Mt. Pleasant in July 2017 – Part I

I took several walks around parts of Howard Country Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant Farm last week while I was preparing for photography sessions with summer campers. There was a lot to see and I’m doing two blog posts about the enjoyable walks taken over 3 days. One morning I walked down through the meadow where I saw lots of butterflies but the ones that thrilled me the most were the monarchs. There haven’t been any in my neighborhood this year so it was something to see that there were still a few in our part of Maryland.

There were wild flowers too – which I couldn’t resist photographing.

When I got down to the Davis Branch, I watched a mud dauber wasp making a small ball of sediment to add to his nest

And I noticed that there were more larger cobbles on the ‘beach’ that before the heavy rains of last summer.

I walked over to the area where some stream restoration work was done last spring and found more dragonflies that I’d ever seen in the area. They all seemed to be the same kind but they seemed to be everywhere I turned.

There was a flock of goldfinches using the riffles constructed during the stream restored as a bird bath! Hopefully there will be some new paths that provide some better views of this part of the stream after the stream restoration is stabilized; I didn’t want to wade through the tall grass and risk ticks (Lyme disease).

On the way back up the hill, I paused to photograph the maple tree within a tree. It’s a favorite spot to share with elementary school hiking groups.

Just as I got to the top of the hill, there was a horse nettle flower that had managed to not get mowed by growing very low…and after I got home I noticed a bug was in the picture too.

Zooming – July 2017

I limited myself to 10 zoomed images this month – and it was quite a challenge to choose the 10! Now that I am looking at them, I realize they reflect the places and sites I’ve enjoyed the most this July. 4 of the 10 are butterflies from Brookside Gardens’ Wings of Fancy exhibit. I have enjoyed photographing them (when I am not on Flight Attendant duty) and appreciate the increased optical zoom of the camera I have now.

There are also some plants from the boardwalk between the Brookside Conservatories and the Nature Center: a horse nettle flower and a fiddlehead fern. Zooming allows me to stand on the boardwalk rather than contorting myself into a lower position and leaning off the boardwalk to get close to the plant.

I enjoyed another walk around Kenilworth Gardens this July. Somehow dragonflies and water lilies always draw my attention.

Finally – a walk in my neighborhood had its own photography opportunities. There was a leaf that fell on the sidewalk…tilted a little to show its changing color. And in a tree near the pond, there was a spider wrapping up a large catch in its web.

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 29, 2017

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.

When you can’t remember where you are or how you got there – Transient Global Amnesia. Evidently accident and emergency units are accustomed to seeing 2 or 3 cases a month. The good news is that usually it happens once…and not again…and that the memories return except for the brief period of the episode. Brain imaging studies show abnormalities in the hippocampus during the episode. The description sounds like a hippocampus re-boot.

New Kingdom Egypt: The goldsmith’s tomb – On an island in the Nile River in Sudan, there is evidence of a multicultural settlement: Egyptian and Nubian….with a focus on gold.

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week # 97 – My favorite is a Green Bee-eater with a dragonfly.

How to Feed the World Without Killing the Planet? – A thoughtful piece about how we can all eat well into the future and not contribute to mass extinction.

Treated Fracking Wastewater Contaminated Watershed with Radium and Endocrine Disrupters – A study of sediments of Conemaugh River Lake – a dammed reservoir east of Pittsburgh – revealed that the highest concentrations of endocrine disrupting chemicals, carcinogens and radium peaked 5-10 years ago during a peak period of fracking wastewater disposal. High radium levels continued 12 miles downstream from treatment plants. Bottom line: treatment of fracking wastewater is not protecting our water supply. Aargh!

Plant Sources of Protein – This is done by serving size. I wish they had done it by calorie so it would be more obvious which sources are more protein dense. I found a reference that includes a table that shows grams of protein per 100 calories for some foods here although the list is not as extensive as I would like and includes too many highly processed items.

The underground railway that became a secret wartime base – In Bristol.  A railroad built to tunnel up a cliff from the port to a spa area in the late 1800s…that closed in 1934 but then during the bombings of World War II it housed the BBC Symphony Orchestra and a little later an alternate broadcast center. It became the nerve center for the BBC in the west of England for the rest of the war. The tunnel became a derelict by 1960 and is slowly being opened for tours now.

Prairie Noise – Some pictures and a short video of a cicada ‘singing’ – it’s the sound of summer to me both from growing up in Texas/Oklahoma and where I live low in Maryland.

