Fauna of the Fox River Valley

During my 5 weeks at "Ketelsen East" this Fall, I kept my eyes open for wildlife. Out in the woods around the house I often saw signs of 'possums, and skunks, but rarely saw their mostly-nocturnal outlines in the dusk. I saw "Bruce", our resident groundhog, but didn't catch him on film this time, nor the white-tail deer I would occasionally spot bedded down adjacent to the access road to the house.

Probably the stars of the trip were the nesting pair of Sandhill Cranes and their nestlings. I literally spotted them in River Bend Community Park, adjacent to the bike path, where I was able to bike to within 50 feet or so where I took the picture at left with my cell phone. I spotted them on an almost daily basis, both in the park and down the road about 150 yards where I think they stayed the summer. Not always carrying the "big" camera, after spotting them one day I had time to run home (a mile) to get the camera and get back with a telephoto. Of course, once off the bike or out of the car and they suddenly recognized me as a dangerous human and started fleeing, but was able to catch the male at right.


Of course, the image at right is reduced in size to fit the blog 1600 pixel-wide limit. While the plumage is a little drab, shown at full resolution at left, more details in his feathers can be seen and the bicolor feathers stand out nicely!

After spotting the house whose backyard they stayed in, I could find them most any time. At right is their usual stomping grounds between the house and a water lagoon. How cool would it be to have sandhill cranes living in your back yard?! I guess after the novelty wore off, it might be a pain - likely against the law to disturb them and even mowing the yard might be considered harassment... Again, if I was on foot they were quite wary, even when they were 50 yards away as shown here.


To get around their fear of humans, the cure, of course, was to drive up to them in a car! I drove down the street leading to the front of the above house, and the cranes nearly walked up to me! With the 300mm lens, it was quite easy to get the closest view I'll ever likely get of them! At right is the male again, and at right is the male in the background and one of the fledglings in the foreground. In this view you can see the youngster has lost some of the feathers off the top of its head and will likely be replaced by the characteristic red plumage that is on top of the adult heads! These pics were taken a few weeks ago when I was still there - duh! But they didn't seem in any hurry to head southwards. Hopefully the cold weather they've gotten since has motivated them to move further south!


Besides the cranes, Canada Geese were literally everywhere! There is a contingent of them that spends the winters in the Fox Valley and there were thousands lining the streets as seen at left, as well as school yards, local cornfields, really most everywhere there was space for a few hundred to congregate. They have certainly lost their novelty and the little "surprises" they leave behind don't particularly make them popular... Not particularly common, but seen several times were the odd egret and heron, though not as numerous as a half dozen years ago when they were seen most every day fishing along the banks of the river.



About the only other creature seen that I had not before was a garter snake that my friend Jane spotted while we were out walking. I've NEVER seen snakes of any kind on the grounds of the camp, so this one took me by surprise. It was also quite willing to pose for me and besides the still frame at left, I also took a stereo pair at right. Get out the red/blue glasses to see the view in 3D!





And, of course, I can't have just one anaglyph image on the blog - it just ruins the symmetry of its Tao, or something like that, so here is another, though it has nothing to do with the fauna of the area. It is of a little patio table that usually holds an ashtray for Melinda's friends to gather around outside to smoke when they visit. Well, the ashtray is still there, but unseen under the pile of leaves that fell naturally to cover table and chairs. And yes, I did my duty and swept off the sidewalk and table before leaving for Tucson, making sure the majority of the leaves were off the tree before doing so. Again, the red/blue glasses are needed to see the 3D!

It was a nice trip and I'm already looking forward to a return, though now that winter has a grip on the area, I might wait till it is closer to warmer weather. But you never know - I might get a hankerin' for some snow and cold weather!

The Window View!

I know, has been a full week since blogging. Seems that since returning to Tucson, time seems harder to come by! The flight back was if anything, uneventful. Niece Kathy provided an early morning ride to the airport on her way to work. The morning was overcast with some fog, that seemed to thicken as we neared O'Hare, yet, the display monitors inside assured the flight was on time. Security was a snap and got thru in seconds, if not a minute or two, so was sitting gate-side a full 2 hours early! Finally boarding the plane, it was only about a third full! Evidently the fog kept connecting flights from coming in, so most everyone missed their connection! Fortunately the plane was already positioned - we could take off, but evidently flights were not coming in!

