Photographs by Frank

12 June 2022

Flag Leaves

Filed under: Misc.,Still Life — Frank @ 9:30 PM

A couple of days ago I cut two stalks of ‘grass’ while I was out and about. I thought that they might make a good photograph.

This afternoon, I set up the stalks on our deck railing and made some photographs. I envisioned making black and white photos of the stalks and eventually salted-paper prints.

As I was framing up my first exposures, I had an epiphany… the leaves attached to these stalks are “flag leaves”!

I recently learned about flag leaves from the current issue of The Limrik, Antrim’s quarterly community newsletter/journal. It just so happens that Joan is the managing editor of this esteemed publication. I am, by virtue of being married to Joan, the photo editor and business manager.

One of the articles in the June 2022 issue is about the “Flag Leaf Bakery”, a new bakery that will be opening soon in downtown Antrim. During Joan’s interview with the owners of the bakery they described the origin of its name. I quote…”The name “Flag Leaf” comes from the last leaf to develop on the wheat stalk before the seed head forms. The emerging flag leaf signals the end of the plant’s vegetative growth phase and its photosynthesis provides a large fraction of the energy needed for seed production.”

I am not sure if the stalks I collected are wheat, but the leaves attached to these stalks are clearly flag leaves.

Life is full of interesting convergences!

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Around the Yard on a Sunday Afternoon

Filed under: Garden Flowers,Monadnock Region,Odontates,Other Insects,Summer,Wildlife — Tags: , , — Frank @ 7:15 PM

This afternoon I took a short stroll around the yard just to see what was up.

There were a few odes about and a number of swallowtails nectaring on Joan’s garden flowers. Speaking of garden flowers, the poppies have really ‘popped’ in the last several days.

The frog is a resident of the small pool I built this spring*, hoping to attract wildlife (especially birds) to photograph without attracting the local bears (as would putting out seed for the birds). I have yet to find the time to ‘stake out’ the pool and see what, if any, birds come by but this frog moved in within a few days of my filling the pool with water.

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* The wooden handles on our wheelbarrow rotted out and were unrepairable. Of course the plastic tub was still in good shape so I disassembled the wheelbarrow and plugged the holes in the tub where the bolts pierced it. I then buried the tub in the ground and added some strategic rocks to cover the exposed plastic of the tub. Joan added some plants to further naturalize the setting and now we have a small ‘water feature’ out near the greenhouse.

8 June 2022

Loon Sitting

Filed under: Birds,Monadnock Region,Wildlife — Tags: — Frank @ 8:01 PM

Late yesterday afternoon, I headed down to the lake to observe the loon nest. There was not a lot of action.

I watched for an hour and three-quarters. In that time the individual on the nest shifted position quickly twice. I am not sure they even turned the eggs.

At about ninety minutes, I got up to stretched my legs and saw a second loon off the end of the point on the main part of the lake. This gave me hope that they might do a switch so I sat back down and waited another fifteen minutes before I decided that dinner was in order.

All told, I made about sixty exposures, mostly to keep myself entertained, not because there was great action!*

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I also experimented with video, something I rarely do. Here is a three minute clip that really gives you a feel for the ‘excitement’ of loon watching!

Try to stay awake… I did for more than an hour and a half!!!!

* WARNING – photographer talk ahead! The first few exposures yesterday afternoon were made using with a 2x teleconverter (a different one from the one I used several days ago). There is certainly some degradation in the images made with the converter, although I am not sure that it is evident in the small files I post here. I am pretty convinced that I will get better results with deeper crops (to get similar fields of view) of the files made without the converter than I will using the converter. As you would expect, since it is a 2x converter, the file sizes differ by a factor of two as well.

I’ll need to make a few prints before making a final decision.

6 June 2022

Dragonflies, No Damsels

Filed under: Monadnock Region,Odontates,Summer,Wildlife — Tags: — Frank @ 4:15 PM

Early yesterday afternoon I took a walk up the unmaintained section of Brimstone Corner Road with the ode rig in hand. Well, maybe “walk” is the wrong term… “crawl” or “stroll” is probably a better term. It took me roughly two hours to cover maybe two-thirds of a mile. I stopped at every sunny spot along the road looking for odes. I got my aerobic exercise on the return trip as I only took about ten minutes to get back home when I decided to turn around. In the late afternoon, I again succumbed to the siren call of the myriad of odes that were about and roamed the yard for an additional hour.

The temperature was in the upper 60s F and it was breezy. The skies were partly cloudy with lots of fast moving, puffy summer-time clouds.

The most common species present, by far, were chalk-fronted corporals. Every sunny spot on the road had six or more individuals sunning themselves. Next most common were the whitefaces, probably Hudsonian whitefaces, but telling the various whiteface species apart (especially the females) without netting them is beyond my capability. All of the rest of the species I saw (and photographed) were represented by much smaller numbers, in most cases I saw only one or two individuals.

I observed (but did not photograph) only two damselflies the entire time I was out. A female aurora damsel in the early afternoon and a female bluet in the yard. My guess is that it was too windy for the relatively weak flying damsels and that they were all hunkered down as odes do in unsuitable (to them) weather.

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