Nature Photography (Formally Spring is in the Air)

[Doug Watson]

Thanks Doug, I am a total noob here and still familiarizing with the forum interface, I will keep this in mind, sorry for leaving the pics in. I have been living Ireland for only a year by the way, and being from Hungary originally I am more familiar and okay with reptiles in general. But even back home there are like three venomous species of snakes and haven't ever met them in the wild, as they are quite rare. It's interesting though how Ireland lacks amphibians and reptiles, if I remember correctly it is due to the isolation of the mainland since the las Ice Age. You are lucky you didn't suffer any injuries during your encounter with miss piggy, such things can easily turn serious.
Oh I wish someone makes a dino movie with more realistic animal behavior, something that is frightening because of its credibility.

No problem I did the same thing when I started here. My compliments on your English by the way if it isn't your first language.
I read your comments in the JW vs TJB thread and I am pretty much in agreement. I loved and still love JP and I have enjoyed the sequels for what they are, entertainment. I look forward to the next instalment. My main problem with JW was that they abandoned the practical animatronic dinos and went for the most part with pure CGI and lost that organic look of a real creature on set with the actors, but that is for another thread.

[Newt]

I saw (and photographed) an interesting scene a few weeks ago. I was standing near a beaver dam and saw a beaver swimming toward me and a cottonmouth swimming away from me; the two passed quite close together, apparently quite unconcerned by one another's presence. Unfortunately the pics didn't come out at all well.

Anyways, here are some photos from my backyard.


Spring Peeper


Cope's Gray Treefrog on Sugar Maple trunk. I was pretty proud of myself for spotting this guy out of the corner of my eye from ten feet away while putting my laundry out on the line. I may not be good at much, but I've got an eye for frogs!


Closeup of same.


Red Paper Wasp, grooming itself while resting on some maple leaves (my yard is infested with maples).

[Flaffy]

Wonderful pictures! 

[Doug Watson]

I saw (and photographed) an interesting scene a few weeks ago. I was standing near a beaver dam and saw a beaver swimming toward me and a cottonmouth swimming away from me; the two passed quite close together, apparently quite unconcerned by one another's presence. Unfortunately the pics didn't come out at all well.

Anyways, here are some photos from my backyard.
Spring Peeper
Cope's Gray Treefrog on Sugar Maple trunk. I was pretty proud of myself for spotting this guy out of the corner of my eye from ten feet away while putting my laundry out on the line. I may not be good at much, but I've got an eye for frogs!
Closeup of same.
Red Paper Wasp, grooming itself while resting on some maple leaves (my yard is infested with maples).

Great shots Newt and if you spotted that frog from 10 feet away tucked in like that I tip my hat. I have spotted two Eastern Gray Treefrogs over the years, one in gray on a similarly coloured dead tree hanging over a lake and one in green on a low bush in a swamp but both times they were hanging out there on branch so easy to spot the shape of the frog. Spotting one tucked in a hole with that kind of colour match is crazy!

Oh yah and great story about the beaver and the snake. Lucky you.

[Newt]

Thanks Flaffy!

Doug - It probably helps my chances that Cope's grays are about as rare as dirt here. Every swimming pool, goldfish pond, tree hole, birdbath, and blocked-up gutter has a breeding population. They sing me to sleep from my magnolia tree every night (they're taking over from the peepers, who are finally trailing off).

[Newt]

I visited a local Wildlife Management Area in the Cumberland River bottoms. Some of the habitats present include:


Bottomland hardwood forest


Buttonbush swamp


Black willow swamp

And some critters:


Spring Fishfly - a cousin of the more famous Dobsonfly


Green Soldier Fly


Seven-spotted Ladybug


Pale Green Assassin Bug, with another Seven-spotted Ladybug on the same Curly Dock leaf


Scarlet-bordered Assassin Bug - a millipede specialist


Red Maple Borer - a clearwing moth


Cast-off exoskeleton of a Six-spotted Fishing Spider


Freshly-molted Long-jawed Spider


Rough Green Snake in a Winged Elm


Eastern Box Turtle

[Doug Watson]

I visited a local Wildlife Management Area in the Cumberland River bottoms. Some of the habitats present include:

Great shots Newt, I especially like the Rough Green Snake. I was hoping to spot one of those down south but no luck, we have the Smooth Green up here but I haven't seen one since my teens. There are archaeological records of the Eastern Box Turtle in Ontario but they were extirpated here.
So far it has only been warm enough for critters with fur and feathers but we are finally getting into the teens celsius during the day but still pretty cold at night. I would have been out by now but that pesky thing called work keeps getting in the way.

[Halichoeres]

I'm especially liking that fishfly! Must be a nice clean stream, then.

[btb300]

I like the pics with the shed spider cuticles best, nice finds

[Doug Watson]

Dead face hugger, somewhere in Tennessee a Xenomorph is on the loose. "Run Newt, run. Get away from her you b***h!"

[Newt]

Too bad about your box turtles, Doug. I know a lot of the Iroquois and Algonquin tribes were pretty tough on them - both eating them (despite their occasional acquired toxicity from mushrooms) and using their shells for rattles and other implements. They cleared them out of a lot of the northeastern US too.

We don't have smooth greens down here, just roughs. There's an isolated population of smooth greens in Texas, so presumably they were once more widespread.