The first pictures show the situation - as we turned, I could get a glimpse down the runway, the fog and the queue of planes behind us. As we started our takeoff run, a quick shot of the terminal showed the thicker fog obscuring even the top of the control tower!

But almost moments later we broke through - it was a very low layer causing the problems. And right away I caught an amazing sight - the shadow of the plane surrounded by a glory! These are caused by water droplets reflecting light from the sun back to the observer. The circular glory is centered on my shadow, so you can see I was sitting behind the wing on the down-sun side! I took photos at about 15 to 20 second intervals, and made a sequence of our ascension out of the fog.  As the plane climbed, our shadow, of course, gets smaller as the projection screen (top of fog/clouds) gets further away. What is interesting is that over the 3 minutes of elapsed time, the diameter of the glory stays the same or grows! I went to some trouble to assure the scale was the same between exposures, so what does that tell us?


The diameter of the glory actually tells us the size of the water droplets! I actually did the calculations a couple years back. Since the diameter of the glory is inversely proportional to the water droplet size, as the glory grows, the droplets get smaller and smaller. Shortly after the sequence ends, we ran off the end of the low-hanging clouds, as shown at left, 7 minutes after the start of our takeoff run. The growing glory indicates a falling droplet diameter size to the edge of the fog layer. Makes sense that the edge of the fog extent has a smaller droplet diameter... Data seems to bear that out, anyway!


With the rapid clearing so close to
O'Hare, I was quickly able to orient myself, spotting towns and cities just west of where our house is in the Western Suburbs. I was able to quickly spot Decalb and the nuke plant southwest of Rockford(shown at left), the town of Dixon - just visited a few weeks before. We crossed the Mississippi River just below Clinton, Iowa - the town where I was born and spent much of my youth. The image at right shows the "Tri-City" area of Fulton, IL at right and Camanche, IA to the left of Clinton in the center. Looking at the full-size image I can show you dozens of landmarks from casinos, my Uncle John's farm and housing development adjacent to the golf course I used to walk to and search for lost golf balls, as well as lose a few too! Above the two bridges that cross the river into Clinton is Lock and Dam #13.  I worked most of my summers at my Grand-Dad's (now Uncle's) farm, so know the area reasonably well and is fun to look for the little details that would take hours to drive around to see.

I was able to follow our path out to Iowa City where I attended college before I lost track of what I was seeing. I suspect it might have been a record for me as we usually travel quite a bit further south - don't know a lot of landmarks around the southern part of the state!

Opposition Effect brightening!

Most every time I travelled it was with Melinda, so this was one of the few times I've flown alone. But looking out the window, I recognized a friend and spent a good part of the middle section of the drive documenting the "Opposition Effect". Shown at left, it is very similar to the Heiligenshein which I blogged about a couple posts ago - it is the bright spot near the shadow of your head on dewy grass. That effect needs water droplets, but looking at where the shadow of the plane should be, you see another bright spot. From our high altitude, the plane is much smaller than the subtended angle of the sun, so the shadow would be subtle at best. So what causes the bright spot? This sequence was made from exposures taken at about 1 second intervals, each going through the same enhancements I do for most of these images taken from planes - nothing extra-ordinary...

The effect is a combination of a couple things - first, like with the heiligenshein, shadows of the landscape disappear, so there is a component of brightening from that. In addition there is another contribution from some grains in soils and rocks that retro-reflect light back towards the sun. If you pay close attention (it can be sometimes be low contrast and difficult to spot) you can watch it pass over farms and towns and then something else happens - light retro-reflects back up towards the sun from vehicle reflectors and the glass micro-balls added to traffic signs to illuminate towards you from your vehicle lights at night. It is way cool to see these signs get absolutely brilliant as your shadow crosses them. At left is shown some random town, I'm thinking in SW Iowa, but not sure. I noted our "opposition effect" was going to cross it so got the camera ready. Not too much noted in the slightly darker exposure at left, but at right is the same frame with the brightness set just black - just showing the saturated pixels. It is neat seeing the red reflections likely returned from stop signs that face south towards us at regular block intervals.


