Monthly Archives: September 2009

Anole art

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I’ve been taking a bit more artistic license with my photography.  That’s not to say I’m betraying my principle of only letting you see what I saw.  No, I won’t be Photoshopping out pieces of the image so you can enjoy a scene that never existed: if there were power lines stretched between the trees in an awesome view of autumnal foliage, you’ll either see the power lines or you’ll never see the photo.  I’m a purist in that sense.

What I mean by “artistic license” is that I’m spreading my wings a bit into different filters, different editing techniques, different presentations.  I’ll never give up on showing the majestic beauty of nature as it exists; there’s no need to since nature has such profound magic that one need never venture from the truth to find art.

But having said that, I’ve also grown to appreciate that nature can sometimes be viewed in a different light so to speak, such that it creates a whole new experience.  Infrared filters, cross-processing, over-exposing, black and white…  The list goes on.

Perhaps I’m engaging in a brief affair, a flirtation if you will.  No matter the source of this little adventure, I thought I’d show you some of what I’m referring to.

Take the ubiquitous green anole (Anolis carolinensis).  This species can change colors such that it never ceases to amaze me.  A group of them lives in the wall at one end of my patio (Mediterranean geckos live in the wall at the other end, hence I have diurnal and nocturnal insect protection when it’s warm enough for the reptiles).  Although I see these anoles when taking walks or when stepping out my back door, they entertain me and engage me at every turn.

But how many photos of them can I take before it becomes mundane?  Or worse, boring?

Not that I ever think green anoles are boring.  Hell, they show me gratuitous lizard sex at the drop of a hat.

Green anoles (Anolis carolinensis) mating(20080526_05846)

Honestly, though, how often can you watch cold-blooded critters doing the dirty before it becomes unexceptional?  Okay, for me that’s never, but I’m not sure you’d want me showing those photos all the time as though they represent something new and exciting.

A female green anole (Anolis carolinensis) seen through the patio fence (20080901_11693)

Mind you, the anoles create their own art without realizing it.  As I sat inside the fence watching them scamper and hunt and try to woo each other, this female stopped to look at me from a position on the outside of the fence.  She hung effortlessly on the wall as I looked through the slats and marveled at her beauty.  The scene of her through the fence opening made her all the more beguiling.

Still, is it new and exciting?  Is it even interesting?

A baby green anole (Anolis carolinensis) perched on a leaf (2009_09_06_028883)

On the other hand…  Take a little baby anole sitting on a leaf carefully watching me, a sea of green awash in sunlight, an unremarkable scene if ever there was one.  On its own, it looks like every other green anole sitting on every other leaf.  But give it a wee boost by cross-processing the color image as though it’s negative film, and something happens that makes it interesting, compelling even—if I were inclined to say as much.

A female green anole (Anolis carolinensis) perched on the side of a tree (2009_09_07_028929)

Then there’s the failed close-up of an anole hanging from a tree.  She sat there for quite some time waiting for lunch to walk by below.  Meanwhile, I kept trying to find a way to get a nice image while shooting through the fence—or from above, which I hate since it’s so anthropocentric and unnatural.  I regrettably never found the right spot that made the fence a friend rather than an enemy, so all the photos turned out poorly as she responded to my many thumps and scrapes against the wood slats.  Nonetheless, taking an unsatisfactory picture and turning it black and white followed by some newspaper aging seemed to offer something usable from something useless.

A green anole (Anolis carolinensis) hanging on dead leaves (2009_09_06_028789)

Amongst the endless parade of green anole pictures, however, I still have those that stand on their own.  This one offers the simplicity of a creature turned dark brown so it can absorb the morning sunshine and expedite its warming.  The contrast of dead leaves surrounding the vigor of a small life calls to me somehow.  That and I never cease to be amazed by the diverse range of colors this species can assume, and they do so for more reasons than we can imagine.

More importantly, I’ve learned over these many years that a state of mind—even an emotion—can rest beneath each color, from courtship to warning to camouflage to fear.  Over time I’ve gained a better understanding of certain hues that always mean the same thing, and I’ve also grown better able to discern intent and thought based on the colors the lizards assume.