Halichoeres - thanks! It's the first adult Chauliodes I can remember seeing. Sialis, Nigronia, and Corydalus are more abundant, but all the megalopteran adults are so short-lived and cryptic it's hard to find them. Larvae are dead easy, though.

btb300 - thanks! I've always been fascinated by shed skins and exoskeletons. When I was a kid I had a collection of such things - mainly ratsnake skins and dog-day cicada (or, as we called them, "dry fly") exuvia.

Dead face hugger, somewhere in Tennessee a Xenomorph is on the loose. "Run Newt, run. Leave her alone you b***h!"

[btb300]

Dead face hugger, somewhere in Tennessee a Xenomorph is on the loose. "Run Newt, run. Leave her alone you b***h!"

Sorry Doug, I have to correct you on this: "Get away from here you B***H!" would be the correct expression according to my memories (OK, busted, another favorite movie of mine). I love the analogy though

Don't listen to him Newt, you are better off hiding in the air ducts

The cicadas are amazing indeed, I remember the time when I first saw them on a vacation in Greece. They aren't common in Hungary so I was quite fascinated. (But the noise can be annoying if not used to it...)

[Doug Watson]

Sorry Doug, I have to correct you on this: "Get away from here you B***H!" would be the correct expression according to my memories (OK, busted, another favorite movie of mine). I love the analogy though

Yes, I realized the mistake after Newt replied so I didn't bother correcting it. What can I say,...I'm old. But I think you made a typo. It is Get away from her not here. Corrected now.

[btb300]

Sorry Doug, I have to correct you on this: "Get away from here you B***H!" would be the correct expression according to my memories (OK, busted, another favorite movie of mine). I love the analogy though

Yes, I realized the mistake after Newt replied so I didn't bother correcting it. What can I say,...I'm old. But I think you made a typo. It is Get away from her not here. Corrected now.

You are absolutely right, I guess I shouldn't have started teasing in the first place. As the proverb goes: Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.

It is very interesting to see the pictures of habitats you all keep posting. I wonder though if North America the problem of invasive species exists just like in Europe. In Hungary most og the problematic species are from North America, like common milkweed, Canadian goldenrod, black locust, etc. Do you observe similar trends on your walks? If yes, where are the species from?

[Doug Watson]

It is very interesting to see the pictures of habitats you all keep posting. I wonder though if North America the problem of invasive species exists just like in Europe. In Hungary most og the problematic species are from North America, like common milkweed, Canadian goldenrod, black locust, etc. Do you observe similar trends on your walks? If yes, where are the species from?

Yes we have our fair share of invasives. Mind you when I am hiking in the States I tend to concentrate on fauna, especially snakes but often in State Parks there will be information posted on certain invasive plants and warnings about spreading them. Same thing occurs here in Ontario Parks. One of our biggest problems is with Purple Loosestrife Lythrum salicaria since it chokes out some of our native wetland plants like Cattails. It is thought to have arrived by accident as seeds in soil brought over early in the 19th century but it was also planted by gardeners and apparently still sold in Nurseries today. A lot of our current invasives started out as ornamentals planted by gardeners. One site lists 17 invasive terrestrial plants alone on Ontario's current watch list http://www.invadingspecies.com/invaders/plants-terrestrial/. One that has been making the news lately is Wild Parsnip Pastinaca sativa. It was brought here for it's edible root but contact with the sap can cause severe burns so there has been a concerted effort locally to eradicate it. In fact it has just recently started showing up here where I live and the authorities have been spraying a herbicide to kill it. It is amazing how quickly it has spread, I just started hearing about it and bam! I was seeing it everywhere. The biggest problem with all of these invasive plants is their ability to outcompete our native plants, reducing biodiversity.

[Viking Spawn]

Such wonderful photos in this thread!  But I think its time to change the name back to "Spring."

Speaking of which, I'm getting truly excited since the 17 year Cicadas are about to invade Ohio in the coming weeks!  I'll have my camera and recorder ready too!  Its been a long wait!



Photo taken June 1999 - Brood V.  Mohigan State Park, Ashland County, Ohio

www.magicicada.net

[Newt]

I look forward to seeing your cicada pics, VS! It'll be five years before we get another Magicicada emergence in the Nashville area. We have both seventeen-year and thirteen-year broods here, so that keeps things complicated.

btb300 - I live well to the south of Doug, and I can tell you we have tons of invasive plants in my area, most of either European or East Asian origin. Kudzu, bittersweet, autumn and Russian olive, common reed, Nepalese grass, Japanese and Amur honeysuckle, Japanese and small-leaf climbing fern, common privet, hydrilla, Eurasian water milfoil, water hyacinth, etc. blanket huge areas of the southeastern states, and most of our common lawn, roadside, and agricultural weeds are Eurasian exotics as well.

[Doug Watson]

Speaking of which, I'm getting truly excited since the 17 year Cicadas are about to invade Ohio in the coming weeks!  I'll have my camera and recorder ready too!  Its been a long wait!

Your Cicadas are such beauties. I had never heard of periodical cicadas until I read about them here. All we have are the dull looking annual Dog Day Cicadas. I still love to hear them in the heat of the summer but they just aren't much to look at.
Good luck with your photos.

[btb300]

Thanks for the loads of information, guys, very interesting stuff. I never thought parsnip could be such a serious issue though. In Europe I think the giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum) is a similar threat, and cause very ugly burn injuries.

This pic is from last year, but I hope to see this year's hatchlings very soon

[Viking Spawn]

Thank you Newt and Doug!  I'm expecting to hear reports of a mass emergence within the next week or so.  I just purchased a new camera bag, rechargeable batteries, and a tripod in anticipation!