I am still amazed at the nonchalance of folks flying along at 550 miles an hour 6 miles above the ground. I continue to have my nose glued to the window the entire time but this mostly empty flight demonstrated those with opposite feelings. The couple in front of me had the center and window seat and as soon as we took off, they moved AWAY from the window to aisle and middle, and no, they weren't watching a video or something where the light might have bothered them... Anyway, I don't understand not looking down at the spectacular 200 minute show right outside your window! Look at these pictures here, I believe taken in northern New Mexico - just spectacular landforms that I'm glad I didn't miss. I've got stereo pairs of most of these, but won't bore you with them now - will work on a 3D post later!



Most every flight you can catch the city of Albuquerque in New Mexico. If you draw a line from Chicago to Tucson, the line passes about 80 miles south of Albuquerque, but evidently air traffic is steered near it before turning more southward towards home. Here at left it is seen on the western slopes of the Sandia Mountains at right. The darkish channel from right to left center is the upper waters of the Rio Grande River which flows up there in NW New Mexico with its ultimate headwaters up in Colorado!

Lately it seems we also always pass over the VLA radio telescope west of Socorro. Not always easy to spot with 27 dishes spread over 40 miles of track. Shown at right is the eastern arm of the "Y" shaped array. Each of the 80 foot diameter dishes are mounted and moved around on tracks so can be repositioned at regular intervals. I think this fully spread-out setup is Configuration A which results in the highest resolution images from the telescope.


Two more spectacular images shown here. At left is a spot just north of VLA, which I've not been able to exactly locate on Google Maps, but is just a sublime landscape of erosion channels in a dry desert! The subtle colors plus the amazing landscape just blows me away! Similarly, the distinctive view at right came by the window 12 minutes later - I believe it is the Middle Gila River in SW New Mexico. Note the golden foliage in the trees along the river channel at bottom.




One of the things that always interests me on a plane trip is how far you can see from 30,000 feet elevation. Of course, even how far you can see from a mountaintop interests me too (easily entertained!). Fortunately, on this section of the flight through SW New Mexico we had a nice reference to look for. Barely visible from the time we left Albuquerque was a pimple on the horizon. At left is a well-stretched image of it taken about this time from the above pictures. I believe with all my heart that the bump shown just below the tip of the wing are the San Francisco Mountains north of Flagstaff Arizona. With my trusty ruler and Google Maps, it was a good 260 miles away, which I think is a record for knowing how far I can spot a landscape. Two years ago on a similar flight I saw 220 miles, so a good jump in the distance record here!


Before I knew it we had passed the big copper mine in Morenci and the LBT telescope atop Mount Graham, both a little too far away to pay justice to here on the blog. We did pass right over the relatively new windmill farm run by Tucson Electric Power, dedicated just over a year ago on the western slopes of the Winchester Mountains (east of the Rincons). I had spotted them from up on Mount Lemmon so was nice to get a near-vertical view upon them...

And minutes later we circled the north side of Tucson to line up to land. As we passed over the eastern slopes of the Tucson Mountains, I marveled at some of the houses perched atop the very top peaks, shown at right. Good thing they don't get much snow on those hills - would be hard to get up some of those driveways if it were icy!

So the trip was great, and the longest break I've had in memory was over. Back in Tucson and trying to get back to normal now. Hopefully I'll get blogging at more reasonable intervals - I promise!

Firstie Freezie!

Still in Illinois and still enjoying the remarkable string of great Fall weather! Seems we've been enjoying blue skies and few rains - virtually ALL of the crops have been harvested, as seen on my trip to Iowa yesterday. In decades past we've gone well into December, so harvest completion by mid-November is a good thing for the farmers. We just had our first freeze the other night, a full month later than the median date of 11 October (median date indicates half of first freeze is before, half after, for average of last 30 years).

With the success of my "dewdrop" pictures out in the yard a week or two ago, when I woke to find the white frosting on the lawn, I ran for the camera and tripod and went to work. The setup is the same from the dew shots, 100mm macro, full-frame Canon 6D and about 3cm of extension tube for more magnification. Now I've shot and posted some frost pictures before with great results from a few years back. But I suspect my techniques have improved some over the years, so was looking forward to shooting more. After the spectacular shots of the dandelion seed heads in the dewdrop post, I was on the lookout for more dandelions, but you know, if there were any, they were well-disguised among the frost crystals! I swore that the image at right was a dandelion until I started looking it on the computer - it might be a seed head, but is not a dandelion - still some interesting crystals on it...


