Workshop, and Daniel Webster Sanctuary

Canada geese flying into land

First an announcement.  On Saturday, March 19 starting at 6:30 PM at the Stone Barn of Allens Pond Massachusetts Audubon Sanctuary, I will be holding a program on doing nighttime macro photography, and we utilize a vernal pool.  This event is limited to 10 participants.  The fee is $20 and will include drinks and snacks.  Equipment DSLR with a Macro lens or a lens in the 70-200 External Flash a Flash extension cable or remote flash trigger Boots Flashlight or headlamp and appropriate clothing.  Anyone that is interested, please email me at mborn@photobee1.com.  By the way, half of the proceeds will be donated to the sanctuary.

Yesterday, it was a beautiful day and warm with the temperature starting out in the 50s and going into the 60s.  My son and I spent the morning at Daniel Webster Massachusetts Audubon Sanctuary in the morning blind.  The sanctuary has two blinds, one at each end of the pool, morning and afternoon blind, so named because the location of the sun.  There was a lot of passerines flitting around in the brush and bushes.  However, none of them perched in a location where we could photograph them.  The two main species that we photographed were painted turtles and Canada geese.

We started out with three painted turtles on the log and by the time we left, there were seven painted turtles all enjoying the bright, warm sun.

Painted turtles on the log

Initially, there were only a few Canada geese in the pool but as the morning wore on large groups flew in.  The Canada geese put on a show with many of the geese bathing and preening.  The geese would raise large splashes a water duck underneath the water and even bays upside down with their feet in the air.

Canada geese landing

Canada geese swimming and preening

Canada goose bathing

Canada goose flapping its wings

While watch and the Canada geese, around the corner of grass, swam some ducks.  There was a pair of mallards and for my first time visiting here a Northern Pintail.

Northern Pintail and mallards

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Crab Spider

This morning was beautiful and Jenna and I first went to Gooseberry where we did some birding and photography.  More about that in the next blog.

After that we went over to Allens pond and first decided to see what we could find around the butterfly garden.  There was a number of butterflies including monarchs, flitting around and feeding on the various flowers.  On the daisies, it looked like there was honeybees, but on closer inspection turned out to be a bee mimic fly.  I took some macro photographs and then I found a crab spider sitting on one of the flowers.

Bee Mimic Fly

Crab Spider

Crab spiders are interesting in that they do not spin a web to capture food but rely on speed and there front legs to capture insects to feed on.  And other fact is that they will gradually over time, change the color to the flower that they are on so that they can hide better from their prey.

I set up my camera to do a video of the crab spider, hoping that it would catch a fly.  Initially there were ants on the flower and even on the spider but the spider ignored them.  I filmed the spider for about 20 minutes and though it tried to capture some of the flies that landed on the flower.  It lucked out and did not capture any, or maybe the flies lucked out.  I must say I was very happy with the video and I am only going to show a small segment of it.  But despite the wind blowing and moving the flower.  The video, on my Nikon D810, kept the spider in focus.

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The Small World around Us

Orange-spotted Jewelweed (the leaves are treatment for poison ivy)

As I wrote in yesterday's blog, prior to the Beach Ramble, I spent my time mostly around Allens Pond butterfly garden photographing macro subjects, insects and plants.  My equipment was Nikon D810, Tamron 180 mm macro lens and the Nikon R1C1 Wireless Close-Up Speedlight System, handheld.  To an macro photography, you must be patient, wait, and always return to where you have been before.  Why do I say that, on a second walk around I found northern walkingsticks hidden in the low aspect of plants.  After taken the photographs calming reviewing and deleting the out of focus pictures, the next hardest part is to identify what species you have found.  Sometimes you only can get down to two what family.  It belongs to.  I have a number of field guides, which I use for us to help me and also there are a number of sites that are available for identification purposes.  Bugguide at www.bugguide.com is free to join and you can post photos of insects and spiders and people will identified them for you.  For wildflowers I use http://www.mywildflowers.com/identify.asp and https://gobotany.newenglandwild.org/.  Even with this help.  There are many times it is almost impossible to identify what you photographed.  Eventually, most of the time you can find out an answer.  So get out early and photograph the small natural world around us.

