Water Droplets on Fern

Last week I fixed our soaker hose by doing some surgery to make 4 equal straight pieces. This is making watering much more efficient in the garden. Too bad something fluffy toured the garden yesterday and chopped down most of the seedling lettuce.

Dewey Lupine

It required growing from seed, but I finally have a nice healthy lupine. I tried six seeds, only two germinated, and only one survived its first winter. That one is now on its third year. I love the leaf shape enough that I almost find the flowers secondary. I have an amazing frost picture from the plant last year, and I keep trying for a good dew picture. This comes close, but I really want dew on both sides of the leaf without cheating with a spray bottle. Looking around the yard I have plenty of planting I need to do soon. I was lazy late last year and have 4 or 5 pots that need to go in the ground along with a list of plants I need to move for their own good.

Water

Lady's mantle, another plant that didn't survive last year. This pic is from 2009.

Foggy Broadmoor

I woke up early this morning. Then I shut off the alarm. Then I woke again still fairly early. I've been trying to go out at dawn, but I keep worrying about the traffic since dawn is currently around 7, so psych myself out and go back to bed. My goal was to get out of the house by 8 AM. I managed that but had to go back for my tripod. I picked Broadmoor as my destination as I could get there on back roads. Halfway there I crossed the Charles River and drove through some lovely banks of fog. Thankfully the fog persisted all the way to Broadmoor. There are plenty of tiny spider webs. Some of the trees are changing colors. Even the reflections were nice. Grass in sunlight. More leaf veins. This would be the lowpoint of my hike. In the wildlife meadow a strange bug landed on my hand. Since it looked like a tick on first glance I shook my hand and whacked it against things. Ticks bring out my irrationality. I got it off my hand, but it started crawling on my shirt. I saw it only had 6 legs so couldn't be a tick, but it certainly looked like one. A little reaseach when I got home led to a Deer Louse Fly or relative. I didn't find out if they bite, but they do have nice hooks on all their feet, which explains why I had so much trouble getting rid of it.

Broadmoor Footprints and Ice

It was cold and clear Thursday morning this week and I managed to finally go two places in a week. A light snow fell Wednesday. A nice shallow sticky snow, so I found lots of nice footprints Thursday.

Fox Track

Confusing Bird tracks

Raccoon Tracks, there were tons of these all across the Charles River crisscrossing back and forth. I really liked the patterns of snow over the roots. The sunlight coming from behind was just a bonus. I have no idea what these are the tracks of, but they were maybe the size of my fingertips. There weren't many around the rock, so I'm not really sure where the critter came from but they really liked this rock. Most of the trails had a light cover of snow but under that was a sheet of ice in many places. The locations of the ice were kind of random, so there was plenty of sudden slipping. In the field around the wildlife pond I keep seeing red tailed hawks overlooking the pond. Thursday there was only one, often I've seen two. Most of the time they get chased off by blue jays before I get close enough to even really see them. I'm still deciding what my next lens will be. The above is as close as I could get to a hawk. I expect I'm not going to be getting much closer to one. The above was fully zoomed with my 250 mm lens. The hawk still looks like a little white smear. Even if I get a new 200 mm zoom, that would be able to take pics at f/4, rather than having to stop down to f/8 to get good shots, getting close would still be a problem. If I can't get closer to the subject a better lens won't help. The waterfalls are nicely frozen. One is now frozen completely over. It didn't occur to me for a few hours that I completely forgot to use my polarizer for the water. I had plenty of fun, though I didn't actually see many critters.

Moose Hill Ice

The creek near the ovenbird trail was frozen yesterday. Well, the surface of it was.

Daily Photo - Ice

Pattern in a frozen creek at Moose Hill.

Daily Photo - Algae Eaters

Algae coated snack for my new fish.

24 hours later.

At least they're eating well.

Daily Photo - Icy River

Icy River at Broadmoor. If I'd been paying more attention I would have noticed that the iso was set to 400, which explains why I wasn't getting the shutter speeds I was expecting. It was very, very cold.

Daily Photo - Cold Water

Waterfall with icicles - Broadmoor yesterday

A Hawk Landed on My Head Today!!!

