Night visions

I've been bitten by the bug to take long exposures of the night sky. Blame this on Terrence Dickinson, our locally famous astronomer, who gave a talk to our photo club this spring. Prompted by events like the Perseids meteor shower (cloudy that night, grrr!) and the lunar eclipse on August 28th, I decided to try out some of his suggestions. There's been a few late nights since then, with some moderate photographic successes.

Shot of star trails taken last night.

In the wee hours of the morning, the start of the lunar eclipse.

Peak of the eclipse.

Stars reflected

Just playing around with long exposures for night shots.

Loons and Herons

This morning, at about 4:30 a.m., I heard the loons kicking up a huge racket, and was worried that something was raiding the nest. They've been on the nest for about 3 weeks or more, we're hoping that any day now we'll see chicks. I paddled down the lake at about 7:00 a.m. in my kayak, and cruised by from about 40 feet away to check if there were still eggs. I was happy to see one of the loons on the nest, glaring at me. I took a few quick shots and kept on going. Last year's nest was raided by either racoons or coyotes or the otters, we're hoping they'll be successful this year.

***Note: Blessed be digital...long lenses and raw files...one can shoot from a distance, then enlarge and crop the image on the computer. The following are details of pictures from this morning, taken with a 300mm lens.

Detail from picture above of the loon giving me "the look". On the way back out she was on the open water, and I could see the two eggs.

On to the herons. Back further in the swamp I counted 7 nests, with 3 chicks in 6 of the nests, 4 in the 7th. Pretty good crop this year. I just hope my bullfrogs keep out of sight. I looked for grackle nests, sometimes grackles will find a hole in the underside of the pile of branches and tuck their nests in just out of reach of the herons. I'll have to take the binoculars with me next time and cruise around a bit more.

Can you imagine feeding this crew! When the parents come flying in with food, it sounds like a flock of hungry pteradactyls in a B-movie.

Detail of 3 chicks from another nest. This nest is only about 4 feet above the water, so I could a more straight-on view.

When I got back out onto the open water, the other loon was preening and seemed unconcerned as I drifted by. I waited with the camera ready, and caught "the stretch". We're keeping our fingers crossed that we'll soon see a pair of chicks with the adults.

Turtles and Ichneumon Wasp

Between working on things around here today, I noticed 3 turtles trotting around the beach, trying to decide where to lay their eggs. At one point I noticed one headed for the road, and went down to discourage her. She headed back for the beach, but one had already dug the hole and laid the eggs in the road. I went back up to the house to get the camera, by the time I got back she had covered up the eggs and was doing her little tapdance to tamp the sand and gravel down. I got a couple shots of her, and then waited for her to finish. Once she headed back towards the water, I picked her up and gave her a lift down to the water's edge. The location she had chosen was about the worst available, literally in the road. Cars would drive over the nest and when the summer rains wash the gravel down the hill we use a tractor with a blade to grade it back up, so there was about a 100% chance of this nest being squashed. Normally I wouldn't disturb a nest once laid, but in this case there was a definite danger of it being destroyed. I got a garden trowel and shallow pan with sand, and carefully dug up the eggs and set them on the sand in the same position in which they had been laid. I then dug a hole at the top of the beach where they were least likely to be disturbed, at the same depth as the original nest, and carefully set the 8 eggs in the hole, and gently covered them up. Dad watched the procedure, when he saw the 8 eggs he asked "WHERE does she keep all that in her body?" I've often wondered that myself. In hindsight I should have grabbed a couple pics of the eggs, but I was more concerned with relocating the nest as quickly and safely as possible.

Earlier I had been working out in the garage, and heard something buzzing in the window. There was an ichneumon wasp trying to find its way out. I got out my bug catcher and captured her, and put her into the aquarium and kept her in a cool place until I had time to photograph her. After the turtle episode I got her back into the bug catcher, grabbed the tripod and camera and took her out to a fallen log. I set up the camera and then coaxed her out of the bug catcher and onto the log, she stopped to preen herself for about two minutes before taking off to the treetops. I managed to get a few shots before she left.

Other notes from the past couple of days:

There's been a nighthawk flying around for most evenings the past couple of weeks. We've had them here years before, but this is the first one I've seen in about a decade. You hear that "neep.....neeep......braaaaaaaawwwww..." There's a couple of whipporwills calling, one was singing away in the woods across the bay last night. Another night caller here lately is the great horned owl, I've called back a couple times, when it hears a "rival" it's call gets shorter and more "terse". The bullfrog chorus has begun, with its accompaniment of green frogs' banjo plucks in between. The treefrogs are one big shrill trill in the woods around the pond. It seems like there's more crickets this year, calling earlier. One thing there's definitely more of is chipmunks, seems they're EVERYWHERE underfoot. Every time I drive out the gravel roads these days I have to slam the brakes at least 3 times before I get to the highway, trying to avoid some kamikaze chipmunk running across the road.

