Vernal: A Spring Photo Project (Day 71 through Day 80)

Here come more photographs from my spring photography project.  To see the previous set of photos click this link.

Day 71 (29 May 2019) - Green Frog 

This image of a male green frog (Lithobates clamitans) was taken in Mt. Pleasant at Chipp-A-Waters Park.  Earlier in the spring I shared a photograph of an American toad taken in the same pond - both species breed in this pond, but at different times.  The fact that this is a male frog can be determined by the size of its tympanum (the circle behind its eye).  Female green frogs will have a tympanum the same size as their eye while the tympanum of a male frog is larger than the eye.  These frogs are often heard before they are seen as they announce their presence with a loud PLUNK! sounding like someone plucking a single out-of-tune guitar string.  This photograph has been cropped to a widescreen (16:9) format to eliminate some distracting elements at the top of the image.

Day 72 (30 May 2019) - Wild Geranium 

I selected this image of wild geranium (Geranium maculatum) because of color.  I like how the pink of the flowers contrasts with the varying shades of green from the geranium itself and surrounding plants.  This photograph was taken at the Chippewa Watershed Conservancy's Sylvan Solace Preserve.  Wild Geranium has long been one of my favorite wildflowers to photograph.

Day 73 (31 May 2019) - Mayapple 

This photograph was taken at Mill Pond Park in Mt. Pleasant.  Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum) produces a single large while flower beneath as pair of large umbrella-like leaves.  From above its almost impossible to see the flowers, but from below...  This image was taken by holding the camera at ground level and using the moveable digital viewer to compose the image.

Day 74 (01 June 2019) - White-tailed Fawn 

June 1st was National Trails Day.  I was scheduled to lead hikes at four CWC preserves, but the weather was horrible almost the entire day.  We dodged thunderstorms and rain all morning with even heavier rain due early afternoon.   Everyone bailed on the hike scheduled for 1:00 except me and Shara.  Despite the rain we went for a short hike at Hall's Lake Natural Area.  I kept my camera tucked inside my raincoat for most of the hike, but I did bring it out when we spotted this white-tailed deer fawn.  Despite the rain, the hike was worth it for this picture.

Day 75 (02 June 2019) - Portrait of an Iris

In the last set of photographs I shared an image of a Siberian iris photographed in our home flower garden.  This iris image comes from our gardens too, but this is a bearded iris.  I deliberately shot this image to focus on the iris' beard.

Day 76 (03 June 2019) - Monarch Egg 

On June 3rd I decided to stop at Forest Hill Nature Area on the way home.  Large parts of the property were mowed down last fall and then (apparently) sprayed with herbicide this spring.  I can only assume the intent is to replant these areas with native seed sometime this year.  Right now walking through these areas is rather depressing.

However, I did notice that the herbicide did not kill all of the common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca).  On a whim I decided to search the milkweed plants for a monarch butterfly egg.  I found this one on the second plant I searched.  This image has been cropped down to about 30% of the original size and has been the brightness of the image has been adjusted.


Day 77 (04 June 2019) - Impressions of grass @ icd office

The photograph for Day 77 was taken at the Isabella Conservation District Office.  The wind was constantly creating waves in the grassy field behind the office.  I decided to work with the wind and create an Impressionist photograph of the scene.  The image above was shot at 1/6 second at f/32 to capture the blur of the grass as the wind moved it around.  This image reminds me a bit of some of the landscapes in Frederick Remington's later paintings that were heavily influenced by Impressionism.  Of this set of ten photographs, this is my favorite image.

Day 78 (05 June 2019) - Dead Man's Fingers

A trip to Mission Creek Woodland Park yielded this photograph of the appropriately-named Dead Man's Fingers fungus poking out of the ground.  I like this image more for the subject than I do for the composition.

Day 79 (06 June 2019) - Common Whitetail

I love photographing dragonflies... when they will sit still for more than a few seconds. 

This female common whitetail (Plathemis lydia) perched on a blade of grass a few inches off the ground at Chipp-A-Waters Park in Mt. Pleasant.  She sat still as I approached to within about 4 feet and stayed there long enough for me to snap several dozen photos from more than one angle.  This picture has been cropped from a horizontal to a vertical image.

Day 80 (07 June 2019) - Raindrops on Spiderwort leaf @ Saginaw Chippewa academy 

The final image of this set was taken at 7:30 in the morning at the Saginaw Chippewa Academy's native pollinator garden.  The garden has reached its early summer glory with hordes of coreopsis, penstemon, Canada anemone, and spiderwort bursting into bloom.  On this morning the star of the show as not the flowers but rather the thousands of water droplets left by an overnight rain shower.  My favorite image of the day was of this single large droplet poised on the end of a spiderwort leaf.  A couple of smaller drops sit further back along the leaf and droplets in the background refract circular globes of light.  If you look closely at the central water drop you can see an inverted image of the background plants and sky.

Field Trip - Maple River State Game Area

Yesterday (04 July 2018) I took a short trip to the Maple River State Game Area (MRSGA).  I have lived in Mid-Michigan for the majority of my life, but I have never visited MRSGA before despite driving through part of it hundreds of times.  I grew up in the area and hunted and fished in several State Game/Wildlife Areas as a youth, but because MRSGA has been managed primarily for waterfowl and I have never been a duck or goose hunter so this area was mostly not on my radar.

