Merry Mitchella Repens!

Merry Christmas!


I found this on the forest floor today. My best identification is Partridge berry (Mitchella Repens). It's supposed to be edible, but not tasty, so I didn't try it, but it did remind me of the season.

Close Call

Frank, a friend, recently posted a nice article about his white water rafting trip on the Lower New River in West Virginia, including photos.

His post reminds me of a time about 8 years ago when I floated down the Youghiogheny River (the "Yough") in southwestern Pennsylvania with friends. One of the friends was kind enough to arrange the trip, including lodging us in his vacation house (which he built!), and hiring a rafting outfitter. Unlike Frank's experience, our outfitter simply provided us with rafting equipment, a short safety talk, and then we had to prepare for our two minute time window at the put-in site. No guide. And all equipment was optional, including helmets. Guess which option I chose.

We had a lot of fun on the upper part of the run. A few of us fell out on some of the more challenging rapids, but we stayed safe. Then we came to Dimple Rock. The outfitters had warned us about Dimple Rock during the safety talk. Basically it's a small rapid with a large rock at the bottom. If you don't approach at the right angle, it's easy to hit the rock and flip your raft.

Well, we definitely did not approach at the right angle, and we definitely flipped our raft. It was a little bit eerie to hear people from the shore trying to coach us, "stroke, stroke! STROKE!" but as we approached the rock, the coaching subsided to, "UH OH!" We bonked into the rock, tossed over, and the whole crew fell into the drink. (The safety instructions we were given about the "high side" technique were forgotten.) I actually fell into the water on top of our host. I popped up after a few seconds, and the host did a few seconds later, and we both scrambled out. Some of our raft crew actually floated down river over some more rapids without a raft!

I realize now that there was a significant chance of me or someone in my crew dying. I could have hit my head and been knocked unconscious, or I could have been pinned under a rock, and drowned. Those few seconds underwater, at the mercy of the currents, seemed like forever. I will never take something like that so lightly again.

Here are two videos on YouTube showing the rafting wrecks at the same Dimple Rock. However, one difference is that the year we ran it, the water was much lower, and there was actually a small falls approaching the rock. I found out later several people have died there. There's a hollow below the rock which sucks people under.

Owl-tastic

As I've said before, I'm lucky to work at a place which has some reasonably natural areas, with basically no urban development. I regularly walk through these areas, and once in a while I see some great wildlife scenes. On the even rarer times when I remember to take a camera along, I can capture the scene.



My best moment so far was finding two owls perched together over a small creek on September 3rd. I'd seen a single owl several times perched near the same location, and some bird-watchers had told me they had spotted an owl's nest nearby as well. I had imagined it to be a solo owl nest, so imagine my surprise when I saw two next to each other! I actually ran all the way back to my office to get my camera, and the pair was still there when I got back for this photo (in fact they had gotten a little closer!). This is a pair of barred owls, which is common in North America. I assume they are pair-bonded, but I never saw any owlets. The fact that they are out of the nest together suggests that, if the pair reared any owlets, they are now out of the nest. This was probably a relaxing evening out for them! (please see OwlCam and their wonderful DVD to find out more about their young-rearing cycle). Just after I took this photo, one owl flew away, and then about a minute later the other owl flew right over my head to another perch. They were very silent.



The next day I did remember to take my camera, and caught this fox crossing the road. I've seen the same fox at the same place several times, so this is his local hunting grounds. He spotted me while I was setting up for the photo, thankfully posed, and then walked off into the brush on the side of the road. There is a nearby pond, so I suspect he has lots of frogs, birds and ducks to go after.



Of course, there are the ever present deer. This photo was taken last year when there were a lot of deer seen roving the workplace, even in the more urbanized parts. This year, however, the deer have been a lot more scarce. Perhaps they have been removed or lured away by maintenance staff. However, today I came across a herd of eight deer, about three does and six fauns, which is the most I've ever seen at one time! They were very close to the trail and I walked right past. The largest doe stared me down, stomped her hoof and snorted, but I held my ground too. The others retreated into the forest.


Here's another shot from last year, with a smaller herd near the edge of the forest. There is a feeder on-site for deer, which is supposed to reduce the number of ticks and tick-borne disease, and this photo was taken near that feeder.

(Previously, previously.)

