In this entry, I'm collecting a bunch of photographs from days that didn't warrant a photojournal entry of their own. There'll be less prose than usual.
In the middle of the afternoon on April 22, I paid a visit to Colony Farm Park. There I visited with a lovely pair of Cinnamon Teals, who were in the slough on the east side of the river. |
|
 |
| |
|
 |
| In a different part of the same slough, a female Bufflehead hurried by. |
|
 |
| Near the path leading up to Shaugnessy, I found this resplendent male Common Yellowthroat. It was nice to see a warbler. |
|
 |
| Red-winged Blackbrids had swarmed some cattails at the pond. |
|
 |
| And on my return trip, I caught a crow standing on the mud in the river. |
|
 |
| On Saturday, April 28, I went to Grant Narrows Park with my friend Ram, after our usual Saturday lunch at the Golden Pita. We had brought Ram's friend April along. At the narrows, we saw some Ospreys at their nest. |
|
 |
| One of them took off, to go hunting. |
|
 |
| Later he came back, fish in hand, and stopped on a pile to eat. |
|
 |
| It was late in the afternoon, or early in the evening, and there didn't seem to be much bird activity. My only other subject that day was a butterfly. When I first saw this, I thought it was one of our usual Painted Ladies, but once I had a good glimpse in my viewfinder, I knew it was something I hadn't seen before. Turns out it's a California Tortoiseshell. |
|
 |
| On the fourth of May, I saw this European Paper Wasp (Polistes dominula) lose its footing near the end of a leaf. |
|
 |
| And on the 12th, I found a new type of centipede on the wall by the walkway that leads from my condo to the river. |
|
 |
| |
|
 |
| Near the same spot, on the 19th, I found ants excavating a nest in a crack in the sidewalk. |
|
 |
| |
|
 |
| On the 25th, in the courtyard, I found a Grovesnail. This shot provides a good view of the grooves that run perpendicular to the whorls. It turns out that the character of these grooves (or pits, or dimples, or in general the surface sculpture) differs from species to species, and can be helpful in identification. |
|
 |
| As I crossed one of the bridges in the courtyard, I found myself in the middle of a small swarm of little bugs. They were two-winged and looked to be some sort of midge or mosquito. When my flash lit them up, they had a neat yellow-green colored abdomen. |
|
 |
| |
|
 |
| Naturally the ones that I got photos of were the ones that were sitting around rather than flying, and naturally those were all males. The feathery antennae give them away. |
|
 |
| June 1: Sometimes, you reach the end of your rope. Like this jumping spider did. |
|
 |
| On the second, there was an interesting moth on my wall. I never did identify him. |
|
 |
| And on the third, I found a tiny grasshopper in my favorite garden near my condo. |
|
 |
| Here's a detail of that last shot. |
|
 |
| I like that even their eyes are covered with the camouflage. |
|
 |
|
And here's my favorite little-grasshopper shot. |
|
 |
|
On June 23, I was walking around the neighborhood with my backup camera and got this upwards shot of a construction crane that was half a block down from where I live. |
|
 |
|
One has to be careful with upwards shots with digital SLRs, as they encourage dust to fall on the image sensor. And dust on the sensor translates into spots on the photos. And that means more time in Photoshop (to remove the spots) and extra time on the fussy and delicate task of cleaning the camera sensor. So I generally think two or three times before taking upwards shots like that.
Done with the spring,
Tom
|
|