Posts in Category: forest
Pink Lady Slipper Orchid
Pink Lady Slipper Orchid, Rachel Carson NWR Headquarters Trail
Yesterday I posted a panel of May wildflowers from Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge that included a cluster of Pink Lady Slipper Orchids. It was afternoon when I found them, and by then the sun was off the little glade where they grow. I went back yesterday morning to see if I could catch them in the sun. It takes a warm morning sun to bring out the richness in the pink flesh of the bulb…or late afternoon if you can find a patch with the right light.
Nikon P900 in Close Up Mode at 80mm equivalent field of view. 1/500th @ f3.5 @ ISO 100. Processed and cropped slightly for composition in Lightroom.
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.
Mourning Cloak
Mourning Cloak, Bear Canyon, Randell Davies Audubon Sanctuary, Santa Fe NM
Carol and I did some hiking yesterday morning while waiting for Anna to get out of work. We hiked the trail at Santa Fe Canyon Preserve (Nature Conservancy) and then the trail at the Randell Davies Audubon Sanctuary. It was a wonderful morning with good birds, wonderful scenery, and some interesting history of the Santa Fe watershed. At Randell Davies we took the short extension up Bear Canyon. I don’t know what I expected, but I certainly was not expecting butterflies on this brisk March morning with patches of snow still on the trail in the mountains of Santa Fe. Yet, as we reached the end of the maintained trail in Bear Canyon, high up among the Ponderosa Pines, a Western Tiger Swallowtail came up off the ground by the stream and went high into the trees (as they will do). Then, a few yards beyond, a Mourning Cloak (the one in the pic) came floating down above the stream. It eventually landed so I could get some shots. Finally, either a Comma or a Question Mark (I did not get a shot of the closed wings so I can not say which it was) followed the same route down the stream. We saw the same, or additional, Mourning Cloaks further down the main trail. Butterflies!
Sony HX400V at 1200mm equivalent field of view. 1/320th @ ISO 125 @ f6.3. Processed and cropped slightly for scale in Lightroom.
Snowshoe Vistas
Snowshoeing at Rachel Carson NWR
Yesterday the temperature crept up into the 20s and the sun peaked out, so after a good long rest when I finished blowing the 4 inches of fresh snow out of the drive, after lunch, Carol and I decided to go snowshoeing at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge Headquarters. The loop trail there is just about the right length for snowshoeing novices…and popular enough with snowshoers that you practically never have to break trail. We have something in neighborhood of 4-5 feet of snow on the ground, where it has not drifted, so the woods and marsh have a totally unique aspect. The Merriland River, which runs along one side of the trail, and Branch Brook, which bounds another side and meets the Merriland, are both tidal rivers this close to the sea, so the river ice, which is at least 3 feet thick at points, is fractured by rise and fall and stained by the mixture of fresh peaty waters and salty sea waters.
These are 4 in-camera HDRs. Sony HX400V. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet, and assembled in Phototastic.
Blue-crowned Motmot. Happy Sunday!
Blue-crowned Motmot, Lodge at Pico Bonito, Honduras
The Motmots of Central America are among the most colorful of birds in a region renowned for colorful birds. There are several species to add interest. They are, according to WiKi, relatives of the Kingfishers, Bee-eaters, and Rollers, all colorful birds in their own right, and like their kin, nest in holes and tunnels in steep banks. They perch low in the canopy, and except for the Turquoise-browed, which apparently favors more open country, are difficult to photograph in the perpetual half-light under the dense foliage. This shot was digiscoped…taken through the 30x wide-field eyepiece on a ZEISS DiaScope 65FL spotting scope, with a small Canon s120 advanced Point and Shoot camera. The combination gave me the equivalent of about an 850mm lens on a full-frame digital camera. The low light levels pushed the camera to its limits, but I am happy to have a record of this amazing bird.