Black Rat Snakes

For a critter that's supposed to be so rare in these parts, I've certainly seen my share of them over the past few days. Today the count was four, and I had hardly covered much ground in between my work. The first one made my day, I was working in a cabin that has been mouse-free for about 6 years, then all of a sudden last fall they've found their way back in again. We crawled under the cabin, checked the pipes, checked the joints, all looked to be sealed tight. I even got out a trouble light last night after dark, put it under the cabin in a few positions, went into the cabin and shut out the lights and hoped that I'd see a glimmer in the pitch dark from light shining through a hole, but no luck. In one of my trips into the cabin today, here was a lovely half-size blacksnake coming across the counter, from a hole under the propane pipe to the stove. I picked it up, patted it on the head, told it what a wonderful creature it was to tell me how the mice were getting in, and set it loose back outside.

There were covers that I had placed over the couch and beds for the winter that needed washing, so I grabbed those and headed for the laundry room. As I was putting the covers in the wash machine, I heard something above, and saw a very large black rat snake up in the rafters. I gave it a gentle prod with a broom handle to see just how big it was, it moved around, looked to be 4 or 5 feet long. I left it there and went about my business. Around 7:00 p.m. I realized that I hadn't hung out that load of laundry yet, and headed for the laundry room, and heard a noise again. I saw my snake was still there, but then I saw 2 heads, and realized that there were 2 of them wound up together and moving about in the rafters, so I ran for the camera. When I got back, the two of them were hanging down the side of the wall, winding themselves up together and swinging back and forth. They didn't seem bothered by my presence, so I took pictures. After a couple of minutes one of them fell down behind the washing machine. The other one pulled itself back up and kept looking for the one that had fallen. The one that fell promptly started climbing up the pipes and wires in back of the machine, and started crawling up the corner of the wall. The first two attempts were unsuccessful, and I was thinking I may have to help this creature back up, but the third time it made a more determined effort and hauled itself back up to the rafters. They slithered towards each other and ended up nose to tail across the beam, then started winding together again, and once more were hanging nose down on the wall. This went on for a few more minutes, and then both of them fell onto the machine. They just crawled nose down in back of the machine and held on to the pipes with their tails. It was about then that I heard something rustling in the leaves outside, there was another smaller black rat snake, about 2 feet long, crawling along the ground. The two big ones were busy behind the machine for a few more minutes, then came crawling out across the floor. One of them then took off like a shot, crawled past me and went about 10 feet, then up the rockwall and back over to behind the building. The one in the laundry room crawled back up the corner and up into the rafters. It would have been interesting to grab the larger of the two snakes and try to measure it for size, but this was not the time to be interfering. Rather, I was cheering them on, telling them to be sure to produce a new batch of little mouse catchers. I got a measuring tape to measure the distance from the top of the taps to the top of the wall, it's 3 feet one inch, so I'm guestimating the larger snake to be about 4 1/2 to 5 feet long. Both of them looked to be mature healthy specimens of a large size.

Hummingbird Nest

We found our first hummingbird nest of the season, it's located in almost the same place where we found one last year, in a maple tree. I had checked last week but didn't see one there, so she must have just built this recently.

Catching up: Hare from May 17th, 2007

Aleta from the nature list told us of a recent encounter with a feisty hare on the road, and it's prompting me to post a couple pictures of our resident snowshoe hare. Dad had called me over to the window on the morning of May 17th to watch bunny munching its way through our rock garden. It selected several weeds, some grasses, clover, then munched the leaves off a small oak tree.

After filling its belly, it hopped up to the patio, and had a good stretch and scratch. You can see in the second picture that the last of the winter white is shedding off. I've had to plant my salvia plants up out of reach this year, last year bunny took the whole row off. Hogged the salad and didn't leave any for the hummingbirds. In the past three weeks we've seen the hare (s?) racing about over the lawns. One morning I stood still and watched, it raced back and forth, twice it came within 5 feet of me. At one point it encountered a rock wall, stopped, looked around and made about a 7 foot leap straight up and hit the ground running. Quite entertaining watching him race about.

Which way to the beach?

Yesterday we had a very pleasant, sunny day, light breeze from the north, about 75F in the sunny sheltered areas. Birds were singing, treefrogs were calling, just one of those perfect spring days. In late afternoon I decided to clean the beach, took the rake and fork and headed down to get the bits of flotsam that had washed up on the sand. As I started from the one end, a watersnake moved in the cattails in the corner, and I saw that it had a dead perch in its mouth. Fortunately I had brought the little camera with me, and slowly crept up on it to get a few shots.

