As I was creating the zoomed images into collages, I was drawn to color in my February collection of photographs.
Enjoy the zoomed images from February!
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.
Busy Bees: Patterns of pollen and nectar foraging specialization by bumblebees over multiple timescales using RFID – At the top of my list this week…the paper (link is at the bottom of this post), is authored by my son-in-law and daughter!
Automatically darkening windows in a wide range of colors – Maybe insulating drapes will not be needed in the future…although I like the idea of windows that generate power rather than just changing color.
From Vector to Zoonotic: A Glossary for Infectious Diseases – Some of these words are used in news stories without definition….how strong is your knowledge of what they really mean?
How Blizzards and Extreme Cold Impact Birds – We haven’t had any extreme cold in our area this winter….but it may be happening somewhere. This article talks about the studies about how birds cope with the cold; some succumb to the cold itself and some starve because their food source becomes unavailable.
Why Killer Viruses are on the Rise – An outcome of our increasing impact on environments that previously were wildlife habitats.
Winning images of the Underwater Photography of the Year Contest – Eye candy…but educational too.
NASA’s Osiris REx takes its first image of Jupiter – We saw Osiris REx launched last September so I always take a look at any new news about it.
Torpid Turtles, Tortoises, and Terrapins – Examples from turtles in the US…several are common enough in Maryland that I’ve seen them.
The oldest grave of the Netherlands, “Trijntje” – A facial reconstruction of a woman buried 7500 years ago.
The Feather Atlas – A feather reference. I hope I remember this exists the next time I find an interesting feather!
Earlier this week it was such a warm day that I wanted to get out and about - chose to go to Brookside Gardens. About halfway there, I realized I had forgotten my camera but then realized that I had my new cell phone (a Samsung Galaxy S7); it was time to experiment with the cell phone camera. I headed to the boardwalk between the conservatories and the Nature Center. The skunk cabbage was still not up under the cypress trees but there were crocus
And some dried ferns that were catching the sunlight (they look like big feathers!).
I walked toward the ponds and saw other early bulbs blooming
And turtles taking advantage of the warm day to come out of the mud at the bottom of the pond. I was beginning to learn about the camera in the phone; it does zoom (8x) but it’s all digital so the zoomed images sometimes look fuzzy.
As I trekked toward the witch hazel I had seen last time I visited Brookside – I saw a butterfly and managed to get a picture! It looks like a Question Mark Butterfly…hope there were others it found that were out and about.
Then I found the witch hazel trees again. They were still very bright with streamers around their blooms.
Some trees still have fried leaves clinging from last fall.
I learned that the camera in the cell phone does relatively well close up too.
As I completed the loop back to my car, I noticed some greenery between rocks (daffodils?) near the stream and wondered how the bulbs got wedged in that location.
I general have at least one snow post in February – but we have had no significant snow at all this winter (so far). We have had some wonderful early morning color. Here is what the sunrise looked like from my front door on February 10th.
The color was transferred to the trees behind my house on Valentine’s Day. The color only lasts a very short period of time when it is reflected like this….I was pleased to catch it!
On the 17th, I photographed the sunrise from the front door again. It was a little further along than on the 10th since it was more orange than pink.
Finally – yesterday I looked out my office window and noticed a bird I had not seen since early fall – a robin in the morning sunlight that was making the tallest branches of the tulip poplar behind our house glow. Is it spring already?
Our February has been very mild so far – some cold mornings but generally warmer than usual – and not snow. The birds frequent both our bird bath and feeder. The cardinal likes the maple or sycamore.
The chickadee comes when it can get a drink or a few seeds when the juncos are not around.
The doves are sporting a sheen to their feathers.
I don’t see flickers every day but there was one that must have been very thirsty. It arrived and kept the juncos away from the bird bath --- and I had time to take some portraits. My favorite is the last one of this sequence that shows the feathers fluffed against the cold.
The red-tailed hawk is still around. I first saw him peering from the black walnut tree through the pine. He flew to another tree where I could only see his front and the beak; can you see him in the jumble of branches?
The blue jays are around every day. They have quite an attitude! The second picture shows the varying shades of blue and note the way the feather look on the top of the head (almost like scales).
Starlings don’t come around our deck very often – and I’m glad since they usually travel in flocks. Our feeder is squirrel proof…and apparently starling proof too since it closes down if too much weight is on it (2 or more starlings!).
I observed two different types of sparrows this month…didn’t realize it until I looked more closely at the pictures. The first was a house sparrow.
And the second was a white-throated sparrow which is only in our area during the winter. Note the yellow marking between the eye and beak.
The downy woodpecker comes for very short visits to our feeder. It finds most of what it needs in the forest behind our house.
February was a good month for birdwatching through my office window!