I still use the focus-stacking technique to combine several images to keep the full range of the image in focus. I've found that for full-resolution viewing though, only the range of focus of the area of interest needs to be stacked. So some of these are only a few combined frames. At left is a leaf where all 19 exposed frames were taken, which takes a lot of processing time to stack them all. At right is a close-up with only 8 frames which takes less time with no decrease in sharpness.

I know little about frost formation. The little reading I've done shows there are multiple kinds of frost depending on humidity and temperature of air and surfaces. But there are some really interesting-looking crystals that almost look like hollow tubes in these pictures. Will have to keep at it, and try to get closer still! As it was, kneeling in the wet cold grass was still worth the results, I think!

A November Surprise!

Today I had some spare time, so took my sister-in-law Maj to her annual physical, had lunch with our friend Carolyn afterwards, then ran a few errands. As we approached the Wal-Mart, with Resurrection Cemetery across the street, I suggested we "go visit Melinda" at her niche there. Didn't need to twist Maj's arm! As we approached, she smiled and said she had a surprise for me! She had taken a call the day before - Melinda's plaque, which for some reason was supposed to take months to arrive, had come and with the mild weather, had been attached. Now she has a labeled interment location!

We shed a few tears and shared a hug, happy in the satisfaction the site was complete, save for a small flower vase to be added later. I'm not sure when Maj was going to inform me, but evidently we were thinking alike and we got to see it for the first time together...

Making Lemonade...

Still hanging out in Illinois and while it would be great to have an extended foliage season, it is an ethereal thing and does not last long. About the only sources of brilliant color are the "Burning Bush" (Euonymus alatus) which is visible on almost every block in town, it seems! Even at the cottage here we've got several, as seen on the left. As you can see, most of the leaves from the big trees have all turned brown and fallen, though one high overhead still has leaves that I'm waiting to fall before climbing the roof and cleaning it and the eaves out. But there are still points of color to capture - right under our bush, for example! At right is a close-up of some of the scarlet leaves, along with what I suspect is a mulberry leaf (known for their asymmetrical shape) and the already-down brown oak leaves litering the ground...


So without foliage to shoot, what else is there? Well, like the title sez, you gotta take what life gives you and make the best of it. The weather has been so great here - nearly a month it seems of clear skies! And almost Arizona temperatures! Highs have occasionally pushed 80, though has very slowly been descending thru the 60s and now the 50s. But I've been able to ride my bike nearly every day, if not 2 or 3 times a day! And with the clear skies, what do you get every morning - dew! I am fond of telling my bloggin' buddy Ken on Long Island that if you get out the macro lens, almost everything is interesting! And even a dew-covered lawn is no exception.

Here are some typical macro shots of dewy grass. Actually, I used the macro PLUS about 3cm of extension tubes to extend the lens outward and get an even closer view. It is truly amazing the tiny droplets of dew that condense out of the air and coat everything! And as at right, each little droplet acts like a tiny lens, forming an image of what is behind.


Fortunately, there were a few things that weren't blades of grass. There were a few late-season dandelions, and they look absolutely amazing on a dewy morning! While looking a little aged and sporting a few spider webs, the droplets look like so much bubbles of foam. Note the image at left shows nearly the entire seed head.

Unfortunately, this blog has a 1600 pixel-wide image limit. Note that the camera sensor of the 6D has over 5400 pixels. By reducing an image to the blog limit, resolution is decreased by a huge amount after down-sampling the image. One way around that is to zoom in to full resolution - take a 1600 pixel-wide sample of the full image. Shown at right is a crop of the left image showing the full resolution of the original... Click on the right image twice to load the full-size image! Truly Amazing!


Note that these aren't straight images, not that I'm cheating! These are focus-stacked images, which I've talked about before. With the macro working close-up, the depth of field is very narrow and the images above are a combination of 13 individual frames, each with slightly different focal points. Photoshop is then used to pull out the sharp parts of each image for the final stack... The results can be inspirational! At left is another shot (15 frames combined!) of another dandelion seed head taken a couple days earlier. This one has more seeds, so don't get the cross section view as above, but can see "down" into the head. I can't decide which I prefer, so feel free to let me know which is your favorite!


