Yesterday afternoon, I got distracted by the profusion (both in terms of number of species and number of individuals) of odes present in the yard.
I spent about an hour and a half hunting odes and making photos… much more fun that identifying odes from previous trips and household chores.
I count seven species of odes… and how did that bumble bee sneak in?!
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I made this photograph about a week ago* at the end of our “January thaw”… a couple of days with high temperatures near 50o F and nights with above freezing temperatures.
The forecast called for a cold front to move through and an accumulation of four to six inches of snow overnight and the next morning. I was reading in the living room when I noticed the weather beginning to change.
Knowing that weather in flux often makes for good photographs, I pulled on my boots and headed out for a short walk to the beaver swamp at the back of our property. We live at the south end of this wetland. There are often nice skies at the north end during changeable weather.
I began by taking a few photos from the safety of the edge of wetland. However, I knew the best place to photograph this scene was from near the middle where I could use the channel of open water as a leading line and the view of the sky to the north would be best.
If one has never walked a wetland like this, you need to know that the grassy areas you see in the foreground are called a “wet meadow” for good reason. The clumps of grass one sees are sticking out of a boggy mess. My type of terrain!
The just ending “January thaw” meant that the ice in this wet meadow was likely to be thin. I had donned only my regular hiking boots rather than my green wellies. Heading out into the meadow, I calculated that the chance of wet socks was high but one accepts such things in pursuit of “art”.
About three-quarters of the way out, I felt the rush of ice water into my left boot. I must have reacted quickly since I did not feel any of the real squishiness that accompanies a fully flooded boot and it only took a few minutes for my body heat to warm the water so that I did not notice it!
I proceeded to make some photographs while watching the cold front move across the scene in front of me. The diagonal line of heavy clouds starting at the tree line on the left and heading up and to the right is the front.
I hung around for maybe a half hour until there was no blue sky remaining in view and headed back to the house. I was about ninety percent of the way back to “dry land” when my right boot met the same fate as my left one!
Was the result worth the cold wet feet? I think so!
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*On Tuesday, the 15th at 1:59 PM to be exact; ain’t metadata wonderful!
Brimstone Corner (Road*) is an old prototypical New England road… no pavement, lined with old sugar maples and stone walls. Many of the maples are reaching the end of their natural lives and some are literally falling (or have fallen) apart. The stone walls are, however, in pretty good shape!
I think about Brimstone Corner in three segments. The road begins at the bridge across Gregg Lake and continues for a mile and a bit to the Price Farm. (We live in the house just before the Price Farm.) The second section is not maintained and is getting rough in spots. This section goes for another mile and a quarter or so; one passes from Antrim into Hancock along this stretch. The third section, in Hancock, is much like the first.
Thus, when we head out for a walk we must pause at the end of our driveway and ask the question “Left or right? Left, down the “civilized” section towards the bridge? Or right, into the “wilderness”?
Either way we can get in a nice two mile walk.
More often than not we turn right, but this time of year that decision requires more planning and forethought as snowshoes are needed.
On New Year’s Day we turned left and walked down to the bridge and lake.
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*Most of the folks who live here call our avenue "Brimstone Corner Road". However, the Postal Service insists that it is simply "Brimstone Corner". Why? I have no idea!
Last weekend, I found a bit of time on both Saturday and Sunday to wander the neighborhood and photograph the last of the foliage. The bright reds of the swamp maples are long gone. However the forest canopies (of mostly oak, birch and beech, with a few maples) were still a mix of browns and yellows. The understory (a mix of many species) was just about at its yellowy peak.
As I write, the show is pretty much over for the year. The oaks and the beeches will hang on to their brown leaves much of the winter. But for the next few weeks… until we get some snow… the landscape will be drab and grey. Here is hoping for an early snow!
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A four frame panorama, looking across at “our” side of the lake. Our camp is visible in the full-sized image but I can’t make it out in this web-sized version.
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I found some time on Sunday (1 July) and Tuesday (3 July) to get out and photograph.
On the day in between (that would be Monday, 2 July for those keeping careful track), I made a round trip to SE Massachusetts to install my “Life Cycle of Dragonflies and Damselflies” exhibit at the Pembroke Public Library. It will be there for the month of July.
Joe Kennedy, my friend (and stalwart commentator on this blog), helped me with the installation and we enjoyed lunch after the work was done. Thanks Joe!