Most of the fluffy seeds of milkweed and dogbane are scattered by now but there were a few caught in the pod that I noticed last weekend. Based on the shape of the seeds – these are probably dogbane rather than milkweed.
With all the stiff breezes we’ve had recently, the parachutes of these seeds must be very firmly attached to the pod; most of the seeds flew away last fall shortly after the pods split open.
I like the bright white of the fibers – the puffs made by the stuck ends of the fibers at one end and the seed on the other…the ones on the others side that have half their fibers free of the pod. The deep red color of the outside of the pods contracts nicely with the lighter color of the inside.
…savoring the little serendipity of a hike!
I bought flowers a few days ago….an early start to our Valentine’s Day. My husband and I will use the flowers for some photography experiments. I’m posting my first round of pictures as a virtual bouquet on a day that celebrates relationship. Enjoy a little beauty of flowers and be in the mood to savor the best of the people you love!
I lead a hike yesterday at the Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant Farm – a skunk cabbage swamp stomp. I finally managed to photograph the spadix (round, ovoid, bearing true flowers) inside the spathe (flesh hood, wine or brown with vertical speckled brown or green).
After the first two pictures, one of the younger hikers held a small flashlight for me….it’s much easier to see the flowers on the spadix with the extra light.
I’ve created a slide show with the rest of the photos. There were a lot of skunk cabbage to see – multiple spadix in clumps, tightly coiled leaves with split purple or brown coverings, a few plants so close to the stream that the water carried the soil away from their roots, some sprouting withing the stream, others camouflaged in the grassy remains of last summer’s vegetation, and mud everywhere! Skunk cabbage like it wet.
The historical average temperature for February where we live in Maryland is 46 degrees (Fahrenheit); yesterday it was in the 60s and sunny. And the day before it reached 70. Not a normal February at all so far! I’d enjoy at least one good snow this winter!
I used the warm afternoon to clean out the bird bath and fill it with fresh water - and to photograph the Christmas Ferns that grow under our deck. They look scraggly this time of year but the stocking shape of the pinnae (the leafy segments along the stalk) are still evident. I bought them a few years ago, since they are very tolerant of shade and deer don’t eat them. They have survived well enough but they haven’t propagated themselves yet either.
On the way back up the stairs to the deck, I noticed that some of the stair risers were very green. They are in the shade for at least half the day and the wood must be damp enough to support the growth of photosynthetic microorganisms.
We picked a cold sunny day to trek to Conowingo Fisherman’s Park last week. We stopped at the Visitor’s Center to bundle up: ski bibs and footwarmers inside hiking boots. When we got to the park we added a balaclava, hat, coat, and handwarmers inside gloves. The extra layers of warmth kept use reasonably comfortable. My nose got cold because I couldn’t pull the balaclava up over it without my glasses fogging up. The first think I noticed was that weren’t many birds about. There were icicles on the railing. The churning water creates just enough spray for them to form on the section closest to the dam.
I walked back toward the entrance to see the buds of the Paulownia that grows on the cliff side of the park. They are brown and velvety already. They are an invasive species in our area but this one does not seem to be propagating itself.
The gulls that were so plentiful last time were scarce…but the black vultures were around. They seem to like the view from the top of the dam.
There were very few eagles about (we’re spoiled because there are often so many of them). My husband got a few ‘in flight’ pictures. I decided to just watch the birds rather than trying to follow their flight with my camera.
As we were leaving there was an eagle in a tulip poplar tree on the cliff side. Its feathers were fluffed against the cold. He kept looking toward the river…and eventually flew off in that direction.
I responded to a request for volunteers so was at Mt. Pleasant last Friday. It was a cold gray day – not raining but looking like it could start at any time. The construction on the Gudelsky Environmental Education Center is proceeding. I’m going to try taking pictures from this angle every time I go to Mt. Pleasant. Hopefully it will be completed by late spring.
The witch hazel along the driveway to the farmhouse added a bit of color. The flowers are not as big as the witch hazels I photographed at Brookside recently – probably not a recent hybrid.
Near the picnic area, a forsythia was beginning to bloom. The bush is protected by its position under an evergreen.
Montjoy Barn is the same as usual. The red on the barn door is more appreciated in the winter – when any color other than brown stand out!
I’ve tried to photography peacock feathers by getting close to them…but decided to use the zoom on the camera instead yesterday. I put the feathers in front of a window to use natural lighting. It was more satisfied with the result than my previous attempts although it is hard to capture the iridescent quality of the color.
These feathers are over 30 years old. My grandmother picked up feathers that her peacocks shed one year in the early 1980s and then gave them to her granddaughters at Christmas time. I am so glad I still have them!
Looking closely at the images – it is possible to see the dust that the feathers have accumulated. They are getting fragile and I try to not touch them these days…let along try to dust them.
