a little wild   (a small slice of wildlife)

I had exactly half an hour to spare and was in the area, so a quick trip to Devil’s Rock was just what hit the spot.

Please forgive me for posting some more longish exposures of the stream. I’ll try to control myself in the future. Not as strong a flow as early spring, of course.

Found this dandelion at home. I cranked up the aperture to decrease size of the focal plane, and focused on the center of the flower, keeping the outside in the frame.

I don’t shoot a lot of videos, but I thought that this one was pretty cool. Water droplets on their stochastic path down the rock.

If you take a short exposure, it seems to freeze the waves, and often seems static. If you take a long exposure, it blurs all the movement and ends looking rather static, too. These exposures are about half a second or so, and to me they bring out the action and look more dynamic. I really need to use a tripod, and get a neutral density filter, though.

Looked under a rock, and there was a network of strands (fungus)? Water droplets were on them, clearly not dew, perhaps snow melt.

Water beetle with an air bubble for breathing. Dytiscidae?

A collection of air bubbles under the water. The nest of the water beetle?

Mosquito Larva:

Some kind of nymph. Perhaps dragonfly nymph, Dytiscid beetle nymph, or hellgrammite (dobsonfly larva):

Millipede under water:

Lithobiomorpha centipede, perhaps Lithobius genus:

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Stonefly! This is very encouraging because stoneflies are very sensitive indicators of water quality. If you have stoneflies (and we had them in profusion on Massapoag brook), the water is pretty decent.

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The Vernal Pool loop.

Millions of snow fleas, jumping all over the place. Seriously, it’s amazing how many snow fleas there are (Family Collembola)