Finally one more demonstration! A dewy lawn is a good place to demonstrate the Heiligenschein! If you look at the shadow of your head, there is normally a bright spot caused by a couple of factors. In the image at left, you can see the camera (held away from my head w/two hands) recorded it as a brightening centered about where the lens would be, marked by the white "X". Click on it and you can see that the brightening is caused by two effects. The major one is that in the exact shadow of the camera, the sun/camera/grass is in a direct line and there are no shadows, so the intensity is at a maximum. Once you move off that line, you can see the shadows of the grass blades, so average intensity is lower. In addition, the dew adds a brightening - you can see individual bright points as the droplets focus sunlight which reflects off the back of the droplet to come back out towards the sun. This "cats-eye" reflection occurs, ironically with cat's eyes in the dark with a flashlight, or is what causes traffic signs to glow when your headlights are on as the glass beads on them reflect the light back to the driver. So the combination of lack of shadows and cats-eye reflection from individual drops both contribute to the Heiligenshein...

One more thing to point out... You might know about rainbows - the circular colored effect that occurs at 42 degrees from your shadow when there are droplets of water in the air. You can also make an artificial rainbow with a garden hose if the sprayer makes droplets fine enough. And similarly, if you look 42 degrees from your shadow on a dewy lawn, you can see a brightening - demonstrated at right. Not a lot of color, likely because the dew drops aren't perfect little spheres, but they are close enough that you can see lots of the droplets reflecting light back, some showing some bright colored spots...

So that is what I've been observing lately - whatever nature throws my way! Unfortunately, with the man-made hassle of Daylight-Savings Time, I've now got to get up an hour earlier to catch the dewy dawn light, and I'm not an early riser. So no dew pictures since last Sunday!

Miss November!

Today, being Sunday, I headed to Iowa to have dinner with family members that were available. I left early enough that I stopped in Fulton, IL to visit with my aunt Velma Ketelsen who is in the nursing home there. Growing up in the area, it seemed most weekends the 6 kids in our family spent time with their 7 kids at their place or ours, so more than most families, they were part of our own. I was surprised as I walked down the hall to her room that she had been named the "November Resident Spotlight", but I prefer the moniker "Miss November"! Someone from the staff interviewed her (below with minor edits) and took her picture to post with the biography, and I added a few photos of her that have appeared before on the blog. So here she is, MISS NOVEMBER!

Velma Fallesen was born on her parent's farm in rural Charlotte, IA on 28 Nov, 1927. Velma had 3 sisters and a brother. Her and her siblings went to the Fallesen Country School, so named because the school was built on land Velma's family owned. She started school there at the age of 4, but doesn't know why she started so early. I suggested perhaps she was just exceptionally brilliant and could not wait until 6.

During the depression, like many Midwesterners, Velma's family lost the family farm. When she was 11 the family moved to town (Charlotte). Her father soon went to work at the Savanna Army Depot while Velma and her siblings began a new school in town. She graduated from High School in 1944.

Picnic at the farm w/great-niece and nephew(Aug 2008)

Velma with niece Kathy (Mar 2010)

After High School, Velma went to work for a local farmer's wife. She worked very hard tending the children, cooking, canning fruits and vegetables and doing housework. While Velma worked on a farm, so did her sweetheart Arlo. They had met in grade school. They married in 1945 at age 18. Velma and Arlo had a small wedding with family as attendants, marrying at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Charlotte. For another three years Velma and Arlo rented a farm and worked it until they could at last purchase their own. They were very hard workers, Velma tended the children, cooked, cleaned, butchered chickens to sell and to eat. Arlo milked dairy cows, raised crops, and butchered cattle and hogs. Velma helped Arlo with the outdoor chores as well as doing her indoor chores. She tells me nothing went to waste including liver, brains and the cows tongue. Velma said she cold-packed a lot of meat until they got their first electric freezer.

Velma and her husband had seven children and 34 Grandchildren. Arlo came from a family of eleven siblings, so the large close family pleased them both.



We share birthday cake in 2013 (we're 3 weeks apart)

Velma and Arlo stayed busy attending sports events of both their children and grandchildren. They also met with friends and family often. A typical night out usually consisted of a good meal, conversation and perhaps a game of cards.

