Volo Bog - 9.04.10 - Post 1

This was my second trip to Volo Bog, and it won't be my last.  There's a lot more information on Volo Bog on their website, but the short version is that it's the only open-water "quaking" bog in Illinois - a relic of the last ice age!  It was the first genuinely cool day Chicago had had in months and I alternately needed my sweatshirt, wanted a heavier coat and was happy in my t-shirt, depending on the amount of sun and wind at any given moment.

Volo Bog

Adult Supervision

Okay, I have to say, this sign just amuses me, because when you see it, you can't quite figure out what needs adult supervision.  Turns out that if you go around to where that second sign in my shot is, there's a path down to a dock into a small pond-bog that has bird habitats and tadpoles.  There are a lot of school groups that tour the bog, so it makes sense, but on the surface, it's just this odd sign out in the middle of the path.

Vervain on the Savanna

Besides the bog, there's a large wooded and savanna area that I didn't get the chance to hike the first time I went out there because I was with a group.  Being on my own, I was able to walk the roughly 5 miles of trails and click to my heart's content.  This would have been significantly easier if we weren't having hurricane force winds.

No, really, it was windy.  Check out the flags in the parking lot.  This kept some animals in hiding, but others, like the dragonflies tended to land on something and hold on for dear life... which made for easier shooting if I could catch the plant when it wasn't swaying in the wind.

World Turned Upside-down

Anyway, the bog is fascinating.  This is a shot of the surface reflecting the skies and nearby tamarack forest.  Those are lilypads floating on the top.  I managed to catch this shot early enough in the day that the really, really nasty winds hadn't kicked up yet and the bog was fabulously still.

Waterlily Glow

I love waterlilies, as you may have noticed.  There's something about the way that the seem to glow from the inside.  The water here is so still it's black and the leaves of the lily pads are dark green, which makes the white just stand out and glow.

Light Shines Through

Here's one that's more open and has a fantastic reflection in the still water.

Ripple Effect

This part of the bog - the section that has the floating boardwalk around it - has thousands of ridiculously active frogs in it.  They were hopping up from the water catching bugs and disappearing.  There's something very peaceful about the lily and the ripples here.

Froggy Finger Hold

Here's one who sat still for a few minutes.  I like how he's hanging onto the leaf with his little froggy finger.  This is your good old, standard Green Frog.

Leopard Frog Lies Low

And this, as far as I can tell, is a Southern Leopard Frog.  I think it's a little on the young side and his spots haven't quite come in yet.  I know there are quite a few frogs still developing - in the next post I'll have shots of tadpoles and one of a polywog (a frog that still has the vast majority of his tadpole tail.)






And these were all taken in the half-mile of floating boardwalk (which makes for interesting shooting if you aren't the only one on it.  See my post about trying to shoot from a moving ship in the water.)  I hadn't even gotten into the nature preserve.

South Pond - 8.30.10 - Post 5

Okay, wrapping up that last August walk.  Just a few more shots...

Seven of Swords

 Another Blue Vervain shot.  I'm really taken with the little clusters of flowers that aren't quite on the tip of the stem and the way the long stems are separate from each other, instead of clustered together like they would be on a Bull Thistle or something..

A Dash of Blue

Another Familiar Bluet.  This thing is perched on the edge of a fragile, dying leaf.  It's so small and so light that the leaf doesn't move at all when the damselfly takes off or lands on it.

Neon Damselfly Glows from the Inside

 Here he is close up.  He's almost neon the way he seems to glow against the gray algaed background.  You can even see his little tiny feet hanging onto the light edge of the leaf.  His wings are so transparent you can see the segments and black stripes right through them.

I'm Pretty Sure Your Nose Is Longer

Fiery Skipper drinking from a (I think) purple milkweed flower.  Check out the proboscis.

Skipper with a Drinking Habit

Here she flipped to give me a side view - you can still see the proboscis - but now you can see those prominent front legs.

Buckeye: Inverted

Buckeyes have a weird habit of hanging out upside down.  I don't know if I've posted about this before, but I know it's not the first time I've seen an inverted Buckeye.  I don't know if it puts those big fake eyes at the top - fooling any predators that might come along - or what.








Okay, next up - Volo Bog.  A very interesting place to shoot.  Too bad I did it in hurricane force winds!

Saganashkee Slough - 8.25.10 - Post 2

Okay, here are the last shots from the hike on Wednesday.

Common Tern Overhead

First, there were two new species that I meant to add to the other post.  This is a Common Tern.  Not bad for shooting a bird in flight, eh?  If you look closely you can see bone structure of the bird's 'downstage' wing.  Who knew my camera could take x-rays? :)

Eastern Amberwing at Rest

I caught a new dragonfly, too.  This is an Eastern Amberwing.  Apparently what this species is famous for is being very small.  It's less than an inch from head to tail.  But it's not a damselfly.  The body is stocky, which is a dragonfly trait and it rests with it's wings open.  Damselflies rest with them folded back.  If you click on this picture to make it bigger, you can see the really fantastic markings along its tail.

