the ‘Egypt’ link just above the ‘slide’ portion of the screen.

Keulemans, John Gerrard. Onze volgels in huis en tuin – Volume 1. Leyden: P.W.M. Trap. 1869. Available from Internet Archive here. Keulemans  (1942-1912) is a well-known bird illustrator and this is one of his earlier works – in his native Dutch. I was looking at it for the illustrations rather than the text. There are two other volumes available on the Internet Archive (volume 2 and volume 3) that I have yet to read…and I’m going to look at other books that might be online that he illustrated. According to Wikipedia, his total output includes over 4,000 published images – virtually all before 1915 so not in copyright.

Enjoy good visuals and good reads!

Nature Photography through a Window – December 2015

My office window is my favorite place for ‘through the window photography’. Here are some recent images.

The nuthatch is the only bird to use the feeder this way! The bird is a little bigger than the chickadees and has a more aggressive personality. There is a titmouse waiting patiently on the deck railing for the nuthatch to finish.

Squirrels are very active this time of year.  The light caught this one with something to eat under the pines.

The dove was looking down at the seed bowl but ultimately decided that the bird bath was a better ‘next stop.’ Note that there are a lot of tulip poplar seeds in the gutter. We’ve has a bumper crop of seeds this year and they are still coming down with each brisk breeze.

We have robins in the neighborhood too. There are some that winter here but I haven’t seen them in the winter very often. There seem to be more that stayed in the neighborhood this year.

I’m not sure what this flicker was so interested in but it was in the area long enough to get a picture.

I’ll share another batch of ‘through the window’ images in January.

Lady Bug

We have lady bugs in the house! This often happens after some cold days in the fall...and at other times of the year too. Never constant or consistent. There are never a large number and the only aggravation they cause is if they get into one of the halogen lamps and roast themselves. I photographed one on the mirror in the bathroom.

The ladybugs are different than the ones I remember from my childhood. They are orange rather than red. And we never had ladybugs inside either. These bugs may be ones released to help control insect pests on the farms nearby. They probably starve to death in our house.

But I like to watch them wander around the walls….the ceilings…the mirrors. They are a part of the outdoors that I can welcome….not at all like stink bugs!

Downy Woodpecker

We had a woodpecker visit our bird feeder and seed bowl recently. I took pictures then used them to make the identification.

It turns out that Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers look very similar. I looked at many pictures but finally found a side by side comparison that pointed toward the identification of the bird as a Downy Woodpecker:

• It was smaller than a robin
• The beak was short
• There was quite a bit a white in the wing

It must have been a male to because it had a nice red patch on the back of its head.

I was very glad to see the bird after I found the woodpecker feathers a few weeks ago.

Conowingo Dam – November 2015

We are planning day trips to Conowingo Dam (Maryland) this winter to attempt photography of the Bald Eagles that feed there from the fish in the outflow from the dam when electricity is being generated. We went in last May and saw more Bald Eagles than I had ever seen in one place before (my post from May is here) and it wasn’t even the peak season for the Bald Eagles being there! Now it is getting to the peak time so we are planning to make the trek once a month – on a time when the roads are not slippery. It’s about an hour from our house so a comfortable day trip (and we’ll bundle up and take something hot to drink).

The parking area below the dam already held some cars when we got there at mid –morning last week. And the photographers were lined up along the fence. The number of big lenses was impressive. There was a lot of water coming from the dam and we saw eagles immediately on the rocks

And perched on the electrical tower.

Periodically we’d spot an eagle flying over the water – and catching a fish.

This one caught a large fish and took it to one of the equipment towers. There were black vultures and an immature eagle that gathered there to eye the fish. Eventually – the eagle with the fish flew away with it. Who wants to eat with that kind of audience?

Sometimes the fish is small…sometimes large.

Next time I hope to position myself to improve the background for the photographs…and to go on a brighter day so that the wing movements will not be a blurry. I may also pay more attention to the black vultures next time we go. I only saw one Great Blue Heron on this trip (last May we saw more); they are frequently photogenic if they are not too far away.

