Monthly Archives: September 2012
Afternoon Egret, Kennebunk Bridle Path
While hunting dragons and Monarchs on Sunday, I could not pass up the Egrets who were hunting the pools along the Kennebunk Bridle Path (though I don’t think they were hunting dragons and Monarchs…but it is at least possible 🙂 The afternoon light was well behind the Egrets, and the Egrets were well out in the marsh, making for somewhat difficult shots. Still, you have to try. I actually like the “molded in light” effect.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1680mm equivalent field of view. f5.8 @ 1/400th @ ISO 160. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Tall Aster with Monarchs
The bright purple,
blooming stand
of tall aster,
against the wood’s edge,
behind the cattails of the marsh
draw me…
but it is the Monarchs,
wild for nectar on migration
mobbing the aster…
that hold me
at the edge of breath
for moments out of time.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1680mm equivalent. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Black Saddlebags, Kennebunk Bridle Path
I mentioned in yesterday’s post, that I had been seriously distracted from the Monarch migration along the Kennebunk Bridle Path on Sunday by a trio of Black Saddlebags hunting just where the trail opens out to the marsh from the tunnel of trees next to Rt 9. The trail is narrow there, running between dense shoulder high hedges of mostly Beach Rose (with some stunted saplings and a lot of wild aster and Goldenrod mixed in this season).
We had a lot of Black Saddlebags emerge at the pond I frequent for dragons and damsels this summer. There were generally at least 2 flying on any given day, and often half a dozen. I was more than a little frustrated with them as they stay in the air for hours (sometimes it seems like days) at a time, never perching for a photo. I did eventually find a teneral (newly emerged from its last larva stage) and track it in its first weak flight to the perch were it hoped to dry, and got a few shots, mostly obscured by the reeds around it. But I still wanted a good shot of a Black Saddlebags. I mean…so many…so close!…and no photo??? That can’t be.
I am discovering, however, that Saddlebag behavior is quite different in the fall than it is in the summer…or maybe it is different among migrant Saddlebags and resident Saddlebags. The Saddlebags I am seeing these days spend at least part of their day perched, mostly low in rough vegetation, where they can find a bare vertical twig to latch onto, and as someone in the Northeast Odonata Group on Facebook told me already, they tend to return to the same perch (or one close by) after each hunting flight. I remembered this after startling a Saddlebags into the air at exactly the same spot on the trail for the third time. 🙂
So I sent about 90 minutes figuring out which twigs they were using, and waiting for one to return. Eventually one did…and landed dead head on to me. The best I could do was a face shot, and even then, partially obscured by the grasses between.
The afternoon was wearing on, as they say, and I was getting tired of walking and standing along the same little stretch of trail, so I decided to cross Rt 9 and take my scooter up to the marsh pools on the other side. There is a stretch of Beach Rose and taller saplings forming a hedge on either side of the trail just beyond the pools where I found so many dragons early this summer, and I had, in early July, seen and photographed a Saddlebags well above my head in a tree there. Certainly it was worth a try.
I was really, really thankful to find a Black Saddlebags right were I went to look. This one, as you see from the first photo, was perched side on to me, just below eyelevel, in on a dry flower head near the top of the Beach Rose hedge. It was deep enough in the hedge so I could not get around behind it…but I am more than satisfied with this view. And, it sat there as long as I could want. I left it on its perch when I finally decided it was time to get on my scooter and go home.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 840mm –1680mm equivalents. f5.8 @ 1/250th – 1/320th @ ISO 200. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
So I have, I think, my Black Saddlebags pics for this year. Not that I will stop looking, of course, but if don’t get another, these are enough to satisfy me. 🙂
Monarchs on the move. Kennebunk Bridle Path
Yesterday I took my scooter down to the beach and along the Kennebunk Bridle Path. Between my house and the Rt.9 (2 miles through woods) I saw maybe 15 Monarchs crossing the road…between Rt 9 and the ocean (about a half mile), I must have seen 50. Standing in the parking area for the beach and looking back along the road in, they were every where.
Then, the Kennebunk Bridle Path, on the ocean side right off Rt. 9, runs through a solid stand of pines and is like a tunnel about 10 feet wide and 10 feet tall and several hundred yards long. You could stand there and watch the Monarchs coming at you, just above eye-level, one going by your head every 30 seconds in a steady stream. It was impressive! I wish I had thought to take a video.
Where the path opens out a bit more to the marsh on either side, I got distracted from the Monarchs for a while watching a trio of Black Saddlebags hunting along the path. More on that tomorrow, but the Monarchs became so common that I stopped looking at them. They were all in motion, coming in off the marsh, mostly on the river side, and funneling down to pass through the tunnel of trees. Eventually I noticed that the goldenrod in bloom along there was tempting the occasional Monarch to lite, so I kept half an eye out for one in good position for a photo.
