Archive for the 'Nature' Category

Of course, any time we spend a while visiting my parents in Columbia, Missouri, Roger looks for any and all wild creatures.

Within minutes of arriving, Roger had already found one of these cute little Ringneck Snakes (Diadophis punctatus). Two more followed shortly thereafter.

They are each well less than a foot long, don’t bite and are quite calm.

One did get out of the cage. Of course, it crawled about 15 feet across the floor and onto Roger’s foot. After that, though, the snake cage stayed on the outside porch

More critters on the click through…

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Roger and I (and Christine, for most of the week) have spent the last week in Columbia, Missouri visiting my family

In other words, Roger and I have spent most of the last week hiking around the land that surrounds my parent’s house every day.

I took a handful of photos of water tumbling over the rocks in the creek below the house. To capture that “blurry moving water” essence, I cranked the aperture to maximum and used a nearby rock as a tripod to keep the shutter speed open as long as possible.

I specifically positioned the camera such that it would catch the reflecting sun off the surface of the water. As the sun was acting as a point light source, I figured that it would be interesting to see the sun traverse the water surface over the course of the exposure.

Certainly was! Surprisingly so! The end result looks like someone scribbled with a light pen on the surface of the water!

Detailed explanation (for my seester Ann): I used the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro Lens to capture these 2″ tall waterfalls. They were taken in very bright afternoon sunlight. I cranked the aperture to f/32 to achieve as long of an exposure as possible. For these, the shutter was open for all of 0.2 seconds (1/5th of a second). To keep the camera steady, I propped the camera on a [somewhat muddy, oh well] rock and held the shutter button down to take multiple exposures, hoping at least one would be steady.

Given the angle of the sun and the water, the water was acting as a mirror for the sun. Reflecting a point of light directly into the camera lens. Unlike a mirror, water is… well… fluid and, thus, the surface is ever changing and the point from which the sun is being reflected changes constantly as the shape of the surface changes.

The key to the squiggles, though, is that this particular waterfall is moving at just the right speed such that the surface tension of the water is never broken in the primary flow. The surface remains smooth as it flows over the small fall.

Neat! I suggest clicking through to the largest size to get the full impact of the light scribbling on water.

Now, this little tumble of water was not exactly natural…

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During the first weekend in April 2008, Roger and I headed to Castle Rock State Park for a bit of a walk in the woods.

Castle Rock State Park is located about 20 minutes from downtown Saratoga, CA off of Skyline Boulevard.

The park has lots of trails and there is an excellent high resolution PDF map made by a third party. Roger and I hiked a 3.5 mile loop.

The terrain is quite rocky and the trails hug the mountain side.

This is actually a photo of the trail we hiked along from the distance. You can sort of see it carved into the side of the mountain.

While it looks treacherous, the actual trails are quite nice. Generally fairly level and wide with only a few areas where you need to scramble over some rocks.

While the 3.5 mile loop we took dropped and climbed several hundred feet, yet we spent the entire time near the top of the mountain.

Thus, the views are often spectacular. On a clear day, you can easily see all the way south to Santa Cruz and the Monterey Bay.

Looking north, you can see the Pacific in the direction of Half Moon Bay.

Rarely, though, is it that clear.

There is typically a bit of fog rolling off of the Pacific ocean that obscures the view.

You can see the haze in this photo. Instead of the dirty brown of heavy pollution, it is a bluish fog off the Pacific.

While the haze limits the ability to take sweeping landscape photos, it makes for some very interesting flora and fauna.

Which is what the rest of this post is about. As the fog rolls in each evening, the lay of the land guides the fog in very specific areas more than others.

Thus, a simple 3.5 mile hike led us through 4 different micro-climates. Given that it was early spring, there were tons of early blooming spring flowers out — the little ground hugging flowers that try to get out and bloom first in their competitive efforts for the attentions of the various pollinators in the area.

So… for a photo tour of the flowers (and a few critters) of the area, click on through….

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On Tuesday of our Easter Florida Adventure, we visited the Alligator Farm in St. Augustine, Fl.

It was actually a really neat zoo with a real focus on alligators and crocodiles from around the world.

Though, it does stink. I mean, it smells really really bad. Not surprising given that the entire place is basically built on natural swamps surrounding manmade swamps of some of the core exhibits.