On this particular trip – I enjoyed the remnants of fall color next to the parking lot (turning my back to where the eagles were).

I also noticed a feather. I wonder whether it was from a Bald Eagle or a Black Vulture.

There is a Facebook page for the Conowingo Bald Eagles Community for more information.

Woodpecker Feathers

Last week I saw a lot of birds one morning at our feeder (juncos, cardinals, nuthatches, chickadees, titmice), flitting between the trees in our yard (blue jays and robins) and back in the forest there were two kinds of woodpeckers: pileated and red-bellied. I next day I saw the red bellied woodpecker again and then it seemed like there were very few birds around at all for a few days. When I was working the yard yesterday – I found a pile of feathers. There must have been a predator in the area…probably some kind of hawk.

The pile was back in the pile of leaves I’ve creating at the edge of the forest. There were long feathers and fuzzy bits of down. The black and white pattern looked like a woodpecker and was probably the red-bellied woodpecker since a pileated woodpecker are mostly black rather than the black and white pattern.

I picked up some of the feathers to photograph. They were a little damaged so probably had been on the ground for a few days.

Yesterday, I noticed more birds at our feeder again. Maybe the predator has moved on.

Fall at Centennial Park

I missed the peak of fall foliage at Centennial Park. In mid-October there was still a lot of green (see post here). This past weekend, some of the trees had already lost quite a lot of their leaves…although there was still plenty of color. When we first got there on Saturday morning, the sun was in the treetops and there was a mist rising from the lake because of the temperature differential between the water and the air (it was a cold morning).

There were a few clouds in the sky and contrails across the sky.

I walked around a little to look around and let the sun come more. I noticed: dew on fallen leaves. This one is a tulip poplar.

Drifts of leaves in the parking lot. Many of the red ones were from a nearby maple.

The view straight up to the sky shows both color and that some trees are already in winter form.

Flocks of Canadian Geese took off from the lake – circling over the trees and into the brighter sunlight.

And finally the sun came all the way down the trees on the opposite shore.

The Great Blue Heron that had made a ruckus when we first arrived had retained his perch in the colorful trees there.

Zooming – October 2015

I managed to limit myself to 5 collages gleaned from snippets of photographs from late September and early October. The majority are from Longwood Gardens since that is where I took a huge number of pictures.

They are all botanical except for two: can you find the bee and milkweed bugs.

There are four clips of water lilies (pink, purple, white, and a giant that is white a pink)…the bee is on a water lily but it is clipped a bit too tight to see that one so I didn’t count that one. Can you find the fiddlehead clip?

Can you spot the poke weed? Hint: the stem is bright pink and the berries are dark purple. The connection of the stem to the berry is something I had not looked at closely before.

Jelly Fungus

Our deck is about 25 years old but seems to be in good shape. Last year I did notice some bright orange jelly fungus growing one of the knots visible in the deck railing. It went away after a few days.

It was back again last week. The fungus is growing in the railing all the time but puts out its colorful fruiting bodies when the conditions are right. Evidently those conditions include cool, wet weather.

And there was one small orange blob at a second know further along the railing. The organism is spreading, but not very fast. The blogs were gone in a few days; when the rain stopped and things dried out completely, the orange blobs were gone too.

From now on I will look for the tiny blobs every time it rains. They are a reminder that nature eventually regains control…slowly but surely. It’s the way of the world that we should appreciate when we can.

Mt Pleasant Farm – September 2015

A few weeks ago I walked around the Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant Farm on a wet Saturday morning. I was with a birding group but didn’t manage to get any good bird pictures. Instead there were shelf fungus that looked a lot like pancakes layered with whipped cream and

Milkweed bugs maturing as the milkweed seed pods reach maturity.

At this point it started to mist heavily and even rain for short periods. The milkweed seeds spilling from pods quickly filled with droplets

As did other plants. The thinnest parts of the plants seemed to hold the most moisture.

