Posts in Category: meadow
Maine! Laudholm October, where field meets forest
Where the overgrown meadow meets the forest at Laudholm Farms (Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve). Color, color every where. OM Systems OMD EM5Mkiii with 12-45mm zoom at 24mm equivalent. Program mode with in-camera HDR. Processed in Pixelmator Pro.
Wild Iris
Another shot of Wild Iris (Flag Iris) to go with yesterday’s For the the Love of Landscape shot…from the same field. The distortions of this ultra wide lens close up produce a interesting background and composition. Sony a6500 with 18mm equivalent ultra wide lens. In-camera HDR. Processed in Polarr.
Swamp Sparrow Beauty. Happy Sunday!
Swamp Sparrow. Higbee Beach, Cape May NJ
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light…” Jesus
This is a very early post as we have Sunday morning plans. We are New Jersey, Cape May, for the Fall Birding Festival, and on Sunday morning we are at Uncle Bill’s Pancake House on Beach Avenue when it opens at 6:30, and then do a lap at the Meadows before the show opens at 10. If you have done the autumn thing in Cape May, you know exactly what I mean. Pancakes and birds! That is already enough to make this a good Sunday…with at least two forms of worship. 🙂
But seriously, take a look at this sparrow. I nominate the Swamp Sparrow, despite its muddy name, as the most beautiful sparrow in North America. I love the rusty tones and the sharply contrasting pure grays, the black accents, and the highly patterned nature of this little creature. Those who lump all sparrows into “little brown jobs” are missing the subtle beauty of the family. I posted a panel of “how we normally see Swamp Sparrow” yesterday…4 shots buried deep in reeds and brush, with only bits of sparrow showing…but every once in a while even a skulker like the Swamp has to get up and sit up and be counted in the early morning sun, as it did here at Higbee Beach Wildlife Management Area yesterday early. Then you see the sparrow for what it is…and it is an eyeful…a generous eyeful!
Now, what Jesus said about the generous eye was not a conditional statement, though it is often taken that way. It is a declarative statement. It is not “if” your eye is generous, “then” your whole being “will be” filled with light. It is “if you eye is generous, your whole being is full of light.” In such a statement the two phrases do not depend on each other…each phrase is simply testimony to the truth of the other. Fact. Those who are full of light have generous eyes. Fact. Those who have generous eyes are full of light. I point this out on behalf of the sparrow. There are those who can see the beauty of the Swamp Sparrow…many such…and those are the folks who are full of light…those are the folks with generous eyes. You want to get to know them…in fact…if you are a person of generous eye, you already know them as such, pretty much instantly, on meeting. There are a lot of generous eyed birders! Which is why a birding festival is so much fun for me. They don’t all know they are filled with light…but even so they are…and it is such fun to watch them watching the birds they love. Even the Swamp Sparrows. Especially the Swamp Sparrows. Happy Sunday!
Bobolink in flowers…
Bobolink in Knapweed. Kennebunkport ME
While photographing this meadow full of Knapweed, I observed several male Bobolinks competing for territory. I had, through an oversight, only my little Sony HX90V with me, and it only has 720mm equivalent field of view…only! That really shows how spoiled we are in the Point and Shoot Superzoom world. I used some Clear Image Zoom (Sony’s enhances digital zoom) to stretch out to 1440mm for this shot of the Bobolink with prey among the flowers.
Camera as above. 1/250th @ ISO 125 @ f6.4. Processed in Lightroom.
Orb Weaver on the Kennebunk Plains. Happy Sunday!
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I got to the Kennebunk Plains and Day Brook Pond early enough this week to catch the dew on the spiderwebs, and there were some spectacular webs. 🙂 The angle of the sun was just right to light them up. After photographing this particular web for effect, I noticed that it, unlike most of the others, was still inhabited, so I took a little detour off the path for a closer look. It is clearly some kind of Orb Weaver, but I can’t pin it down more than that. This is, to me, a very satisfying image…I love the light caught in the droplets on the web, the detail and color of the spider, and the out-of-focus landscape in the background making a horizon.
Sony HX400V at about 68mm equivalent field of view. Macro. ISO 80 @ 1/1600th @ f3.5. Program with -1/3EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
And for the Sunday Thought: I know many people have a thing about bugs, and spiders in particular. It is perhaps (as I am pretty sure has been suggested many times by better men than I) a residual fear based on the fact that some of them can hurt us, and a very few of them can kill us. Same with snakes. It seems to be more a female thing…perhaps maternal, as in protecting the helpless infants and hapless kids from all that might harm them. If it is not instinctive in males, it can certainly be learned. To really see a spider we have to sidestep that fear if it is still in us. Then too, spiders break the leg rule. They have too many legs, too many limbs. Everything we love has 4 limbs. Spiders have two extra. What’s up with that? Creepy.
On the other hand, who does not love a spider web jeweled with dew? Logic tells us that a web needs a spider, but we are not always logical…we are rarely logical when it comes to what we like and dislike, and almost never logical in what we fear.
On the other hand, the spirit compels us to view all that lives as beautiful, because it was created by a loving God, the same God that created us. The web of life should be as appealing as a spider web jeweled with dew in the morning sun, and each creature a drop on the web, refracting the pure light of creation in its own unique way. The spider has its beauty if we are willing to look closely enough. If we are willing to know spiders.