Velma and a friend enjoyed walking daily and would even go out when the weather was quite cold.  They met almost daily and kept their walking routine for 20 years.


She and Arlo enjoyed traveling around the United States by car, usually but not always to visit relatives. She has kept a journal for many years, and read me several entries from 1983. Velma's journal entries always contained a brief weather description. She also always mentioned the book she was reading and working on a jigsaw puzzle in inclement weather. Many of the entries talked about chores and made references to cooking and recipes.

Arlo passed away in 1998. Velma remained on the farm for many more years before moving to town (Clinton). She came to live at harbor Crest about 14 months ago. Ironically she lives across the hall from her sister-in-law (also named Velma!). She tells me she and her sister-in-law refer to themselves as real sisters. They can often be found sitting outside together on a warm sunny day.

A Trip To The Farm!

Over the years Melinda and I got into the habit of heading to Iowa on Sundays to get together with my side of the family, usually involving food, and usually at a restaurant convenient to everyone. Mostly this was at the Clinton, IA Pizza Ranch. Melinda was proud of the fact she never tried the pizza there, but she absolutely loved their fried chicken and mashed taters! Anyway, this last Sunday, all the sibs seemed to have plans made, but got an invitation to head to my sister Kathy's for dinner.


Now we all grew up on a working farm - about 360 acres, growing corn, hay and oats, mostly to feed the livestock - cattle and hogs. This was the traditional family farm. Boys worked with dad out tending crops and animals, girls in the house w/mom. But as we all grew up, only Kathy married a farmer and is the only one on a working farm - they have little livestock though (not much money in it!) - crop farming is their speciality.

As I arrived right at about 5, Kathy was just leaving the house to feed "the animals", so I followed her to the barn. But she was feeding the barn cats! Shown at left are the two tame ones, but note the "Grey Ghost" in the background who waited till we left to come down to eat... They do have about a dozen head of cattle, shown at right - the proverbial corn-fed beef! These are right at market weight, so taking them to Kalona to the sale barn will soon be on the calendar...


Just as we were inspecting the "real livestock", nephew Jeff and his family arrived to join us for dinner (they brought the pizza!). At left he and Claire are walking up towards the barn, carrying baby Natalie - well "baby" is relative - she's what, 20 months old... Note the good-lookin' corn across the road, soon to be harvested...

Of course, with any kids, there is instant fascination with farm animals. With Jeff and his sisters growing up, they were always quick to pull out baby pigs for us to pet. Nothing small this time, but Claire was quick to climb the fence to get the feedlot in the back of the picture!

After dropping off dinner in the house, Sandy joined us, and right at sunset, there was some good light to take a few family shots. All lined up at left, and at right are dad and Natalie... A great-looking family if I've ever seen one!







With hot pizza in the house, we didn't tarry too long outside... With Kathy cutting up her specialty "Chippy Dippy Bars" I documented the kitchen fridge. The farm refrigerator seems to be the center of the house, and whether it is the food inside it or the photo album and children artwork held on with magnets to the outside, it remains an attraction!

And of course, when you are at grandma and grandpa's house, the kids head straight for the toy box!  They can transform an immaculate living room to a disaster area in seconds as they dive for the favorite toys!  That red barn looks awfully familiar - it might be more than a generation old!


I sat in the easy chair and took advantage of some of the reading material Kathy and Rich keep at hand. Of course, in Tucson that would be periodicals about astronomy and photography. Here on the farm is a catalog of combine parts! Look like our reading lists don't overlap much!

The pizza was great! Knowing the mild taste buds of my family, I didn't even bug them for the red pepper flakes, knowing they wouldn't have any... But it was still great, as were the chippy-dippies - I even got a care package with some to take home.

Also, as is standard when any Ketelsens get together, group shots need to be taken. At right of course is me in the center with sister Kathy at right.

With my relatively new iPhone at hand, I took a selfie with great-niece Claire. She certainly has the family genes for being photogenic! Great-uncle Dean, not so much! Minutes later I hit the road for the 3 hour trip home, nothing exciting other than the biggest raccoons I've ever seen just after leaving Kathy and Rich's farm. Interestingly, with the Cubs playing in the World Series, the toll way across Illinois was absolutely empty - I interacted with less than 3 or 4 cars in the 90 minutes crossing the bulk of the state!