All Night Long!

I've been back at "Ketelsen West" for nearly a couple weeks. When I make plans to be out of Tucson in July, everyone always asks how I can miss the monsoon rains - so welcome to the desert dwellers. Well, I miss the start of the 2+ month rainy season here, but also a lot of the hottest weather and the wondering when the first storms will arrive... The one thing that I do hope I don't miss is the flowering of my cereus repandus - night-blooming cereus cacti! They typically start their spectacular blooming shortly after the monsoons start and last through most of the rains till it cools off the end of September. And while the flowers are indeed impressive, what is fun and "sporting" is capturing the pollinators that inevitably come by to feed on the flower's nectar and in that process, distribute pollen among other plants and blooms. I was in luck - shortly after my return, a quartet of flowers bloomed the same night - on the same arm of the cactus! At left is how it appeared right about sunset - the 4 telltale buds were swollen and about to bloom the next few hours. At right, by 10pm, they were open and awaiting action!



But in recent years, I've enjoyed capturing the rustic sphinx moth pollinators. They appear randomly during the night, perhaps drawn by the very subtle (to me anyway) odor of the flowers, or something else that tells them there is food here... The challenge is always to capture as many as their flighty visits, without taking a million photos! Of course, I could sit there and man the camera myself, pushing the button as they visit to feed. Likely also it would be straightforward to rig up something to do it automatically as they come by. I was able to capture a few of the earliest visitors manually, as they started visiting shortly after the flowers opened. With my head-mounted red light, they buzzed my head as they approached, seemingly as large as a bat as it came past me to feed. There was no missing their approach, and even during their stay, I could see the cat's-eye reflection of my red lamp from their eyes! The most fascinating thing to me is there nearly 15cm (6") long proboscis, so tried to take their photo before they landed on the flower. The results here demonstrate that successful plan.



But I was not prepared to stay flower-side all night. I increased my chances by setting up the camera so all 4 flowers were in the image. That way, if any moths came to any flower, I'd document its visit. Also, I used the on-camera flash (on my 10-year old Canon XSi) to illuminate the scene. Taking a photo every 20 seconds (3 per minute, 180 per hour!) I was hoping to catch a few moth visits! 5.5 hours later, the camera and flash were still going after nearly 1,000 photos! The next day I downloaded the all and went thru it frame-by-frame - I had caught over 80 images of moths! That included 4 frames where there were 2 moths in the frame - an absolute first for me! They weren't consecutive frames either, so weren't the same 2 moths hanging out together! These two frame sets show the 4 images with moth pairs in them...


What is most amazing about these moth images is the length of their probiscii! At least when they are flying around the cereus repandus flowers they appear to be fully extended. I believe I've seen images showing them coiled up when not in use, but flying around with something extended that is larger than your wingspan must be dangerous, if not at least a little risky! The image at left is quite incredible! Be sure to click on it to load the full resolution image...

And some of the moths dig so deeply into the flowers. Either they are a little smaller, or perhaps they've got a shorter or broken proboscis, and need to go deeper to feed. Check out the image at right - can barely see the moth body...


So this particular night (19 August) was a particularly busy one! I had stopped the camera at 4:30am, but stopped by a couple hours later to do some close-ups to compare to some I had taken earlier in the evening. At left is a "before" photo showing the abundance of pollen and the still-green stigma and pollen-covered anthers...

At right is a close-up of the stigma after a busy night of pollination. You can see the moths have transferred a lot of the little round pollen grains, and it appears that the moths have also left behind an abundance of their scales - the feather-looking filaments that appear to be stuck to the stigma. Note how bare and naked the anthers are, now devoid of pollen...

At 6:00 the sun was just coming up and the flowers were about to close. I set up the camera once more with the timer to take a photo every 8 minutes for 3 hours. Rather than make a time-lapse, I made a GIF, shown here demonstrating the rapid closing of the flowers once the sunlight hits them.

It looks like the bud/bloom cycle continues, as does the monsoon rains. Will keep my eyes open for more photo opportunities!