It was, of course, our little down-home bit of the great Monarch migration. They are headed south, some as far as Mexico, to winter. Some of them will return next spring.
This specimen was actually one of the last photos I took on the sea side of the path before moving over to the other side of Rt. 9 to see what might be happening there. Some of the Monarchs, on closer view through the zoom on the camera, looked pretty well worn, but this one looks to be in good shape for its long journey south.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1680mm equivalent. f5.8 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 200. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Christmas in September, take 2. Meadowhawks
Last Monday I posted an image of a Green Darner Dragonfly mating wheel in a Blue Spruce tree, under the Christmas in September heading. This is even more Christmassy. It is a mating pair of either White-faced, Cherry-faced, or Ruby Meadowhawks. These three, with bright red males, are all here right now and all so similar that I can not tell from the photo, and I did not see the pair from any other angle. You need to see the face, and even then, it is a chancy thing. We also have the Autumn Meadowhawk right now, in great abundance, which is another one easily confused with this trio, but the Autumn would show lighter colored legs. Close as I can get.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1240mm equivalent field of view. f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 400. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought: I am rapidly coming to the end of dragonfly season. The last Odonata fly in Maine in October. Already the pond, which was alive with dragons and damsels a few weeks ago, is very quiet. You have mating Meadowhawks and Bluets in some numbers, a few Common Darners still flying on warm afternoons, and a solitary Black Saddlebags. There is only one pair of Pondhawks still there, and all the Blue Dashers are gone. I expect one day soon to find the pond and the air above it empty, at least of Odonata.
And, since dragon and damselfly hunting has been such a big part of my summer, both personally and photographically, I am faced with more than the usual fall “what next?” Oh, I know, we will have foliage in a few weeks, and just yesterday my daughter was remarking that the “September skies” are back. By the end of September my travel schedule kicks in, with trips to Oregon, New Jersey, Texas, and New Mexico before Thanksgiving. So I will be busy, and there will be lots to photograph. (And dragon and damselflies still flying in the southern reaches of the journey!)
Still, today, I am caught with that “seasons passing too quickly” feeling. My soul is singing “Where have all the dragons and damsels of summer gone?” The wheel of time is threatening to run me over.
And I was thinking about time and eternity in another context this week, thinking that too often we think of eternity as an “unimaginable and unending stretch of time” when in fact, eternity is the absence of time altogether. Time and eternity are two alternate views of reality, and they exist side by side, or, better, intertwined…not as we picture them, one after the other, sequentially. Especially NOT “time while we live, and eternity after we die.” And every religion worth the name has offered some way out…some way to transform the temporal view to the eternal. The temporal is, well, temporary at best, and often seen as illusion. Only the eternal is divine. Every religion values eternity and devalues time.
Strange that.
Because, of course, rightly seen, time is just the way we humans experience eternity. We see the passing seasons, and we know, especially as we age, that we have a limited number of them. We see people born and we see people die. Here and not here. And because of that we begin to count the moments…to see each moment as one more or one less, rather than as the moving point, the living point, where we touch eternity…the moving point, the living point, where eternity touches the world of matter in each of us. The only true way out is to learn to see the eternal in every moment, to be the eternal in every moment…to live in time as though there were no time.
Now don’t think I am devaluing time here again. What I mean is that we should each bring the full rich living experience of eternity to bear on every passing moment, so that every moment becomes as valuable to us as all eternity. I mean that we, each of us, should become the moving, the living, point were the eternal divine touches the world.
Seasons come and seasons go. The dragons and damsels of this year are almost gone. And the question is not really “what’s next?” It is always “what’s now?”…an eternity of what’s now…a now that is eternal.
And in saying it, I can almost grasp it. I can almost see it, taste it, feel it. It is almost my reality. And maybe that is as close as we can get…the rest…in this as in everything…must be faith.
A moment filled with meadowhawks in a Blue Spruce tree is, by faith, eternal.
Kennebunk Bridle Path Birdie.
I have been birding more than 20 years, and this is kind of embarrassing. I can’t say for absolutely sure what kind of bird this is. I think it is an immature Yellow-rumped Warbler. It was traveling with Yellow-butts, in a mixed feeding flock that included Chickadees as well. I was on the Kennebunk Bridle Path, on my electric scooter, and I stopped to look for a butterfly that had flown up, when the flock came through, landing and chattering and flitting all around a small group of pines by the trail, never sitting still for more than a second. There must have been 20 birds. I got on this one and let off a burst of captures.