Recovery: Bringing Back Bumble Bees – 46 indigenous bumble bee species in the US are at some risk of extinction. Bumble bees are frequently more efficient pollinators than honey bees. We in the US have been slower than other countries to recognize their importance and act to stop practices that make their survival more difficult.

59 Retro Posers Celebrate the Colorful Diversity of America’s National Parks – Eye candy for the week!

Ten Little Celebrations – July 2017

A lot has happened this July…and it was easy to pick 10 little celebrations to highlight:

A successful first road trip. I finally got a road trip in my Prius Prime. I didn’t celebrate the blow out that happened on the original start to the trip (I did celebrate that the blow out did not cause an accident) but the trip that re-started the day after was so enjoyable that thoughts about by car turned positive again.

A morning walk at Mt. Pleasant Farm. I’ll get around to posting about this walk because it was so enjoyable: temperature perfect for hiking, a flock of gold finches bathing in a riffle of the Davis Branch, dragonflies everywhere, Monarch butterflies in the meadow, a ground hog ambling out of the path ahead of me, a riot of vegetation – including ripening blackberries. It was very much a celebration of summer.

Great Blue Heron interaction with a dragonfly. Sometimes being in the right place to witness the interaction of two very different organisms is a celebration. I could photograph this one. It was a juvenile Great Blue Heron it is seemed perplexed about what to do when the dragonfly perched while the heron was looking for lunch. Eventually the heron moved…the dragonfly moved. This went on for a few minutes before the dragonfly got the idea to find another place to land.

Summer camp photographers at Mt. Pleasant. I celebrated another group of 5-12 year old photographers that took excellent pictures. I have a post planned for early next week about the adventure from my perspective. One of the counselors commented that the campers seemed so engaged with the activity. There is something about having a camera in hand that is almost magic.

Milkweed bug instars. This time of year, I am always thrilled to find a plant with a lot of instars of milkweed bugs. It almost always happens in July. They start out very tiny and almost all red and go through several stages getting larger and larger and ending up as adults that are orange and black…and with wings!

Our street. I am celebrating that the street repaving in front of our house is complete…and it wasn’t too traumatic while the work was going on.

Melons. We are getting melons from our CSA – always worth celebrating so rare we have gotten sun jewel melons, cantaloupe and yellow watermelon. Hopefully we’ll get some red watermelons in August.

Then there were celebrations associated with volunteering a Brookside Gardens’ Wings of Fancy exhibit:

Butterfly laying an egg on my ring. OK – I’ll admit it was a very confused butterfly. But it was magical to have a butterfly become a part of my ring temporarily! I transferred the egg to the host plant afterward.

A 90-year-old birthday girl in Wings of Fancy. The lady was in a wheel chair but thoroughly enjoyed her family’s outing to the exhibit. Everyone that was in the conservatory celebrated with her!

Hummingbird moth at Brookside. I had been seeing the hummingbird moth on the walkway up to the ticket taker for the exhibit…and finally managed to get a picture. Celebration!

Birding through a window – July 2017

I didn’t do much birding through the window in July because I wasn’t home enough….but there was a startling visit by an American goldfinch. It flew right up to the window and perched on the frame and – seemingly – looking directly at me! I was fortunate to have my camera near the keyboard of my computer so I moved as little possible to pick it up and take some pictures! Birding through the window is always opportunistic but this month it seemed to be even more than usual. I haven’t noticed the bird returning so it must have satisfied whatever prompted it to look through my window.

Volunteering at Wings of Fancy at Brookside Gardens V-X

In the training for volunteers at Brookside Gardens’ Wings of Fancy, they told us it would take about 10 shifts to feel comfortable with all the roles; I have that many now and have decided that it’s all about getting comfortable enough to accept the variability in the people that come to the exhibit and the environment (temperature, humidity) during the shifts. There has been something unique about each of my shifts so far…and I’ve enjoyed the 30 minutes I have walking around the gardens before each shift – taking pictures there and then locking my camera in a locker while I am busy with my shift. So – here are some images and notes from my July shifts at Wings of Fancy!

Before the 5^th shift, I noticed moisture on a very thorny plant and a small green insect (grasshopper?) that was decorating a yellow flower (also full of water droplets).

I walked toward the anniversary grove and saw a very trusting chipmunk. During the unique event of the shift inside the butterfly exhibit were owl caterpillars. They had hatched from eggs laid on a canna plant. They were so tiny compared to the butterfly they will eventually become!

