It's that time of year again when the fat mature caterpillars start showing up. Here are 2 that I photographed today.




Since 2006, Giant Swallowtail Butterflies have been seen in our area. I finally got to see several of them this summer, and recently discovered their caterpillars in the prickly ash bushes along our laneway.























When you prod these guys they suddenly sprout red tentacle-like structures called osmeterium as a form of defence. Also helps to hide in plain when you're shaped like a bird turd.

I nearly stepped on this big caterpillar, it was over 3 inches long. Closest I can figure from caterpillar book is that it may be the Great Ash Sphinx, will have to have that confirmed. It was a lively fellow, (m?f?) thrashing about excitedly when I picked it up, nearly dropped it.

Summer storms

Saturday wasn't too bad weatherwise for most of the day. Along about 11:00 p.m. the clouds came rolling in and I saw lightning coming up in the distance, so I grabbed the camera and found a dry spot to sit and take long exposures. Had fun watching the storm and shooting the lightning until it was directly overhead and pouring down rain, figured then it was time to skedaddle indoors.

Summer night skies

Haven't had much time to play with the cameras during the daytime hours, but there have been a few nights when I got out the barndoor tracker and took a few shots. These were taken just past midnight on August 2, 2011. The first on is looking southwest. Lens Sigma 10-22mm set at 10 mm, ISO 400, f 4.0, 267 seconds exposure.

The second shot is northeast to southwest, same shot settings, exposure time 249 seconds. Both shot in RAW and converted to .jpg

The Perseid meteor shower is coming up Friday night/Saturday morning, predictions are for clear skies. The only drawback will be the near full moon. Going to be interesting trying to shoot meteors with the bright moonlight.

Flashdance

I was ready to go to bed last night, turned out the lights, peered out the window...and saw lots of little green sparkling lights dancing over the beach. The fireflies were putting on a good show, so I decided to take the camera out and see if I could get some pictures. I did manage a few good long exposures.

It's interesting to watch the patterns of the flashes. This was discussed on the nature list, that we should learn the flash patterns of the different species. I'm just wondering where one would find the information on the flash patterns. I was thinking this would be difficult, but when you stand for a while and watch the fireflies in action, after a while you can pick out different patterns. Some are *bippitybippitybippity*, pause, repeat, others are *bip* pause *bip* pause, repeat, and still others are *bleeeeeep* pause *bleeeep* pause. A couple of these patterns are apparent in the shots.

A mass of firefly lights in a long exposure. There were about a dozen fireflies in this location.

Here are two of the patterns, the *bippitybippity* and *bip* *bip* *bip*.

One of the fellows on the astronomy forum has some wonderful shots of fireflies and star trails. I'm inspired by these, and hope that I can find a location where I could shoot something similar.

Dragonfly with Shrunken Head...or a case of Head Ripped Off?

The Update/Correction: Okaaaaayyyyyy.....I was bound and determined to see a shrunken head on this dragonfly. Now I'm not so sure, it's probably a head ripped off. It LOOKS like eyes and mandibles, but I have no good magnifier to put on it. I have found out that a dragonfly's brain is not necessarily in its head. "Ichabod", as I've named it, lived about 6 more days. Then I was reminded of how cockroaches can live without their head for a week. I have found newly emerged dragonflies with some kind of deformation, some not even making it out of the exuvia and dying half way through emergence. I am thoroughly creeped out by this episode. I am also reminded of how badly I need new glasses! Time for some bifocals for the closeup views.

The Original (Erroneous) Post and Observation:
?This morning I was moving plants out onto the patio, and saw what I thought was the body of a dragonfly laying there. I picked it up, thinking to set it aside and examine the remains later, try to identify the species. It looked to me like something had bitten the head off. I had it by the folded wings, and the legs started kicking. This creeped me out a little, and had me wondering how the body could keep moving without the head. I took it upstairs and set it in a container. A couple hours later I came indoors for something, looked at it again, poked at it with my finger. Legs started moving again. Surely it couldn't live that long without a head. So I grabbed it by the wings and peered at it closely. I realized that it wasn't headless, it had a shrunken deformed head, really bizarre looking. What really puzzles me is how the heck the thing managed to live out its larval stage with a shrunken head. The snapper swing-arm jaw must have been working. The mandibles on this adult are pretty much useless, it is doomed to starve to death. It's already weak, or it probably would have flown away while I was photographing it out in the bright sunlight.

Snow Goose

We've got a northern visitor in our back yard. This snow goose has been hanging around the lake shore the past couple of days, looks like it may have an injured wing. It trots up onto the lawn and grazes, swims quite well, looks like it's otherwise okay, just can't fly. I'm keeping an eye on it, hopefully it just needs a little time to rest and recover.

It was a dark and stormy night....

It started out as Quest for Treefrog, but after stumbling around the hillside by the frog pond for a bit in the dark there was a bright flash and a boom of thunder, so I skedaddled out of there. I headed down to the lake to see if there was a storm to be photographed, it headed across the east side of the lake and south. Lightning lit up the clouds, but didn't catch any bolts.

As I was standing there with the camera, I noticed bright flashes coming from the west, across the peninsula, so I headed over to the dock at the other bay, only to discover that I had been missing a good storm cloud on that side headed south.

That cloud had a nice big cumulus being lit up spectacularly by lightning. In one of the shots I did manage to catch a couple bolts. Looks like some kind of creepy outer-space alien monster from a B movie.

After all the storms had headed south, the sky above cleared, but I sat on the dock continuing to take long exposures of the night sky as the clouds lit up now and then in the distance. Lo and behold, I was lucky enough to catch a meteor in one of the late shots.