Poisonous Pokeberry

I really liked the contrast between the stems and the berries on this plant.  We see green stems with purple berries all the time.  Here we have purple stems with green berries.  Now, to be fair, they're green because they're immature.  This is a pokeberry (or poke, pokebush, pokeroot, polk salad, polk salat, polk sallet, inkberry or ombú) and it's famous for being highly poisonous.  So, you know, no snacking.  However, when the berries mature they can be used for ink or dye.  I read that pokeberry ink was used to write a lot of battlefield letters during the Civil War.

Hymenoptera Grand Central Station

This is another shot worth making bigger to see the details.  It was Insect Grand Central Station.  There's two bumblebees and the green bee that I posted about in the first post, at least.  I can't tell if one of the brown spots is just a dead bit of plant or if it's a bug.  Either way... that's a lot of bees on one plant.

Clouded Sulphur Very Clearly

So I checked this guy out on several websites.  I thought he was a Little Yellow, like I saw at Midewin.  Turns out that he's a Clouded Sulphur instead.  I love his big green eyes.

Frog with a Tat?

Yet another Southern Leopard Frog.  I'm starting to think they're the only frogs living in Northern Illinois.  If you look at his left front foot, you can see his veins.  That's a little odd, isn't it?  Maybe he's the counter-culture frog and it's a tattoo.  This was the only frog out there who would let me take his picture.  Most other frogs I didn't see.  I heard them as they went 'plip' into the water as I approached. 

Someone Paid Attention in Geometry

 Another thing I saw a lot of were spiderwebs.  None of them had anyone home, so I'm not sure what kind of  spiders they belong to, but I love the geometry in them.  I have to wonder how something with the brain the size of a pinhead gets each strand to have exactly the same amount of space between them.  I also think that photographing something as ephemeral as spiderwebs is something that takes an insane amount of practice.

Spiderweb with No One Home

 This one was 'messier', but I could get the center and more of the web to come in in focus.  But again, this kind of thing clearly takes a lot of work to get right.

Vervain Looks over Saganashkee Slough

As you may have noticed, I have a macro lens and I'm not afraid to use it.  But I did catch this landscape on one side of the Slough and I just loved it.  The tree and the vervain in front, the water in the middle-ground and the forest and sky in the back, keep your eye traveling throughout the whole photo.


Okay, that's the end of that trip.  Later the same day I went to the Hedge for a few minutes. I'll post those next.

North Pond - July 14, 2010 - Post #2

Okay, here we go again. More shots from that same walk I was talking about yesterday.


A purple coneflower. More fun with macro mode. [Coneflower Near the End of the Road]








I'm learning to do a lot more with manual focus. For example, I wanted to focus on this grackle with a seed in his beak, but my camera kept insisting on focusing on the green leaf in front of him. It's trickier to get a shot quickly, but if your subject is sitting still for a minute, you do get a much better shot.

[Grackle with Seed]

This guy was adorable. He came creeping down from a higher branch and seemed pretty shocked to see me standing right under his nose. But instead of running back up the tree, he just flattened himself against the branch like, "You can't see me. I'm blending in!" Too bad the tree was mostly green from lichen. :)
[Flat Squirrelly]

Peekaboo turtle! Don't let fables fool you. Turtles - at least Chicago turtles - are pretty fast. This guy would hear my shutter, duck back under water swim a few yards, pop back up. I'd catch him, he'd duck under and come back up somewhere else. Very, very quickly. I love that you can see his feet and shell under the water in the breaks in the algae. [Peekaboo Turtle]

Near as I can Google, this is an upside down Carpenter Bee. I think the flower he's on is some kind of onion variety. Anyone know?

[Carpenter Bee]





Most adorable shot ever! The "Rainbow Duck" shot from yesterday is mom. She was swimming around this log while her babies sat up high and dried and preened and rested. I still need to look up what kind of ducks they are.

[Ducklings on a Fallen Log]




I love this as an artistic shot. I also love that my Google-fu found that this plant is called Blue Vervain and that the bee is a female bumblebee. This is the kind of shot that I end up filing away for the next Art Sharks or contest I find.

[Bumblebee and Blue Vervain]



So, truthfully, the smaller you make this shot, the better it looks. :p He took off, I held down my shutter and just followed him as he went. The good news is, the camera did know what I was focusing on (as evidenced by the almost invisible, yet still visible enough to be annoying tree branches in the foreground), the bad news is, there's a lot of blur when trying to catch a heron that's diving for its dinner. [Heron Goes Dinner Diving]

He's so much easier to catch well when he's sitting still. :)

[Juvenile Great Blue Heron Watches the Horizon]






And here he is in all his glory. And in context. I think I may have inadvertently focused on his chest because it's a little more in focus than his head. But given the distance I was at when I took this, I'm surprised it came out as well as it did (even if I did have to darken it a bit in Graphic Converter). I love how you can see the darker feathers coming in on his chest and in his tail. And a little detail? Look at the zig-zag reflection of the grasses in the water. [Young Heron in the Grass]


Okay, ten pictures make a post. Let me know what you think. :)