But, alas, if you are going to visit nature, you gotta deal with the stench.

More critters on the click through…

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We are in Florida for Easter, visiting family.

Roger, of course, captured a couple of toads and a frog within the first 5 minutes of being here.

On closer inspection, we have found that there are tons of critters in the area.

This was a lizard that Roger caught on the back porch. We let it go and watched as he hopped from branch to branch for a bit.

Beyond this photo — my favorite — I also snapped a neat photo of the lizard on saw grass and another of the lizard walking on a bit of tree branch.

There is a bit of a swamp in the backyard, so this really isn’t much of a surprise.

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For his fifth birthday, Roger was given a pair of stick bugs (with our permission).

Little did any of us know how much stick bugs are the epitome of the gift that keeps on giving.

Many Phasmatodea don’t really need a mate to reproduce, reproducing by parthenogenesis instead.

I’m not sure if that was the case with our original pair. If not, we clearly had a male and a female.

This shot is of the current generation, probably the 4th generation since the original pair came home nearly two years ago.

Yes, that is a pile of hundreds of very tiny, and very much alive, stick bugs.

Anyone want a stick bug? Easy pets to care for.

As their name implies, stick bugs tend to spend a lot of time trying to look like a stick.

Sometimes they are more successful than others. This little guy — the leaf was about 1.25 inches across at the widest point — is trying desperately to look like a bare twig hanging out in the breeze.

Not going so well.

These particular stick bugs eat rose and citrus leaves. We are careful to not allow any to get loose, but they are so small when freshly hatched (from eggs that look exactly like big stick bug poo) that I would imagine some have managed to get loose.

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Or, I should say, Gardening season began in late January, but we are just getting around to starting our gardening in mid February.

Roger and I planted a bunch of fava beans in our community garden plot a couple of weeks ago. Some are destined to be harvested, but most are simply there to fix nitrogen and be turned into awesome mulch.

When gardening, I generally try to set up the garden such that I can flood irrigate. This lets me leave a hose or three running full blast in one area of the garden while I work / weed some other area.

One of our garden mates has this incredibly cool device to chop up fava bean plants and return them to the soil. It is, effectively, a lawn mower mounted in a rain barrel with a hole in the deck through which you feed the plant matter. Quite the frightening device.

Of course, with flood irrigation, the numerous ant colonies within the garden do get a bit upset when their homes are periodically flooded. Roger likes rescuing the ants wherever possible, though some ants do appear to be able to walk on water.

This was a bit of dead plant matter left behind from last year’s gardening efforts. The ants seemed to use it as a bit of a watch tower. An ant or two would run to the top, have a look around, and then run back to tell their nest mates whatever bits of wisdom they had gleaned from above.

All photos taken with Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro Lens and an Canon MR-14EX Macro Ring Lite. Not that the ring flash was needed for the photo of Roger, it just happened to be on.

Growing up in the midwest, the first sign of spring for me was always the first crocus that I spotted in the yard, typically peeking through the snow.

We lacked crocus around our house in California but, fortunately, we have plenty of bare dirt in the parking strip as we had a boatload of concrete removed last fall.

OSH — local hardware store — had a sale on bags of crocus bulbs, so I grabbed some, planted them in the bare dirt and promptly forgot where.

The other morning, Roger noticed something yellow in the dirt and discovered the first Crocus bloom of spring!

Gorgeous little flower, even for a bulb that hasn’t even had a season to mature and establish itself.

There are a couple of dozen other crocus sprouts in various areas of the parking strip (along with gladiolas and, now, about a pound of California native wildflower seeds) and I’m hoping for a variety of colors, but will be happy with just yellow.

Crocus are also the source of saffron. At upwards of $5,000 per pound, saffron is one of the most expensive spices by weight in the world.

And no wonder! While this particular species of crocus is not one of the saffron bearing varieties (I don’t believe), I have seen ones that are and the actual little bits of spice are about 1/10th the size of that bit of orange in the middle of this particular flower.

A pound of saffron can contain upwards of 200,000 threads. Each saffron crocus contains 3 threads, requiring 70,000 or so flowers to have their little tiny hairs picked out, typically by hand.

Some cannot.