Well, it may have been a Merlin, I didn't manage to get a picture. Anyway. I went to Broadmoor this morning since I didn't have to be at work early today. It was freaking cold, 19 degrees or something and windy. I meandered a little, found some ice, and the mostly frozen river and noticed the spillway under a water fall I like got reworked. Only time will tell if they ruined it for photography or not. There also appears to be a new overlook at the wildlife pond, though I didn't explore it. Wandering around I spotted a hawk in a tree quite far off, and circled around to try to see it better. By the time I got there the blue jays had chased it and a friend off. I stayed to try to photograph some birds with some new tips I got about by 55-250 mm lens (f8, Servo Auto focus, shutter speed 1/320 or faster). I stood there for a good 10-15 minutes, very still with the camera up in front of me, snapping images of some sparrowy looking birds. I heard wings, and felt something land on my head, but almost immediately take off. I felt nothing but a light weight settling on my hat then it was gone. I turned around, expecting a blue jay, though I couldn't figure out why one would land on me. I figured if it had been an attack, I would have been pecked, or been whacked with the wings, there also would have been some shrieking as a warning before any dive-bombing. A few feet away at eye level was a tiny raptor, grey or brown and white streaked chest, tiny hooked beak, about the size of a jay. He took off before I could get the camera up. I think he had pointed wings, but the people at the Wildlife Center thought he was a sharp-shinned hawk, since merlins aren't as common this time of year. (Mind you just about anyone I know probably wouldn't have held still if they heard wings that close. My cockatiel has been using my head as a landing platform for years now, and I've become accustomed to freezing so she doesn't miss. Most of my relatives start freaking out when she takes off, which of course in turn freaks her out more.) So apparently in this getup and not moving I look like a very inviting tree stump. Especially since I was about 10 feet away from what I suspect would have been breakfast. I find it extremely funny that on my first day actively birdwatching a hawk landed on my head. I did manage some much, much better pics of small birds, though none were outstanding. A few of my very close to actually focused birds... not too heavily cropped.

American Robin White Throated Sparrow (maybe) Northern Cardinal (female) No idea, it had a little yellow on the top of its head and yellow and black wings. It also sat still almost long enough to focus then would take off again. About the size of the above birds in their original files. Basic tips for the lens included get closer, which I'm not so good at. I bought some thermal pants, so maybe I'll go out again tomorrow.

Frosty Morning

I got up at dawn again today, and spotted frost covered shrubs so forced myself outside. These are with a tripod at f/14. The shutter speed was camera determined unless I thought it was wrong.

Lupine with Frost Maple Leaf Lupine with Frost

I got a book out of the library last week that had an understandable section on how and why frost forms. Science 101: Weather Synopsis was dampness coupled with clear skies on a cold night.

Daniel Webster Morning

At some point I will really figure out that is takes me about 25 minutes, unless I'm really rushing, to get out of the house in the morning. Maybe I'll even remember that it takes 45 minutes to get to Daniel Webster, so if I really want to be there at dawn, getting up at 6:45 am isn't going to cut it. On arrival around 8 am I really loved the moon. There was still some nice light, but not much of an angle anymore. At least I found some nicely colored leaves. The weather was quite odd. It started out cold, but switched up to almost 60 degrees F. There were a few dozen green and brown grasshoppers trying desperately to get out of my way. I kept herding them to the middle of the path. Due to the warmth I saw some slightly out of season insects. I was chased by freaking mosquitoes in November. The above isn't one of those color picked images, nor is it photo shopped. The gray leaves until recently were under water and started to rot. the brighter leaves fell at some point after the water disappeared. This is not the latest dragonfly I've seen, but it does appear to be the same species as last year's November 12th visitor. There were three or four that teased me back and forth up the path. I have a bad habit of moving dew soaked leaves and such from shade to sun to try to catch glittering water images. I fount two Wooly Bear caterpillars. One was motoring along in the path. I convinced him onto the leaf to get the grass out of the way. I think this is a white wooly bear, but I'm not sure. I discovered earlier this year that white caterpillars are very hard to id if you don't grow them out. This is only one of three I saw this morning. All were on a boardwalk over standing water.