a little wild   (a small slice of wildlife)

We went for a Christmas Day walk at Borderland State Park to enjoy the special weather. There were prominent sundogs in the sky, as well as this circumzenithal arc :

November and December are the brown months. The spectacular fall colors are gone, and the snow usually hasn’t coated the ground yet. It takes a little more effort, but what stand out at this time are the more subtle patterns from the bare branches.

Another crop of the same photo:

Continuing my obsession with this particular view of wood and rock. One of these days I’ll get this photo right; so far, every one I’ve taken has had just that one thing wrong with it.

It is a sin to miss a beautiful fall day in New England. We went to Stony Brook Massachusetts Audubon Sanctuary in Norfolk: trees, water, birds and the late evening sun.

Even the ducks know when it’s time to go.

We booked a weekend in Vermont, but were afraid the foliage would be past peak. A surprise for us, the colors were nothing but spectacular.

Leaf, bark and stone

A rockface that I was obsessed with:

From near the top of Mt. Mansfield:

Ninigret Park in Rhode Island

A little experimental: I took a longer exposure of the previous scene (1/3 second) while it was very windy, to get a wavy effect. Enhanced the color curve a bit, but no other editing.

Praying Mantises are fierce predators. I can’t but help notice, however, that they look like complete goofballs.

At Ninigret Beach, there were a lot of birds.

We saw a wasp either laying eggs in a grasshopper, or dragging it back to its burrow to feed the babies. It was identified on BugGuide as Prionyx:

More photos from the backyard.

Candy-striped leafhoppers always put on a show:

Syrphidae:

Araneid orb weaver (genus Araneus? Neoscona? Not sure).

Not a very clean eater, is it?

You don’t have to go far to see interesting things.

Not a very good photo, but it seems to me to be an ant-mimic spider. Perhaps Synemosyna formica, in Salticidae.

Dreaming of fat and juicy flies, perhaps:

An ambush bug (Phymatinae):

Candy-striped leafhopper, Graphocephala coccinea:

Haven’t had a lot of good insect photos lately, but as always, I’ve enjoyed the search. I don’t fish, so this is my substitute: an excuse to go outdoors and enjoy my time.

This is maybe a sweat bee. I have been trying hard to get good photos of sweat bees, cuckoo wasps or jewel wasps, without a lot of success. This is as good as I have got so far, but it doesn’t really do justice to the iridescent colors.

This is dragonfly season!

I’m not sure what the significance of the “tail-up” pose is. Some seem to believe that it has to do with regulating temperature through sun exposure.

Underneath a rock. Perhaps Amaurobiidae? If so, I would expect to see spinnerets.

Cute little fly outside my house. Perhaps genus Chlorops, but I Am Not An Expert. [Edit: identified by Kai Beck on the Facebook Entomology group, as Lauxaniidae, but Drosophila was also mentioned as a possibility.]

I hadn’t gone out for a walk in the woods for much too long, so it was time. There were a lot of dragonflies, but I couldn’t get close enough to them to use the macro; the zoom would have to do.

Even more macro abstracts:

A large-ish group of deer:

And some of the dragonflies I promised:

Manini Beach, Hawaii

This was a small beach that was pretty popular with the locals. The kids loved the little cove.

From 201507_hawaii_nature

I’ve been doing a lot of hand-held long exposures. And I’m not going to apologize.

This is a Gasteracantha spider. I don’t know if the small one is a male, or if it’s a kleptoparasite such as Argyrodes.

I took this photo of the spider on the Big Island. Then I came home and examined it: it’s a recluse spider, the Mediterranean Recluse Spider.

Volcano National Park is one of the most remarkable places on Earth. Really.

This photo is at the Thurston Lava Tube.

On the Kilauea Iki trail:

The Chain of Craters Road is breathtaking from start to finish.

These photos are on the petroglyphs trail off the Chain of Craters Road.

Black Sand Beach, still on Hawaii:

The Na Pali Coast trail in Kaua’i must be one of the most beautiful hikes in the world.

I already warned you about the long exposures:

The morning golden glow was great for photographing the land, but I found that a higher sun brought out the ocean colors.

The beach at the end of the trail.

The overlaying of the fern over the flower is deliberate. I was trying to show that it’s okay to be green and there’s more to life than pretty flowers, but not sure if that worked in the photograph.

Here’s a wasp that I found on the trail.  Family Eumeninae (Potter wasps, genus perhaps Delta, credits to the Facebook Entomology group for identification).

And here’s a frigate bird:

See, here’s the problem. I’ve already exhausted my superlatives, and now we come to the Waimea Canyon.

I’m not sure what birds these are. That didn’t stop us from admiring how dramatic they looked wheeling in the canyon, or how much fun they seemed to be having.

I’ve been effusive so far. So let me simply say that view from the Kalalau viewpoint in Waimea Canyon is the single most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen (for the sake of personal safety, I’m excepting the first time I saw my wife and my son).

A heartstopping drop, into a green and earth valley with dappled cloud shadow. Beyond that, cerulean blue with flecks of waves.