I’m at home in CT for the holiday this weekend. Just having some fun taking closeups of insects and spiders in the yard.  I used the built-in flash on these shots in order to hand hold at very small apertures.  Up this close, the depth of field becomes very shallow, so the small aperture compensates.  I really need a set of extension tubes.  I’ve got +1, +2, and +4 close-up filters stacked on my Pentax FA 77/1.9 lens for most of these shots…a bit optically unsound, but I think the images came out all right.

Yellow Crab Spider Eating Fly

This spider was on the same lily the next day even though all but one of the petals had fallen off overnight:

Yellow Crab Spider Waiting For Next Meal

Tiny Spider On Daylily

Tiny Bee On Day Flower

Bumble Bee On Lysimachia clethroides

This dragonfly was hard to get close to, but kept on returning to its favorite spot on the deck:

Dragonfly On Deck

Usually, dragonflies are difficult to approach.  I think this one was sleeping. I spent a good fifteen minutes photographing it within three inches before it started to buzz its wings. Then it wiped its face and took off before I could get another shot:

Dragonfly On Yew

Look at the water droplet on its fly in the previous picture. This detail shows the droplet magnifying the eye lenses:

By the way, this was a very large dragonfly. Perhaps the largest I’ve seen around here. Very dragonly.

Dragonfly Wing

Hey, guess what?  There are black swans!  According to the Wikipedia article, Cygnus atratus are from Australia.  I took these pictures of one in Rancho Santa Fe, CA.

I poked around Wikipedia for something interesting.  Black Swan Pas de Deux is from the third scene of Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake.  "In ballet, a pas de deux (French, step/dance for two) is a duet in which ballet steps are performed together."  Well, I thought that was relevant because these two swans were mirroring each other’s actions for a while.  You can see in two of the pictures below, but they were synchronized preening for several minutes.  Who knew it was a pas de deux?

The black one was hanging out at the boat ramp as Jen and I walked around the lake.  We were told its mate had been eaten by a coyote.  How sad!

Kind of shy, but seemed to appreciate the company.  The white one swam over while I was taking pictures.

Of course, I couldn’t resist making LOL SWANS!  Haha…

This weekend, I learned that the tallest tree in the world is a coast redwood named Hyperion. He stands a towering 379.1 feet (115.55 meters) tall! The location in a remote region of Redwood National Park is kept secret out of fear tourists would damage the forest’s ecosystem. And what kind of forest is an old-growth redwood forest? Remember the Ewoks? The forested planet of Endor was certainly my favorite setting in the Star Wars trilogy, with it’s huge and majestic trees. You don’t need a spaceship to get there, though. It’s all right here on Earth…for now.

In the 1970’s, only 15% of the Californian redwood forest’s original range remained in it’s pristine old growth state, thanks to logging and development. Today, a shocking 4%* of old growth forest all that remains! And the logging continues!

Sometimes it’s hard to visualize a figure like 4%. Here are some examples that illustrate the magnitude of what has happened to our redwood forest:

• The estimated 2007 US population is 303,111,027. If there were 4% remaining, that would be only 12,124,441. That would be like only the populations of New York City and Los Angeles remaining!
• There are 30 Major League Baseball teams, each with a 25-man active roster. That’s 750 players. If only 4% remained, the league would consist of: The Boston Red Sox, and the 5-man starting rotation of the Colorado Rockies.
• That Grande (16 oz.) cup of Starbucks coffee you rely on every morning? Well, sorry, but you’re getting just 2 teaspoons now! Drink up.
• During the daytime, you can expect to catch a subway in New York City approximately once every 5 minutes. Uh oh…if there’s only 4% of trains remaining, you’re going to have to wait 2 hours for the next train!
• Eggs now come in cartons of 1/2 egg.
• The phrase 24/7/365 now only applies from January 1st through 14th. Sorry, you’re going to have to call Dell next year to get your laptop fixed.
• Good golly, the average adult penis size is less than a quarter of an inch!

Well, that was shocking, wasn’t it? Then it should be equally shocking that so much old-growth redwood forest has disappeared! And what about that drop from 15% remaining to 4% remaining since the 70’s? That happened during my lifetime! Some of these trees are over 2,000 years old!

That’s right, any portion of redwood forest replanted today would take another 2,000 years to return to the pristine state we see in the present remaining forest!

I want to go to the redwood forest myself to experience it in person. I want our ancestors 57 generations from now to be able to experience the same thing, to see grand redwood forests planted today, and hopefully somehow still have rich biological diversity in their world, though it slips away from us each passing day.

* - I found these figures online, but I’m not sure how recent they are. They refer to old growth redwood forests (you know, with thousands-year-old trees and their original ecosystem intact), but an even smaller portion is protected park land. According to Jeff of Humboldt Forest Defense, California environmentalists are reporting less than 2% remain! Anyhow, this is far too small a number. It wouldn’t take more than a very localized disaster to wipe out what remains!

Here are a couple photos I found while rummaging through my hard drive. I have so many photos to sort through it’s ridiculous. However, trees make me happy so I thought I’d share these.

Pentax*ist DS2, 50mm, F2.0, 1/250

Pentax*ist DS2, 24mm, F2.4, 1/60

I heard the call of an Eastern Screech Owl in Connecticut for the first time this evening. It’s a really freaky sound. It was also a bit distant, which made it even freakier. Take a listen to this file courtesy of the Missouri Department of Conservation:

Call of the Eastern Screech Owl (mp3)

Then turn down your sound so it’s real faint and pretend you’re outside in the woods and it’s coming to get you!

…when doves cry.

There was a mourning dove under my air conditioner this afternoon. It’s call sounded like it was in my living room. Up close, the detail in the call sounds a lot more metallic than the soft sound you hear in the distance [mp3], reminiscent of the mechanical whirr of a cicada’s tymbals, or perhaps Bubo from Clash of the Titans. I tried to record it with my cellphone, but it flew away before I could get the darn thing in the right mode.

A few hours later, I was walking home down the sidewalk from grocery store. A startled mourning dove jumped out of the grass and flew right under my chin. I could have damn near tasted it! When they fly away startled, they make a rapid “woot-woot-woot” sound [mp3] with their wingbeats.

They are pretty common around here, but today’s close encounters were quite welcome. I got pretty annoyed with Wolf Blitzer inviting viewers to “count along” with the shots on that cellphone video. The call of the mourning dove [mp3] suits me much better than the din of media insanity.