The Magic Hedge - 1.11.11, Post 3

Here we go again... :)  I'm finding that I have to do a lot of lightening of my shots in post-production.  Given that it was really light (I mean, it was cloudy and snowing, but it wasn't, by any means, dark) out and I was shooting snow, I have to figure my camera was somehow overcompensating.

Airborne Squirrel

 Like I said yesterday, there were squirrels-o-plenty.  This guy was chasing another one.

Chilly Squirrel

This squirrel managed to look cold.  Most of them didn't. They were fat and energetic and having at the seed someone tossed down.  This guy... I don't know... he just looks chilly.

Standing Guard Over Seeds

I think this guy was afraid I'd take his seeds or chase him off.  He kept popping up like this and then going back to eat and popping back up to look at me.  I love how he's all chubby in the belly, but he has this kind of ratty tail thing happening.

And They're Off...

A geese-launch shot I forgot yesterday.  I didn't color correct this one.   I left it a little gray because it seemed to add to the scene for me.  Also because it gives you an idea of how my camera was perceiving the *really, really* white snow.

Your Insane Photographer

Here's a rare portrait of the (insane) photographer.  I ran into someone else out there taking shots with his S.O. so I offered to take a picture of the two of them together, so he said he'd return the favor.  I couldn't find my purple and gray hat, so I had the earband on.  I had really, really wet hair by the time I got home.

The Bird the South Forgot

Then there was this guy.  It's not a good shot or anything, but it's an American Robin.  What the *heck* is he doing here in this snowstorm?  As a kid I was always taught that the robins returning was one of the first signs of spring.  This robin?  One for the first signs of SNOW MY GOODNESS, SNOW!

Looking for Mr. Tumnis

 There's shrubbery arch in the Hedge.  I have no idea if this was crafted at some point or if it somehow naturally formed when branches tangled together overhead.  Anyway, add a little snow and you have the entrance to Narnia, I swear.


 

Snow on the Weeds

 The weeds of the summer and fall are clearly dormant now, but the stems still remain and have been picking up snow on any surface that's horizontal or close enough for jazz.

You Can't Spin This Cotton

It makes it look like we're growing cotton... in Chicago.  In January.  I love that in this shot, even at this size, you can see the snow falling.

Snow (on) Cone(flowers)

 Here's more of the little snow caps.  I'm pretty sure these were either coneflowers or sunflowers in the summer.  Now They're snowcone flowers. :)

Quiet

This needs to be made into a card or something at some point.  It just strikes me as ridiculously iconic "Winter".










There's more.  (There's always more with me, isn't there? :)  But that's enough for tonight. :)

South Pond - 8.18.10 - Post 1

I had a few errands to run in Lincoln Park on Wednesday, so I left a little early and took a trip around the South Pond.  I haven't been down there in three or four weeks, so there was a fair bit of change.  It's a re-established ecosystem - they spent the last year draining the pond, redeveloping the bottom of it and relandscaping the entire thing and adding the elevated boardwalk (made not of boards, but recycled plastic bottles.)

So in a month a lot changes.  A lot of the thinner grasses that were seeded have started coming in, a lot of the animal populations are starting to become accustomed to people and aren't hiding quite as much.  The tadpoles have metamorphed.

Like this guy.  He was sitting in the very shallow water at the end nearest the zoo, just hanging out.  You can see where his eyes and nose are out of the water, but the rest of him remains completely submerged.  I think he's a Green Frog (that's a species, not just a description), but the pictures I'm finding on line aren't *quite* the same.  Anyone have any other guesses?  The sign at the pond actually calls him a toad, but he's in the water and very smooth.  Doesn't that categorize him as a frog?
[Frog in the Shallows]

This guy seems to be a Northern Leopard Frog.  You can see his spots on his legs.  Why does water have to be so shiny? This shot would be so much better without those reflective marks.

[Frog Floats]

 There were two new dragonfly species being cooperative on this walk.  I'm reasonably sure this is a female Calico Pennant.  There's a chance it's a Prince Baskettail, but the resource I use for identifying dragonflies says the Baskettail rarely lands, and this one was still for a little while.  The same resource shows a more red Pennant, but then says "the female has the same markings in more golden tones."  So... I'm going with the Pennant unless someone has a better idea. [Calico: It's Not Just For Cats Anymore]

 I love the name of this one!  It's a Halloween Pennant.  And according to its description, it sits on top of vegetation even on very windy days... so I'm pretty that's right. ;)

[Halloween Pennant in August]

She even flipped around to show me her face.

[Halloween Pennant Turns to Stare]

 I so love this shot.  I've had a hard time getting insect eyes in focus.  This bee crawled right over the top of the flower to stare back at me.  Not bad for hand-held, eh?

[Bug Eyes]

 The Buckeyes were out in force.  This one was basking on a blade of grass, showing off his false eyes.

[Buckeye on Grass]

 This one was doing his 'butterfly thing' on top of a coneflower.

[Stopping for a Sip]

 I was actually shooting something else when I caught this bee coming up to land on the flowers.

[Bee, Incoming]

Last shot for the post.  This is a juvenile Black-Crowned Night Heron.  A lot of the fledgling birds are starting to show  this time of year.  This one may have been fishing... or he may have just been admiring his reflection.