And of course, one of the things we learn to know is that a few of them can, if we do not give them their space, hurt us. We know who they are and learn to respect them, and, unless one ends up in your sleeping bag, as a Brown Recluse did in mine on a trip to Arizona, they will not bother us. The scar on my leg is a good reminder to check my sleeping bag before getting in. We learn to give all spiders, all creatures, the space they need to live. Not simply because they might be dangerous, but because they are, each one in its own way, lovely…created with love.
Happy Sunday!
Milkweed!
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I know it seems odd, but I have been waiting patiently for the Milkweek pods to burst. There were great fields of them at the Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farm. They have, as of yesterday, only preserved one small section below the house. The rest have been mowed before the pods could burst. It will be another week before they all ripe and ready for release, but I captured this early pod, just in case they get the mower down there in the next few days. I love the fine silky fibers and the way they catch the light. The seeds themselves have an interesting shape and texture, and the wind is always making new patterns. What is not to love?
Sony HX400V at 55mm equivalent field of view. Macro. ISO 80 @ 1/400th @ f7.1. I used Program Shift for greater depth of field. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Slender Spreadwing
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The meadows at Emmons Preserve have been very good this summer and last for Odonata. Still a beginner, I have many first sightings and first photos from Emmons. I have, if memory serves, at least one other photograph of this species, but it is rare enough be just a little exciting when I get another. The total lack of pruinocity on the tip of the abdomen and its length and thinness make this almost certainly a Slender Spreadwing, and the light tips on the wings are good for that species too. 🙂
Sony HX400V at 2400mm equivalent field of view. ISO 160 @ 1/250th @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Summer Azure
The Milkweed Meadow at the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve at Laudholm Farm is now dominated by Goldenrod, and will be until the Milkweed pods burst this fall. And it seems there is nothing quite like Goldenrod for attracting a wide variety of insects. This Summer Azure Butterfly was uncharacteristically cooperative, well above ground level and sitting still for long enough for some macro shots.
Sony HX400V. About 70mm equivalent field of view. Macro. Program with Program Shift. ISO 80 @ 1/250th @ f4.5. Processed in Handy Photo on my tablet. Cropped slightly for scale and composition.
Great Spangled Fritillery!
Yesterday was my July pilgrimage to Emmons Preserve to check the meadows for dragonflies and butterflies and the river for Emerald Jewelwings. Great day. Found and photographed new damselfly: Sedge Sprite. An Ebony Jewelwing landed on my shoulder at the river before I even started looking, and I managed a few good shots. The Meadow was being patrolled by half a dozen Great Spangled Fritilleries…one of whom finally sat for its portrait. Not to mention that I found a Striped Hairstreak in the forest and a Lancet Clubtail in the Meadow. Did I say, great day?
The panel shows the cooperative Great Spangled Fritillery in a variety of poses, so you can appreciate it from all sides. 🙂 And what a great name for what a great butterfly! Great Spangled Fritillery! Fits, does it not?
Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. 1200mm equivalent (600mm optical plus 2x digital extender). Processed in Snapseed on my tablet. Assembled in Pixlr Express.
Awesomeness on wings!
You might remember from yesterday’s Sunday Thought post, that I was about to set out on my scooter in search of whatever awesome I could find…most likely having to do with waterfalls, dragonflies, and deep forest. I was thinking of Emmons Preserve along the Batson River where it tumbles down over some ledges in the forest in Kennebunkport. This time of year, there are Ebony Jewelwings there, one of our most striking damselflies, and you just never know what you will find along the trails that wander down from the dirt road to the river and back through the woods. And I decided, on the ride there, that I would poke around the meadows that boarder the preserve, since the dragonflies are moving away from the water to hunt the fields these summer days.
When I got there, of course, the folks at the Kennebunkport Land Trust, who manage Emmons Preserve, had anticipated me. I had forgotten that they had made a trail around the meadows that surround the Land Trust Office. It was perfect: a nice wide mown strip along the edge of the meadows, all the way around, with little side trails surrounding isolated copses, or up along the edge of a little pond I had not known was there. There were lots of dragonflies: Meadowhawks mostly, but a good variety, including a Mosaic Darner (that’s a family of dragonflies) that I have yet to positively identify.
And there was this amazing butterfly. I was well over 2/3s of the way around the meadows and had seen it in flight many times. Big and orange and very fritilleryish. I had about despaired of its ever landing, when I came back out of a side trail to the forest on the far side of the far meadow and found it on the Knapweed.
I believe it is a Great Spangled Fritillery, though it could considerably be an Aphrodite Fritillery. Both are about the same size, and have very similar patterns, and both are possible in southern Maine. I settled on Great Spangled as simply being the more likely.
Canon SX50HS. Program with my usual modifications. 1800mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 320. Processed in Lightroom.
Oh, and clearly I did find the awesomeness I sought. Lots of dragons…Ebony Jewelwings as expected and a new an new Darner!…Great Spangled Fritillery!…several tiny toads and Wood Frogs, a smorgasbord of mushrooms in odd shapes and all sizes, and the water tumbling down in the dappled light of the deep forest among moss and ferns. Very awesome!