Hints of Spring!

Am back to the Midwest at "Ketelsen East" to enjoy the emergence of Spring! It looks like I arrived with perfect timing - there are mostly shades of brown and gray, trees bare, temps still definitely on the cool side after Tucson temps have been flirting with the 90s! But there are definite hints that the new growth of Spring isn't far away! Just a couple meters from the house, in fact, growing up in bits of asphalt piled high by the snowplow clearing the roads in my absence, are some beautiful crocus flowers. Shown here at left is the biggest plant - barely reaching 3" (8cm) tall, so I needed the macro lens for these shots!




And as soon as I shoot the yellow crocus above I notice some slightly smaller white crocus too! I had to check with my neighbor Elaine on the ID - I've not sure I've been early enough to catch these beauties in years past. She claims she has some purple crocus in her yard, but I've not been there to catch those yet.  I like the gentle pale yellow trim on these white flowers - they were kind of hard to spot with the brown grass background, but there were quite a few plants scattered about.






As I mentioned, the temps have been cool, and the flowers close up as the temperature drops as sunset approaches. The photo at left (same yellow crocus as above) was taken shortly before sunset, and today, with temps never going much above 40, I think they stayed closed all day! Lows tonight will be 24, so hope they survive the hard freeze tonight - will check on them tomorrow...

Note that most all of these photos were taken with the macro lens, and in order to extend the range of sharp focus at these considerable magnifications, several shots taken at different focus settings were taken and combined in Photoshop. Known at focus-stacking, they can considerably extend the range of sharpness in these photos...







In my searches for other things just poking out of the ground, I thought the bud at left might be the first sprouting of my beloved Trillium, that I spend time shooting every year. But from my first discovery of these sprouts (only about 1/2" tall) to today, they are starting to reveal their blue colors - Blue Scilla, which will carpet my yard blue in a week or two! Click on the right image for the full-size that shows the appearance of blue colors... Will try to keep an eye out for new members of the Spring population!

Far and Near...

As my time at "Ketelsen East" winds down, I still keep my eyes open for photo opportunities even in the midst of Winter. And while I tell people I can't really do astronomy with the skies so bright from the light pollution of Chicago, I still look up. After all, a month ago I did manage to shoot a comet next to the Pleiades in the back yard! Unfortunately, the bane of astronomers in the Midwest are mosquitos in the Summer and in Winter, temperatures can get frigid! Even so, one of the prettiest views in winter are the prominent constellations seem through the naked trees. Shown at right here is Orion visible through the bare oak trees just a few steps from my front door. This is a single 13 second exposure with the kit zoom lens set to 28mm and F/4.  Any longer of an exposure and the sky was way overexposed...



That very night, while it was under freezing, it wasn't really frigid. But I did note on the weather forecast that evening that there was likely going to be morning fog. Well, for some reason I didn't sleep well that night, so got up at the crack of 8am and stepped out to find a very impressive display of frost on the downed oak leaves in the yard. So dutifully I got out my newish "super macro" lens, the Canon MP-E 65mm with the ring flash mounted in the front for some hand-held focus-stack images.

Now I often mention "focus-stacking". The depth of field of macro lenses are quite narrow, so to extend the part of the field that is in focus, several-to-many frames are taken with slightly different focus settings, or lens positions, and Photoshop or other software can combine only the parts of the frame that is in sharp focus. For example, at left is a 7-frame focus stack, and at right is a single frame from the sequence that shows how narrow the depth of focus actually is! See how only the upper part of the frame at right is sharp. Photoshop does a great job at combining all the sharp parts of the frame as seen at left.


Some of the frost photos were quite astounding! There was about a 3-meter square patch in the center of the yard that showed needle structure. I DO NOT know how they form - I guess I need to look around on crystal formation! In some of the frames the "needles" appear tubular or hollow, and in some they have a general hexagonal hollow form. Those are visible at left.

And at right one of the stunning images of spikes emanating from a single point, and quite large - over a centimeter in diameter!