Oh, but I digress…

A male green anole (Anolis carolinensis) displaying from deep within some bushes (2009_09_08_028942)

Seeing this male in full display reminds me of what I was talking about: being a bit more creative.  He happens to be sitting in an image I initially threw away.  Something called me back to it, though, and after a bit of fiddling with it I discovered he had something to offer after all.

So rambling aside, I’m saying you can expect to see a bit more creativity in my images, although you will continue to see the vast majority as they have always existed: just as the scene was in front of the lens.  Adding a creative flavor to them will exist as nothing more than a neat experiment, perhaps something I do “on the side” for fun but that does not detract from my overall sense of naturalism.

The hunted

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More than 40 cicada species live in Texas.  Some can’t reach an inch (<20mm) in length (e.g., Beameria venosa) while others challenge the three-inch mark (>70mm) with ease (e.g., Tibicen pronotalis).  The rest fall somewhere between those extremes.

Which ones you see and hear depend on where you are and what year it is.  Some species pop up every summer (annual) while others show up every 17 years (periodical).

Of special interest is that annual cicadas do not necessarily follow a one-year lifecycle.  One of the more common cicada species here shows up every year even though it matures on a three-year schedule.  It’s the superb cicada (a.k.a. green harvestfly, green cicada or superb green cicada; Tibicen superba).

A male superb cicada (a.k.a. green harvestfly, green cicada or superb green cicada; Tibicen superba) clinging to the side of a tree (2009_07_06_026142)

As I walked home one evening, I found this male singing in the dark.  Only male cicadas sing.

Though I heard him as I approached, he fell quiet when I came near.  He needn’t have worried since it was too dark for me to see him.  Still, his song had already told me he was at eye level, so I stood patiently and waited for him to bellow his chorus into the night air.

Once he did, I knew which tree he was on, so I let the flash fly a few times to locate him, then I snapped a couple of pictures.  He seemed comfortable at that point as he didn’t stop singing again until I turned to walk away.  A few steps later and he was back at it.

A male superb cicada (a.k.a. green harvestfly, green cicada or superb green cicada; Tibicen superba) clinging to bamboo (2009_07_07_026152)

The very next day I found this male of the same species.  Unlike his predecessor, he never stopped singing even when I started poking through the bamboo to find him.  Perhaps that was a sign his love life was lacking and he didn’t have time to stop wooing the ladies.

This year offered a summer full of cicada song.  From dawn till dusk, from and in every direction, the varied music sounded every day, often punctuated with the panicked buzzing and abrupt silence that means another one bit the dust.

The difference from last year seemed profoundly apparent.  Although no tree sounded unoccupied this summer, last year’s cicada population was anemic at best.  A few songs could be heard now and again, but mostly the summer passed in silence.

That had a cataclysmic effect on the cicada-killer wasps.  Their largest colony fills the air each year with more giants than can be counted; this year perhaps a few dozen of them emerged.  A smaller colony a short distance away nearly collapsed: this year I never saw more than two or three wasps there at any time.

A male silver-bellied cicada (a.k.a. silverbelly; Tibicen pruinosus) clinging to a tree branch (10870400)

Also of interest last year was the dearth of cicada species: I never heard songs other than those sung by superb cicadas.  But as this male silver-bellied cicada (a.k.a. silverbelly; Tibicen pruinosus) shows, the summer of 2009 was filled with a variety of insect music sung by various species.

This robust variety stretched from May right through September.  When I visited the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge on May 16, I found this not-yet-dry hieroglyphic cicada (Neocicada hieroglyphica) scrambling to climb from the pile of debris where it had fallen.

A hieroglyphic cicada (Neocicada hieroglyphica) in a pile of leaves (2009_05_16_018794)

And just a few days ago as I stood on the patio, this female silverbelly made a less than graceful landing in the tree.

A female silver-bellied cicada (a.k.a. silverbelly; Tibicen pruinosus) hanging upside down in a tree (2009_09_08_028935)

Ill situated to know which end was up, she tried fruitlessly to right herself.  At one point I thought she might pull it off as she hung precariously sideways and faced me directly.  But her near success crumbled beneath an untidy fall from the tree into the bushes below.