While the ZEISS VICTORY SF Experience hiked through the rainforest looking for birds like the Motmot, the subject of how such spectacuarly strange birds “evolved” came up. Looking at Motmot’s for instance, there are many features of structure and plumage that are difficult to explain from a “survival of the fittest” stand point. If you assume that every feature of the creature has to have provided evolutionary advantage, then you soon get lost in rambling speculation, since there is often no obvious advantage to such intricate design. At one point I simply laughed and said, ” I am not looking for evolutionary advantage. I take each feature as evidence of design.” You can believe that caused a dead silence in the group. In truth they might have felt pity for me…since I was obviously one of those backward fork who what to see intelligent design in nature…a creative intelligence responsible for the creatures we see. Imagine if I had gotten as far as saying a “loving intelligence” who “loves” the Motmot and all creatures into existence. Because of course that is what I believe. It makes me the odd-man-out in the birding circles that I frequent, but that is okay. Every bird I see is another reason to give thanks to the Creator…to celebrate both creation and love. It makes birding, like every aspect of a life lived in the spirit, an act of worship…both the joyful, song-filled, revitalizing kind of Sunday worship, and the deep meditative worship of reflection. I only wish I could share more of that worship with my fellow birders. And of course, I am secretly attributing the joy they feel in the presence of birds to the movement of the spirit in them. It costs them nothing and it increases my pleasure in what we are doing together. Happy Sunday. And may something as wonderful as a Motmot in the rainforest enrich your day.
October Light in the Forest
Laudholm Farm, Wells ME
Yesterday was one of those clear-blue-sky October days in Southern Maine, just past peak foliage color, when the forest is full of drifting leaves and everything is hopping and popping. Birds and beasts are busy with the final collections for winter. The slant of the sun, and the trees dropping leaves already, bare limbs showing at the tips…there is a feeling of rush…not panic yet…but an unusual concentration, a compression of life that promises to get the most from this day. And, of course, it is all so beautiful!
This is a boardwalk at the Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farm in Wells Maine, just down the road from us. I think it catches the feeling pretty well.
Sony HX400V. In-camera HDR at 24mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Red Alert
I walked up on this Red Squirrel while he was busy, by the evidence around his mouth, with some dark gooey squirrel goodness and he barely had time to stamper up a tree to get out if the way. He was not happy about being interrupted and found a perch (pulpit?) above my head to tell me about it just long enough to get a few pics 🙂 This was at the Kennebunk Land Trust property at Secret Garden.
Sony HX400V at 950mm equivalent field of view. ISO 1600 @ 1/60th @ f6.3. Processed in Handy Photo on my tablet.
Smith’s Preserve
I have been exploring the local Land Trust/Conservancy properties in Kennebunk and Kennebunkport this month. This week I visited Smith’s Preserve in Kennebunkport. It is the largest Preserve in the Kennebunkport Land Conservancy and has a number of well developed trails. If the day I visited was typical, it is popular with mountain bikers. There is a small stream, some marshy areas, and, as far as I got, some shady second growth forest with large exposed bolders and rock ledges. It makes a change from our typical Coastal sand plain forest.
I took a number of in-camera HDRs, trying to catch the atmosphere. Here I like the slight rise from the trail, the lay of the rocks and ledges and the dappling of the light and shadow. Sony Alpha NEX 5T with ZEISS Touit 12mm f2.8. Processed for HDR effect in Snapseed on my tablet.
Chipmunk
On my way back from my photoprowl to the beach at the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve at Laudholm Farm I chose the boardwalk trail through the forest, and was rewarded by this Chipmunk sitting and eating berries on a tree quite near the trail. Nothing cuter!
Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. 1200mm equivalent (600mm optical plus 2x digital extender). Shutter preferred. 1/640th @ ISO 2000 @ f7.1. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet.
Mushroom’s Eye View.
One of the things I am coming to love about the ZEISS Touit 12mm f2.8 lens is its ability to shoot from inches away, to produce very natural looking close-ups. It would not work, I suspect, with people, as the distortions would be distracting, but for plants and mushrooms it can be very effective. I think, in fact, that the perspective and depth of field are both very close to a naked eye view. That means that in a shot like this one, of a mushroom growing along the trail at the Kennebunk Land Trust’s Secret Garden Preserve, the mushroom sits very naturally in its environment. When you add the absolute clarity of the lens, and some subtle processing, the result is, to my eye, very close indeed to bending down to look for yourself. 🙂
Sony Alpha NEX 5T. Lens as above. ISO 160 @ 1/60th @ f4. Processed in Snapseed for HDR effect on my tablet.