Gleanings of the Week Ending September 17, 2016

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Sensory Biology Around the Animal Kingdom – Beyond sight, smell, touch, taste and hearing.

A Variety of Ways for Students to Explore National Parks Online – Not just for students….these resources could be worth a look before traveling to a national park or helping to savor the visit after you return.

Proprioception: The Sense Within – The sense of position and movement of our limbs, the senses of muscle force and effect, and the sense of balance --- easy to take for granted, more important that you might think at first.

Six Snapshots of Geoscience Research from National Parks – Our National Parks highlight the value of these special places for more than recreation…they are often places uniquely suited to increasing our understanding of Earth.

Thanks to this man, airplanes don’t crash into mountains any more – Don Bateman’s terrain mapping device....a long development cycle.

Bumblebees Pick Infected Tomato Plants – And does this compensate to offset the costs of viral infection when it comes to seed production from the tomato plants?

The Flower Sense of Hawkmoths – Olfactory receptors in the proboscis….but what attracted mw to the article was the picture of the hawkmoth (made me think of my recent hummingbird moth observations).

Late boneset: A fragrant late-summer pollinator favorite – Thinking about late blooming plants that sustain pollinators into the fall. Late Boneset is one….goldenrod is another!

“Skeleton Flowers” Turn Beautifully Transparent in the Rain – Botanical eye candy from colder regions of Japan and China

The Value of Water in the Nebraska Sandhills – Water is valuable to every environmental niche on Earth…this blog post focuses on detailing water in one type of place. Water percolates down and into aquifers below the root zone of plants!

OSIRIS-REx Launch

We were on bleachers at the Kennedy Space Center’s Saturn V facility to watch the OSIRIS-REx launch on September 8th.  OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Idenentification, Security – Regolith Explorer) is a mission to fly to, study, and retrieve a sample from the asteroid Bennu and return the sample to earth. The launch happened shortly after 7 PM at the beginning of the launch window on the 8th and the first day in its launch schedule. The clouds built up in the afternoon but were benign by launch time. The evening was still hot and humid – typical for Florida in early September. We arrived about an hour before the launch and watched the outgassing from the fueling process (the white plume to the right of the rocket).

The slide show below shows my pictures of the first minute of the launch. Even in that short period of time – I had to adjust the zoom to keep the rocket in the frame!

By 3 minutes after launch – only the drifting plume remained.

My husband took my favorite picture of the launch with distinct Atlas and solid rocket plums. Awesome!

Road Trip to Florida

We were in Florida last week – for the OSIRIS-REx launch and a few days of touring…more that in upcoming posts. The drive down from Maryland was done in an easy two days with a stop in Florence, South Carolina. The weather was hot so we didn’t stop for any of our usually outdoor activities. We retraced our steps coming back. The first day was very hot but the navigation system routed us to the Beltway around Jacksonville, Florida rather than saying on I-95 and we crossed the Dames Point Bridge. I managed to get my camera out and take some pictures of it.

It’s quite a sight.

I also liked the colorful mass of shipping containers just past the bridge.

We stayed in the same hotel in Florence, South Carolina on that night and I managed to get a sunrise photograph from the window. It was the only sunrise picture from this road trip!

The weather has cooled down a bit and the humidity was not so high for the last day on the road. We lingered a little at one of the rest stops – still in the Carolinas – and I took some pictures of a late blooming day lily

And some grasses swaying in the breeze catching the morning sun.

There was a dragonfly lying on the sidewalk – dead but still relatively intact. The plates of color on the abdomen reminded me of a Mayan turquoise mask.

The thorax was yellow green.

Hummingbird Moth at Brookside

I was thrilled to see a hummingbird moth enjoying the flowers at Brookside Gardens last week. The insect is always one I look for during the mid to late summer in the fragrance garden since that is where I’d seen one before. They are probably their every year but I have not seen then consistently so it was a special treat to see it and photograph it too. The images are good enough to identify it as a snowberry clearwing hummingbird moth (Hemaris diffinis) (Info from USDA and Wikipedia).

The wings have red veins but are almost always moving so fast that they are blurred or can’t be seen at all. The insect moves rapidly from flower to flower – similar to the way a hummingbird moves. I watched this one in two stretches. (Interrupted by a group of women with strollers in the garden for a ‘new mother’ outing; they need the full path and I stepped out of the way…remembering fondly that time of my life that is now more than 25 years ago).

