Posts in Category: Laudholm Farm
Angel Wings (Fringed Polygala)
Fringed Polygala, Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farm, Wells ME
We are having a very odd spring. There were no Angle Wings (Fringed Polygala) along the trail at Rachel Carson NWR Headquarters, where they are generally common…and yet, the very next day, the woods at Laudholm Farm were full of them. The two spots are separated by less than a mile as the crow flies. I can think of no good reason to explain why they would be in bloom one place and not the other…but that is nature…ever mysterious 🙂
Nikon P900 in Close Up Mode at 95mm equivalent field of view. 1/400th @ f4 @ ISO 100. Processed in Lightroom. Cropped for scale.
Catbird Seat
Grey Catbird, Well National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farm, Wells ME
A Grey Catbird on a mossy stump at Laudholm Farms the other day. Back light on the forest floor made for difficult shooting, but the image catches something about the Catbird, and the forest, that I like.
Nikon P900 at 2000mm equivalent field of view. 1/125th @ ISO 720 @ f6.5. Processed in Topaz Dejpeg and Lightroom.
Blue Jay Rampant
Blue Jay, Laudholm Farms, Wells ME
It is odd that until this year, I have had little success photographing Blue Jays. I see them, but I have not been able to get them in the frame. This year I have photographed them in Maine and Ohio, getting close-ups and satisfying images in both states! I posted one from Ohio as the pic of the day a few days ago, and here we have a specimen from Laudholm Farm just down the road from my home in southern Maine. I think there might me an unusual number of Jays this year for one thing…or the late migration north has bunched them up more than usual. I am certainly seeing more of them.
Though it can be an obnoxious bird around feeders, and is know for raiding other birds’ nests for eggs, it is certainly, on aesthetic grounds alone, one of the more striking birds of North America. The boldly barred blue and black and white wing and tail patterns, and the subtle purpley-blues of the back…along with the patterned face, big beak and eye…make it a stand out bird. Catch it in good light and with a contrasting background, as here, and it makes a memorable image. Or that’s what I think 🙂
Nikon P900 at 2000mm equivalent field of view. 1/200th @ f6.5 @ ISO 400. Processed and cropped for composition in Lightroom.
Jack-in-the-pulpit in the wild! Happy Sunday.
Jack-in-the-pulpit, Laudholm Farms, Wells ME
My photographer friend Robert, who lives in Australia, liked yesterday’s picture of a Pink Lady Slipper, because it was a chance to see a plant he only sees “caged” (his word) growing in its natural habitat. Until yesterday, though it is native to Maine, I had only ever seen the Jack-in-the-pulpit, so to speak, in “captivity”…at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Booth Bay Maine, and at Wild Gardens of Acadia at Sieur de Mont Springs in Acadia National Park. You can imagine my surprise, and delight, when I looked down off the edge of the boardwalk yesterday at the Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farm in Wells Maine and caught sight of the unmistakable hood of a Jack-in-the-pulpit. It was almost completely buried in its own foliage, and in the foliage of other plants growing with it. Further investigation showed 4 Jack-in-the-pulpit plants (also called bog onion, brown dragon, Indian turnip, American wake robin, or wild turnip) in a cluster within a foot of the boardwalk. I kept my eye peeled, and found another cluster of five plants, similarly placed, before I came to the end of the long boardwalk. The second cluster, two of which are shown above, were younger, with the leaves not completely unfolded and the hood stripped inside and out and lower on the jack. The first cluster were mature plants, fully flowered with the hood completely green on the outside and drying at little at the tip.
Jack-in-the-pulpit
According to the wiki article, the Jack is actually covered in tiny, both male and female, flowers. The male flowers on any one plant dominate early and then die, leaving more female flowers, so the plant is not self pollinating. I also read that it takes 3 years for the plant to mature enough to flower for the first time, so these Jacks have been growing beside the boardwalk for at least that long. There is more in the wiki, and as you might suspect from some of the alternate names, the tuber of the plant is edible…and has been used in traditional herbal medicine.