[Young Heron Reflects]

Chicago Botanic Garden - 7.25.10 (2/2)

Okay, I thought it was odd that I'd only found ten shots from my last CBG trip that were good enough to post. So I went through the folder again. I had *edited* ten, but there were more. So here they are. :)

What made me think of it was these two shots. I knew I had some good rainbow shots and yet, I didn't have a 'rainbow' tag in my 'labels'. So I knew I'd forgotten to post something.

The color saturation here isn't so great, but I've never seen an almost perfectly horizontal rainbow before.

[Horizontal Rainbow]

This one was taken with a *just* slightly faster shutter (1/1000 here, 1/800 above), and a bit longer of a focal length and the color saturation was much better. Obviously I also changed position (the fountain was in the middle of a pond I was walking around), and the different angle helped as well.
[Fountain Rainbow]

So after about two months of searching the internet, I've discovered that this is a female red-winged blackbird. She was being highly cooperative from her perch on a purple coneflower.

[Not So Black Blackbird]

She even shifted to give me a very nice profile.

But there is some seriously weird stuff going on on that Y chromosome to make this bird (female)...
[Female Red Winged Blackbird on Coneflower]

... look like this bird (male of the same species.) (This shot from the North Pond)

I so adore this shot of a GIGANTIC green dragonfly. Not because he's so huge or so still, but because if you look at it closely, the light is coming in just right that you can see the *shadows* of his wing veins on the lilypad.

[Veins in Shadow]

Business end of a yellow-jacket. I spent about forty minutes chasing yellow-jackets around a pond trying to get just the right shot for the book I was working on for my nephew. (More on this later, in its own post, but the short version is, I made my nephew an alphabet animal book using only pictures I took myself. And I needed a good shot for Y. :) [Business end of a Yellow-Jacket]

This ended up being the shot I used. Clear shot of his wings, you can see how his thorax and abdomen are a.) not fuzzy and b.) very disjointed - which is how you know he's a wasp, not a bee. And check out those huge eyes.

[Yellow-Jacket Species Model]

I love these, but I somehow managed to forget to shoot the sign. I think they're a form of violet. Anyone have a clue?

[Perky Purples]

Another one I forgot to get the sign for. Looks like a pink fried egg. :)

[Pink Fried Egg Flower]








Okay, NOW I think that trip is done. :) What do you think?

The Magic Hedge - 7.20.10 (1/2)

I always love it when I go somewhere I've been before, especially if I've been there multiple times, and I find something new. When I hiked the Hedge last I found several species there that I'd never seen before.

I absolutely cannot Google a species on this bee.  I thought at first it might have been a queen, but that didn't seem to be it.  I can't tell how much of the yellow on the sides is pollen and how much might be actual bee fuzz.  If it's all pollen then it's probably a honking-huge carpenter bee with a TON of pollen on him, but if that's actual bee-fuzz... And these flowers don't have yellow pollen, so...  I'm stymied.  Anyone?
[Wide Angled Bee]

 A new species for me!  American Goldfinch.  I thought these things existed only in pet stores, seriously.  Or possibly somewhere far more tropical, like Brazil.  Chicago is not known for it's exotic and bright birdlife.  Mostly we have dirt-gray pigeons, you know?  Next I work on getting really *good* pictures of these guys.  But I was stoked to find him.  Actually I saw several before I left.

[The Goldfinch's Back]

Bug damage.  The plant this leaf-skeleton was attached to was seemingly healthy, but this leaf was *done in* by some kind of insect.  The resulting structure of veins is pretty interesting.

[Leaf Skeleton]

 Yet another new species!  This is a male downy woodpecker.  I'm a little fascinated by the way he can just stand on the tree and have his body be almost parallel to the ground.

[90 Degree Woodpecker]

 This is a root chicory flower.  They're everywhere in the Hedge now.  Yes, this is the stuff that gets ground up and used as fake-coffee-substitute in hotels and stuff.  Well, probably not the flower part, but this plant.  If you blow this up and look at the center, the pistol and stamen construction is pretty awesome.

[Chicory Blossom]

 Pine cones.  Lots and lots of pine cones.  I keep thinking this is the kind of shot that should be the background for something else or a computer wallpaper or something.

[Pine Cone Canopy]

 A tangle of native wildflowers.  Coneflowers, Queen Anne's Lace and Clover (I think the purple is clover, but if it is, it's really tall clover.)  That's Lake Michigan in the background.

[Prairie Flower Tangle]

 I've loved Queen Ann's Lace since I was a kid and they grew near the retention pond across the street from my house.  First of all, they're tough as nails.  Ever try to pick one?  Second of all, I love the flower-in-a-flower.  The little purple flower inside the big white one.  [Queen Anne's Lace]

 Queen Anne's Lace and Chickory growing together.  Things you learn from Google:  The root of the QAL is a wild carrot.  Who knew?

[Prairie Partners]

These are milkweed flowers.  There will be more about them in the second post from this walk.  But I love the monarch hanging off this one.

[Milkweed Monarch]








Ten pictures makes a post.  I'll post the rest of the shots from this walk 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. :)