Corkscrew Swamp - 10.7.12 - Post 5

One last creeper, and then, a truly weird thing... the only bird for this trip. 

Spotted Orb Weaver (053 - 2012)

This is a Spotted Orb Weaver.  They were *everywhere* in the swamp.  Which makes sense since their endemic in the southeastern U.S. - again, something I won't find in Illinois.  The neat thing about this shot is that you can see that the first segment of his legs are red where as the rest are black and white.

This is not a shy spider.  They make huge webs you could see from the boardwalk and then sit right in the middle of them.  Sometimes you'd find them or their web hanging right in front of you.

I like this shot because even though the web is hard to see, the spots (from his name) are easier.  Look at the white stripe right down the middle of his abdomen.  He has gray spots down the white line.

Pileated Woodpecker (054 - 2012)

And then there was my one major bird find for this trip.  There were a few other birds, but none of them photographed well.  I may fight with them later, but for now, there's this Pileated Woodpecker.

These guys have the weirdest range.  Up the U.S. West Coast, through a swath of lower Canada and then down through the northern Midwest and Eastern states all the way down to the top of Florida.  But nothing through the Southeast, most of Texas or the Northern U.S. around Wyoming, the Dakotas and Montana area.  And he was drilling and drilling and drilling.  I hope he found some awesome bugs for all the work he was doing.  They are in Illinois, but I don't think I've seen one here yet.

Okay, reptiles and amphibians are next and last.  For this shoot.  There were many, many, many more pictures taken while I was in Florida.

What a Tangled Web We Weave...

So I missed posting yesterday.  I forgot to toss pictures onto my laptop so I could work on them when I got a chance.  Technically I forgot again today, but I found a folder of pictures I meant to post a long time ago, so I'll post three of those. :)

These are all pictures of spiderwebs from that Sunrise Beach Trip I took last summer.  Once the sun had come up and that particular part of the shoot was over, I walked through the Magic Hedge.  Now it was about 7:00, maybe even 6:30, and there was no one else out there.  The sun had just come up so the place had just opened for the day and it was gorgeous.  The entire park was covered in spiderwebs.  It looked like there was a mist over the grasses and plants, but when you got closer to just about anything, you discovered that, in fact, it was just a crisscrossing of spiderwebs of various kinds.  Funnel webs, fabric-looking webs and good old-fashioned concentric circle webs.  Most of the hosts were no where to be found, but the dew on the strands made them all lovely and interesting.

Waterproof Woven Web

 This was what I meant by fabric-looking webs.  I'm sure it has a different name in the scientific community, but to me it looks like gauze or some kind of chiffon.  I love that it's strong enough to hold up large drops of water without tearing or even sagging.

Pennant

The construction on this one breaks my brain.  I suspect there has to be a third anchor point off to the right, but I didn't catch it in the shot.  All you see is this amazing web, with strands so close together, yet not touching or tangling, hanging from a stick.

How Dew You Like Me Now?

It looks like this web was made from something about as thick as cotton yarn.  Of course it wasn't, but the dew drops combined with the light shining directly on it to give it so much more dimension. Spiderwebs have kind of been a 'bucketlist' shot for me, because the webs are both amazing and stupidly difficult to shoot well because they're so diaphanous.  Having so much light at such an angle, and hitting the dew collected along the strands made it so much easier, and still just as awesome. 

I'll probably post a few more webs tomorrow before I start on the things I keep meaning to transfer off the hard drive and onto my laptop.  :)

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.