Ant Exploring

Baltimore Checkerspot

Bumblebee Feeding

Common Fleabane

Japanese Honeysuckle – Invasive Plant¶

Northern Walkingstick

Plant Bug

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Macro Photography in Lakeville

Variable Dancer

It is that time a year again.  The weather is warming, insects are hatching, flowers are blooming and it is time to do macro photography.  The other day, I travel to two of my favorite spots in Lakeville to do some macro photography.  Normally, I utilize a tripod when I am doing macro photography.  That has a problem in that you have to be careful way you move the tripod, because, if you hit a leaf or anything it will scare the insect.  This day I decided to handhold my Nikon D810 and my Nikon 105 macro lens and see what I would come up with.  I found I had to increase my ISO and shutter speed and shot a burst series.  I had a good time photographing damselflies, dragonflies and spiders.  On reviewing the pictures on the computer after downloading I found a good number that were not in focus due to my movements.  Oh well, those got deleted but still left me a number of sharp images.

Spider

Spider Weaving Its Web

Slaty Skimmer

Slender Spreadwing

Dragonfly Nymph Exoskeleton

On the side of Poska Pond, I found a number of very pale looking damselflies.  I thought these may be newly hatched damselflies and this was confirmed.  They are known as 'teneral' which is  the state of an insect immediately after molting. At this time the insect's exoskeleton has not hardened and it may be pale in color.

Damselfly after Nymph Stage It Is a Teneral

The following picture was taken with the same camera/lens combination, but it is not a macro.

Marsh with a Wood Duck and a Red-Winged Blackbird Flying Overhead

So as we approaching summer do not forget the little things that surround us also and enjoy photographing them.  Vistas are great, but you can do macro photography right around your own home.



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By the way, I know some of you have bought Collier's guide to photographing the night sky and there are a number of people who learn better by viewing a video.  I like having a video, since I have two computer screens I keep the video on one and use the other to follow along working on a picture.  Collier has produced the video on all the steps in post processing a night sky photograph.http://www.payloadz.com/go/jump?id=2890652&aff_id=3522556

Wee Little Critters

Spider

Since it's part of the summer when spiderwebs are getting more frequent to see, my journey today, took me to a number of places to see what I could find in the way of spiderwebs and spiders.  Again, there were numerous areas of fog and when I arrived at the first location, there was some dew on the plants, but not any on the spiderwebs.  Most of the spiders that I photographed where a quarter of an inch or less in size and even with a 1:1 macro lens, I still needed to crop the pictures.  It still was a great morning photographing these interesting arachnoid and watching the habit of some of the spiders.  One in particular crawl to the edge of is web, and hid underneath the seed head of the plant where the web was attached.

Spider hidden beneath a seed head

Spider on its web

Spider was on its web but with water behind it.  I was able to capture it isolated from everything

This is definitely a wee one

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Animal Macro's at the Butterfly Garden of Allens Pond

American Copper

I have been photographing macro subjects recently and a great location is the butterfly garden at Allens Pond Massachusetts Audubon Sanctuary.  Not only can you get flowers in bloom, but there are the berries and seedpods, which give you interesting subjects.  Those subjects will be the topic in a later blog.  On my last visit, there were grasshoppers, butterflies, a crane fly and garden snails.

Crane Fly

The grasshoppers blog to the genus Melanoplus and there are at least 238 species in North America and the only way to tell different species apart is differences in the male genitalia.

Melanoplus sp.

Melanoplus sp.

Sachem Skipper

I have written a previous blog about the garden snails http://photobee1.blogspot.com/2012/09/garden-snails.html, I also found one snail that I could not identify, and it has a different looking shell from the common varieties of garden snails

Brown-lipped Garden Snail

Unknown snail, notice the different shell from the Brown-lipped garden snail

Macro Photography Fun

What I have been enjoying about macro photography, besides being in the great outdoors, is finding new creatures to photograph and obtaining different photographs of familiar creatures.

The other day, I had to take a son to physical therapy, and while I was waiting, I went up the road to a state wildlife management area and photographed the butterflies and first which I thought was a bug or a beetle that was on a flower.  This insect, I had never seen before and I could not find it in my field guides.  I then posted a picture on BugGuide, where you can join for free, post the picture and people will identify it for you.  BugGuide can be found at http://bugguide.net/node/view/15740.  The insect turned out to be a moth, in the Tiger moth family, Yellow-collared Scape Moth (Cisseps fulvicollis), which feeds during the day.

Yellow-collared Scape Moth

There were a number of  Orange Sulphur - Colias eurytheme butterflies flitting around and I was able to capture some of them in motion with the blur of the wings.  Also captured a female Orange Sulfur in its white phase.

Orange Sulphur Yellow male, white female

Orange Sulphur

Orange Sulphur

There were a number of Cabbage White Butterfly - Pieris rapae on the ground obtaining minerals from the moist soil.

Cabbage White Butterfly

Feeding on some leaves was a grasshopper, which according to my field guide was a Differential Grasshopper, but as I Googled the differential grasshopper, it is not supposed to occur in Massachusetts.  I am now waiting an answer from the BugGuide.

Grasshopper