Greeter at Canopy Tower
Red-lored Parrot, Canopy Tower, Panama, July 2022 — There were 5 Red-lored Amazon Parrots waiting to greet me when I arrived at the observation level of Canopy Tower after my flights and being picked up at the airport. Nice of them. 🙂 Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. ISO 250 @ f4 @ 1/500th. Plus 1.7EV for the backlight.
Big Green Bee in Purple Knapweed
I am on the bus, already at 3am, on the first leg of my journey to Panama and the Canopy Tower and Canopy Lodge. Yesterday at our family 4th of July cookout I walked the edge of an overgrown meadow looking for a photo to post on my way to the airport. This big Green Metallic Bee…very big as Green Metallic Bees go…in the fresh Knapweed caught my eye. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. ISO 100 @ f5 @ 1/1000th.
Azure Bluet
Azure Bluet: SMMC Kennebunk, Kennebunk, Maine, USA, June 2022 — The grasses around the drainage pond at Southern Maine Medical Center in Kennebunk were full of Azure Bluets…probably more than a dozen visible in every square yard. What they lack in mass they make up in numbers 🙂 Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. ISO 250 @ f4 @ 1/500th.
Asian Lily
An Asian Lily in late afternoon light. From our front yard. 🙂 Happy Sunday!. Sony Rx10iv at 447mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. ISO 640 @ f4 @ 1/500th.
Flower Long-horn Beetle
Flower Long-horn Beetle (sp?): Emmon’s Preserve, Kennebunkport, Maine, USA, June 2022 — I stopped at Emmon’s Preserve while out on my eTrike the other day, looking mostly for dragonflies. There were none in the upper meadow, or around the small pond near the Kennebunkport Land Trust headquarters house. ?? I did find this consolation prize Long-horn Beetle of indeterminate species along the edge of the trail. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. ISO 100 @ f4 @ 1/640th.
Leaf-cutter Bee
Leaf-cutter Bee: SMMC Kennebunk, Kennebunk, Maine, USA, June 2022 — This is most probably a Leaf-cutter Bee, which I found working the flowers around the drainage ponds at Southern Maine Medical Center in Kennebunk. (Less probably it is a Mason Bee, which apparently looks and acts very much like the Leaf-cutter…but which builds mud nests). Both are solitary bees, great pollinators, but not honey makers. In looking them up this morning I found that there is a whole Leaf and Mason Bee culture out there, with firms that will sell you starter sets to establish the bees in your garden or farm or orchard, to help with pollination, and lots of instructional material on-line about keep them. Who knew. Not I. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. (This is a heavy crop, enlarged with Pixelmator’s ML Enlarge tool.) ISO 100 @ f8 @ 1/1250th.
Eastern Pondhawk
Eastern Pondhawk: SMMC Kennebunk, Kennebunk, Maine, USA, June 2022 — I have been watching out for these. The Eastern Pondhawk is one of my favorite dragonflies. I like the subtle shades of blue and green, blending into each other, and I like the fact that it sits on sunny rocks for its portrait. 🙂 This is a male. The females remain mostly all green with brown stripes on the abdomen while the males develop this prunosity that renders the abdomen increasingly blue. They are active, agile hunters, but they like to sit and sun themselves as well. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. ISO 100 @ f4 @ 1/500th.
American Lady
American Lady Butterfly: SMMC Kennebunk, Kennebunk, Maine, USA, June 2022 — It seems to me that there are fewer butterflies this summer than last…I have seen only a few Swallowtails, and this is, so far, the only Lady I have seen. Maybe I am just not getting out enough. 🙂 I have to look up how to tell a Painted Lady from an American Lady every year. We have both in Maine, as is true of most of the US. The two large eye-spots on the underside of the wings are the tell for American Lady. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. ISO 100 @ f5 @ 1/1000th.
Wild Turkey Poult
Wild Turkey: Gravely Brook Road, Kennebunkport, Maine, USA, June 2022 — As I passed on my eTrike the other day, out towards Emmon’s Preserve on Gravely Brook Road in Kennebunkport, a few hen turkeys and their nursery skittered out of the ditch and headed out into a field of mixed weeds and hay. I got off the trike and got my camera out, but the poults had disappeared into the taller vegetation. I watched the hens as they wandered out into the field, and eventually this one poult stuck its head up high enough for me to see. There were at least half a dozen of them in there, but I could not see them. 🙂 Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. ISO 100 @ f4 @ 1/800th.
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Red-bellied Woodpecker: Kennebunk, Maine, USA, June 2022 — It used to be that we would get a Red-bellied Woodpecker in our yard once every few years…then, beginning maybe three years ago, a few times a summer…and now a few times a week all summer…getting on towards daily. I found an article from 2021 on the Maine Audubon site that details the range expansion of the Red-bellied Woodpecker in Maine, that started in 2004, and has gained momentum year by year since. It is very likely that this woodpecker is nesting in our neighborhood. We used to only see it on the suet…but it is now taking mealworms from the mealworm feeder we keep full for our nesting Bluebirds and their young. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. ISO 6400 @ f4 @ 1/500th. Taken through a double glazed deck door. 🙂