The snake was medium to large sized, the perch about 7 inches long. It doesn't seem to matter if a fish has been dead for a while, I've seen watersnakes scavanging some stinky old fish carcass that's been around for a while, which makes me think of them as a handy little cleanup crew. I had work to do, so couldn't hang around to see the snake finish this meal.

As I continued raking, I was about halfway across the beach and after one of the swipes with the rake I spotted a tiny turtle hatchling in the sand when I removed its covering. I put some wet sand in one of the toy beach buckets and placed it in there to keep it safe til I was finished, and after a couple minutes, discovered a second one. I had already scooped a couple piles of debris with the fork and dumped it on the hillside beside the beach, and worried that I may have scooped a hatchling along with it, so after placing this second turtle in the bucket I then spent 20 minutes picking the pile apart one handful at a time to see if there were any in there. I didn't find any. Raking then proceeded much more slowly. When I finished the raking job, I took my wee tiny turtles up the house to get some photos of them.

Once the turtles had warmed up, they became quite lively. The smaller of the two wouldn't stay on his back for a side-by-side shot with the other one for comparison of bottom markings, he would immediately flip himself upright As you can see from the pictures, these little guys are literally thumbnail size. After photographing them, I took them down to the shoreline in a sheltered area with plenty of cover for them to hide in. I put them right at the edge of the water, and they immediately took off. One headed out to sea, and the other swam around a bit, then dove down and burrowed into the plants and leaves on the bottom. Hopefully they've made the start of a long happy life. It's good to see that a nest was successful in producing at least 2 hatchlings, I suspect that there may have been more that headed into the lake before I found them. I'd like to think that this was one of the nests that I had protected from raccoons. Whenever I see a turtle laying her eggs around here, I make note of the spot, and come back later with a board or light flat rock. I lay this over the nest, and spray with a shot or two of ammonia, then remove the rock a week or two later when the fresh-dug nest has settled down.

Other notes from yesterday: Treefrogs were trilling here and there all day long, and then last night the big chorus was in full swing. There's still a bunch of peepers calling. A great horned owl was calling, I hooted back a couple of times and got it going. The lilacs and lily of the valley are just coming into bloom, I'll be watching for butterflies. There are about 5 bass on their nests that I've found, another job yesterday was roping off an area by the dock so that no one would wade in and trample the nest that a 10-inch bass has in the shallows. Over from my dock there's a bass about 14 inches long that has been hovering over his nest, I got a few dew worms to throw to him, he quickly gobbled them down. I've read that bass will not eat while nesting, but I've never found this to be true here. Our bass are little gluttons, and will gladly partake of any edible tidbit I throw to them. I'll have to gather some worms today and toss them to these guys, keep their strength up for driving off sunfish and perch. Although, I've noticed that with the Big Guy smaller fish keep their distance, I have yet to see a sunfish come within 5 feet of his nest, his sheer size keeps them away.

It's cloudy and windstill this morning, I should get the camera out. There are downy yellow violets in bloom, and the trilliums are turning pink. There's a couple of small shagbark hickory trees with the leaves coming out, still brownish red. One of my favourite plant observations in spring is watching the hickory buds open, and the bracts coming out and spreading. So many things to see this time of year, and so little time!

Trilliums

Doing a bit of "catch-up" here, from May 10th. We had some trilliums that were right in the middle of pathways and work areas, in real danger of being trampled, so I decided to transplant those to safer areas where they could grow in peace, and where we could enjoy seeing them more readily. There were what I thought were two large ones growing closely together, but when I went to put them in their new place, some of the dirt fell off the root and I discovered that the two were actually the same plant. I took a couple quick shots before transplanting.

I'll make a note that all transplants were successful, within a couple days the flowers had perked up and look to be healthy.

Ring Neck Snake

It seems the highlight of my day today was finding this lovely little ring-necked snake under a board. After it had slithered back and forth through my fingers a few minutes, it finally held still long enough for me to snap a few pictures before releasing it back to its board. Twas cool and cloudy today, about 50F, so not as many little wigglers out and about today. Yesterday while I installed clothes lines there were 3 or 4 garter snakes out and about.

Spring is in full bloom, the trilliums are at their peak and even starting to turn pink. The Dutchman's breeches are fading, gone to seed and the leaves turning yellow. Hepaticas are hard to find now, most are done blooming. The early saxifrage is blooming, as are the tiny wild forget-me-nots. The columbines are getting red, and the early meadow rue is blooming. I need to check the prickly ash again, the one behind the garage was just starting to turn yellow yesterday. The leaves on the beech and birch are about half grown. In the past few days I've seen 2 blue spotted salamanders, the big one Dad rescued from the garage, he found it while sweeping.

Okay, enough for my first blog post/test, let's see how this thing works.