Desert Arboretum at Bosque del Apache

I spent some time in the Desert Arboretum at the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge on our last full day at the Festival of the Cranes. Almost immediately I spotted a dragonfly that wasn’t sitting still but would pause long enough to be photographed. I was glad to have the extra power of the digital zoom on my new camera.

I also spotted some white-crowned sparrows which I had been told about on one of our tours…but hadn’t seen. They nest in the far north and are only in the US during the winter. They have very distinctive black and white stripes on their heads.

Rather than take pictures of whole cactus plants, I decided to look more closely at the spines. At first, I looked for color.

Then I looked more closely about how the spines were attached to the fleshy part of the cactus. I did a series that zoomed in more and more and discovered that the spines almost look like they pierce the flesh rather than grow out of it!

The image below are some prickly pear spines.

Some spines look sharper than others…or maybe it is the golden color of the spines that make them look more menacing. Again – there is a grayish mass (like a blob of putty) where they go into the cactus flesh.

Enough about spines. There was a gall on one of the plants that reminded me a little of the cedar apple rust gall I’d seen at Mt. Pleasant Farm last spring (described in this post).

The only bloom I saw was a tiny plant that looked like the top had been eaten.

I couldn’t resist taking a picture of the yucca pods. Yucca pods have always been one of my favorite seed pods. There are some I harvested about 40 years ago in a dried arrangement at my house!

Zooming – September 2016

I already did a zooming post earlier this month focused totally on insects --- but there have been so many other good shots that I couldn’t resist another for this month with more than insects in the mix. I am getting a new camera soon so this might be the last set of images with the 30x in optics and digital up to 120x. Let’s start with some plants: crabapples against a clear blue sky. Most of the leaves have already fallen from the tree but I looked around to find some fruit with a leaf nearby.

A flower with its petals still in tubes. Soon they would flatten into more normal looking petals.

A cloud of pink flowers.

Lots of pollen.

Milkweed seeds on the verge of blowing away.

The long central stalk of the hibiscus flower.

And a mushroom that was greenish underneath.

Back to some animals…..this chipmunk had very full cheek pouches. It was probably collecting food to be stored away for winter.

A skipper sunning itself among the dew drops on a large flower.

A bee so focused on the flower that it doesn’t notice my son-in-law’s camera trying to get a close shot (upper left corner). I prefer using the zoom!

A molting bird…maybe a grackle?

A dragonfly.

Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge – Part 2

Continuing on from yesterday’s post about the Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge….

A plant community that becomes more evident the further south we drove is epiphytes with the Spanish moss being some of the most noticeable. But I took pictures of smaller ones as we walked around the boardwalk of the visitor center.

Flowers are always attention getters too.

Insects are even a bigger draw. Different kinds of bees were competing for flowers. The bumblebees are so big they usually drive the others away!

A long tailed skipper stayed put long enough for me to take a picture too.

The dragonflies looked similar to the dragonflies of Maryland.

We found a dead Polyphemus moth on the ground before we even walked into the visitor center. We perched it on a bush to photograph. It’s a male (large antennae to detect pheromone emitted by the females).

The seed pods on the button bushes in Florida look the same as the ones in Maryland.

And then there was a small tree in the pollinator with seedpods at various stages of maturity…and flowers too – obviously a legume.

When we got to the beach (the wildlife refuge abuts the Canaveral National Seashore), I noticed the sea grapes had color variation in their leaves and also had clusters of fruit.

These plants are planted on the dunes along the shore for stabilization.

There were a few gulls about but they were not as interesting as

The juvenile sanderling that seemed very interested in every piece of seaweed tossed up by the surf.

Road Trip to Florida

We were in Florida last week – for the OSIRIS-REx launch and a few days of touring…more that in upcoming posts. The drive down from Maryland was done in an easy two days with a stop in Florence, South Carolina. The weather was hot so we didn’t stop for any of our usually outdoor activities. We retraced our steps coming back. The first day was very hot but the navigation system routed us to the Beltway around Jacksonville, Florida rather than saying on I-95 and we crossed the Dames Point Bridge. I managed to get my camera out and take some pictures of it.

