a little wild   (a small slice of wildlife)

EDIT: Could be Haliplidae or Hydrophilidae instead of Dystiscidae, I guess.

Dytiscid beetle

Dytiscid beetle larva

Mosquito larva with bonus Collembola in the upper right.

Some interesting patterns in the icicles outside our window: the small things in life matter.

Going through some old photos, thought there was something in this photo that could be cropped and salvaged into a snap worth sharing.

A foggy day.  I wanted to get to the lookout point to photograph the fog effects, but unfortunately didn’t time it right — I didn’t want the gates to get locked with my car still inside.  So I ended up with more water droplet images than I planned.

Snow, yay!  It was especially crystalline today, which makes it a good day for closeups.

Snow crystals on spider web.

The winter stoneflies were everywhere!  It was wonderful seeing them.

You might already know: I can’t stop taking photos of this panorama.

And you may already know that I can’t stop taking long exposure photos of the stream.

I was expecting the winter stoneflies, but wasn’t expecting…the winter midges.  The family Orthocladiinae was suggested.

A wonderful walk, as always, to a magical place.

It’s a little sobering how little I have explored of Sharon’s trail system.  I pushed a little bit today, going up to Greeley Pond in the King Phillip’s Cave area, and was happy for the walk on a nice crisp December afternoon and evening.

The long shadows and subdued hues of this season lend themselves well to black and white photos.  You may see plenty of them in this set!

I take a lot of this photos of this particular stand of bark and undergrowth, hoping to capture the impact.

This burnt log had moss growing on it, and the green on black was irresistible.

Late afternoon winter light:

A little pond freezing:

The encroach of winter:

We get a Nor’easter tomorrow, so today was a chance to see some of the fall colors before the leaves fall off.  A double shot: Moose Hill Mass Audubon, and Devil’s Rock.  Moose Hill first.

There was a nice frost:

Now, Devil’s Rock.

The fall colors are so late this year! I’ve never seen leaves on the trees at this time of the season, and they’re just turning colors now.

After the peak foliage.  The pleasures of this season, they lie in subtle hues.

How is it that I’ve never come here before??

In the photo below, I think the apparent concentric rings occur because pine needles that are tangent to the circle formed by the sun and their midpoint, will reflect light to the camera from all along their length, while others will not.

It’s the same reason we sometimes see light streaks on windshields at night (in this case, because of striations caused by windshield wipers, and headlights from a car coming in the opposite direction).

More elegantly, it’s also why we sometimes see sun-pillars over the setting sun.  In that case, it’s because snowflakes in the atmosphere often orient themselves horizontally.