Finding a something new to me in nature always delights me. To know that I have walked by these plants for at least 3 years, and to have finely “chanced” on them, is simply wonderful…so wonderful that I totally reject the notion that there was any “chance” involved. I could so easily have walked by them again this year. To have found them is a gift outright, an undeserved and unearned gift, the very definition of a blessing. And “wonderful” too in the literal sense of the word…filling me with wonder…with that sense of awe at the beauty of nature and the love of the creator. That they are there is wonderful…to have found them, to have been lead to glance down just at the right second, is awesome! And then to be rewarded with a second cluster…such love!
And now I get to share them with you! How awesome is that? Happy Sunday!
All photos Nikon P900 in Close Up Mode. 80-100mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Lightroom and the panel assembled in Coolage.
Trout Lily
Trout Lily, Laudholm Farm, Wells ME
I went for a walk at Laudholm Farm (Wells National Estuarine Research Center) yesterday, more for the form of the thing than with any real hope of photo ops…but I was pleasantly surprised. Both the Skunk Cabbage and Trout Lily were in bloom along the boardwalk through the maple swamp, I caught a Garter Snake crossing under, and got good shots of an early Blue Jay. The Eastern Towhees were also tuning up. There were drying vernal pools with masses of frog eggs, some clouds came up over the farm buildings, interesting winter weathered reeds. a Kestrel hunting the farm fields…lots, really, to look at and enjoy. Glad I went.
The Trout Lily is one of the earliest blooming forest flowers in Maine…kind of the Crocus of the woods…budding out shortly after the last of the snow leaves the ground. Many years I miss it altogether, because it has passed by the time I start paying attention. I remember finding beds of the distinctive green and brown leaves one year, and watching them for a month waiting for the bloom, when, in fact, they had bloomed weeks before I first noticed them. Generally I find them when I am not expecting anything to be blooming…like this year.
They “nod” on their stems…generally the flower faces the forest floor when fully open, presenting its backside to the sun, but I did find one more or less horizontal and near enough to the boardwalk so that by getting down on my side I could frame it from slightly below and catch the full effect of the flower. Thank you, Nikon, for the articulated LCD on the P900. 🙂 The flower is about 1.5 inches across.
Nikon P900 in Close Up Mode and 105mm equivalent field of view. 1/800th @ ISO 100 @ f4. Processed in Lightroom.
Birch Boundary
Birches at the edge of Laudholm Farm, Wells ME
In summer, walking the lower fields of Laudholm Farm, you would think you were on the edge of a deep forest. In winter it becomes apparent just how thin the boarder of trees between fields and marsh is. Really just a few birches and pines and some underbrush is all that separates the two. As I have said before, birches have always been among my favorite trees, and I find this “hedge” of birches and pines irresistible.
The top panel is another accidental panorama…or rather it is two sweep panoramas, taken with the camera in vertical orientation, neither of which caught quite the full sweep I was after. At home it occurred to me to try stitching them for that last bit of sweep. Photoshop Elements PhotoMerge tool to the rescue! The bottom panel is the same birch boundary at 24mm equivalent in an in-camera HDR from further out in the field. Sony HX400V. Processed in Lightroom, panorama stitched in Photoshop Elements, and collage assembled in Phototastic on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Winter Laudholm Farm
Laudholm Farm, Wells ME
It is one of those triumphs of the conservation spirit (and rare common sense) that a combination of public and private agencies managed to “save” Laudholm Farms from development. The land is held jointly by the Wells National Estuarine Research Center and the Laudholm Trust, and between them they have managed to preserve both a large and diverse ecosystem which includes two healthy tidal rivers, marsh, woodlands, upland pastures, etc. and the magnificent buildings of a true, late 1800s, Maine Salt Farm. Quite an accomplishment. I am truly thankful to have such a valuable resource in my back yard! It is a great place in every season…and with the Friends group renting snowshoes, is one of the more accessible winter outings in our area. I love it!