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.
Face of 9,5000-year-old Man Revealed for First Time – A mummy from Jericho. The skull was covered in plaster…with eye sockets containing sea shells. Now just the skull inside, a probably face has been revealed via digital imagining, 3D printing and forensic reconstruction.
Site Diary: What we found inside the Morecambe Urn – A cremation urn…with fragments of bone…painstakingly sorted. At first they thought there was too much bone to be just one individual, but the analysis of the fragments they were all from the same person: young adult, relatively healthy.
Magical Photos of the World’s Oldest Lake Frozen Over – Eye candy….but educational too.
New Publication Reveals Birthplaces of Eastern Monarchs – The whole region east of the Rockies contributes to the Monarchs that make their way to Mexico. I’m glad that so many people are planting milkweed appropriate for their area of the country!
How solar may save Ukraine’s nuclear wasteland – What to do with the area around Chernobyl. There is a project to start installing solar panels. The electric power lines are already there so getting the electricity generated to the power grid.
Eye-opening Photos Capture the Terrifying Beauty of Melting Polar Ice Caps – It’s winter even though we haven’t had any substantial snows in Maryland yet…I’m enjoying photos of ice instead for their beauty but realize that this is an indicator of a warming planet. Some of these lakes are formed from very old ice.
TED Dialogues: An urgent response to a dangerously divisive time – I’ve signed up to be notified of the events. The first one will be on 2/15 at 1PM EST. The speaker for the first one will be Yuval Noah Harari. I enjoyed his class on Coursera – A Brief History of Humankind.
Seven heart-health habits could save billions in Medicare Costs – $14 billion per year in Medicare costs could be saved if all beneficiaries achieved ideal levels in 5-7 heart-healthy habits (the 7 are: cigarette smoking, physical activity, diet, body mass index, blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose levels). Of course – it all starts before you get to Medicare age. How many of the 7 habits are you achieving?
What Peter Pan Teaches us about Memory and Consciousness – Barrie was an astute observer of how we learn to think.
Peacock colors inspire ‘greener’ way to dye clothes – 3-D colloidal crystals (polystyrene nanoparticles and polyacrylate for mechanical stability. It does not produce contaminants…but are the particles themselves problematic? The article didn’t say but microbeads and plastics have been in the news as problems in the oceans – already.
There was work replanting some of the conservatory beds at Brookside Gardens when I was there last week. There were still enough plants in bloom to enjoy….and it was much warmer than outside! I liked the view from one of the bridges over the bubbling water…so dense with foliage that the water itself couldn’t be seen.
Pink and green always seems like a beautiful color combination.
A bloom had fallen into the water and looked very much like a butterfly.
The bird of paradise flower always reminds me of a spiked mohawk haircut!
And there are plant pompoms (or powder puffs) too.
The banana palm had bananas! The plant seems to frequently be in some stage of fruit development but I’ve never been around when the bananas were any color but green.
And then there were flowers for zoomed portraits.
The tree fern had many fiddleheads. I enjoyed photographing them and savored the memory of my trip to Hawaii a little over a year ago.
It was a very cold morning when I made the trek to Brookside Gardens last week. I made a very short hike. The first destination was the place where Skunk Cabbage grows – the boardwalk between the gardens and the nature center. The wet area around the Bald Cypress trees is think with it…but not yet. The needles of the cypress cover the ground with the cypress knees breaking the monotony. There are not skunk cabbage sprouts yet.
I headed up to the small rooms of gardens and a gazebo and made some photographs of benches and stone walkways. I didn’t pause to sit on a sunny bench.
The plant I was very pleased to find in bloom was Witch Hazel. I found one in a location I had not noticed before and two others that I had seen in previous winters. They are a welcome burst of color in winter. The petals look like narrow ribbons sometimes curled tight.
And with that…I headed into the conservator where it was warm!
My office window continues to be a great vantage point for photography. The heated bird bath and a usually well supplied bird feeder attract quite a few birds. Some are occasional visitors (or I don’t catch them on their rounds very frequently): Chickadees,
House finches,
Starlings (the sun was just right to catch this bird’s coloring), and
A downy wood pecker (because of the chisel-like bill….otherwise it could be a Hairy Woodpecker).
The cardinals I see more often…but they seem to be more nervous than usual (perhaps because of the red-tailed hawk frequenting the forest behind out house).
The juncos I see all the time – they are the most frequent visitors to our deck.
The mourning doves have been arriving in larger groups this month. They look very fat on cold days when they have their feathers fluffed out.
We do have a hawk that comes to the edge of the forest. The blue jays usually make a big ruckus when it is in the area…making it easier to photograph.
The jays themselves seemed to enjoy the heated bird bath more than any other bird. The stop for water and then fly off to the maple or tulip poplar.
