Posts in Category: Rachel Carson NWR
7/1/2012: The Dragon Ponds. Happy Sunday!
As I have mentioned before, the Kennebunk Bridle Path is an old, abandoned trolley line that runs from Kennebunk to Kennebunkport within site of the Mousam River…a reminder of a gentler age of tourism in the Kennebunks. Today it runs through large sections of Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge and Kennebunk Land Trust Conservation lands. It is mostly used by joggers, bicyclist, and dog walkers, but it provides easy access to some very rich habitat along the river for those of us interested in such things.
Since discovering the joy of watching dragon- and damselflies, almost exactly a year ago this week, I have a new reason to explore the Bridle Path. On either side of where it crosses Route 9 near the Mousam bridge, it runs through marshland with lots of small ponds and pools. It takes a very high tide to flood the marsh (though it happens on occasion) so the water in these ponds and pools is mostly fresh. And they are surrounded by marsh grass standing in a few inches to a foot of water on a very spongy bed. Along the rise of the Bridle Trail, and in the forest edge behind the marsh, larger bushes and small trees provide perches. It is an ideal dragon- and damselfly hatchery, and provides the emergent adults with an excellent hunting ground. Now that I am paying attention, I have seen dozens of species there already this spring and summer.
So I have taken to calling one particularly rich area, where a small stream runs through the marsh and under the Bridle Path, the dragon ponds. “I am off on my scooter to the dragon ponds,” I say to my wife, and she knows just where I will be. It is 2.2 miles one way (with a quarter mile walk at the end), so it is an easy ride on Froggy the Scoot. (I can ever ride right to the pools along the Path, but mostly I walk in from Route 9.) Froggy (due to the neon green color), is seen here parked by the ponds yesterday (which are, believe me, out there in the grass). I actually bought Froggy the Scoot to be able to get to the ponds more often.
The lead photo is a female Widow Skimmer. I have seen the female several times now, but I have yet to find a male.
By far the most abundant dragonfly in the Ponds is the Seaside Dragonlet. This is a tiny dragonfly by dragonfly standards…most individuals are less than inch long. They perch a lot, compared to other dragons, so they are relatively easy to photograph. This is a female, and a male and female in tandem follows.
There are also damselflies. The most common, by far, is Eastern Forktail. What we have in the next photo is a closely related Citrine Forktail, the first I have seen at the Dragon Ponds.
Next we have a Four-spotted Skimmer, almost as common as the Seaside Dragonlets, and certainly the most common of the bigger dragons.
And I will follow that with another Skimmer, this time the Twelve-spotted Skimmer. They have emerged within the past few days, and are already present in some numbers.
The real prize yesterday, though I don’t yet have a fully satisfying image, was several Halloween Pennants Painted Skimmers patrolling the marsh (Ed note: still learning!). These are strong flyers, very orange in the sun, who rarely perch, so I spent about a hour and a half watching and waiting. I had given up several times and tried to get back on Froggy the Scoot to go home, only to have one fly tantalizing close and tempt me back to the edge of the marsh. One did finally perch within photo range…but by then the wind was up and the dragonfly picked such a high perch in the marsh grasses that, with the wind wiping the grass, it might almost as well have still been flying. Still…it is a magnificent dragon!
All this in a few hours at the Dragon Ponds.
And for the Sunday thought. As I stood watching the Halloween Pennants Painted Skimmers patrolling, following a relatively predictable pattern over the marsh, always out of reach, I found my self willing them to perch! I came as far as muttering it under my breath like an incantation. “Perch. Please perch.” “Go on. Perch right there!” “Please.”
I was not under any illusion that my plea would effect the dragonflies, even if I spoke out-loud. Dragonflies clearly have business of their own which has nothing to do with me or my desire to photograph them. I will admit to getting very wet feet trying to reach a pool in the marsh were they seemed to congregate at one point, but chasing dragonflies on the wing is even more futile that asking them to perch.
No, I know who I am addressing. My mutters are not a plea to the dragonflies, but a prayer to the spirit that moves in both them and me. I am asking for a blessing, plain and simple, knowing I don’t deserve one and that I can’t earn it no matter how patient I am. Dragonflies will fly, unless, of course, they perch. When this one did, and I finally got the camera to focus on it while it clung to the waving grass, and I shot of a few bursts of images, it was purely a gift, and I was impossibly thankful.
It made my day. It sustained me when Froggy the Scoot ran out of battery half way home. it kept a smile on my face while I sweated the scooter up the final little hill and across the yard. It blossomed to an irrepressible grin when I got the images up on the laptop and saw I had a few keepers.
I know I am blessed to have the Dragon Ponds within reach. I have been especially blessed by a perching Halloween Pennant Painted Skimmers. It is not world peace, or an end to hunger, I know, but it makes me happy, hopeful, full of quiet joy. This is, I think, a good thing. Happy Sunday from the Dragon Ponds.
12/26/2011: Winter Still-life
A vernal pool in the woods of Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge, fallen oak leaves of several shades of warm brown, and just cold enough to freeze the surface into crazy patterns which catch the light in interesting ways. It must be that the patterns are caused by variations in surface tension (or perhaps even water temperature) due to the barely submerged leaves. I am sure there is science behind it, but the effect is, at least to me, captivating, especially when it is contrasted with the shapes of the leaves themselves.
