Escargots Anyone?

 "There's a big snail on the balcony, you should check it out when you get home."
Sensible enough advise from a wife fascinated by all animals and sweet enough to humor my newfound macro obsession. About the width of a quarter I found this snail eating some bird droppings on the pavement and started playing around with my macro gear. Eventually I poked it a bit as it had retracted into its shell when I approached.

 "Sweet merciful God, why won't it stop screaming?" you are probably thinking at this point. Snails seem to be able to fold up and invert pretty much their entire head, to the point that its eyestalks (which are probably a third of its body length each) can be not only retracted into its shell, but withdrawn completely into its own head.

 Even a pair of tentacles by its mouth (that they apparently use to smell) are likewise suctioned right into the head, presumably so nothing is dangling out and an easy meal for a passing bird. Once the face fully flopped out it peered around with its eyestalks peering in different directions and surveying its surroundings for predators or anything else that should concern it.

Once again I appreciate macro photography for taking the more insignificant things in life and making them stunning. I have seen thousands of snails in my life but rarely stop to take in what a marvel of biology they are in their own right.

It's All Just Bricks in The Wall

Geordie and I  have been to quite a few big name concerts. Seeing Roger Waters nee Pink Floyd's The Wall has always been on my must see list.  Geordie and I saw him when he did Dark Side of the Moon and it was amazing and The Wall was no less then 3 hours of mind-freak fantasticness.  We were stressing about getting in as we had showed up half an hr early and there was a 45 minute wait. Security processing was glacial and problematic. A serious problem as the concert had started and there was still lots of people outside. We made it by the skin of our teeth.  So 'Boo' to bad ticket taking setup but 'Yah' to instantly on the scene medics who aided someone who had gotten badly hurt outside.

Thanks to Chris Arnott who lent us a little point and shoot. Not the best quality camera but we knew we would not be allowed in with our professional gear. The photo below was taken during the polyrhythmic 'Bring the Boys Back Home'. Projections were put on the ever growing wall of Pink's (Roger Waters) isolation. They did some really neat stuff with the lighting and puppetry. A very visual show.

It's not a PF show without a floating pig.  And quasi-Nazi costumes.  And marching hammers. And a gun that fires very convincing blanks. You could see the shells coming out! Our seats were pretty good being just slightly to stage left directly across. Though in the photo below it looks like the hammer flags are drapped over the wall it is actually light projections. On the right behind the scaffolding you can see Waters firing that gun. I like that concerts are filming and projecting the performers so those in the nose bleeds can see.  Oh and they also crashed a plane  into flames onto the stage but I was too busy saying 'GAH!' to grab the camera. So if you ever get a chance go see!

Spring Visitors

Geordie and I spend the only nice day on this Victoria Day long weekend on the North Shore. We started early, busing to Lynn Canyon for some hiking. I am glad we got there early because it got busy later with tours wanting to see the suspension bridge. The early time paid off with some very nice bird encounters and a quieter time.
A new fellow was this very personable Townsend's Warbler who appeared to be picking bugs off a tree. He was really cute singing to himself as he fed. We could hear others in the trees about us.

 These Barn Swallows are nesting underneath a restaurant on the sea wall. At least I think they are. They are so hard to photograph because they are usually fast flyers going after bugs and do not want to sit for a moment. Today though there were about half a dozen in the area and they seemed to like to perch on some part of a dock. They were in wonderfully bright light so they look very shiny. I think that the one with his wings spread has a very belligerent expression. 

 Also in Lynn Canyon there are American Dippers. I have been here before and not seen them but others I was with have. They are brave birds plunging right into the fast flowing cold water. They are kind of shy but sitting quietly on a nice sunny rock paid off in the long term as we were able to watch them feed and eventually and with difficulty snap a mediocore photo.

Baby Sea Lions: Natures Mother's Day Cards

Mother's Day is here and happy Mother's Day to all our Moms and all of nature's moms too.  The sea lion mummy below is proud of her almost grown pup. It is almost ready to go into the ocean. Her fat rich milk helped it grow big and plump. She often has to leave the pup for several days to eat.