Yesterday we woke up to a dusting of snow (this has been a warm January with less snow than usual for our area). As soon as it was light enough I took some pictures of the bird bath (no bird tracks) and the feeder (a few tracks on the nearby railing.
An hour later – it was obvious that a lot of birds were out and about!
I like to photograph in morning light…particularly when I manage to capture the glow it creates on ordinary places. This is the view from my office window every sunny morning – the sun coming down the trees as it rises over the roof of the house. It puts a lot of color in the bare branches of winter trees!
Of course, there are the sunrise pictures. The edges of the clouds caught the blaze although the bulk of the clouds were thick enough still look very gray. The vegetation in front of our house was in silhouette with the light of the morning not quite bright enough yet. The tree in the foreground is an oak and some of the buds are large enough to be seen – even though it’s only January and a long time before it will leaf out.
January is a good month for this type of photography – the sunrise is still late enough to not require getting up early!
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.
Danish Study Raises More Questions about Mammograms’ Message – Evidently doctors can’t yet tell which tumors really need to be treated and which might be able to just monitor. There is a tendency to think that breast cancer screen is better than actually is….and that leads to a lot of potential unneeded (and traumatic) treatment.
Watch Geologic Machinations in Motion at Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park – About a year ago, I visited the Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park so I am always looking at items with news from the place. I don’t know that I would be up for an 8-mile hike to see the new viewing area.
An Iceberg Larger than Rhode Island is Poised to Break from Antarctica – When it goes – the Larsen C Ice Shelf will lose more than 10% of its area….and the maps of Antarctica will need revision.
Stunning photos of trains roaring through picturesque landscapes – Eye candy for the week.
Recovery: Saving the Lake Erie Watersnake, a lesson in outreach – Not poisonous but ill-tempered and smelly. Only found in the lake’s western basin on islands…French explorers found them sunning themselves in heaps, knots and snarls. It turns out that people killing the snakes was a bigger factor the reduction of numbers than habitat loss….and thus an education campaign is helping increase their numbers!
The Chemistry of Popcorn - Probably my favorite snack. We have a special bowl that allows us to pop it in the microwave (no weird chemicals like in the bags of microwave popcorn).
Why America is Growing the Most Sweet Potatoes since WWII – I’ve always liked sweet potatoes….and it seems that more people do these days since it has become a popular crop for former tobacco farmers and over 11% of the crop is exported!
Arctic melt ponds form when meltwater clogs ice pores – In the field (of ice) and an experiment to discover how melt ponds forms on porous ice.
Ten more field guides and references for the serious naturalist – I think I might buy the one about bees.
Obesity is barely covered in medical students’ licensing exam – Not good since nearly 40% of adults and 20% of children and adolescents are obese in the US.
Late last week there was a sunny day…and I accompanied my husband to Centennial Park. He walked all the way around…I was busy taking pictures! The first subject was a red tailed hawk high in a tulip poplar tree. The angle wasn’t great – but the reddish tail feathers were a little visible in one of the pictures and the fluffing of the breast feathers was a good clue to how cold the day was.
There were Canadian Geese of course. They are always at Centennial. I experimented with different angles…reflections, near silhouettes, the awkwardness of the bird on land.
There were two types of diving ducks. Both are winter birds in Maryland. They are a challenge to photograph because the go completely under the water then pop back to the top for few seconds. The Buffleheads were on the other side of the lake from where I was…but the white on their heads make them easy to identify even in a blurred picture. The one on the left is a male; the right is a female….not enough of a side view to tell the one in the middle.
The other diving ducks on the lake were female ruddy ducks. Their tails are a stiff fan. I didn’t see any flipped upward but these ducks were actively feeding…only staying on top of the water for short periods of time.
I decided it was a little chilly to stay out longer so headed back to the car. Along the way, I tried a ‘looking up’ shot of small cones. I like the sharpness of the lines within the cones – light and shadow.
There is always something to photograph at Centennial Park!
I use the zoom on my camera in so many situations – to look at the details of a façade in McKinney, Texas,
A swan and coot at Josey Ranch.
And then there is the combined strategy of photographing through a window and zooming: crepe myrtle seed pods through the window of the hotel in Grapevine, TX (when it was very cold outside),
Kitt Peak (probably) taken through the window of the plane taking off from Tucson headed to Los Angles, and
A tangle of plum tree branches covered in water droplets in the morning sunshine.
Sometimes the zoom is so great that it makes the picture look more like a painting. I thought this shelf fungus looked like a stylized bird!
Celebrating the whole of life....
Thanks for visiting my blog! Enjoy the photo picks from last month:
Copyright © 2024, Gwen Morrison. All rights reserved.
Powered by Squarespace.