I first stopped at a moss patch that never gets much Summer sun. While not as impressive as the larger spikes I found a few minutes later, they are interesting in their own way.

All of these are combinations of 7 to 11 frames to extend the range of focus, and are all "focused" manually by hand-holding them. It was my first time attempting this and as you can see, came out ok! Some I used some combination of flash and the rising sunlight.

Of course, as soon as the rising sun cleared the horizon, since the temps were barely under freezing, all the crystals melted quickly, and the show was over!

I present the rest without comment, other
than I will certainly keep an eye out for such events in the future!

Monsoon Season Winds down!

I returned from the Midwest a few weeks back and was afraid that I'd missed the blooming season for the cereus repandus cacti on the east side of the house. Fortunately, as I rounded the corner, I saw about 20 buds that would provide about a week of blooms. The are remarkable flowers, attaining nearly 6" (15cm) diameter, with the blooms opening fully well after sunset, and on their way closed shortly after the sun hits them. So they depend on night time pollinators, and it has been a hobby of mine to document this "night shift" every year. Here is a link to some of my favorite pollinator  posts the last few years...


My first Friday night back I had gone to Phoenix to attend an astronomy club meeting, and returned after midnight to find 7 (!) flowers open, so set up my old Canon XSi (with built-in flash) to take a photo every 20 seconds through the remainder of the night. Starting about 1am, the camera ran unattended until about 5:30 when I went and stopped it - it was already getting light and was surrounded by bees, which take over after the moths stop coming. So yes, there were over 800 photos to examine! As shown above, the full frame covered 2 blooms to see if they worked them sequentially. It turns out I never saw one on the rearward blossom.

It was a long wait for the first visitor - the shot above at right was after 3am, 2 hours after the start. Hard to tell if the flash startles them or not. Some only stay for one flash, some for several. The one at left came only 2 minutes later, but I don't think it is the same one - the latter looks larger and I can't match any of the fine patterns... Then, almost 2 hours later one fed for 3 of the consecutive exposures. Looking much smaller than the moths in the other exposures, I have no explanation. I don't believe they grow as they age, so am mystified a little by their apparent smaller size. It looks to be the same species as the markings are nearly identical, the exception is that the above have 3 orange spots down the side and these smaller ones have 5...


A few minutes later I caught the corner of a wing, and the flash silhouette of another moth, so I'm counting 4 visits even though this one is marginal! About 30 minutes later the first honeybees came along and are the last to have their way with the flowers before they close shortly after sunrise. But even among these bees there are some interesting variations! At left is one of the few that had it's "fannypack" stuffed full with pollen already! Note I had repositioned the camera with macro lens for these shots with the ring flash.



The oddballs continued with the appearance of a large, black, fuzzy bee in one frame - I think is a female carpenter bee. In addition there was a small strange moth that also appeared in one frame shown at right. It appears green with brown trim. Unfortunately it wasn't in sharp focus, so remains a mystery - wasn't able to find anything close in Google images...



Finally shown here is the result of a night of pollinators... At left is shown the resultant stamen where the pollen is deposited and must adhere with a sticky substance. Individual pollen grains are resolved in this full-resolution 15-frame focus stack. Meanwhile the anther that normally is loaded with pollen look like bald, yellow raisins. At the start of the night they are fuzzy and loaded up with pollen grains. Make sure you click on the image to see it at full scale.

And here is a flower a few nights earlier that shows what the flower parts look like early in the evening, when the stamen (green fingers) are fresh and devoid of pollen at left, and at right the anthers are shown loaded with pollen...

So the bloom season has now ended, and continues again early next summer. The desert provides few blossoms for pollinators in the fall, so not much of interest coming up, but I'll be sure to be out next summer!

Walks Around the House

I've been immensely enjoying the Summer at "Ketelsen East", and often go on excursions in the prairie restorations and the woods near home to see what there is to be seen. Sometimes I bring my camera, and when I don't, usually see something that makes me wish I had! The photos here were all taken with the Canon 6D camera and the 100mm macro - a nice versatile lens that works on distant objects as well as focuses up to life size, allowing close ups of bugs or flower details. As a result, you don't need to carry any alternate gear along...