Eventually I gave up trying to capture the scene, tucked my camera under my windbreaker to keep it dry, and just walked on enjoying being outdoors.

Photogenic Chipmunk

When I was growing up, I knew about chipmunks first from books. Then I saw them when I went on vacations in Colorado - away from Texas where it was probably to dry and treeless for them to survive.

When I moved to the east coast, we saw them more frequently and I went to a lecture at the Smithsonian by Lawrence Wishner just after he’d published his book about Eastern Chipmunks. He’s the one that point out that the animals have Oreo markings on both sides.

In our current house, we have chipmunks that appear on the front porch - enjoying acorns from the oak further out in the yard. The cats are entertained by the view; they are hyper alert behind the glass of the narrow windows on either side of the front door. In the back of the house, the chipmunks come up onto the deck to clean up the seeds the birds spill from the feeder overhead. They also nibble on seeds from some of the flowers. The cats watch them from the screened part of the deck.

The photographs I’ve included in this post are of a very photogenic chipmunk at Stony Brook State Park in New York (taken on our recent road trip). The little rodent must have been used to people being around because it was near the playground area enjoying its meal…surveying the scene. It was early enough in the morning that nobody else was around except for me and my camera.

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 15, 2015

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Is Modern living leading to a ‘hidden epidemic’ of neurological disease? - A study that compared 21 countries between 1989 and 2010 found that dementias are starting a decade earlier than they used to in adults. In the US, neurological deaths in males 75 years old and over have nearly trebled…gone up five-fold for females in the same age range. The rapid increase points to environmental influences. Scary.

A single image captures how the American house has changed over 400 years - The link at the bottom of the article will take you to the full poster. I like history themes that go way beyond what I learned in school (which seemed to be mostly about conflicts and wars).

Deer Management Solutions: It Takes a Village - We have way too many deer in our area. Fortunately I have not been involved in a collision with one….but I see deer grazing near the roads and the occasional carcass from a collision at the roadsides. Our trees and bushes show evidence of deer browsing…we see deer in our backyard. Very few buds on the day lilies survived to become flowers!

Mapping how the United States generates its electricity - Lots of graphics. The first bar chart shows that there is still a lot of coal used for power generation. It accounts for more than 15% of the generating capacity in 15 states. In my home state (Maryland), coal is used for 44% of the capacity.

Global Risks - Richard Watson posts some thought provoking graphics. The subtitle on this one is ‘How would you like your apocalypse?’

Great plains agricultural greenhouse gas emissions could be eliminated - adoption of best management practices (no-tillage agriculture and slow release fertilizer, for example) can substantially mitigate agricultural greenhouse gas fluxes. The challenge is to overcome the cultural and economic barriers (higher cost of slow release fertilizer, new equipment/training required to convert to no-tillage agriculture) to best practices..

A Self-Taught Artist Paints the Rain Forest by Memory and The plants cultivated by the people from the center in the Colombian Amazon - Beautiful and informative work. The second link is for the free eBook. The text is in Spanish…but the drawings are the reason to download it.

Web-based patient-centered toolkit helps improve patient-provider communication - It seems like this is something that should already be in place in most hospitals although I know firsthand that it wasn’t a few years ago when I had a critically ill parent. It is frustrating that it is taking so long for health care organizations to apply data and technology in a way that keeps the focus on care for the patient….and consistent with patient (or their proxy) interaction re that care.

Astronauts Will Eat Space Lettuce for the First Time Next Week - This article is a little dated….they’ve eaten the greens already.

Artist Quits Day Job to Pursue Passion for Beautifully Quilled Paper Art - I like the spiral shape and this art form is all about spiral shapes with colored paper. 

Found Feathers

Back in June I posted about finding a lot of feathers on a walk around Centennial Lake. It probably resulted from a sad ending to the bird.

Most of the time I find only one feather at a time and feel happy about finding it - a little treasure. The blue jay feather I found in Texas is a good example. It was still in near pristine condition so I must have found it shortly after the bird lost it.