I took lots of pictures, trying to get every angle and proboscis position. Look for the following in the slideshow below:

• A skipper butterfly photobomb
• Extended proboscis
• Fully extended wings – with a flower send through the ‘clear’ wing
• Coiled proboscis
• Antennae structure
• Bristles on the end of the abdomen
• Fuzziness of the thorax

1981 Road Trip to New Mexico

My Monday posts are trips back in my own history…. brought into the present via pictures that I have been scanning. This week I’m remembering a road trip to New Mexico in September of 1989. We spent considerable time at Bandelier National Monument. We walked around the main ruin area,

Did some hiking,

Climbed into some reconstructed ruins,

Saw the carvings of mountain lions, and

Tried to image how it must have been when the canyon was populated in ancient times.

My husband was taking flower pictures then too…and managed some stunning ones at Bandelier.

I remember the hike down to the Rio Grande vividly. There is an elevation change between the visitor center and the river.

We followed the water for part of the hike and my husband too pictures of a waterfall from many angles.

And finally made it to the river….very muddy and much reduced by up river irrigation.

We drove over the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge and my husband took a dizzying picture from when we walked out onto the bridge. I remember feeling the bridge vibrate when cars or trucks went by…and not wanting to stay out on the walkway for very long.

We also went to Pecos National Historical Park on that road trip…but it was overshadowed by Bandelier.

Thinking back on this and other times I’ve vacationed in New Mexico – I have enjoyed them all…and am ready to go again.

Minutes in the Meadow

It’s the time of year that schools start again – and I’m more of that with the classes for Howard County Conservancy volunteers. I got to Mt Pleasant a little early for one of them to give myself time to spend a few minutes in the meadow. I didn’t have time to go very far but there were plenty of subjects for photography. The dew was still evident on the flowers. Chicory flowers always seem a darker blue before they completely open. I had not notices the little fibers on the calyx before; they catch dew.

Sometimes the chaos of an unfurling flower is what catches my eye. This one was so low to the grown that I almost missed it.

And then I saw some movement in the mass of meadow plants and, with some difficulty, managed to find it and zoomed in enough to figure out what it was. A grasshopper or a Queen Anne’s Lace fruit cluster!

I glanced down near the edge of the path and saw what looked like thorn on a blade of grass. I backed up enough for the zoom on the camera to focus on it. Another grasshopper! I ended up zooming out to get the antennae in the picture. They were very long!

I was pleased to see so much in such a short period of time and in a relatively small area of the meadow.

Onions in the Chaos Garden

There are onions blooming around the base of the sycamore in the chaos garden. I cut the green parts as chives when I remember but there have been some that have gone to seed  for the past several years so I have more plants every season.

Now there are enough to get every stage of the flower heads in one photoshoot. They start out with a cluster of buds.

They do not all open at one time (there is a blurry coneflower adding color in the background for this flower head). At first it looks like the flowers are going to be overly crowed.

But then – some of the stems that support the individual flowers elongate.

There still seem to be a large number of buds when the flower head looks like a miniature bouquet.

The new buds hide underneath the flowers that have already opened.

And that is the state of the chaos garden onions in early September!

Zooming on Insects

The last week or so has been a great time for photographing insects. There were skippers enjoying some last season Joe Pye Weed at Centennial Park. I took pictures at different angles and discovered when I got home that there might have been two different types of skippers on the plants.

At home, I checked the milkweeds for insects and could find any adult milkweed bugs like I found a few weeks ago but there are some larval stage milkweed bugs. They develop so quickly that there are at least two stages in this one grouping…maybe three.

On another milkweed there are aphids – again. There must have been something that came and cleaned off a lot of the aphids, but they are back now. Again – there are multiple stages of aphids in this one picture with the whitish ones being the youngest and then look at the different sizes of the yellow ones.

There was a very small insect with a green metallic-looking thorax. Sometimes insects look like little machines.

And a fly on the milkweed – with bristles on the abdomen!

As you can tell – I am having a lot of fun right now using the zoom (optical + digital) in my camera! There is a lot to see out there.

Queen Anne’s Lace in the Fall

Many of the Queen Anne’s Lace plants at Centennial Park are finished flowering and in the fruit cluster stage. I find the clusters as attractive as the flowers. There is still a lot of visual complexity. Some of the clusters are green.

Looking closer you can see the oval fruits beginning to form.

Later they will turn brown….and early harbinger of fall color.