I laughed!  She tried so hard yet still wound up demonstrating the clumsy, uncoordinated knack for which cicadas are known.

Despite her tumble, she meandered about the photinias for several minutes until coming to rest in a bit of shade.  She was gone a few hours later.

I hope this explosion of cicadas helped the cicada killers recover from the devastating losses they suffered last year.  After living in the midst of several colonies where summers are full of countless giant wasps, seeing their numbers reduced to pennies on the dollar this year worried me.  I still don’t know if all the colonies survived.

And now that I’ve shown the hunter and the hunted, it’s time to look at the hunt.

Bad birds – Part 1

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Rummaging through my entire photo collection so I could restore my laptop following the drive failure has offered me two things: discovery and fatigue.  The latter kept me from completing it sooner mainly because I kept feeling burned out having to reprocess thousands of images.  About halfway through the collection I realized I never wanted to look at another image again.  But like a trooper, I marched on.  A good reason to keep going was the sense of discovery—or more precisely, rediscovery.

A golden-crowned kinglet (Regulus satrapa) perched on a branch (2009_01_17_004303)

Like this golden-crowned kinglet (Regulus satrapa), I found a lot of photos that won’t win any prizes or accolades.  Yet these are pictures I keep for ID purposes when I’m not sure what I’ve seen, or because I don’t yet have a better picture of that species.  Heck, sometimes I keep them because I once thought they were usable.

In the case of this kinglet, it was a dark, cloudy day and the bird flitted along the edge of the woodlands.  Too far away to see any detail and visible only for a few seconds, I snapped some photos anyway just in case it was of interest.

Having to look at each and every one of these photos over the past weeks has taught me it’s time to dump them.  Rather than delete them outright, however, I figured I could at least show you what’s been lurking in the pile all this time.

A winter wren (a.k.a. northern wren; Troglodytes troglodytes) standing on a rock in the middle of a shallow stream (2009_01_17_004472)

Keep in mind I’m not a photo snob; I don’t think every photo has to be technically perfect, though I do try for something less haphazard than what’s in these scenes.  After all, it wasn’t sloppy photographic standards that made me a published nature photographer.

Yet in truth, I’d forgotten about a lot of these.  Remanded to the back burners of memory, they eventually became lost in that place where forgotten things go.

This poor winter wren (a.k.a. northern wren; Troglodytes troglodytes) is a good example.  The bird caught me completely unaware: wrong lens on the camera, my attention focused elsewhere.  It kept returning to this shallow stream in the middle of the woods.  But I wasn’t photographing birds that day and didn’t have the lens for it.

I kept the photo as a reminder that you can never be too prepared for nature photography, but you can always be unprepared.

A Carolina chickadee (Poecile carolinensis) opening a sunflower seed (2009_01_17_004606)

Then there’s the time when I found this Carolina chickadee (Poecile carolinensis) beating the tarnation out of a black sunflower seed.  Chickadees are notorious for this stance: pinning a seed down with both feet while pounding it to death until it spills its innards.

Unfortunately for me, I discovered this scene at the end of a long walk.  I was dripping with sweat, miserable and tired and ready to go home.  Mosquitoes had munched on me all day, so I itched from head to toe.

As I walked along the trail leading to air conditioning and cold water, I heard something in the trees above me, but my overall malaise kept me from paying attention until I had already made enough noise to wake the dead.  I paused, lifted the camera and snapped this image—and then the chickadee flew away with its prize.

I had totally stepped on its dining buzz with my clumsy approach.  To eat in peace, it had to find another table.

Hey, don’t think it’s always my fault when a photo doesn’t turn out.  Well, okay, mostly it is, but sometimes it’s not.

A brown creeper (Certhia americana) clinging to the side of a tree (2009_03_07_012364)

Take this brown creeper (Certhia americana) as an example.  These birds are perfectly camouflaged for what they do: creep along the trunks and branches of trees.  Most people never see them even when the birds are abundant.

I usually find them by movement.  And I almost never find them if I’m looking for them, but instead they show up in my peripheral vision as a shadowy specter, something there yet not there.