The walk before the 6^th shift was frustrating. I only had my cell phone with me and there were so many insects that I saw but couldn’t photography well without the zoom of my camera. I did take a picture of the construction going at the Nature Center next door to the Brookside Gardens Conservatories. Inside the butterfly house there were mystery caterpillars! They had hatched from eggs laid on a plant in the basil family – not one that is normally deemed to be a host plant. But the caterpillars were growing like crazy eating it. They were thought to be tropical swallowtail caterpillars. One had already made a chrysalis.

I brought my camera to use on my walk before the 7^th shift. I took a couple of zoomed pictures of some flowers along the boardwalk between the conservatories and the nature center.

But best picture was of a very black dragonfly…a picture I would have missed if I’d only had my cell phone. Inside the caterpillar house there were still 3 cecropia moth caterpillars but they were all huge. It won’t be long before they will all be cocoons and we’ll need other stars for the caterpillar part of the exhibit.

I took even more insect pictures before the 8^th shift – all along the walk up to the ticket taking station to the butterfly exhibit. There were bees and skippers all over the cone flowers.

And a milkweed bug on some milkweed. The unique event of the shift was that the volunteer contingent was short the ticket taker so I moved from being a flight attendant to ticket taker. It was good to be outdoors for the shift but I prefer the flight attendant role.

Before the 9^th shift, I walked over to the anniversary grove and saw the chipmunk again. As I walked back toward the Conservatories, I saw a flower that was poised to unfurl

And a wasp exploring on a nearby plant.

I walked through the parking lot to check the boardwalk and found  Joe-Pye Weed before I got there….and it was full of butterflies. I took picture of two spice bush swallowtail butterflies. One was very battered and the other in better condition.

Inside the caterpillar house the new stars were Monarch and Queen caterpillars. They were too small to tell apart (without a magnifying glass – which we didn’t have). All the cecropia moths had made their cocoons.

The walk before the 10^th shift started at the Joe Pye Weed. There were at least 8 eastern tiger swallowtails on the plants! The ones with more blue around the bottom edge of the wings are females; the ones without blue are the males.

There are beginning to be some precursors to fall from the trees

Although there are still a lot of flowers full of pollen for bees (like this hibiscus).

The unique part of shift was the key lime plant was drawing tropical swallowtails to lay eggs. Many of the visitors not only got to see eggs already on the plant but butterflies in the act. As I was explaining what was happening to a group, a butterfly landing on my hand and laid an egg on my ring (a very confused butterfly, obviously)!

Previous posts re Volunteering at Wings of Fancy: prep, I, II-IV.

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 22, 2017

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.

View and Print 3D Models of Smithsonian Artifacts – An article about Smithsonian X 3D – a website worth browsing through – a museum available from home!

Deepest dive ever under Antarctica reveals a shockingly vibrant world – From National Geographic – great pictures as usual.

The one trillion-ton iceberg: Larsen C Ice Shelf rift finally breaks through –  Lots of ice…leaving the Antarctica ice shelf.

Periodic Table in Pictures and Words – Hopefully this is use in intro to chemistry courses rather than the older form of the periodic table.

Can the Monarch Highway help save a butterfly under siege? – Making I-35 the safe corridor for Monarch migration. It won’t help the situation in Maryland where the Monarch population as dropped dramatically over the past 10 years.

The Chemistry of Frozen Desserts – Thinking about cool foods for summer heat…

Photography in the National Parks: Favorites for each season – National Parks are always good bets for photography…but going at the right time of year can make them even better.

Preeclampsia: New study documents its enormous economic and health burden – Rates of preeclampsia are rising…driven in part by maternal age and obesity….and it costs a lot. Hopefully continued research will improve prediction and treatment.

Birds around the world in 31 incredible photos –  From National Geographic….Celebrating the diversity of birds.

Study: Bumblebee Species Declining Worldwide – Researchers evaluated 40% of the 260 identified bumblebee species worldwide…and 30% of those evaluated were dwindling. Species that inhabit small geographical ranges appear to be at higher risk…and more vulnerable to warming climates.

Hungry Cecropia Caterpillars

The Cecropia Moth Caterpillars in Brookside Gardens’ Wings of Fancy exhibit are very large and I can hear them eating when the area is quiet. They are eating cherry leaves in the Caterpillar House but evidently eat maple and birch leaves as well. They are native to our area; I saw one at Mt. Pleasant Farm back in September 2014.

The moths have one generation a year – overwintering as a cocoon. Like large moths, they don’t eat as adult so the adults live a very short time…laying as eggs. The caterpillars eat until they are large enough then make a cocoon.