This one has some fruits that are still green…others that are reddish brown.

Some Birds at Centennial

My short walk at  Centennial Park last week included several bird sightings. I was most excited about a green heron that flew into a tree not far from where I was walking. I didn’t know what it was until I managed to zoom in enough with my camera. It is surprising how well camouflaged the birds are in the foliage. It flew down to the water’s edge from the tree and I didn’t see it again until it flew away across the water.

There was a mourning dove enjoying the morning sun on a park bench. When I walked closer it flew down to the shore…then squeakily away to the island in the lake.

There were birds in some foliage near the shore with berries. One flew out and perched on the top of a sign. I think it was a mockingbird. It proceeded to fluff its feathers – looking rather comical as it preened.

Way across the lake – a great white egret was fishing in the shallows. This picture is about at the limit for the zoom on my camera but I like to take pictures of these graceful birds. There were two great blue herons that flew low over the lake while I was there…but I wasn’t fast enough to get a picture of either one.

Photography Gear

I am particularly pleased with the results my current nature photography gear. Whether I’m taking pictures through the window of my office or out hiking – my Canon Powershot SX710 HS on the Oben Monopod with Tilt Head gives me the best overall performance although sometimes I manage with just the camera. I carry an extra charged battery but rarely need it if I start the day with a fully charged battery in the camera.

When I am away from home for more than a day, I take the battery charger and almost always copy my pictures from the SD card to my laptop at the end of each day. That gives me two copies of the pictures while I am traveling. I clean off the SD card when I return home and have at least two copies on other media (i.e. external drives not all in the same location).

I’m very pleased with the images this compact gear allows me to capture – although I’ll probably upgrade to the Canon Powershot SX720 SX (going from 30x to 40x optical zoom). What can I say – I’m drawn to new technology!

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 03, 2016

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Edible food packaging made from milk proteins – I’m not sure how this works to reduce packaging since to be edible it would have to stay clean (i.e. another layer of packaging?). Still – it would be great to reduce the amount of hard-to-recycle plastic packaging.

Zika Infects Adult Neural Progenitors Too  and How Zika infects Mother and Baby – Two articles from The Scientist. Zika is a hot research topic right now…and a public health concern.

Research priorities for the field of atmospheric chemistry – The development of a predictive capability to provide foresight into the consequences of rapid changes in the Earth system is need to help in preparation and decision making. Right now the field is focused on observing, learning and discovering for fundamental understanding…so there is data to support attempt to develop a predictive capability.

New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection – The Guaico Culex virus that infects mosquitoes has 5 genes and each gene is individually packaged. A mosquito cell has to have 4 of the 5 packages to be infected. The 5^th package may cause the infection to be potent. Once again – a case that shows how little we really understand about life on Earth.

How Aluminum Changed the World – A little history for the week.

Wildflower Wednesday: Chicory – Like the author of this post – I like chicory. The blue color redeems it from being considered a weed for me!

Invasive Species Spotlight: Canada Thistle – Evidently it was introduced accidently to North America in the 1600s!

Photos of Frozen Flowers Capture the Paradoxical Beauty of Preservation and Destruction – Eye candy for the week….maybe an idea for some photographic experiments for this winter.

Hope for reversing stroke-induced long-term disability – What a boon it would be for an aging population where having a stroke often reduce the quality of life.

Actin Architecture (image) – Filaments in a cancer cell imaged via confocal microscopy.

Feathers in the Park

Earlier this week, I accompanied my husband to Centennial Park. We got one of the last parking spaces in the lot closest to the concession area (south area of the park). He did his normal walk around the lake and I enjoyed some photography along the path primarily from the boat ramp toward the dam. The morning was very humid and I was thrilled to find three very different feathers in the wet grass --- good targets for some photography. The first one was black and white. The water droplets on its surface appealed to me…as did the curves of the lower part of the feather than are obviously no longer repelling water.

The second feather was in better shape – and probably not from the same bird even though it was not very far away from the first feather.

I zoomed in for a closer look. The water droplets are very tiny on the part of the feather closest to the rib.

The third feather looked quite different that then other two. It was a feather that looked like it would blow away at the slightest breeze. The white part would have been closest to the body and looked like down.

I zoomed in to get better view of the structure.

Then I looked at the feather from a different angle and saw that it too has many water droplets.

The dew droplets almost looked like an encrustation of tiny globules of glass…on both the white and brownish part of the feather.

