Photographs by Frank

27 August 2014

Up North

Filed under: Landscapes,Odontates,Other Insects,Summer,wildflowers — Tags: , , , — Frank @ 6:00 PM

Monday morning, we packed up the camper and headed north. Our goal was the Errol, NH area as Joan had some plant conservation volunteer business to attend to.

We arrived at  Mollidgewock State Park in the middle of the afternoon, dropped off the camper and spent the remaining daylight hours exploring and photographing. The highlight of the evening was watching (through the spotting scope and too far away to photograph) three otters eating and playing in the Androscoggin River.

Tuesday, we awoke to dense fog over the river but it burnt off quickly and  the day turned hot (low 80’s) and sunny as predicted.

After breakfast, Joan spent  four or five hours locating a population of rare plants (the only known population of this species in the US; there are about ten other isolated populations in Canada) and collecting seeds from them  for the New England Wildflower Society.

I spent the time photographing the local roadside flora and the odes and had fun despite the harsh light.

By midafternoon, we were back on the road meandering towards home.

Landscapes

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Odes (and a grasshopper!)

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Flora

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“Down Back”, again.

Filed under: Monadnock Region,Odontates,wildflowers — Tags: , , — Frank @ 11:00 AM

Sunday afternoon I donned my waders and spent a couple of hours “down back” in the beaver-made wetland at the back of our property. A short while after I left, Joan headed down in the same general direction to do some botanizing. She says that she saw me but I must have been completely engrossed in the odes since I did not notice her at all… makes me wonder what else I am missing!

As has been the case for most of the summer, the numbers of odes seems to be low. The most common odes on this visit were the large darners patrolling both low at the margins of the open water and between roughly five and ten feet over the wet meadow.

The only other dragonflies I saw were small numbers (roughly half a dozen) male meadowhawks present where woodland meets wetland; I saw no females.

There were also a smattering of damselflies (less than a dozen total) including bluets, spreadwings, a single female forktail and a lone sedge sprite.

I arrived back at the house a roughly 6 PM to find a feeding swarm of mixed darners (probably 50 or more individuals) in the yard down by the garden.

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21 August 2014

The “Wilds” of Antrim

Filed under: Birds,Monadnock Region,Summer — Tags: — Frank @ 2:00 PM

This morning about 9, my CWS* announced that an AWS** had emailed saying that there was a great blue heron on the Mill Pond behind town hall.

It takes about seven or eight minutes to drive from our house to the town hall… I was on the scene in the parking lot behind town hall by about 9:15!

When I arrived the bird was atop the pile of rocks in the middle of the pond by the bandstand in Memorial Park. I got two or three frames before it moved to the far side of the pond and began hunting. The hunting was poor as I saw him/her make a single attempt to grab prey in about 45 minutes. At about 10 AM the bird moved from the pond to a tree near dam at the south end of the pond. After a few minutes of preening,  (s)he flew again, this time headed east over Main Street and towards the Contoocook River.

I chatted briefly with the folks in Town Hall (including the AWS) and was back home before 10:30; not a bad way to spend 90 minutes.

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*Chief Wildlife Spotter; i.e. my wife, Joan.

** Associate Wildlife Spotter; one has to have a network! Thanks… you know who you are!!!

 

9 August 2014

Connecticut River Odes

Filed under: Odontates,Summer — Tags: , , — Frank @ 12:00 PM

I haven’t done much photography in the past 10 days or so… sometimes life get in the way!

We spent a few days at the end of July helping one of Joan’s cousins move and then I spent the past week stacking the nine cords of firewood that was delivered last Sunday.

The completed pile measures 16′ by 16.75′ by 4.25′. The weight is roughly13 tons. (The web says that dry fire wood weighs between 2000 and 4000 pounds per cord; I used the midpoint in my calculation.)

I would take a photo of the stack but it looks pretty much like last years stack; this years is just a bit larger having an almost complete row in from where there was only a quarter of a row last year.

Woodpile 2013… the 2014 pile looks pretty much the same!

I did take off Wednesday afternoon from my stacking duties to accompany Joan and her cousin Suzy on a kayak trip on the Connecticut River in Walpole, NH. Joan wanted to scout out some rare plants that she will need to collect seeds from later in the season, so Suzy and I tagged along.

I, of course, wanted to explore for odes which I did. I also re-learned the lesson that making photographs of small critters from a boat in a rapidly moving current is frustrating.  Most of the species are new to me and even though I spent some time with the books, I have not been able to identify most of them.

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