Sunday’s crop:
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The insect in the second photo was hovering for long periods (tens’s of seconds) right about eye level. In between its hovers, it would make rapid forays in seemingly random directions. I assume that it was hunting for other insects. Thus I was able to “capture” it during one of it hovers. I got lucky with the light in this frame. The other three or four photos I made had the critter in deep shade.
I discovered the small (thumb-sized) toad because I noticed the vegetation moving in an odd way. Kneeling down, I spied the toad. The photo was taken lying down on my stomach.
The last two images in this series illustrate the power of digital photography. They were both made at ISO 3200 in very dim light; did they even make ISO 3200 film?. The photos were very noisy straight out of the camera but cleaned up well with the right software tool.
The vesper bluet photo also illustrates another big advantage of digital. Let me set the scene…
In other words, I shot dozens of frames in order to get one that was acceptable! Who could have afforded to do that with film? Ain’t digital wonderful!!!
Tuesday’s crop:
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Tuesday afternoon I noticed two or three female common whitetails hanging around the edge of the yard in the clearing I use to process cord word. This caused me to head back to the house for the camera. After photographing the the whitetails, I meandered the yard and the road looking for other subjects. At one point I almost stepped on another small toad who was keeping very still and relying on its camouflage.
Yesterday was cool, cloudy and windy… not ideal weather for odes to be out and about. A stroll around the yard after lunch confirmed this. I saw no odes in flight.
I did, however, discover this female calico pennant hunkered down out of the brunt of the wind. She was perched on a pine twig not more that six feet from the back deck and about 4 inches off the ground.
A little pine sap stuck to my forearms (and the knees of my pants) was a small price to pay for the second photo.
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I spent a few hours hunting odes down at the beaver swamp at the back of our property this afternoon. The most common species present was the four-spotted skimmer, which I had not seen here before. There were a number of other species present including a few which I did not get photographs of. Interestingly I only saw two damselflies all afternoon. They will be “arriving” soon, I suppose!
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The lady slippers are in full bloom around here.
On Saturday, Joan’s cousin Suzy called and said that they had one blooming right at the side of their driveway. I, of course, headed down there the first chance I got and took a bunch of photographs, playing with the lighting, angles, background, etc.
This morning, I was out back by our shed and noticed a lady slipper right between the shed and the outhouse (now used as a tool shed). Upon further exploration we discovered close to a dozen under the pines and hemlocks right behind the house. Of course, I spent another interval photographing them.
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Warning… photo-geek talk below coming next!
Both these photos were taken in full “Strobist-mode”. Both the camera and the flash were set to full manual mode. I set the aperture to get a nice out of focus background and the shutter speed to get the exposure I wanted on the background (under exposing it dramatically). Finally, I set the flash power to get the desired exposure on the flower.
In the first photo the flash was bare and about 18 inches away. I used a collapsible diffuser to place the flower in essentially open shade.
In the second photo the flash was about a foot way and was equipped with a “softbox”. Again, I used the diffuser to place the flower in “open shade”.
I thought that I had left the softbox at home for the first photo and had to make a choice between using the diffuser in front of the flash or to provide shade. It turns out that the diffuser was in my backpack all of the time… I just hadn’t looked hard enough… heavy sigh!
Although there have been odes present in the yard for at least a couple of weeks, I had yet to find the time to “go hunting”.
Finally, yesterday (Sunday) afternoon, I spent a bit of time prowling the edges of the yard with my dragonfly rig. There were a number of species present with chalk-fronted corporals (Libellula julia) being the most common.
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This afternoon, I took a stroll down back to the beaver pond to look for odes. It was cool and mostly cloudy and I was not expecting to see much in the way of odes so I took only my binoculars.
The black flies were not too bad! There were painted turtles sunning on a log in the beaver pond. There were swifts or swallows (one of these days I’ll figure out which!) foraging from the tops of the snags and there were other birds about.
But, as I expected, there were no odes in flight. However, I did scare a single Hudsonian Whiteface (either a female or an immature male) up out of the vegetation as I walked through the wet meadow.
On my way back up the hill I found a painted trillium, so I headed back out with the camera gear to photograph it. There were also some very small ferns beginning to emerge in the woods. The trillium blossom is less than the size of a quarter and the fern is maybe the size of a nickel.
It was good the get out and photograph. I am looking forward to the next few months.
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