Case in point is a flash of color I spotted last week - an American Goldfinch. As with many subjects, you can sneak closer while distracted feeding. This fellow was distracted feeding on a cone flower, finally getting a morsel you can spot in the last frame. Meanwhile I had gotten to about 20 feet or less allowing me to get a little detail in the shots here.


Similarly, there have been a lot of Monarch butterflies this year. In recent years, hearing the difficulties of their overwintering grounds and massive die-offs, they have seemed scarce around the Midwest. Perhaps it was the conscientious plantings of milkweed plants, but rare is the time I go out and DON'T see them this year. As above, try sneaking up on them while distracted feeding and I got to within a couple feet of this male, here feeding on a flowering Joe-Pye weed. How do I know it is a boy? I thought everyone knew that! Males have a little dark spot on the tops of their rear wings that are pheromone emitters to help locate females. Shown at right are a couple (admittedly lower quality) images showing this butterfly flitting about, clearly showing its pheromone spots (arrowed).

I continue to be amazed at the
biodiversity of the milkweed plant. I've blogged before about the milkweed bug and milkweed beetle and documented the difference. Normally a careful search of a plant will show one or the other, rarely both. On a walk the other day I spotted a milkweed just covered with yellow aphids - not the plant 8" to the left or right, but that one in the center! And there was only the one infested, not a single aphid spotted on another plant. Here is where the macro comes in handy - you can photograph an entire leaf covered in speckles of yellow, or move closer to focus a few inches away for more details. At left I've pulled the leaf back to reveal the underside where the bulk of them were located. At right is a close up of a flower on the plant, showing the sapsuckers working on the stalks of the flowers. You can spot one near center sporting a pair of little wings that will allow it to be more mobile someday. As with most aphid colonies, there were ants nearby that seemed to be in charge, likely feeding on the concentrated sugar water the aphids excrete... Amazing stuff!


On another walk yesterday, closer to
home in the woods, I used the same setup - the 100mm Canon macro, but with 3cm of extension tubes to allow even closer focusing. I also had a flash that attached to the front of the lens that was useful for the shots taken shortly before sunset. First up was a purple phlox near the house. We don't plant any of these, perhaps a LONG time ago, but they are perennials now that show up annually. Interesting flower clusters, but only individuals shown here. While they look flat from their front, they have a long tubular structure attached, shown better at right looking nearly into the sun in a "different" view of them. Both of these are "focus stacks", where multiple images at different focus settings were combined to extend the zone of sharpness. 14 frames were combined at left, 18 at right! The higher magnification provided by the extension tubes required combining more frames.


Similarly for the thistle flower here, 22 frames were combined into this image. While a noxious weed, the flowers are quite striking. I'm not quite sure the type of thistle this is, or if it is, in face a cockle burr. Some of the images I saw online show similarities to both, so am going to leave it unidentified here...







A little deeper into the woods were a
striking yellow flower I've not noticed before! I've been told it is a "Tansy" (Tanacetum vulgare). They are eye-catching both for their little button flowers, and upon magnification, for the pattern of the microscopic substructures of the flowers... In the fading light, 7 frames were combined at left, 18 at right. Note the flowers start with a thin white cover sheet which bursts open as they mature enough and grow into a bloom.


In the fading light I noticed a few little creatures a couple millimeters across on these plants. I'm always on the lookout for new creatures, and with new plants (to me) was the chance for some new little varmints! These will be unidentified for now as they may be nymphs, which are notoriously difficult to identify, but the one at left looks to be a treehopper, and at right a leafhopper. These have a different "look" to them as they utilized the ring flash on the front of the macro for illumination. Of course, with living creatures, you have to deal with movement - managed 8 frames to combine at left, only 2 at right.

As my trip winds down, I won't have many opportunities to visit these friends, so will have to make a point of getting out a few more times!