Feathers get bedraggled very quickly after they are lost. It’s an indicator of the effectiveness of the preening birds do.

This feather was in grass that had been recently mowed. I wondered if the feather had survived the mower or whether it had been already scruffy looking with the bird lost it.

Through the Kitchen Window

We have a goldfinch that frequents our deck - getting a drink at the bird bath and

Enjoying the Black Eyed Susan and Zinnia seeds forming on the plants growing in pots. I have enjoyed watching the bird - at least I think it is the same one - for the past few days. Rather than going outside to photography him I’ve been attempting to capture his activity through the kitchen window.

The seeds must be very tasty!

Brookside Gardens Wings of Fancy - August 2015

We made a second trek to the see the butterfly exhibit at the Brookside Gardens conservatory - a great outing for a guest in town for the weekend.

Often the contrasting colors of the flowers and the butterflies prompts me to take a picture.

Sometimes a tree trunk seems to be a favorite resting place for butterflies. One had at least 6 on it as I walked by.

I wondered how this morpho was still flying. Parts of both wings are missing.

There were several that hung gracefully upside down on their flowers.

Others fluttered to keep their place or move slightly to the next flower. Sometimes the slightly different motion of the two parts of the wing can be detected.

Some butterflies are more colorful on the underside.

When butterflies perch close to each other - resting - I often wonder if they are aware of each other.

Last but not least….I am always on the lookout for Monarchs. I wish we had them in our neighborhood like we did 20 years ago…but now I seem them most often in exhibits like this one.

Nature Photography for Summer Campers

Yesterday I lead a Nature Photograph Introduction for summer campers at Belmont Manor and Historic Park. It was an exciting and gratifying volunteer gig - exceeding my expectations in just about every way. I worked with 5-8 year olds in the morning and 9-12 year olds in the afternoon. The campers became so engaged in taking photographs that they were surprised when it was time to stop! And they took some excellent pictures.

I used 8 pictures to introduce nature photography before we hiked into the forest - tailoring the discussion a little for the age group but both groups had a lot to say about each image and used some of the ideas in their photographs during our hike. I’m including the ‘priming’ images in this post and a few notes about how I talked about them.

Image 1: What story does this picture tell? Concepts: leading line (path), foreground/background, person for scale

Image 2: How was this picture taken? (Remember you don’t have to always point the camera straight ahead or down!). Concepts: bright spots, attention to light

Image 3: What is this? (birds nest fungus) Concepts: scale…approaching macro photography…get as close as your camera will focus, different stages of fungus development in the same image

Image 4: What is it? (blue bird)  Concepts: zooming, introduce possibility of cropping (older group)

Image 5: What is the butterfly doing? Concepts: photograph butterflies when they are still (eating or drinking), zooming

Image 6: What is it? (blue jay feather) Concepts: photographing things you shouldn’t pick up, get as close as your camera will focus

Image 7: What is it? (mouse ears) Concepts: get as close as you can, if you want to identify the flower later - take pictures from several perspectives and at least one that includes the entire plant

Image 8: Let’s review some concepts - light (some overload)…leading line…hints of color

Then we reviewed how to hold the camera (strap around the wrist at all times), how to turn it on and take a picture, and how to zoom…..how to hold the camera while we were walking (turned off, camera in hand, strap around wrist).

And then we were hiking and finding a lot of the natural environment to photograph!

Brookside Gardens Walk

When we went to Brookside Gardens last weekend, the parking lot at the conservatory was already full just after 9 AM…so we parked in the Nature Center lot. I will be glad when the main lot is finished but the estimate now is late fall or even into winter. We walked over the boardwalk that traverses the woodland and stream between the Nature Center and Conservatory.

Hibiscuses are blooming where the boardwalk joins the Brookside path.

Instead  of turning toward the Conservatory - we walked toward the Tea House with woodlands on the left

And the renovated ponds on the right. A dove was getting a drink from the rocks where the overflow water from the ponds runs off.