And so it was with this critter.  I walked right by the tree, probably within a few steps of the bird, yet I never saw it until it moved.  I responded stupidly: by stopping and turning to look.

It responded in precisely the way I would expect: it flew to another tree some distance away.  I lost sight of it until it moved around the side of the tree where its profile stood out.  By then, though, it was too far away for a good photo.

OK, so that bad image is my fault as well.

I can at least say I’ve since grown much better at finding this species and getting close without disturbing them.  We learn from our mistakes…

A Lincoln's sparrow (Melospiza lincolnii) standing in a pile of brush (2009_03_21_013906)

Fine, here’s a better example of an opportunity lost not because of my ineptness but because of circumstances well outside my control.

This Lincoln’s sparrow (Melospiza lincolnii), like all its kind, is perfectly patterned and colored to make it invisible within the brush it inhabits.

Sure, these birds are numerous here and it’s rather easy to find them.  Photographing them is another story.

I had been looking for a clear view of a barred owl sleeping in the canopy when something caught my eye.  Movement, perhaps, or maybe just the dance of a shadow.

Once I found the sparrow, it had realized I was looking for it and had taken a stance of rapt attention.  And when my eyes fell upon it?  Yep!  Off it went.

A Bonaparte's gull (Larus philadelphia) floating on the lake's surface (2009_02_22_010858)

Not gregarious and not interested in people, finding a Bonaparte’s gull (Larus philadelphia) floating in the middle of the lake with several of its brethren made for a nice winter discovery.  And a bad photo.

A large group of these small gulls could be seen lazing in the warmth of a sunny February day.  That I found myself on the shore furthest from their location was like spittle in the face.

The much larger ring-billed gulls could be seen clearly.  But the Bonaparte’s gulls aren’t ring-billed gulls, and they looked like tiny white specs floating on a vast sea of reflection.

I took the picture anyway, even knowing it would lack quality.  At least it showed the birds were here, as they are every winter.

And after all this blathering ad nauseam, I’ve come full circle without making a point.

What I started with was the idea of bad birds.  Or more precisely, bad bird photos.  That’s the intent of this brief series: to expel the avian images still in my working set that aren’t of great quality but nevertheless deserve honorable mention.

A love note in one part

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Words expressing capably how I feel do not come easily.  Ay, rare is the time when I am at a loss for opinion or articulation, yet that selfsame garrulity laments its own inability to communicate precisely to you what is written upon my heart’s heart.

Be there no words for such utterances?  Is my spirit unable to sing to you in these pages the essence of what is within?  Woe is the man for whom naught but the reality of life be cast upon his lips.  I strive lest I be that man, yet I fear words may prove inadequate for what speaks unspoken between us.

Yearnings for the poetic caress of my tongue’s calling beseech me for you.  Might I tell you how I feel?  Does within me lie reason capable of translating spirit to thought?  I fear, as does tell me my soul, that I contain no such comprehension.

Worlds within rest not in their journeys about spirits deep, and in their travels they wish to pronounce for ears of passion the behest of their own hearts.  These hearts within me are the stones cast at birth melted so ably by your presence.

Saying that which I burn to tell you seems only to feebly drop words at your feet like leaves around the oak tree.  Your branches reach out and I wish them to contain the whole of my depth offered clumsily in writ.  What forlorn desolation I seem to offer, my words cheaply reduced to foliage cast upon the ground, as munificent emotion is lost to language too simple and inadequate.

Proved in the spaces between me rests undying hope that my voice find expression in bodies writhing overmuch, silent whispers betwixt your soul and mine, understanding only found inside recesses deep in our shallows.  Tendering aught but all cheapens our reality.  Would that my all find its voice in my mouth, empowered by that devilish device to say the unsayable.

I fear such hopes misplaced and misguided.  No words can express after a heartvoice’s passions.  Who was I to believe me capable of such?  We humans in our arrogance wish it to be, but wishing for a thing does not make it so.

Dare I appeal to your self that it might hear my own self?  Alacrity notwithstanding, I could wish for no greater thing.  Even I in wounded flight of composition cannot answer your warming touch with mere words.  How flimsy a steadfast love must be were such eager inconsequence thrust upon it as though it might answer to the mind the heart’s unanswerable.

