Posts in Category: close up
Wood Lily. Happy Sunday!
Wood Lily, Day Brook Pond, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, Maine
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
I have been posting images from our trip to Honduras for the past two weeks now. I have been home a week already. Of course I have been out around home a few times too. 🙂 I had to check for dragons and damsels and for the Wood Lilies at Day Brook Pond for one thing. This is Wood Lily season, and this week last year, there were the best stands of Wood Lily out on the Kennebunk Plains that I have ever seen. We have had a long dry spell in Maine this year, and the flowers are much less numerous, and somewhat late to bloom, but there were a few when I visited on Wednesday. It rained yesterday, and it is raining hard at the moment. That may be just what the Wood Lilies need to pop out in full display. We will see tomorrow when I get back to the Kennebunk Plains.
It would take an ungenerous eye indeed not to appreciate the beauty of the Wood Lily. They grow sparsely in open shade along the edges and in the clearings in the forest, and out in full sun on the Plains. They appear to like sandy soil, but with a rich mix of humus. They range from deep red (rare in Maine) to the bright orange caught in this image, always touched with yellow at the base of the petals, and spattered with purple/brown spots. The prominent Stigma and Stamens are tall and graceful, with large velvety Anthers that produce a lot of pollen. They attract many insects, like the little Green Metalic Bee you see on the petal at the right.
Wood Lilies are the essence of a wild flower. They don’t do well in cultivation, so they have rarely been tamed to ornament our yards and grounds. They grow where they will, and boom only to suit themselves, briefly. You have to go out into the woods and uncultivated fields at just the right time to see them. I had never seen one until about 5 years ago when I found two growing along the Kennebunk Bridle Path. I had no idea they bloomed in such numbers on the Kennebunk Plains until 3 years ago when that bright flash of orange drew me out away from the road. Now I go look for them every year. While they are apparently doing well in Maine, they are threatened or endangered in many states, as true wild-lands grow more rare. To me, they will always be a celebration of God’s generosity of spirit and sense of wild beauty. One more reason to be thankful and happy on this Sunday. May you find the Wood Lilies in bloom, and always be filled with light.
Brown Violet Ear Hummingbird
Brown Violet-ear Hummingbird, Rio Santiago Resort, Honduras
The dominant Hummingbird species on our visit to Rio Santiago Resort in the North Coastal mountains of Honduras, by a ratio of 25 to 1, was the Brown Violet-ear. Rio Santiago Resort is actually a small lodge with a few cabins that is justly renowned for the numbers of hummingbirds and the numbers of hummingbird species that work feeders, too many to count, that they maintain. There were certainly hundreds, maybe thousands, of BVEs working the feeders at the lodge. For that reason, we saw far fewer species at the feeders than we expected. Even the most aggressive species, like the Rufous-tailed Hummingbirds, were kept at bay by the sheer numbers of BVEs. This shot, which actually shows the “violet ears”, was taken in the deep shade of the thatched roof over the open air restaurant/bar at the lodge. The roof is lined with maybe 50 feeders, and there are always a hundred or more hummers buzzing overhead while you eat. It is hard to imagine the density of hummers. I was able to stand at at less than 3 feet from the wire supporting the feeders and frame as many BVEs as I wanted. It was dark under there, and this shot was taken at a very high ISO…but it is exactly the kind of shot the Sony JPEG engine does best with, even at such an elivated ISO. Lots of fine detail and a blank background. Sony’s noise reduction routines work very well here.
Sony RX10iii at 600mm equivalent field of view. 1/250th @ ISO 6400 @ f4. Processed in Lightroom.
Another Swallowtail
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail. Sargentville Maine
Are you tired of Swallowtails yet? I have never seen as many Eastern Tiger Swallowtails as there were flying on the Blue Hill peninsula on the Maine coast this past weekend. In fact, in four days I saw way more Swallowtails than I have seen in the total of my life up to that point. They were crossing the roads, hovering over fields, among the trees of the forest, on the rocky beaches…everywhere. If you sat still anywhere outside for more than 5 minutes you were almost guaranteed to see one float by. They were particularly fond of a patch of Lupine and Wallflower growing in corner of the yard where my daughter’s wedding was held. I saw as many as a dozen at once working the patch, and there were at least a couple every time I chanced by. Since they were actively feeding among the Wallflower, they were relatively easy to photograph…and I brought back a lot of Swallowtail pics. 🙂
Sony RX10iii at 840mm equivalent (600mm with an in-camera crop to 10mp for the extra reach). 1/800th @ ISO 100 @ f4. Processed in Lightroom.
Back view: Tiger Swallowtail in Wallflower
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, Sargentville Maine
I shared a front view of Tiger Swallowtails in the Wallflower at the house where Emily got married for the Generous Eye yesterday. This is the back view. 🙂 It is a beautiful butterfly either way you look at it.
Sony RX10iii at 600mm equivalent field of view. 1/250th @ ISO 100 @ f4. Processed in Lightroom.