We walked to the far end of the gardens and out the gate toward the larger pond in Wheaton Park in search of dragonflies. We saw the insects but they were not sitting on anything long enough for photography. I liked the islands of vegetation in the pond…and their reflections.

Occasionally there were leaves already changing color. It’s a little early for that but it is not uncommon to see colors like this pop out of the greenery.

Back in Brookside Gardens we saw a toad crossing the path

And pink lilies like my parents have in their garden in Texas. These are near the visitor center and there were more in the woods seen from the path between the visitor center and conservatory.

The Wings of Fancy exhibit is inside the conservatory but there were a lot of active butterflies in the gardens. This tiger swallowtail is reaching way down into a petunia.

Some flowers were very popular. Even the mothers that often look rather drab - are photogenic with a pink, yellow, and green background.

The most butterflies I got in a single picture was three!

Online Classes - August 2015

After a hiatus from Courses for about 6 weeks - I couldn’t resist starting Geodesign: Change your World from PennState. The topic appealed to me and I am enjoying the short introduction videos, guest lectures, readings, and activities. These days knowing something about geodesign comes close to basic literacy because so many of the issues we have  are only understood if integrated spatial relationships are considered. This is far beyond the basic map reading I learned in school 40 years ago and the statistical analyses I specialized in during the 1980s and 1990s. Geodesign thinking is helping everyone cope with the increased complexity in the world.

In a departure from Coursera courses - I also did a Creative Live course while it was recorded (and free): Outdoor Photography Experience with Chris Burkard. They are recorded on the west coast and I am on the east coast so watching it ‘live’ means watching from noon to 7 for two days! My husband and I watched it together….he is interested in everything; I am more interested in composition and locations than equipment. These video courses are different in that they are all video - no embedded quizzes, no readings, no web based activities. I take notes while I watch….still learn something…and they motivate me to learn more about my camera and try new things photographically. In the particular class - the discussion about water housings got me thinking about getting one for my camera…using it when we travel to waterfalls in western New York and in a few months to Hawaii.

3 Free eBooks - July 2015

The three picks for this month are all biologically oriented - flowers, quadrupeds and birds…and they are all a series of books (so instead of just 3 books - the total is more like

Knowles, George Beauchamp and Westcott, Frederic. The floral cabinet and magazine of exotic botany. London: William Smith. 1837. Three volumes available at the Internet Archive: volume 1, volume 2, volume 3. Keep in mind the date…and enjoy the colorful renditions of flowers - some of the very familiar like the poinsettia I clipped as an example.

Audubon, John James; Bachman, John; Audubon, John Woodhouse. Quadrupeds of North America. New York: V.G. Audubon. 1851. The volumes available at the Internet Archive: volume 1, volume 2, volume3. John James Audubon is famous for birds but this series - published at the end of his life - shows that he was interested in more than birds. His son did some (maybe most) of the artwork in the series. Some of the animals are posed awkwardly - just as some of the birds were in earlier work. I liked the chipmunks.

Wilson, Alexander. American ornithology, or, The natural history of the birds of the United States : illustrated with plates engraved and colored from original drawings taken from nature. Philadelphia: Published by Bradford and Inskeep. Printed by Robert Carr. 1808. There are 9 volumes on the Internet Archive: V 1, V 2, V 3, V 4, V 5, V 6, V 7, V 8, and V 9. Wilson was the greatest American ornithologist before Audubon.

Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens - June 2015

Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens are full of lotuses in bloom this time of year….and dragonflies and waterlilies. We made our first day trip to the place last week on the first sunny day after a huge rain storm. Some of the grassy paths between the ponds were flooded but the circuit wide path was passable. We’ll go again before the end of season.

Eventually I’ll get better at recognizing the different dragonflies. The Blue Dashers are the only ones I recognize easily (the ones that look like they’ve been dusted with light blue powder).

The surprise this year was pots of red hibiscus near the visitor center. I wonder if I somehow missed them last year.

Enjoy the Kenilworth Gardens via the slideshow below!