The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

Tag: Wildlife

Other creatures in our world

Monthly Picture: Hornet in Coreopsis

Another picture from the Quaker Hill trip, where good light made all the difference:

Hornet in Coreopsis

The flower is a Coreopsis and the insect is not a honeybee. The metallic highlights make it look artificial; if I wasn’t there in person, I’d think it was CGI, too.

It’s underexposed by about one stop to prevent those mirrored body panels from burning out and to saturate yellow petals in direct sunlight. Hand-held with the Canon SX230HS in macro mode, then cropped to 1600×1200 without any resizing at all; it’s now the background for the landscape monitor.

2012-08-15
Harvestman Colloquium

For some reason known only to them, one of our kitchen windows attracted a congregation of harvestmen for several mornings in a row:

Harvestmen on window screen

A trio appeared on the end of a honeysuckle tendril that’s making its way up a pillar supporting the roof over the patio:

Harvestmen on honeysuckle

It certainly appears they’re deep in discussion…

They’re harmless and they’re outside, so we let them be!

2012-08-11
Turkey Chicks!

Some years ago we would see two or three turkey hens leading a creche of two dozen chicks. We haven’t seen that many chicks lately, which we attribute to the fox that’s been trotting through the yard and the hawks patrolling the treetops. Recently, a hen guided her five chicks (four visible here) across the front lawn:

Turkey hen with chicks in grass

The family proceeded along the flowerbed at the top of the new wall at the driveway, where the chicks showed that their camouflage works really well against leaf mulch:

Two turkey chicks

If they keep their heads down, that is:

Turkey chick in flower garden

The hen jumped off the wall and flapped down to the driveway, which is no big deal for such a large bird. It provoked a bit of discussion and hesitation among the chicks, who eventually followed her lead:

Turkey chicks can fly

Except for the last and smallest chick, who walked along the wall until the poor thing ran out of wall. It finally showed that it can fly just as well as its siblings:

Last turkey chick flying

Admittedly, turkeys don’t fly all that well, but they get the job done; those chicks can fly up to a branch and snuggle under their mother’s wings, safe from the foxes.

2012-07-21
Dog Tick

There I was, in the kitchen, minding my own business, when I felt something crawling up my shin…

Dog Tick – Ventral

It’s 5 mm from snout to rump, so it’s most likely a dog tick, not a deer tick, not that that makes me feel much better. It’s stuck to a strip of adhesive tape to prevent it from going anywhere and was flat enough to have not fed on anybody recently.

One could develop agoraphobia…

That picture didn’t require focus stacking, although I gave it a try anyway with inconclusive results. I must conjure up a much more rigid camera mount before that works well; a mini tripod isn’t good enough.

2012-07-17
Canon S630: Bulk Ink Rot

Something has gone badly wrong with the yellow bulk ink that I’m using in the Canon S630. Over the winter a precipitate formed in the bottles:

Sediment in ink bottles

And in the ink tanks:

Sediment in ink tank

But now that the Basement Laboratory has warmed up, not only does the precipitate remain, but some of it is growing:

Growth in ink tank

The picture doesn’t do it justice; it looks like pond scum in there. Only the yellow ink behaves like that, so it’s likely some contaminant in that batch. Because I buy ink in pint bottles, it’s a long time since that batch arrived and there’s no point in kvetching to the vendor. IIRC, I actually got this bottle from a friend who scrapped out his S630; he’d been refilling cartridges from the same source, too.

I ordered four sets of five tanks (CMYKK) from the usual eBay vendor for 20 bucks and will toss the old tanks & ink when those arrive.

There’s a set of four bulk ink bottles from a long-dead HP2000C printer on the shelf, but I suspect the ink chemistry differs by enough to ruin the Canon’s printhead… which is discontinued, so when the head dies, the printer dies, too.

2012-07-16
Ladybugs!

These freshly hatched alligator-oid critters:

Ladybug larvae

…. quickly become something even more fearsome, at least to aphids smaller than they are:

Ladybug Larva Eating Aphid (by Cheryl Hearty – CCE/DC)

Eventually they turn into Ladybugs who relentlessly stalk larger aphids on garden plants:

Ladybug with aphids

And then they do this and the wheel goes around:

Ladybugs mating

Gardeners love them ever so much…

2012-05-19
Bald Cardinal: Getting Worse

The balding Northern Cardinal continues to lose small head feathers:

Bald Cardinal – right side

The top of his black mask has lost some feathers near the middle:

Bald Cardinal – front

The poor critter looks a bit like a vulture now:

Bald Cardinal – left side

These are tight crops from DSC-H5 images: 12X zoom with the 1.7 tele extender, taken from about 30 feet away, just before dusk. Turning off the focus assist LED let me stick the big lens out of the kitchen door, brace the affair on the door frame, and click away.

2012-04-14