This is a two panel shot of the farm buildings. The top panel is a wide sweep panorama and the bottom is from the same spot in a more conventional 24mm equivalent view. Together they give a good impression of the farm in winter.
Sony HX400V. As above. Processed in Lightroom and assembled in Phototastic on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Winter Trees. Happy Sunday!
Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farm, ME
Yesterday the temperature got up into the high teens so we threw our snowshoes in the trunk of the car and drove down to Laudholm Farm (The Wells National Estuarine Research Center) for a couple of hours. The Friends group there rents snowshoes so the trails are, by now, well packed and pretty easy going. We climbed the snowbank around the parking lot and headed out parallel to the woods that line the drive coming in. I was immediately struck by the shapes of the winter trees against the snow…certainly not skeletal, and not quite nude…but something very like both. The birch is one of my favorite trees at Laudholm…birches in general, and this particular majestic birch that lives along the boardwalk trail. I have photographed it now in every season. The birch shot is a vertical sweep panorama, sweeping the camera from fully over my head pointed straight up, down the trunk of the tree to the base…pretty tricky while standing on 5 feet of snow in snowshoes. 🙂
Sony HX400V, sweep panorama as above, and in-camera HDR for the other shots. Processed in Lightroom and assembled in Phototastic on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
As I surmised after my first slog around the yard with them, I am really enjoying being able to get out into the snow covered landscape on my snowshoes. I have not gotten out as often as I might like, since the temperatures, often with significant wind chill, have not been inviting, but each experience has been both rewarding and refreshing. I am not very adventurous on them. I stick pretty much to the established trails and don’t do a lot of trail-breaking, but even so, they take me to places I just could not get to without them, and it has (again as I surmised) made a difference in my attitude toward this winter. The temperature might keep me housebound but the snow does not. This is good.
Because of course there is a stark, is might be so bold as to say, a spiritual, beauty to the winter landscape. Skeletal is wrong word for the trees exposed in winter because the trunks and branches are so obviously still alive, waiting, biding their time, resting even…and we don’t see skeletons until after death. There is nothing dead about winter trees. Naked comes close…since, at a stretch, they have shed their summer clothing of leaves…but that is not quite right either because the leaves are way more than clothing for the tree…they are way too alive…way too much the tree itself to be considered merely clothing. It is perhaps, as though we are seeing the spirit of the tree…the strong solid core that will burst out, in weeks, with new life. And we are seeing the spirit trees against the backdrop of landscape transformed and simplified by its blanket of snow…again as though the clean clear spirit of the land itself is exposed. We might have to bundle up in layers and strap snowshoes to our feet to get out, but if we bring our winter eyes we see the beauty…and is so alive! We see through to the spirit, and have reason to give thanks and praise to the creator, in this winter landscape. Happy Sunday!
Wide on the Little for Wednesday
Sweep panorama near the mouth of the Little River on Laudholm Beach
On Sunday my photoprowl featured heavy skies over the October landscape. This is a sweep panorama taken just back from the mouth of the Little River where it crosses Laudholm Beach. I like these tall/wide shots, taken with the camera in portrait orientation. Of course this shot is all about the lowering sky, the sweep of the sand, and the curve of the water. The hint of color in the distant trees is an added highlight.
Sony HX400V. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
October Sky, Laudholm Farm
Laudholm Farm, Wells ME
This is not the first time I have shot this view, and it almost certainly will not be the last. 🙂 It is such a classic that the University of New Hampshire Panorama Project has put a panorama post on the spot, though this shot is from nearer ground level.
It is an in-camera HDR, and I used Program Shift to get a smaller aperture and greater depth of field, even on this day of subdued October light. Sony HX400V at 24mm equivalent. ISO 80 @ 1/500th @ f5.6. Processed in Lightroom on Surface Pro 3 tablet.