Posts in Category: Maine
Great Egret views
Great Egret: Kennebunk, Maine, USA, September 2022 — While I have been sharing my photos from Uganda, of course life here in Maine has been going on. The other day I rode my eTrike on one of my loops and took a detour down to our local beach. There were a dozen or more Great Egrets in the marshes behind the dunes…this one quite close to the road. While I watched, it flew from one side of the road out over the tidal creek and back to the other side, even closer. These shots were taken without getting off my trike. 🙂 There was also a constant stream of Monarch Butterflies and Green Darner Dragonflies coming through headed south. I have a feeling that if I had time to sit and count them I would have totaled in the thousands for both for the day. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. ISO 100 @ f4.5, f5, and f5.6 @ 1000th.
Bonus: Snowberry Clearwing Moth
Snowberry Clearwing Moth: Kennebunk, Maine, USA, July 2022 — As I mentioned in yesterday’s Day Poem…when I went out for my eTrike ride the other day I was dumping my “old’ water from my water bottle in the hanging plants out front when I saw this Snowberry Clearwing Moth working the blooms. We have two possible Clearwings here in Southern Maine…the Snowberry and the Hummingbird…and I always have to look them up to refresh my memory after seeing one. Maybe one of those times the differences will stick in my head. (You can google it.) Both look, when working flowers, like tiny hummingbirds. Though references say the Hummingbird Clearwing is the more common of the two, I have definitely seen more Snowberries. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications and multi-fame noise reduction (definitely not needed in this situation…but the camera was still in that mode when I grabbed it for the Clearwing…and by the time I got it to the correct mode…the moth was gone 🙂 Nominal exposure ISO 200 @ f4 @ 1/500th.
White-fringed Bog Orchid: Saco Heath
White-fringed Bog Orchid: Saco Heath, Saco, Maine, USA — We are taking a break from my coverage of the Panama trip for today’s photos. My friend Stef and I spent a morning at Saco Heath…a remnant raised (or domed) peat bog in Saco, Maine…the most southern such bog in Maine. We were too late in the season for most of the bog specialties…we only found one Pitcher Plant…but we did find a small stand of White-fringed Bog Orchid at the far edge of the last hummock before the Atlantic White Cedar Island. A beautiful plant that, despite its common name, also grows wild in wet meadows and forests…though I have never seen it anywhere but in a bog in Maine. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. These are actually two identical frames. The close up is just heavily cropped to show the flower detail, and then expanded in Pixelmator using their Machine Learning tool, for pixel count. ISO 100 @ f7.1 @ 1/1000th. Minus .7EV exposure compensation to hold detail in the whites.
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.