The caterpillars at Brookside are provided with so much food that they are making cocoons in July! One got ‘ready’ while I was volunteering in the Caterpillar House. It became desperate to leave the food plant – crawling around the rim of the pot that the cherry branches were in and then falling off into the big tray below. The caterpillar was gently moved to a display cabinet where it made its cocoon on a branch. I didn’t see the making of the cocoon but the next day, it looked like a wad of wilting green leaves and few days later it was brownish. Hopefully the cocoon will overwinter and become a cecropia moth next spring!

Milkweed Flowers

I started out the season with a lot of milkweed plants. The went from sprouts to green globes of buds

To pink tinged buds, and

Opening flowers.

The bees love the flowers and often there are more than one bee on each globe in June.

There was one bee that seemed worn out from all the foraging.

The frustrating part of it all this year is that we don’t have any monarchs after those first few that were probably released by local schools. The leaves on the milkweed were pristine without any Monarch caterpillars to eat them. My husband did not like the plants in the front flowerbed to I cut them down over a few days and ate the flowers (they need to be rinsed twice in boiling water to remove the toxicity…and then I ate them in a salad rather than smothering them with butter and eating them hot).

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 15, 2017

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.

How climate change will transform business and the workforce – The way we work and the skills employers need will be changing…is climate savvy going to be become as important as tech savvy?

How to see if home prices are rising or falling where you live – The link is to an article….that contains the link to a zoomable map of the US. My house is in an area that has seen 20-39% increase in home prices since 2000.

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #95 – I liked the picture of the two pintails…the tails clearly visible as they are taking off: matched choreography.

Greenland’s summer ocean bloom likely fueled by iron – It turns the water of much of the Labrador Sea turquoise!

Surf through newly digitized images to see Rome’s ever-changing history – Many images collected by Rodolfo Lanciani and then supplemented. I am looking at this source as well as books by Lanciani on Internet Archive.

Owls’ wing could hold the key to beating wind turbine noise – I guess humans are not keen on wind turbine noise, but will reducing the noise increase the deaths of birds? I include a demonstration for pre-schoolers that includes the sound made by flapping a turkey feather and then an owl feather….and they are always surprised at the silence of the owl feather.

How Abstract Photography has evolved and still continues to inspire art – A little photographic history…and maybe some ideas for you own photography experiments.

Scientists unveil reconstructed face of ancient Peruvian mummified female leader – And she was only in her mid-20s when she died.

Whole Grains: Good for the Gut – And whole grains have more flavor too.

Women of Color Face a Staggering Amount of Harassment in Astronomy – Not good…and it’s even worse in physics.

Tiger Swallowtail on Pickerel Weed

The Tiger Swallowtail is one of the most common butterflies we see in Maryland; we have a lot of tulip poplar trees which are food plants for its caterpillar. I enjoy photographing Tiger Swallowtails and indulged when a male Tiger Swallowtail was fluttering about a stand of Pickerel Weed at Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens last week. It seemed to start out at the bottom of the flower stalks and work upward in a spiral around the stalk. It never methodically sampled every flower…but tended to move on to another stalk when it got to the top of one. The whole sequence of 41 images below happening in about 3 minutes! It was a busy butterfly. I liked getting the different angles of the butterfly feeding…the varying levels of zoom. There was a bee that stole the show in one (#7 in the slide show).

Out and About Close to Home

I took a late afternoon walk through our neighborhood recently. When I got to the pond, I didn’t see our resident green heron but there was a lot of bird noises. I thought maybe it was the birds finding good roosts for the night…then I saw the reason: a red-tailed hawk in the pine tree near the pond…surveying the place.

He was still for a few minutes then started looking around more…then flew away and the area got quieter almost immediately and I headed home.

As I walked up to our house, I noticed that the bush near our garage needed trimming. This would be the second time for this year. The next morning I went out to trim it – remembering to take the ‘before’ picture. It started out looking like a porcupine…then became a bush with a mohawk trim…

Then an asymmetrical bush. I cut some branches from the inside because I want it even shorter. The step stool I have that is easiest for me to carry around to trim bushes does not give me quite enough height to reach the top easily. Note that I used a lot of different tools: electric hedge trimmers, long handled pruners, and saw. I will do more with the pruners and saw to make the bush shorter!