It’s quite a sight.

I also liked the colorful mass of shipping containers just past the bridge.

We stayed in the same hotel in Florence, South Carolina on that night and I managed to get a sunrise photograph from the window. It was the only sunrise picture from this road trip!

The weather has cooled down a bit and the humidity was not so high for the last day on the road. We lingered a little at one of the rest stops – still in the Carolinas – and I took some pictures of a late blooming day lily

And some grasses swaying in the breeze catching the morning sun.

There was a dragonfly lying on the sidewalk – dead but still relatively intact. The plates of color on the abdomen reminded me of a Mayan turquoise mask.

The thorax was yellow green.

Photography with Belmont Manor and Historic Park Summer Camp

Last week I volunteered to lead a nature photography activity the Howard Country Conservancy’s Summer Nature Camps at Belmont Manor and Historic Park. The day was hot, humid and there was an air quality alert as well. I got there early and took a walk along the path I planned to take with the first group…and that is when I took most of the pictures for the day. I noticed the Norway maple’s ripening samaras (invasive tree that was planted as part of the landscaping around The Cottage),

The wineberries (good to eat but watch out for the thorns),

Thistle seeds ready to blow away with the next strong breeze,

Caterpillars making their tent in the morning sun,

And chicory (from afar it looks like it is mostly stem but the small blue flowers are lovely at close range).

Later in the morning when I was hiking with the 6 to 8 years old campers, I managed to capture a picture of ripening Jack-in-the-Pulpit seeds and

The forest canopy reflected in a mud puddle. It was getting hotter all the time and our hike lasted less than 45 minutes.

With the older group (9-12 years old) we headed to the formal gardens. It was after lunch and me tried to stick to the shade as much as possible. It worked for a little while. We took a lot of pictures at the water lily pond. Many of the children were as patient as I was to get a picture of a dragonfly on a water lily bud.

I liked the margins of the lily pads – the green, the black water, the glint of the sun…and tiny piece of brown debris.

We misted everyone with water we’d brought to make spider webs more visible and managed to stay out as long as the morning group even though the temperature was hotter than in the morning. Everyone welcomed the cool of the nature center building when we got back!

More Dragonflies (at Kenilworth Gardens)

I posted some dragonfly pictures from Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens earlier in the month but then we made more visits to the place and I got some even better pictures by zooming in even more (and using a monopod to stabilize the camera). It is easier to see wing damage (lower left wing) and how the wings attach to the insect.

Their heads and legs have more bristles than I expected…and there is a ‘face.’

The eyes bulge out – dominating the head. The wings have an intricate pattern of supports for the wing membrane and the wings are not exactly flat.

The different kinds of dragonflies have a different pattern of wing structures.

The opening in the mid-back where the wings are attached looks so alien - or not the smoothed structure of other things like fly (butterflies, birds, or airplanes).

Enjoy the slide show below of more dragonflies!

Dragonflies at Kenilworth Gardens

Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens in June and July is my favorite place to practice photographing dragonflies. We’ve been twice so far this year and seen at least three different kinds. There are the ones that are powder blue with green eyes – their wings almost clear.

There are darker ones – that look almost black….and their eyes are glossy black.

Last but not least, are the ones with black and white markings on their wings. There were not as many specimens of this particular kind so I only got two pictures.

All of the swoop among the lotus flowers and buds – alighting long enough for photographers. I captured all the above pictures with my Canon PowerShot SX710 HS…. attached to a monopod. I wanted to capture some of them dragging their abdomens in the water laying eggs…but didn’t see any so far. There were some that were defending territory; there was some noisy mid-air collisions!

Zooming – June 2016

My favorite topics for zooming are the usual: birds, plants, and insects! Click on each of the six images to see a larger version. It was hard to top at six collages because there were so many images to clip. After I went overboard early in the week with the Mesa Verde post – I decided that 6 was enough already. The first image includes a house finch, sweet bay, iris, strawberry and peony.

Next comes a monarch butterfly, a poppy, a mourning dove, the center of a flower, and a thistle.

