a little wild   (a small slice of wildlife)

This was an April Fool’s Day in several different ways.  The weather resolutely refused to acknowledge the spring season: pouring rain and then lots of snow.  Perfect weather for a walk in the woods!

Once I got to Devil’s Rock, I decided to try for a particular type of photograph — I really really wanted a photograph of a drop of water falling off a branch.  The drops  of water, on the other hand, were not particularly cooperative.   They either dropped before I was ready, or refused to drop, or timed the drop so that it didn’t come out right.  The one time everything else worked, of course, I had moved my camera out of the focus zone, so I got a beautifully composed shot of a bunch of blurs in flight.  At first I was annoyed, then enraged, and finally filled with grudging admiration for the perverseness of nature.

There are a few photos here that were reasonably successful; I also want to post my failure here, mostly because they took a lot of work to obtain, but also because they’re interesting failures.

My favorite from this set:

Some of the more conspicuous failures:

Let’s grab some winter before it disappears!

A very mild winter so far, so not a lot of snowy photographs!  I needed to catch some crystals before they vanished.

Lots of snow recently.  I took my son and his friends sledding, and took some photos of the nearby snow when I had a quick chance.

First, some photos from Christmas Day.  We didn’t have a white Christmas, but we did have a nice frost covering the lawn.  And at that time of day, I was able to lie down on the ground and take photos into the sun, setting aglow the rime.

Today (December 30th) we had a light snowfall.  I went to Devil’s Rock to see what I could see.  Snow on the moss was the main theme of today’s walk.

My first time on the Pepperbush trail at Moose Hill.  A closeup of beech bark (maybe birch?), in the late evening slanting light.

We had a meeting of the New England Entomological Society at Broad Meadow Brook.  I’ve never been there before, and took the opportunity to take a walk in the woods there.

The autumn colors are gone.  The scenic snowy landscapes are not yet.  This is the brown season, and it has pleasures that are smaller and more intimate.

An abstract of some bright leaves, taken facing into the sun.

An insect that drove me absolutely crazy by flying away each time I thought I had it in my sights.  Identified as Dikrella cruentata, a first for me for this particular type of leafhopper, and apparently the second recorded sighting in Massachusetts as per bugguide.net, and the first recording for this insect in Massachusetts in November (this information courtesy the Insects of New England Facebook group).  Eratoneura was also proposed as the genus.  This is the best I could do:

A nice walk to get my mind off the elections coming up.  The bright autumn colors did not stay long this year, but the more subtle late autumn hues are beautiful, too.  I think cloudy skies bring out the colors wonderfully.

A surprisingly warm day for this time of year, so the insect activity may have been a bit more than normal.  This one had an intriguing flight, almost like a beetle, and I haven’t been able to identify it yet [edit: identified on Facebook as a March fly, Penthetria heteroptera, but perhaps also a dark fungus gnat?].  Sorry for a poor photo:

This heron stood across the lake amidst some gorgeous autumn colors:

And finally, some flowers to celebrate the end of summer: