In the Midwest, where Jeanine grew up and a lot of corn is grown, the crop is expected to be “knee-high by the Fourth of July.” Our first ever corn crop seems like it is on a more leisurely pace. Still, with each passing day now, it is possible to see the plants getting bigger and I will try to take similarly framed photos every week to monitor progress. I wish I had a spare camera to devote to the task. A time-lapse movie would have been a lot of fun.
The Covid-19 pandemic has caused untold health and economic hardship around the globe. Fortunately, there has been a matching outpouring of generosity to food relief organizations such as Open Table. Here, Jeanine is posing with a check representing a sizeable grant from the Concord-Carlisle Community Chest. Most food pantries rely heavily on volunteers, many of them elderly. Given their heightened risk to Covid-19, a large number are not comfortable putting themselves at risk. This has led to the collapse of many such organizations. Open Table, with a small paid staff, its own facility and truck is faring better than most. Still, it has been a very challenging period and has forced the organization to rethink how best to serve the food insecure in these crazy times.
It has been something like two years since I have taken the kayaks out for a spin. Fortunately, the effort Maya and I put into building them has not gone to waste. Nicolai makes frequent use of them and Maya to a lesser extent. For her 21st birthday weekend, Maya took them up to Maine where she joined friends for overnight camping and a day on the water. This morning, I helped her offload them after doing some early morning macro photography in the back yard.
It has been almost a decade since my father died but his memory lives on in my heart and with all who knew him. I can still hear his laughter whenever I think about him. Infectious is the only way to describe it. He found humor where others did not. He would repeat aloud the thought that he found funny to himself and for the benefit of those in his vicinity. As he worked himself into a frenzy of laughter, those around him were drawn in and soon infected as well. What a tremendous gift. As I age, I wonder what my children will remember about me when I am gone. I can only hope it will bring the same joy to them as thinking of my father brings to me.
The muskrats at Great Meadows had become quite acclimated to humans and can often be seen sharing the paths with them. Not so this little fellow who preferred to hide in the tall grasses. Turning to the sky, I spotted this pair of hawks. I did not have time to adjust proper exposure but liked the silhouette just the same.
It is amazing what you can find in your own back yard with just a little bit of effort. I don’t know what type of insects these are but I definitely know what they are doing. To get this shot, the front of my lens has to be about 2.5 inches from my subject. They were completely oblivious to my presence which gave me sufficient time to get a well-focused image. I could not be happier with my DIY flash diffuser which can be credited with the quality of lighting in this photo. Last night, I glued aluminum foil to the white reflector which had the net effect of boosting contrast in the image. Switching my attention to flora, I am also rather happy with this budding flower.
In addition to helping feed the food insecure in our community, Jeanine also feeds the local hummingbirds with a special recipe she makes herself. Thus, they visit rather frequently. This little fellow stopped in a dozen times over the course of an hour and I managed to get a few keepers. The background is our grey-blue house. Orienting the feeder so that I am shooting into the woods will make for a much nicer image and I will try that next time.
I finally perfected a DIY lighting scheme for shooting macro photos and tested it this evening. Made from an old light modifier for my flash and popsicle sticks, it satisfies all of my requirements; lightweight, easy to set up and tear down, easy to transport, does not prevent me from getting close to subjects, and, most importantly, produces soft light.
Attachment is by way of velcro to my flash head and macro lens. The top half is a reflective white surface that bounces light to the bottom half diffuser. When removed from the camera, the assembly folds flat. The angles have all been calculated to maximize light intensity at the diffuser.
Maya spotted this ant chomping away on what appeared to be some kind of caterpillar larva. He was so engrossed in his meal that I was able to get in very close for this shot. With machine-like efficiency the ant devoured section after section of his prey stopping every minute or so to take a 15-second breather. Then back to work.
For the first time since we have lived here, the field behind our house has been planted with corn. Our property goes as far as the small green patch in the field where a pair of birdhouses are situated. The remainder of the land is Concord Conservation Land, which can never be developed. The pond has recently been restored by the abutting neighbors and it has never looked so good. I shall be sure to post images of the cornfield as it grows. As we get closer to putting our house on the market, our appreciation for the setting we have enjoyed for so many years only grows. Today, those pangs were even stronger as we put an offer on a property near my office.
When I originally posted this blog, I thought that the small round objects on this dragonfly’s abdomen were eggs. Not so. Jeanine reached out to a friend who directed us to a blog by Kent MacFarland at the Vermont Center for Ecostudies whose description I have included below.
I really don’t like weeding. So it was with great pleasure when just moments into the task I spotted a dragonfly acting strangely on a nearby plant. What immediately caught my eye was a pile of tiny, red, egg-like sacs all over its thorax. I ran to grab my camera, and at this point, I am sure my wife was rolling her eyes. Anything to get out of weeding. But heck, I was just about to bear witness to phoresy.
Frankly, I didn’t know the term either. But it turns out that those little red sacs weren’t eggs at all, but rather larvae of water mites hitching a ride on the dragonfly. Ecologists call it phoresy, the process of using another organism to move about.
Arrenurus water mite adults are a mere three millimeters long and usually brown or greenish so you wouldn’t notice them in the water unless you were really looking for them. They mate in spring, and the female lays up to 400 red eggs on underwater objects, one egg at a time.
The six-legged larvae hatch in one to six weeks, depending on water temperature, and they immediately swim around looking for an insect larva. When they find a mosquito, stonefly, damselfly, or a dragonfly larva that is in its late stages of growth, they grab onto it, waiting until the larva goes airborne.
As the dragonfly larva crawls out of the water and sheds its exoskeleton, the mites jump off the cast shell and onto the dragonfly. Now they are not only hitchhiking, but they also become parasites. They form a tube that pierces the exoskeleton of the dragonfly so that they can feed on the victim’s hemolymph, kind of like blood in an insect’s circulatory system. After the mite grows enough, its exoskeleton becomes like a sac and inside the larva develops into a nymph.
When the nymph is fully developed, it just drops off the host when it is over water. Now, like all arachnids, it has eight legs and looks similar to an adult water mite. They eat the same foods as adults too – tiny insects, worms, and even other mites. After they eat and grow, if they avoid being eaten themselves, they find an object to attach to and form another sac to develop into an adult.
I did not need to take more than 10 steps from our backdoor to find a bunch of dragonflies this morning. Maya thinks the photo above looks more like a painting. Other than slight exposure correction and sharpening it is straight from the camera but I do share her opinion. The dragonfly below looks less vibrant, partially due to the fact that it was perched upside down on our photographically bland doorstep.
Today’s post comes in the form of a quiz. How many turkeys are in this picture? For the not so obvious answer, solve the following math problem.
42-19 +28-46
Congratulations if you answered correctly on the first try. Keep at it if you think I got my math wrong. Click on the photo and then zoom in for additional clues.
Addendum: In response to the overwhelming insistence that there are only four turkeys in the photo above, I am providing evidence to confirm that there are indeed five. Also, I watched as the family of five traversed our field before I could get my telephoto lense fitted to my camera for the shot.
Jeanine and I attended an outdoor concert this evening. It has been a long time since we spent an evening outside of the house, let alone while being entertained. This is the first post in 15 years that features an audio clip rather than a photo. See if you can identify all of the instruments in the band. Hint: there are far more than you might think at first.