I’ll have some other posts from this visit to Centennial Park over the next week or so; it was a photogenic morning.

Milkweed Seeds

One of the milkweeds in out chaos garden is already spilling seeds. One pod was fully open and the seeds were spilling out. There was a little breeze but I didn’t see any of the seeds float away – although they looked ready to go. I took pictures from several angles.  I liked the way the breeze was changing the light on the pod. The seeds look very dry and the white fluff that acts as a parachute to carry them on the breeze away from the parent plant glistens in the sunlight.

Another pod has split open but there was only one seed that had unfurled enough for the fluff to show. The others were still tightly packed in the pod. Next time I am working outside, I’ll take some of the seeds back to the edge of the forest where I’d like to have a stand of milkweed next spring. Once the plants are established they come back year after year.

Zooming – August 2016

Like last month – I selected images this month where I used the zoom on my camera past the 30x that the lenses do. The digital zoom goes to 120x. I’m often surprised by what I am able to ‘see’ via the camera.

For example – the green eye of this Cabbage White Butterfly on blooming mint. It misses being a great picture because of the errant piece of grass and the other mint plants in the foreground…but it works for identification. Speed is important when trying to photograph anything that can move (like insects) so I opt to get some kind of picture rather than a perfect one!

Black eyed susans from early in August. These three seemed to go together – further back in the garden so zooming was the only way to photograph them without stepping on other flowers. I like the curly petals of the one in the foreground.

Early in August the trees looked like we were going to have an early fall. This is a zoomed shot of the tulip poplar from my office window – across our backyard. Now most of the leaves that were yellow have fallen and there don’t seem to be many new ones – yet.

The sycamore keeps getting new leaves all through the season while the other leaves keep getting larger and larger. This is a new leaf that I took from my office window. I like the blurred background behind the leaf that comes with the lens focusing on the leaf.

Sometimes I like to use the zoom to get my shadow out of the picture. This is a mature seed pod on a sweet bay magnolia (at the Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant Farm).

In the Honors Garden at Mt. Pleasant Farm, the algae mat at the edge of the water feature was attractive to bees.

It also was a good place to look for small plants. I like the red edges of these small leaves. I was able to stand comfortably on the walkway to take my pictures rather than leaning over the small pond.

Birds are easier to photograph if I can stand further away. This male goldfinch was tearing a zinna flower growing on my deck apart with a vengeance.

Sometimes the flowers themselves are my topic. I liked the curves of the petals and the black background in this zoomed image.

The butterfly has not clue I was even around. Using the zoom on the camera is a great way to see insects better than you can with just your eyes.

What about this fly on a milkweed leaf? I was surprised by the red eyes.

 Took two pictures of an insect pollinating a chicory flower. The color on the head and thorax seemed to glitter in the sunlight! But the pictures are not quite good enough to key out what it is.

That’s enough….I may have gone overboard for the zooming post this month but I had so many images to choose from!

Geology Field Trips in 1973

Geology field trips were a special kind of ‘road trip’ in the first year of my marriage. I remember 3 in particular. They were sponsored by the community college (El Centro in Dallas TX); the school chartered a bus for a day, charged a relatively low fee, and students brought their own lunches and snacks. The field trips were popular for more than geology students based on the fullness of the buses!

The first one was to Enchanted Rock – a pink granite pluton batholith in Central Texas. It was not a great day for pictures. Some of the depressions in the granite still held water from recent rains.

That’s me in this picture for scale!

The second one was to see rose rocks near Norman, Oklahoma. The geology of the field trip was overwhelmed by bus getting stuck on the dirt road getting to the location. It had to be pulled out by two tractors!

The third field trip was to Inner Space Cavern north of Austin. It was an easy trip – just off the interstate highway. My husband did some experimentation taking pictures is the low light conditions – all hand held.

Geology field trips have evolved since the 1970s if my daughter’s experiences over the past 7 years are indicative. Now the geology field trips are more likely to require camping, be part of a class and for-credit, and use off-road vehicles rather than buses! Some of them require long distance travel; she had geology field trips to Germany and Hawaii!

3 Free eBooks – August 2016

It always is hard to choose 3 favorites….there are so many available from the online repositories these days.

Roberts, David; Brockedon, William; Croly, George. The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt, Nubia. London: Day and Son. 1856. Available in 6 volumes from Hathi Trust Digital Library here. Some of the places are familiar from modern pictures but were more covered by sand in the 1850s…like the inside of Abu Simbel in the picture I clipped for this post.

