It’s their side. Stomachs have different types of scales.
These are different snakes but it’s have their insides scales look typically .
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Some more ponds scum. It’s hard to know what I’m going to end up with on these, since the camera is on a tripod over the water and I can’t get close enough to see exactly what’s in view. I think this one took about 60 exposures, although they didn’t all end up in this crop. It’s not very attractive but it is kind of interesting in a funky way.
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A budding tree of some species or other – spring is finally arriving here. (This sort of thing is much less physically taxing than squatting in the mud while leaning out over a pond.)
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Awesome photo! Pond scum looks absolutely magical. Illuminated from within!
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I’m always arrested by photos which by framing or focus remove distractions, isolate the familiar yet overlooked, and evoke “what is that?” Great pictures Steve.
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Firewheels (Gaillardia pulchella) and ?Greenthread or brown-eyed daisy in the front pasture. Bluebonnets are long gone.
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Great – now I have an overwhelming need to listen to Willie and Emmylou (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_03-pUBeHaM).
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Neat! We ran across some little ferns as well on our trip to North Carolina:
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Rhubarb rows unfurling, and a chilly butterfly one morning rested when I slipped my hand under it to put it in a drier place
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Some species of Boletus mushroom. It’s a really lovely bolete. Brownish red cap. Yellow stalk with brownish red veining. I could not definitely ID it. But it did not stain blue and was not bitter and was not bright red or yellow and so it is most likely an edible species of bolete. Those rules don’t work for non bolete mushrooms. I risked it and cooked some and ate it. Really good. I posted it to two groups and it’s debated between one section of mushrooms ( all of which is edible ) and another species of mushroom
Which is also edible. So hopefully it’s edible and I won’t get really sick lol.
Made dinner with veggie chicken, a potato covered in a diced onion and tomato, side of the boletus mushroom and a side of crimson clover I picked today as well when gathering meadow mushrooms.
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Trilliums! Many! What a rare treat!
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When I’m doing conservation work I’ll put down a heavy load to stop and move a caterpillar or beetle (watching out for invaders of course) or other fragile tiny critter and have been known to uproot and replant wild strawberry vines encroaching on a trail so they can grow without getting trampled.
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I just saw Canadian geese going overhead low and fast at night! There were about eighty moving low and fast – “coming in hot”, my old ROTC fly-boy friends from university would say – in an almost perfectly balanced V-formation, visible as white figures against stars and storm clouds!
They were low enough I could actually see feet – about the closest I’ve ever been to such critters except for around a lake on campus back in the day. Geese fly over the house a lot on the way to the bay or the freshwater lake next to it, but I’ve never seen them this low before. And they seemed to be going faster than traffic in the 35mph zone downtown – fast enough that by the time I thought of getting a picture they were already gone.
Talk about taking Knox out at just the right moment!
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Nice encounter! Just a technical point from a Canadian ornithologist…
The correct species name is “Canada geese” not “Canadian geese”.
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Have you taken fresh photos from the current space storm that is probably the strongest since 2003?
I slept the last night and regretted when I looked at the northern light photos taken during the last night. Here, northern lights are usually relatively weak and green. Those watching the northern lights told that when the storm hit, the sky was glowing in multiple colors (green, red, purple, blue, in some photos also yellow and pink). In some pictures, the dominant colors were purple and blue, rather than the more ‘ordinary’ green and red.
There is something awe-inspiring in watching strong northern lights. The colors are usually stronger in photos than in reality but the motion of the changing lights is something that photos cannot capture and videos flatten. There is a big difference between watching the 3D reality and looking at 2D videos of the same northern lights.
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A few pictures from Global Big Day. We got 108 species (all in Spartanburg County, South Carolina):
Acadian Flycatcher
Juvenile male Orchard Oriole
Grey-cheeked Thrush
Blue-grey Gnatcatcher
Great Horned Owl
And a few non-birds:
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And a few from the day before and the day after:
Fence Swift
Semipalmated Sandpiper
Lesser Yellowlegs
Least Sandpiper
Semipalmated Plover
White-rumped Sandpiper
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One of my strongest memories as a kid was traveling somewhere to see the northern lights. I don’t know where we went, even how long it took, but I remember colors dancing in the sky like ghostly waterfalls or shimmering sheets of silk blowing in the wind.
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