This is a long zoom shot, at 520mm equivalent field of view, to provide just enough isolation to emphasize the patterns, and just enough magnification to clearly delineate them. Canon SX40HS in Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. f5.8 @ 1/160th @ ISO 500. It is so nice to be able to leave the Canon in Program, with auto ISO, and just shoot, with confidence that the results will be excellent no matter how high the ISO goes to maintain decent shutter speed for handholding long zoom shots! If I had had to dance around ISO and shutter speed considerations for this shot, it would have difficult to impossible, and the result would not, certainly, have been either so sharp or so vibrant.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
7/24/2011: Wood Nymphs and Grace: Happy Sunday!
Tempting as it was to stay inside and lie low on another abnormally hot day in Southern Maine, by 2PM I realized that if I did not break free, I would have spent the whole day at the computer. On Saturday! Not good. Still, it is summer in Kennebunk and Kennebunkport, so there are places we locals don’t go, especially on a hot Saturday afternoon (like anywhere with sand and water, shopping, views, etc…anything which might attract the tourist horde). My choices were limited.
I always manage to find something of interest at the short trail at the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge headquarters, and that can be reached without entering tourist territory.
It was, as expected, hot and still in the woods at Rachel Carson. We never get what you would call “high noon sun” here in Maine. Even at mid-day and mid-summer the angle of the light is never more than 60 degrees, and by 2PM it is already easing down toward 45, so the shadows in the woodland are interesting. And there were lots of Wood Nymph Butterflies. Gray patterned with prominent eye spots in cream-yellow patches on both sides of the leading wing, these guys flit through the forest, keeping, in the heat at least, mostly in the deeper shade. I chased a few with the camera, but, again with the heat, they were rarely still for more than a second, and with the deep shade, they were hard to photograph at the telephoto end of the zoom.
So I was surprised when I caught motion out of the corner of my eye as I left the lower deck on the Little River, to look up and see 8 or 9 of them massed on a tree trunk about 15 feet in and up. I watched and shot for 20 minutes as the butterflies clustered in this one spot, then dispersed, only to return, one, two, three, and soon a whole mass of them again. I could not see the attraction. I don’t know what they were doing. And it was still difficult to get a decent shot of butterflies in constant motion in the low light and at that distance with the zoom run all the way out. A tripod might have helped.
And finally, of course, I remembered to switch to video. You can shoot video in light that limits still imaging, and I found a spot on the rail of the deck where I could prop the camera for a fairly still view. The video required some post processing in Sony Vegas…adjusted brightness and contrast.
And I went away from that deck marveling once again at the gifts we are given when we take a camera (or binoculars for that matter) in hand and go out to intentionally look at the world. I have still have no idea what the butterflies where doing on that tree (if one of you don’t tell me, I may take some time this afternoon for a little research) but just finding them, having the opportunity to see them doing whatever it was, was such a gift. I did not bring back great images…and even the video could be better…but that I saw it at all is a thing of wonder and delight. Once more, since it is Sunday, it is grace. I did not deserve it. I could not have earned it. I had no right to expect it. I was a gift outright. Grace.
6/6/2011: Merriland River Spring Panorama
Of course, this has to be viewed as large as your monitor will allow for full effect. Click the image and it should open in that format.
This is the Merriland River where it flows down to meet the Little at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge Headquarters.
When I took this shot, three shots actually, I had little expectation of its working out. It was simply a why not, digital is free experiment. What caught my eye was the delicate spring foliage, the sweep of the river, and the light on the trees on the left. I liked the way the two relatively close trees framed the view, and I liked the look of the diagonal branch. It had to be a pano though, since any single view out through the foreground obstructions would make them just that…obstructions. The foreground branch, I think, works in the pano because it has the room it needs to look natural, and the larger context to make sense of it. This is my second experiment with Panorama with foreground objects. I am liking them.
Three 23mm equivalent fields of view, overlapped and stitched in PhotoMerge in PhotoShop Elements 9, using the reposition tool. Nikon Coolpix P500, f5.6 @ 1/1000th @ ISO160. Program with Active D-Lighting, for dynamic range, and Vivid Image Optimization.
Processed for Clarity and Sharpness in Lightroom.
5/24/2011: Lady Slippers v.2011
As I mentioned on Sunday, our wildflowers are about 3 weeks late here in Southern Maine. Lady Slippers are generally in full bloom on Mother’s Day. This year, this past Saturday at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Headquarters, all but a few were still in the green bud stage as above…still more than a few sunny days away from bloom…and we aren’t expecting any sun until at least Thursday of this week. Maybe next weekend they will have popped.
There is one spot, on the back side of the loop trail at Rachel Carson, where they have cut a new opening out to the marsh and built a new deck…new two years ago that is. Below the deck, on the slope facing the sun most of the morning, is where Lady Slippers will first be in bloom if they are in bloom anywhere, and this year was no exception. I found 5 or 6 plants and 6 or 7 blooms…but oh how pale compared to last spring’s show. Still, they are always magnificent. Ours are the Pink variety.
The new camera allows an even closer approach than last year, and I took advantage of all the macro it has to offer in the second and fifth shots. This new lens has wonderful bokeh, assisted, I suspect by a little in camera digital wizardry!
Nikon Coolpix P500 in Close Up Scene mode, 32mm equivalent field of view at anything from 6 inches to 3/4 inch. All images at f3.7 and ISO 160, shutter speeds from 1/200th to 1/640th.
Processed for Clarity and Sharpness in Lightroom. (I have added a bit on the Lightroom processing required with the new camera on my Lightroom processing page here or via the link in the header.)