Battered Orange Dead Leaf Butterfly

The orange dead leaf butterfly looks like its name. The one I saw at the Brookside Garden Wing of Fancy exhibit was missing part of one hindwing…not enough to keep it from flying but enough to show that butterflies can get battered looking in the weeks  that are the last stage of their lives. It probably takes more energy to fly as the wings become less symmetrical and with less surface area.

It’s the underside of the wings that look like a dead leaf.

The upper side of the wings has a bold stripe of yellow and a powder of blue that has an iridescence to it.

I was glad I could walk on three sides of where the butterfly was slowly opening and closing its wings to get the images.

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 8, 2017

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.

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #94 – There were several parent birds interacting with young in this set. My favorite was the American Oystercatchers!

Ancient concrete: Learning to do as the Romans did -  Looking more closely at 2,000-year-old harbor structures. The work could lead to concrete manufacturing techniques with less environmental impact than those in common use today.

Three Ways the Interstate System Changed America – It started in the 1930s…with Eisenhower leading the way in the 1950s. I remember the develops from the 1960s onward. The highways are convenient but they homogenize the way we travel too. The goal now seems to be to get to our destination as fast as possible rather than really seeing anything other than the highway along the way.

The detectives who investigate food poisoning mysteries – I was surprised that the culprit one of the cases was flour!

Padre Island National Seashore in Early Summer and Hatch and Release at Padre Island National Seashore – I’m reading up on this area of Texas and there seems that a lot is happening there this spring. My husband and I are planning a trip there in the late fall – for the arrival of wintering birds.

10+ Awe-Inspiring Impressionist Masterpieces Painted by Claude Monet – So beautiful.

To buzz or to scrabble? To foraging bees, that’s the question – The first author on this study is my son-in-law (Avery Russell)! Videos here.

‘One of a Kind’ Collection of Animal Eyeballs Aids Research on Vision Problems – The Comparative Ocular Pathology Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Oregon Wildlife Painter Captures the Beautiful Diversity of Local Birds – Includes an interview with the artist. I like the way he has a lot of detail in the environment around the bird in his paintings.

Sunscreen Myths vs Facts – Summer time…spending a lot of time outdoors…now’s the time to remember the sunscreen.

A Butterfly Minute

Last weekend, my husband and I photographed the butterflies at Brookside Gardens Wings of Fancy…and I took a lot of photographs – just as I did back in May (post 1, post 2). Instead of posting a barrage of pictures, I am going to pick some favorites and feature one butterfly at a time. Today the featured butterfly is a Pipevine Swallowtail.

In my photographs – that were all taken in less than a minute – the underside of the wings, with the seven spots that are a distinguishing characteristic of the butterfly, are clearly visible.

This was a busy butterfly – visiting 5 flowerets in less than a minute!

The butterfly seems to be in constant motion….feeding quickly on the rich source of nectar it found. I don’t think it rolled up its proboscis between flowers.

It will rest later with its wings open…displaying their deep iridescent blue at the bottom and black at the top.

Nature Photography with Belmont Summer Camp – Part 2

The second group of campers were older…up to 12 years old. Their photoshoot was immediately after the younger group and we decided not to go down the tick infested trail. They wanted to go to the forest but we trekked made a loop into the formal gardens along the way. The sweet gum trees had green fruit (above) and some of the campers took pictures of newly forming pecans. In the formal gardens, there were insects (bees and several kinds of butterflies) to challenge photographic skills.

Everyone enjoyed taking water lily pictures in the pool that is a popular backdrop for weddings at Belmont. One of the gardeners talked to the campers about water lilies closing their blooms at night…and continuing to bloom through the summer…and taking out the underwater parts of the plants during winter to replant next spring.

Then it was off to the forest. The only picture I took was of a millipede…the campers kept me too busy to notice more.

On the hike back to the Nature Center, we stopped the male and female gingko trees near the Belmont caretaker house…and the female tree was loaded with fruit. Fortunately, they were not ripe yet – since I’ve heard they smell awful by the time they drop from the tree.

Nature Photography with Belmont Summer Camp – Part 1

This is my third summer to lead a summer camp nature photography session for the Howard County Conservancy’s Summer Camp. Every year is different. This year the weather was perfect on photo shoot day. I am illustrating this post with pictures I took – the children took many more than I did and pushed the abilities of the camera’s they were using to the brink. There were two groups of campers. The younger group was the first to head out and elected to go the fastest route to the woods. Almost everyone took a picture of the path into the trees.

Looking up I noticed some spider webs high in a tree.