Then allium ball, the back of a flower and another center, and hydrangea growing on a rock wall.

Then an all-insect collage: a dragonfly, a monarch caterpillar, a bumble bee, a black swallowtail caterpillar and two butterflies.

Next is an all plant collage: castor beans, datura, day lily, canna.

Finally – a moth, two pictures of southern magnolia flowers (l like the curves of the petals around the forming seed pods), and an Asian dogwood.

Brookside Gardens – June 2016

I had guests over the past two weeks and Brookside Gardens is one of the places that just about everyone enjoys. We got their early enough to be part of the first group into the Wings of Fancy butterfly exhibit. The butterflies inside were pretty much the same as we saw in late May that that I posted about early this month. I did get to see caterpillars for the black swallowtail. I had them on parsley growing on my deck a few years back – so many of them that the parsley was demolished!

There were insects in the gardens that were active because the day was already warm: dragonflies like the garden rooms that include a water feature and

Bubble bees seem to be everywhere.

There was a mockingbird that made lots of noise from the pinnacle of a small tree.

Every bush in the rose garden seemed to be blooming.

I like the ones that seemed to glow from within in the bright sunlight.

A succulent has been planted in an urn where it was blooming and spilling over the side.

The early summer flowers were at every turn.

The tadpoles near the Tea Garden pavilion were huge – about 6 inches long. since the tail was still so long I wondered how long it would be before they made the transformation to frogs.

The native dogwoods are already done with blooming for the year but the Asian ones were still in bloom. I liked the soft pink of one so much that I took a lot of pictures of it. My three favorite images are below.

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 12, 2016

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.

Dragonfly is world-record flier – Confirmed by genetic analysis…this insect makes transoceanic flights.

Identity unearthed: How excavations in Sudan reveal the transformation Egyptian, Nubian culture – Cultural blending in the ancient world…with a lot of individual choice involved: Nubian bed or Egyptian coffin, wrapped like a mummy or not, Egyptian-type amulet or Nubian jewelry (or both).

Fitting into what I’m learning in my Big History class: Mysterious cosmic radio bursts found to repeat, Hubble breaks cosmic distant record: sees universe soon after big bang, and Einstein’s gravitational waves ‘seen’ from black holes – Every time I take a course, it seems like there are a lot of relevant articles coming out in the news feeds!

Astrobiology: Understanding Life in the Universe – Student companion site for the Charles S. Cockell text. Includes chart sets for each chapter – if all you want is an overview of the topic. The book is developed to support the Coursera Astrobiology course taught by the author (which I took last year).

Migrating Monarch Number Rebound – Hurray! The good news is from analysis of the numbers of butterflies at hibernation sites in Central Mexico. There were 3x more butterflies than the year before. Still – the area is still a lot lower than the 45 acres in 1996. The area was 10 acres in 2015, 2.79 in 2014, 1.66 in 2013. Outside of the hibernation sites – more people are planting or conserving milkweed which is needed for monarch survival and keeping that focus on increasing milkweed availability in the environment is what we in the US can do to help.

Toward diagnosing diseases such as cancer in their earliest stages – But can it be done very inexpensively? So far a lot of these diagnostic tests have added cost to the medical system and there a lot of people that are not going to have the disease (i.e. there is a lot of cost of lots of testing to find the few people that need treatment).

Can some birds be just as smart as apes? – Research with corvids (crows, jays and their kind) and parrots reveals that they are capable of thinking logically, of recognizing themselves in the mirror and of empathy. Even though the brain structures and size appear quite different…both birds and apes have a prefrontal brain structure that controls similar executive structures.

Irish Eyes Soda Bread – Something to bake for St. Patrick’s day – coming up on the 17^th.

Uncovering the Roman Roads Cutting Across England - An amateur archeologist using LIDAR…reveals roads the Roman’s build for trade and rapid deployment of troops (follow the ‘full story’ link at the bottom of the article to see a map).

Who Sleeps? – Sleep conserves energy and may be why so many species sleep…but there may be other benefits at all. This an article that summarizes our current understanding of sleep in some major types of organisms (marine mammals, birds, insects, and mentions ongoing research.