Lady Slipper Orchids in Array
Pink Lady Slipper Orchids, Rachel Carson NWR, Headquarters trail, Wells Maine
It is not often you get this kind of a display of Pink Lady Slipper Orchids in the wild. This stand is along the trail at the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center in Wells Maine, and is one of several clusters in the same area.
Sony RX10iii at 277mm equivalent field of view. 1/200th @ ISO 100 @ f8. Program shift for greater depth of field. Processed in Lightroom.
Red momma!
Red Squirrel, Laudholm Farms, Wells Maine
I was walking on the boardwalk through the maple swamp at the Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farms yesterday, and I thought, “this is just about where I saw the Red Squirrel last year.” And just like magic, there was a Red Squirrel on the boardwalk doing just exactly what the Red Squirrel was doing last year…picking up and eating the the little whirlygig seeds of the Red Maple. Once more, the squirrel allowed me to approach quite closely…I worked my way a few feet at a time to within 12 feet of it, before it turned to challenge me and then scampered off.
I knew, while taking the pictures, that there was something odd about the squirrel…or out of the ordinary anyway. Last year the squirrel had a wound on its nose below the eye on one side. This year it was an obviously nursing mother squirrel, taking a break from nest duty to enjoy the maple bounty. You can’t see the nipples in this shot, but in other they are clearly visible.
Sony RX10iii at 840mm equivalent field of view (600mm optical plus an in-camera crop to 10mp for the extra reach.)  1/250th @ ISO 125 @ f4. Processed in Lightroom. The difference in clarity and detail between this photo and the those I took with the Nikon P900 last year is obvious at anything larger than screen view 🙂 and it is pretty clear even here.
Wild Iris
Wild Iris, Fennel Brook Pond #2, Kennebunk Maine
Further inland the Wild Iris are well out, in roadside ditches, and in wet fields, but here along the coast they are just beginning to bloom. I have been watching this clump for several days. It is by the spillway from one of my favorite ponds along Rt. 9 near our home. Iris are always beautiful, and here, the dark background of the water behind sets off the flower to perfection.
Sony RX10iii at 600mm equivalent field of view. 1/100th @ ISO 100 @ f7.1. Program shift for greater depth of field. Processed in Lightroom.
Baskettail?
Baskettail Dragonfly, Day Brook Pond, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, W. Kennebunk ME
The dragonflies are coming out these past few days. At Day Brook Pond there are many tenerals…newly emerged dragonflies…and a few fully hardened off adults. This is, I believe, one of the Baskettails…probably the Common Baskettail. You hardly ever see the adults perched, and I am not familiar enough with the tenerals to be sure.
Sony RX10iii at 600mm plus 2x Clear Image Zoom. 1/500th @ ISO 100 @ f4. Processed in Lightroom.
Lady Slipper time. Happy Sunday!
Pink Lady Slipper, Rachel Carson NWR, Wells ME
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
I have been watching the patches of Pink Lady Slipper at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge and along the Kennebunk Bridle Trail in Wells and Kennebunk for weeks now. There is one patch off a deck at the back at Rachel Carson, overlooking Branch Brook, where the sun comes in all day. Lady Slipper orchids bloom there at least a few days, sometimes a week, before they bloom anywhere else in our area. Yesterday the first blossoms opened fully. I can go back through my archives on my WideEyedInWonder site and find images of this plant going back at least 7 or 8 years, maybe more. I don’t mean this plant as in Lady Slipper, I mean this plant as in this Lady Slipper. It always produces at least two blossoms, sometimes as many as 6. There is a delicacy, a rare beauty in these strange blooms, and I do my best to catch it year by year.
My yearly Lady Slipper vigil is part of what keeps me aware of the constant renewal of the beauty of creation…the cycle of change…no two years the same…but each year with its beauty…that is God’s creative love at work, day by day. It is not that Genesis has it wrong when it says that after God created the heavens and the earth God rested…it is that we have the wrong idea of rest. Rest, in the divine sense has to be creative, radiant…an ongoing action producing peace…an continual outflowing and outworking of love. Rest is not a pause in the dance, or a silence in the music…it is the moment of perfect balance within the motion of the dance…it is the moment when the notes of the music echo in the room…echo in our hearts and minds…and fulfill their beauty. That is a little, a very little, like the rest of God.
When I see the Lady Slippers bloom, in the quiet beauty, I sense the active rest of God, and the notes of God’s love echo and swell in my life to fill it. This is reason enough to love the Lady Slipper, reason enough to watch for its coming, and to celebrate its bloom year by year. Happy Sunday!
Another Oriole in Apple
Baltimore Oriole, Magee Marsh, Ohio.
Back to Ohio today for this Baltimore Oriole in Apple blossoms. An action shot.
Sony RX10iii at 600mm equivalent field of view. 1/250th @ ISO 100 @ f4. Processes and cropped for scale in Lightroom.