This mom and pup still has a way to go before its ready to go off into the ocean. These two are resting side by side. The Mom will often doze away while the pup nurses from her.

Unfortunately human babies will never be as adorable as many animal babies and especially Galapagos sea lion pups (also see puppies, kittens, foals, lambs, calves, cygnets, ducklings, kits etc....).  So Happy Mom's Day to our Mom's who tolerate us and raise us baby humans even though we aren't as cute as some species' babies.

Jungle Fever

The Amazon Canopy stretches in parts over 200 feet in the air. You can see over it for miles. The photo below was taken at 135 feet. It seems truly endless. In the canopy we saw birds that never go down to the forest floor, insects and monkeys. The light hits it directly and so all sorts of plants grow that cannot survive in the shadows of the forest floor below.

The Amazon Jungle is so dense that while hiking we lost someone. He was found 15 minutes later and he was smart and just stayed where he was. What light there is is dappled except in places where a tree fell down clearing out a space where light can hit the forest floor promoting new growth.

Vines, palms and huge old mahoganies all like different levels of light, soil and water. Despite the 30 degree heat it was cool in the undergrowth that we hiked through. Humid though as it is very moist. We hiked through swamps and lagoons and up some mountains over a few days and got a nice cross section of all the different sub-systems that make up the ecosystem that is the Amazon Rainforest.

Not Just a Stinky Turkey

Among the most primitive birds ever, hoatzins were a joy to see everyday in the Amazon Rainforest. They are fairly approachable and there was often a group chilling out on some logs in the lagoon near where we stayed. Hoatzins are called 'stinky turkeys or stink birds' by the natives. Not the most flattering name, but they apparently have a prolonged digestion which causes them to stink a bit like cattle and they apparently taste bad. I think they are really pretty with their faux punk hairstyle

They are not great flyers rating only slightly better then chickens. They are weird because their chicks have claws on their wing digits. This is to help them scramble through the trees before they get their flight feathers and helps tie modern bird evolution to earlier forebears like the Archaeopteryx.

This bird causes arguments among birders and zoologists. It has very strange phylogenetic relationships and doesn't really fit in well in any taxon. Perhaps due to the oddness of its chicks and its other very primitive features no conclusive evolutionary hypothesis has been proposed. With its DNA sequence the situation only gets more confusing. Most zoologists palce it into an order all its own the Opisthocomiformes.

Macro Madness

 A few years back my father-in-law passed off some vintage lenses he wasn't using and there was a nice 50mm prime in there. Hooked up to some $10 extension tubes from ebay, I have been able to start experimenting with macro photography to a degree I was unable to previously. Below is a closeup of the nasal cavity of a deer skull that Kathryn cleaned up herself a few years back.

 This beautiful lattice is actually a decaying leaf Kathryn found on the ground. It looks totally unremarkable from a distance, but when you zoom in you can see an amazing fractal mesh left behind as the softer parts of the leaf rotted away.

 Its great fun to find abstract patterns and landscapes in commonplace objects, but its also fun to have a closer look at very small things. The barnacle cluster below is smaller than your pinky fingernail but with my new setup, everyone can get a nice closeup look.

All the pictures above are larger than they appear in the blog here, and if you click on them they will enlarge for easier viewing.

The Red Weed

The Galapagos are host to many endemic plants that are not found anywhere else on the world. Only because Galapagos Carpetweed is also found on Mars. Seriously, doesn't it look like the Red Weed in War of the Worlds? Galapagos sea lions find it particularly comfy to rest on. Plaza Island in particular was carpeted with the stuff.

The older (and newer) black volcanic rock sticking up out of the plants made for some striking landscapes and photos. Particularly when the sun came up. It looked like fire in the correct light.

Land iguanas eat the Galapagos carpet weed. It doesn't have leaves like you would expect it to but those thicker stalky things. They are a bit narrower then my little finger but about as long. They provide lots of nourishment and store water kind of like a cactus does.