Misumena vatia

Warning! This post contains photos of spiders. If you are uncomfortable about that, as I used to be, I suggest you read some posts about baby cows or cats instead.

A couple of weeks ago I was inspecting the mock orange bush I'd bought for my mom a few years ago - it's one of her favourite flowers, and my grandfather had a lovely specimen growing in his yard when I was a child. I bent down to sniff a particularly lovely blossom when I noticed it was occupied!

This crab spider, sometimes called the goldenrod crab spider after the flower it normally lives in, or more accurately Misumena vatia, is a fascinating little creature. It produces a yellow pigment that it stores next to the surface of its skin, allowing it to blend in quite spectacularly with yellow petals, where it waits for its prey. However, if the spider manages to find nicer real estate on a white flower, it can get rid of its yellow pigment, reverting it to its natural white colour. It's like a chameleon spider, but with fewer colour options.

Its strategy seems pretty successful, because a few days later I checked back on it to find that it had snared a little bee.

A bit sad because I love bees, but I try to remember that spiders need to eat too! And you have to admire how this one manages to find its dinner.

Takeoff

Light painting

Things you will need:

* digital camera capable of long exposures or, preferably, a bulb setting
* tripod
* light source (i.e. flashlight)
* dark area (a room, a park far from the city)
* remote shutter release for your camera (not strictly necessary, but makes life easier)
* friend

Set up your camera on its tripod, and make sure it's on bulb and set to your remote. Get your friend to stand approximately where they will be painting, and make sure you're properly focused.

Right before you start painting, open the shutter using your remote (you can do this without a remote by just pressing the shutter release, but there might be some blurriness due to the camera shaking). If there is any ambient light at all (like there was in our pictures) you'll need to paint fairly quickly, or have a smaller aperture (these photos were all f2.8). When you're done painting, close the shutter.

Ta-da!

Here are our efforts, done at Iona Beach after an aborted attempt at photographing stars. It's still a work in progress.











Now here it is, done right:


credit: rafoto


credit: minamac88


credit: The Areographers


credit: Atton Conrad

UBC botanical gardens

A couple of weekends ago, Davis and I went to the botanical gardens at the University of British Columbia, which are both extensive and diverse. They're not on the scale of anything like the Butchart Gardens in Victoria, of course, but I really enjoyed the walk through the tall conifers, smelling everything in the medicinal herb garden, rambling through the alpine terraces, and inspecting the vegetable garden (the produce of which is donated to local charities). We also did the canopy walkway, a series of suspended bridges through the treetops. I actually really enjoyed this too - we did the one at the Capilano Suspension Bridge a few years ago and it really didn't feel like much of an adventure at all. But this one puts you pretty high up in the treetops, it's much less crowded, and you even have some thrilling moments of mild peril as the bridge lurches beneath your feet and you peer down at the forest floor 50 feet below.

I was hoping to see some birds on this trip - last time we went I saw a creeper - but other than a bald eagle surveying its domain, I was out of luck. I saw lots of beautiful flowers and some neat insects but I am sadly lacking in knowledge of both botany and entomology so, without any descriptions to get in the way:

Depth of field

Having completed my sixth journey across Canada (we arrived in Vancouver on Friday), Davis and I left this morning for our third annual vacation to Ucluelet/Tofino on Vancouver Island. The weather today was lovely - unfortunately, I fear, the only lovely weather we might have this week... but I guess a little rain doesn't matter much when you're soaking wet from surfing and scuba diving anyway. At least, I hope I'll be scuba diving... I'm still coughing up some nasty things and my congested nose is making a reappearance from a cold I picked up on our drive out west, so we'll see what the divemaster has to say about that. Here's hoping it magically disappears before Wednesday, although dunking myself in the cold Pacific surfing for three hours tomorrow may not be the best way to have that happen.

I have tons of photos to share with you, from our road trip and from Ucluelet, but instead of posting all the highlights of the day like I did last year, I think I'll save them until after we get back to Vancouver and settled in... it's a little too manic processing and posting them each night since I am technically on vacation. But here's a little something I took today in Cathedral Grove... I think I should have tried a few more shots, but it's kind of interesting looking. :)

Supermoon: March 19

A supermoon (or more accurately a perigee-syzygy of the Earth-Moon-Sun system) occurs when the full moon coincides with the point of the moon's orbit that is closest to Earth. The term "perigee" means the point when the moon is closest to the Earth, and syzygy is a full or new moon. Hence, perigee-syzygy = supermoon.

Avoid responsibilities.

That is the moral of the story.

I walked out of school at 5 p.m. today after intensely observing the genitalia of a 4-month-old bull (really, that was our lab) and the first thing I saw was the moon - nearly full and low in the sky, looking like I could reach out and poke it and have it roll off its perch and stop at my feet.

"I wish I had my camera," I thought. "This would make a really great photo."

"I could walk home right now and grab my camera and tripod," I thought. "It's a 15 minute walk. The moon won't change that much in 15 minutes."

"You have to buy tomatoes and soy sauce," I told myself firmly, looking at the grocery list scribbled on my wrist. "You can't eat photos of the moon."

Unfortunately the grocery store is in the same general direction as our house, so for 15 minutes as I walked in the nose-sniffling cold I flip flopped. Tomatoes. Moon. Soy sauce. Creativity. Food.

But, as I kind of suspected all along, my feet took me home to my camera and my tripod.

So, today's life lesson?



Creativity first. Groceries later.

I'm pleased with this photo especially because I've never had a good opportunity to take low light photos before (other than when we were running through the forest at night trying to see owls and making coyote calls), and I was able to play around a bit today. The sky wasn't nearly this black - in fact, it was still relatively light out, but I had to make the shutter speed a lot faster than I expected (about 1/400) in order to get the details of the moon - otherwise it was just a bright smudge. I wish I'd remembered to try a few different f-stops, but that will be a goal for next time.

Some crows flew by. There are a couple hundred roosting next to our house at the moment, but that's for another post.

Christmas bird count

This is the third year we've taken part in the Audubon Society's Christmas bird count, where for over 100 years groups of ornithologists and bird-lovers count each and every bird they see on one day in a specific area in a specific time period. All the sightings are compiled for one region and eventually form one giant database that allows researchers to look at large-scale trends in bird populations to see which species are doing well and which are decreasing in certain areas.

The weather was mild this year but the snow was falling thickly, which made for a beautiful winter wonderland as we walked through the forest, listening for the soft phoe-bee of black-capped chickadees or the clear birrrdy birdy birdybirdy of northern cardinals.















Oh right, but we were also looking for birds.

This was a record year for me - we saw 23 different species of birds including common goldeneye, mergansers, a merlin, two red-tailed hawks, three types of woodpeckers, cardinals, chickadees, white-breasted nuthatches, greater black-backed gulls, robins, sparrows, pine siskins and my personal favourite: the eastern screech owl (can you see it?).
And here's a little white-breasted nuthatch, and below him a downy woodpecker.


I wasn't able to get as many photos of the birds as I would have liked because we saw so many of them from far away, but my little owl more than satisfies me.

Random August Photos

... of fireworks in Montreal that I never had a chance to post due to moving, etc. I wish I'd had my SLR with me, but even with a point-and-shoot I think these turned out okay.

Towhee Thursday

Tree swallows

Surprisingly, way more difficult to photograph than hummingbirds.









I think this proves what some people say is a key to great photography... take lots of pictures! I took almost 200 to get these 4 that I like. I can't imagine being into photography before digital cameras... I guess that was incentive to get good fast!