Never alone, I find strong weakness in my weak strength founded upon my lover’s love and loved lovers.  Therein exists the core of us, and it stands unaccompanied among those before and those after.

I swim in the oceans between us and touch the shores of our souls.  There can be no other way to love.  I dedicate not myself to you, yet how else can it be?  Promises for days to come pass between us, oaths of the old souls daring to feed upon the surface and in the depths of life, and continue I to search fruitlessly for that expression capable of penning within this letter the burning fire I share with you and of you.

My thankful heart wishes only to disclose herein its true nature.  Why fails it my mind?  Sitting but inches before the spindling wheel of words, I weave not a tapestry of emotive gesture.  Instead, I stitch the stumbling triviality of wanton colloquialism.

Share with you this I know I must.  Could failed tidings be more apparent in any other context?  I began this transcription with heartfelt aspirations of offering to you what I feel.  Admitting failure in that regard seems unnecessary in light of what now rests before your eyes.  Can you find salutary disappointment here?

Dashed upon reality in these words, I reread this letter before sealing it within its envelope hoping to find redeeming value in what spilled from mind to paper.  Sorrow haunts me when I lock away in its paper cage the result of heart endeavors.  Why fails me thus my writing in communicating that sacred text deep within?

In your presence there is no such obfuscation.  You hear me before I have yet to speak.  You understand the meaning my body imparts to your body.  It vexes me that such impassioned words unspoken battle against expression in speech.  Whether written or verbalized, no greater mystery can be revealed save the story told betwixt the flesh and spirit of us two.

Wishing though it be different, I cannot offer in this missive what I intended to sacrifice one heart to the other, although I wish only that you again provide me opportunity to demonstrate in soulflesh passion that which you know merely by looking through the spirit window of my self.  Cheapened though the experience may be once displayed in such meager terms, I wish only to know your spirit again and again, as we have known our kindred spirits so many times before.

Let my inconsequential chorus fall at your feet and provide us the restful soft of groundcover upon which we might lay one with the other, bodies intertwined overly in fleshful dances, muted wailings silently screaming in echoes with the space not between us, and let my soul’s flesh caress your flesh’s soul.

Defined in moments unimaginable and pleasures both spiritual and carnal are the volumes written on my heart.  They find their collective voice in those places only we two may know.  Whence come desires manifested if not the joining of two with each other?  They dare not present in simple words where meaning fails so often to breach time and space, and the betrayal of truth need only a misreading.

I love you.  There exists no clearer or greater manifestation of words capable of saying what cannot be said.  Yet even three words stumble over meaning they cannot convey.

Let my thankful heart offer itself at the altar of your being.  Neither financial wealth nor intellectual prowess is capable of offering a significantly greater sacrifice, and all the while mine hopes birthed within these pages are unsatisfying of the need to which they were committed.

The eloquence necessary to somehow write the unwritable and say the unsayable escaped me.  My intentions leaped into words insufficient unto the task, becoming a flowing essay of unfulfilled wants to say a thing.  It is charlatan reasoning of the unreasonable so that it might somehow take form in prose incapable of such expression.

Again, I love you.  Need I say more?

Upon your brow I shall once again plant eternal kisses, resting my soul upon yours in infinitely tiny gestures too large to define, and lips upon lips shall convey unknowable things with our breathing one into the other.

Grant to me audience yet again that I may stand upon the stage of your life and sing to you that song which only you and I may hear.  Allow me to strum upon your heartstrings the rhythmic music orchestrated within passion’s relentless grasp.

In silence you shall hear me and I you.  Touched upon your flesh my soul’s grasp takes hold and I find all being.  Lend me once again your true self.

In timespaces unreachable to all others, I will tell you that which this letter could not communicate.  There, alone together with everyone else, we will live in universes of life and on worlds innumerable.  There I will speak my heart’s secrets to you and I shall listen to yours.  My soulflesh will embrace your soulflesh and our spirits will entwine in great inseparable links.

This only can I provide because all else is lacking.