(Sorry about the image quality, but all of these photos are taken near dusk with a cheap consumer camera with few manual settings. The red-eye is due to flash. Non-flash photos are hopelessly blurry due to long exposure times.)

Prepare for Take-Off!

Another in my series of insect taming adventures. Previously.

Rainbow - Once Again

Since so many people couldn't see the cross-eyed version of the 3-D image, here is a version you can try with 3-D red-cyan glasses instead (red filter over left eye). Of course, you need the glasses for the effect to work, as opposed to the cross-eyed version which doesn't require any equipment at all, if you can get your eyes to work right. It's not the best kind of picture for red-cyan glasses, but the effect still works quite well. Be sure to click on the image for a larger version. Unfortunately the Blogger upload process has made the image a bit more "ghosty" than it started out with.

Rainbow in 3D

A friend recently published photos of her trip to Florida, where she saw a double-rainbow at sunset. It's a nice catch, and even nicer because she caught it at sunset close to the summer solstice, where the sun sets farthest north (you can read more in the comments).

As it happens, we had a chain of thunderstorms pass through here in Maryland just before sunset. A colleague told me to come out right now! because of a nice rainbow. My colleague was right. The rainbow was brilliant, and the second rainbow was also easily detectable. In fact, the supernumerary rainbow was also evident. Even though it was still drizzly, I snapped a few photographs. So as a complement to my friend's seaside rainbow, I give you an.... errrr... another rainbow.

To spice it up a little bit, I tried a simple technique to make a 3D image for the first time, a so-called cross-eye image. To view it, you will have to cross your eyes until you see three images, and then try to focus. Click the image to see a bigger version. I usually try to "lock" onto a landmark like the lamp post or the car. For more viewing help you can read this nice tutorial by Ray Tomes. He also describes the simple cha cha you need to do to make your own 3D photos. The only trick is that the photo you take while standing on the left should appear in the right panel of the cross-eye image.

I admit, the composition isn't the best, and a rainbow also isn't the best demonstration of the 3D effect, but the 3D effect is quite stunning for all of the foreground objects. It's so easy to do, and wonderful to look at. There are lots more cross-eye photographs linked from the tutorial mentioned above.

UPDATE (25 Jun): I'm sad to report that about 3/4ths of the people that tried to view it, couldn't see the effect. It's too bad because the effect is quite striking.

Berry Berry Good to Me

I have the luxury of living near an agricultural research center, so even though I live in a "city," a short walk of five minutes puts me among cattle pastures, corn fields and a swamp (er, sorry, wet-lands). And I've been doing more walking there, which makes me more attentive of the flora and fauna than people who just sachet through in their Hummers (which I do too, sans Hummer).

I did not realize that the road-side is filled with berries! Last weekend there were a goodly number of mulberries and black raspberries that looked ripe (the left and middle photos). The mulberries were pretty decent sized, but the raspberries are just tiny little buds. I have to admit that I snacked on the ripe ones, which I quite enjoyed. There is a huge patch of blackberries (the right photo), but they are definitely not ripe yet. When they are, I will definitely be there to partake, thorns permitting.

Wednesday I stopped briefly to take these photos (but not to take fruit), and just at that moment a service security guard pulled up and asked me what I was doing. I figured I would get a scolding, but what actually happened was she first assumed I was a USDA worker (!), and then she warned me to look out for deer (!). Not as one nature lover to another, and not for any health reason, but just to beware that a deer might jump out and spook me! How considerate.

As a kid I used to sneak-and-snack on neighbors' berry patches that were hanging over the sidewalk. My dad and I were even more brazen at the local university, which planted Service Berry trees around the campus library (we knew them as Juneberries). We would troop to the library with buckets and come back with them full! Juneberries are a little like blueberries, but a little fleshier. Curious college students would stop and ask questions, assuming we were university staff cleaning up toxic plant material. Little did they know. I'm not really a nature-boy, but I know a few good berries when I see them. I am guessing some friends must have even more berry experience than I do.

Footnote: the title is a play on a friend's play on words.

I'll Fly Away

Here I am wrangling my little insect friend on the set of the next blockbuster movie hit, The Butterfly Whisperer. Thank goodness my camera was ready just then.

Update: now I know it's a "Red-spotted Purple."