Gruelle, Johnny. Raggedy Ann Stories. Chicago: P. F. Volland Company. 1918. Available from Hathi Trust Digital Library here (Raggedy Andy Stories are available here). When I found these it prompted me to look up the author on Wikipedia. Apparently he was an artist, political cartoonist, children’s book author and illustrator, and songwriter. But Raggedy Ann and Andy are his most enduring works. One of my sisters was particularly interested in the dolls…but I don’t think I’d ever seen the books until now.

Marshall, Nina Lovering. The mushroom book. A popular guide to the identification and study of our commoner Fungi, with special emphasis on the edible varieties. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co. 1905. Available from Internet Archive here. I was interested in the quality of the photography of the mushrooms in this volume published in 1905. This fly amanita (poisonous) is in color and includes the shadows. I wondered if the picture was taken in the field or carefully brought back into a studio.

Sunflowers

Last summer the sunflowers I planted in pots on my deck did not do so well but I’ve had more success this summer. Yesterday I went out to photograph them. Even the buds look good with the fuzzy edges of sepals.

Then there is the unfurling of the petals.

They expand and the flower follows the track of the sun. This is the stage when the butterflies visit the flower.

The flower ages.

Even the back of the flower is complex.

Then the petals fade. This one looked like a flower person with yellow orange hair and a green cap!

The petals fall away…and soon the goldfinches come for the seed.

I have enjoyed doing flower photography from my deck because it is easy to use the camera’s zoom for detail and achieve a blurry green or brown background too.

Beautiful Food – August 2016

August is full of tomatoes and peppers – both very colorful foods.

My favorite way to eat tomatoes is in salads. Early in the month, the CSA share also included a sun jewel melon (to me the taste is between a cucumber and a melon…so I use them in salads) and scallions that went into the salad pictured below along with edamame for protein. I used a lemon vinaigrette dressing.  The lettuces are not at their best in August so most of my salads are full of colors other than green!

Of course I have so many tomatoes that I have to do other things with them besides eating them raw in salads. I am freezing the small ones whole, making salsa (some to freeze), and probably going to freeze some larger tomatoes – whole - with the top core cut out. Last year I discovered that freezing whole tomatoes in Ziplocs was the easiest for me and it was handy to take out the number of frozen tomatoes I wanted for soups or sauces.

As we moved further into August, the peppers started. I like the colorful snack peppers; they are perfect for salads because they are so easy to prepare – just cut the tops and bottoms off and chop the rest (seed and all)! I like the bell peppers too…the hot peppers not as much.

It’s easy to incorporate lots of veggies in my August meals!

Tree Hike at Belmont – August 2016

I volunteered to lead a tree hike at Belmont Manor and Historic Park last weekend. I went out the Friday before to walk the route I’d planned. Even though the hike was in the morning – it was going to be a hot day so I wanted every part of the hike to be worth the effort. The river birch would definitely be the first stop – with it distinctive curly bark.

Some Norway Maples had been planted near the cottage – and I decided that I’d point them out to encourage people to plant native maples instead if they wanted a maple tree in their yard.

I decided to not make the down and back (with no shade) hike down to the pond to see the bald cypress that is the tree with the rounded top to the left of the pond. I pointed it out to the hiking group from about where I stood to take this picture.

We didn’t walk over to the magnolia either. It was enough to view it from further away and talk about the history of large magnolias planted in front of the manor house and the possibility that the large specimen there now is missing the large English Elm that grew uphill until about a year ago when it was cut down before it succumbed completely to Dutch Elm Disease.

On my pre-walk, I walked all the way over to the horse chestnut. The tree is not in good shape. The top was rotten and it broke last spring. The leaves are distinctive but looked pretty battered already.

I opted to go in the direction of the dawn redwood and talk about it being the second example of a conifer that loses its needles at Belmont (the first was the bald cypress mentioned earlier).

We saw two kinds of nut producing trees: a black walnut

And a pecan.

The row of white pines has a few pine cones but the ground crews have thoroughly cleaned up any that fall to the ground.

On the way back I noticed a mushroom under a sweet gum – with bits of dirt clinging to its cap.

There were other trees along the route. The hike on Saturday was almost two hours and we saw something I had missed on my pre-hike: A large English Elm that was being treated for Dutch Elm Disease. The injection ports for chemicals were all around the base of the tree. I hope the tree survives!