With no other plans for the morning I decided it was finally time to explore the area a little.  My trip took me to a part of the game area known as the East Unit (Wetlands Wildlife Management Unit).  This Unit is located on both sides of US-127 between St. Johns and Ithaca.  The East Unit is further (confusingly) subdivided into smaller sections also known as units.  The highway itself separates Unit A on the west side of the road from Unit B on the east side of the road.  Several other Units stretch further east from Unit B including a Wildlife Refuge that is closed to the public from September 1st to December 1st. 

There is a parking lot located along US-127 at the northwest corner of Unit B.  This is where I began my visit.  Unit B like most of these other units is enclosed by a series of dikes that allow the water level to be raised or lowered on a seasonal basis.  I walked east along the dike on the north edge of the unit to the dike that separates Unit B from the Wildlife Refuge and followed that dike south.  I returned to my truck by the same route.

The berm along the north edge of Unit B

Along the east edge of the unit is a wood observation tower.  This tower is actually visible from the highway.  The tower was my goal of my hike.  For some reason I didn't take any photos of the tower, but I did take several of the view from the top.  There is also a handicap-accessible ground blind along the North boundary of Unit B.  The view right now consists entirely of tall cattails; I did not take any photos from there.

The view South from the observation tower - berms and a ditch can be seen on the left of the image

Southeast - a better view of the ditches and berms that mark the edges of the Units

West-northwest - the highway is the white line on the horizon

East - looking across the Wildlife Refuge

It didn't seem like it at the time, but I was able to see and photograph a surprising amount of wildlife.  This included butterflies such as Monarchs (Danaus plexippus) and Eastern Tailed Blue (Cupido comyntas).  I also saw several species of Skippers, a Fritillary, and a bunch of small brown butterflies with eyespots on their wings including Wood Nymphs (Cercyonis pegala).

Monarch

Eastern Tailed Blue

I also saw lots of birds.  A partial list includes Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) , Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia), American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis), Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos), Wood Duck (Aix sponsa), Great Blue Heron (Ardia Herodias) , Green Heron (Butorides virescens), Double-crested Cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus), Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica), Cedar Waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum), Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), and Osprey (Pandion haliaetus).

Red-winged Blackbirds in a drowned tree

 

Red-winged Blackbird on cattail

 

Juvenile Bald Eagle being chased by Red-winged Blackbird

Cedar Waxwing

American Goldfinch

Green Heron

A young Wood Duck runs across the water to hide in some cattails

In one of the ditches I noticed a schools of smallish (6-8 inch) Large-mouthed Bass and Bluegill sunfish.

I also saw several White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) including this buck. 

I also had a fawn run up to me and approach within ten feet.  I'm not sure why it came up to me, except maybe curiosity.  It saw me well before it approached.  I shooed it away when it got too close, but I was able to get several good photos before it ran into the woods.

I plan to go back to Maple River State Game Area, but probably not until next spring.  I want to see if I can photograph some of the thousands of migratory waterfowl that pass through every year.

Trail Camera Pictures (29 May - 14 June 2017)

Yesterday I retrieved memory cards from my trail cameras.  Here are pictures from one of the two cameras.

As always, there were dozens of pictures of squirrels on this camera.

Black phase Grey Squirrel

Fox Squirrel

There were also many White-tailed Deer of all ages and sizes.

One morning a Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes) showed up.  Frustratingly, it was too close to the camera so only its ears and the top of its head showed up in the picture!

Red Fox (just the ears are visible at the bottom of the picture)

A pair of fawns showed up on camera several times, both with their mother and on their own.  I assume the mother was just off camera when the fawns appeared on their own.

White-tailed doe and fawns

White-tailed fawns with no doe in sight

In addition to fawns, bucks showed up on a couple of occasions.  At this point their antlers are just developing.  One of the bucks (last year's fawn) had just little buttons, but the second buck (shown below) has antlers that are already beginning to fork.

White-tailed buck licking its hoof

The lighting in some of these photos is pretty incredible, especially in the early morning and evening when it slants in at a fairly low angle, lighting up the more open background and leaving much of the middle-ground and foreground in shade.  This combination of light and shadow adding depth to an image is know as chiaroscuro.  In Italian chiaro means "light" and scuro means "dark". 

Portrait of a Fox Squirrel - this image demonstrates the principle of chiaroscuro.

I did have one new species appear on the camera during this time period - a Woodchuck (Marmota monax) showed up on two consecutive days.

A Woodchuck crosses from right to left

A woodchuck perched on a log at the center of the frame

My favorite photos this time are this series of six pictures of one a fawn (one of a pair).  I really like the chiaroscuro effect of these pictures - it adds a feeling of drama as the fawn advances from the dark toward the light.

A fawn at Audubon Woods

Can you spot the fawn hidden in this picture?

I spent the past two days working with students from Winn Elementary as they completed forest ecology studies at the Chippewa Watershed Conservancy's Audubon Woods Preserve. (More on that will follow tomorrow.)  On Tuesday, Winn Elementary teacher Mary Verhaar found a White-tailed Deer fawn hiding in the woods, but did not get any photos because it ran away when she approached too close.  Yesterday she noticed that the fawn was back in the exact same location.  Unfortunately the location where the fawn was hiding was right next to one of the students' study sites and it again got up and ran away.  Fortunately, when the students moved to another study site, the fawn quietly returned to its hide.

When the students went back to school for lunch I was able to get close and take a few photographs.  Here are a few of the best...