Unfortunately there is just not enough in the image to soundly ring the memory bells…and even some poking around in guides and on the internet has left me unsatisfied. I came down to YRW mostly by process of elimination. What is that Sherlock says? “When you have eliminated the impossible, what ever is left, however improbable, must be true.”
I think, due to general impression, and that bit of fluffy feather sticking up over the left eye, that this is an immature bird anyway…and immatures are not well illustrated or described in most guides. Not that is enough of an excuse to make me feel better. It is still embarrassing. And a good reminder of two things: 1) how little I really know, and 2) the need to pay more attention while I am taking pictures. If I had put the binos on the bird and studied its behavior, I would be much more certain of my id. 🙂
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1240mm equivalent field of view. f5.8 @ 1/250th @ ISO 200. The bird was heavily backlit and if there had been time I would have adjusted the exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Turtle Head, The Yard
A few years ago, this strange plant appeared along the edge of our yard. It blooms in late August and through September, when most of the rest of our yard flowers are dying down, so it is very conspicuous. The thing is, my wife did not know what it was and could not remember planting it.
A little research turns up the fact that this is a domestic cultivar of wild Turtle Head, which is white. I recently found white Turtle Head growing its natural habitat, actually on the left side of the photo from yesterday, along the Kennebunk River under the bridge, right at the water’s edge.
Since the original stand in our yard is so hardy, my wife has started transplanting it around in shady areas (which in our yard is most of it). We are still not certain where it came from, but a friend seems to remember giving my wife a few plants a few years ago. ?? At any rate, we enjoy its vigorous color…and appreciate it for what it is…a first sign of fall in Maine.
I love the furry tongue.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 24mm macro, plus 1.5x digital tel-extender for scale and working distance. f4 @ 1/125th @ ISO 200. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Under the Kennebunk Bridge
As I may have mentioned before, my active search for an American Ruby-spot in York County has taken me places I would not otherwise go. For instance, I have crossed the bridge north of Kennebunk, where Route 1 goes over the Kennebunk River, thousands of times…multiple thousands of times…but I have never even thought to stop and climb down to the river to see what is under the bridge.
No American Ruby-spots unfortunately, but some interesting rapids and small falls where there evidently once, a long time ago, was a dam. I suspect there might have been a mill there back in the water-power days…that, or I am mistaking old bridge abutments for a dam.
I have done a bit more editing on this shot than normal. It got my usual “Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.” but then I took into PhotoShop Elements for a bit of work with the clone tool to remove a set of power-lines that stretched across the sky and through the trees.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 24mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 200.
Down-Town Green Heron
Until this year, I have seen Green Herons maybe 4 times in Maine. They are here, obviously. We certainly have the right habitat along the coast, with miles of fresh and brackish marsh. I just have not seen them much.
This year, I have found two right in, more or less, downtown Kennebunk. Factory to Pasture Pond is a block back from the busiest part of Main Street and I have photographed a Green Heron there on two separate occasions…not to mention a Black-crowned Night Heron and a Kingfisher. Quest Pond is behind our only shopping mall, on the grounds of an industrial park type steel-framed building now converted to a medical center. I have photographed the Green Heron that frequents Quest Pond and the other drainage ponds of the estate several times now (not, again, to mention yesterday’s Kingfisher). Maybe this is totally typical of down-town Kennebunk. I wouldn’t know, as, before my infatuation with Dragon and Damselflies, I never spent much time at the local watering holes. 🙂
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1680mm equivalent field of view (840mm optical plus 2x digital tel-extender). f5.8. 1-3) 1/125 and 1/200th @ ISO 800. 4) 1/200th @ ISO 400.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Kingfisher on a post.
While chasing dragons at my little local pond the other day, I head the unmistakable chatter, clatter, of a Kingfisher, looked up, and this fellow landed on the little ornamental bridge straight across the pond from me. In my opinion no bird has more personality…birdality?…than a Kingfisher. They are so full of themselves! I mean, look at this guy. Is that kingfisherality or what?
These were not easy photographs, for the camera. It was darkish (ISO 500 dark) and the bird was far enough away so I had to switch on the digital tel-converter. The dtc does wonders with close subjects, as an extension of the macro reach of the zoom, but it is less successful at distance. While the image looks good at this size, and right up to as large as it would take to fill all but the largest computer monitors, it breaks down when viewed at pixel peeping levels. More detail is suggested, by very clever in-camera processing, than is actually there.
Still, for grab shots from across a pond, they are not bad. And as portraits of kingfisherality, they are pretty satisfying.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1680mm equivalent field of view. f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 400 and 500. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.