I took one picture since none of the cameras the children were using had enough zoom…but quickly moved on to things they could take: the root end of a fallen tree,

A tree that had fallen across a small stream and was too rotten to use as a bridge, 

Curls of grass as we headed back to the meadow, and

Caterpillars.

As we were heading back to the Nature Center we realized that the path through the cut grass contained a lot of ticks. It was tick-check time as soon as we got back to the Nature Center!

Herons at the Neighborhood Pond

Our neighborhood pond is still an eyesore – cleaned out with a bulldozer in late spring, most of the vegetation gone, and covered with algae. But it is full of frogs which can sometimes be spotted if you hear plops as they move through the shallows. It’s made the pond a good place for a green heron which I have seen so frequently that it must be a near permanent resident. I always enjoy photographing green herons because they have so many ‘looks.’ Sometimes they look chunky and not much like a heron. Other times the feathers on top of their head stand almost straight up…a bird with a mohawk! Other times their neck elongates but looks very thick and strange for a heron. But sometimes they hold themselves in a pose that looks like most of the other herons (the very last image in the slide show below.

I spotted a Great Blue Heron in the pond last week. It doesn’t have adult plumage and the bill is two-toned so it probably is one that hatched this spring. It has a white spot under its eye which I noticed in several images; maybe that makes it unique. It found a meal near the pond drain but swallowed it before I could see what it was – maybe a frog…or a small fish.

Even though the pond has no visual appeal on its own, I like the birds that are there!

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 1, 2017

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.

Carbon in Atmosphere is Rising, Even as Emissions Stabilize – Are the carbon sinks less able to function as CO2 levels have risen? Still TBD. There is still a lot to understand about our planet and the impact of higher and higher greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Cats Domesticated Themselves, Ancient DNA Shows – Cat came into settlements on their own…enjoying the bounty of rodents human settlements contained. They didn’t give up their wild natures to the extent that dogs and other domesticated animals did. There is genetic evidence that they’ve remained largely unchanged for 1000s of years.

Not so pearly whites – Evidence of a filled dental cavity in a 13,000 year old hunter-gather tooth!

43 Incredible Photos of US UNESCO Sites: Present and Proposed – I was surprised that I had visited so many of these places (the ones in the continental US).

Plastic Pollutants Pervade Water and Land  and Microplastics sloughed from synthetic fabrics in the washing machine - Plastics are everywhere in our environment and their  negative impact is probably greater than we realize…but it is surprising how much we don’t know.

In the AI Age, being ‘Smart’ Will Mean Something Completely Different – The author proposes that the new definition of ‘smart’ will be about the quality of thinking, listening, relating, collaboration, and learning…not about the quantity of factoids we remember. It won’t be easy to be the new kind of smart and I often wonder if the way we use current technology has moved us in the opposite direction.

American Icon in the Alaskan Horizon – Birds at the Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve in Alaska…in snow and ice.

11 Very Different Types of Photography that Each Illuminate Our World – A little eye candy for the week…and a survey of types of photography.

Mars rover Opportunity on walkabout near rim – One of my daughter’s first jobs as an undergraduate student was calibrating images coming from Opportunity…so I always take note when articles come out of it.

Mapping the potential climate effects of climate change – I look at these types of articles and try to understand the assumptions that are being made. It always seems that there are still a lot of unknowns….and it could be different and worse than they projections. Basically north and west seem to fare better than the south where it is already hot and often dry.

Zooming – June 2017

I use the zoom on my camera for multiple reasons and I was thinking about that when I selected the pictures from this month’s accumulation. I use the zoom to photography birds and animals that would fly or run away if I got closer. Squirrels fit into that category. This one was exploring the area under the pines in our back yard; I was in my office on the second floor of the house.

The optical zoom on my camera has improved with each new camera over the past few years until now I notice things in the images that are too small to notice with my eyes. Note the hole in the beak of the catbird. It’s a nare (nostril) which leads to nasal cavities in the birds skull.

I also see the changes as birds react to their environment. Take a look at two ‘looks’ of the green heron that is frequenting the pond in our neighborhood.

Sometimes I use the camera almost like binoculars. These structures were in the distance from where I was hiking.

Other times I use the optical zoom to achieve macro-like images….and avoid creating a shadow on my subject (by getting close to it). This day lily petal is a good example.

Other times I can’t get close because the subject is too high or there is a physical barrier. This maple is surrounded by a flower and ground cover bed….and I didn’t want to step on any carefully maintained vegetation.

I tend to use the zoom (both optical than continuing into the digital) frequently and its one of the reasons I use my camera rather than cell phone when I want better images.