There is nothing more spectacular among birds than the peacock. Figure 1 is one that I ran into at Viscaya in Miami last month. Unjustly, most have their wings clipped to prevent flight, and they are left to strut around and add an exotic asiatic touch to the garden.

I had never considered the issues of language here. You have to start with the word “peafowl.” All are peafowl. Peafowl refers to three bird species, genera Pavo and Afropavo. This fine fellow is an Indian blue peafowl (Pavo cristatus), just gorgeous. But the term peacock is, and it makes sense, the male of the species. Such brilliant color. And, of course, as with butterflies the color is not primarily pigment. Rather the vibrant iridescent plumage is structural, resulting from optical interference known as Bragg reflections. It is based on regular and periodic nanostructures of the barbules of the feathers.

Canon T2i withEF 100-400 mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM lens at 400 mm ISO 800 Aperture Priority AE Mode 1/200 th sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.

On a very chilly day last November, I planted tulips for the spring. I planted 250 bulbs in fact, with the help of an electric gardeb auger. The day was chosen in the hopes that the major gorge of squirrels on acorns was past and that these bushy-tailed rats with good PR would be thinking of long winter naps. Still I sprinkled crystalized and very smelly coyote urine wherever I planted.

And now I am rewarded! Planting flowers is like planting trees, an assertion of faith that things will get better, that the sun will rise, and warmer days come again!

This season has been a great one for tulips! I was in the garden early yesterday morning, and the sun was shining brilliantly through them, irradiating the world with color. Hence the simple image of Figure 1. I wanted to share it with everyone, in the belief that better days will dawn – but not without our commitment to making them better, to planting flowers, both real and metaphorical.

Yesterday was an absolutely glorious day and I went for a walk with my camera at Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, in Concord, MA. At one point the trail has a little boardwalk bridge that crosses a now almost completely dry stream. As I approached this stream I could see a very spiny snapping turtle, only about five inches long, walking in the stream bed. I approached it cautiously so as not to panic it and even sat down and talked to it as I took photographs with both my iPone and my Canon.

It is a juvenile common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina). I emphasize the word juvenile, because for a while I was confused by its prehistoric spikiness and thought it was an alligator snapping turtle, which are not found this far north. An interesting feature is how the nostrils are at the very apex of the nose enabling this turtle to lie quietly just below the surface in its hunt for prey.

Snapping turtles cannot retract their bodies into their shells, known as carpaces. So this turtle just stared, probably unhappily at me. At one point it stretched out its neck and looked side to side revealing the origin of species name serpentina. For me, it was a metaphysical commune with nature moment.

I carefully got up and walked away. When I was a bit further down the trail, I turned and looked back. He had resumed his walk, as if nothing had happened. Resumed his focus and purpose.

My friend points out that he.she looks very much like the leading man, Robert Mitchum.

Canon T2i with EF 100-400 mm F/4.5-5.6 L IS USM lens at 375 mm, ISO 1600 Aperture Priority AE mode 1/4000th sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.

There is something wonderful and calming about the gentle waterlily, the Nymphaeaceae that immediately invoke the calmness of a warm summer’s day and harken the naiads. These are the fresh water nymphs of ancient Greek mythology. The strange thing about these seminal myths is that they always raise, in me at least the desire that they were somehow true.

The pink waterlily (Nymphaea rubra) of Figure 1 I took by a quiet pool at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables, FL. Yes I was mindful of the Florida approbation not to get too close to the water’s edge.

Canon T2i with EF 100-400 mm F/4.5-5.6 L IS USM lens at 235 mm, ISO 1600 Aperture Priority AE mode 1/1000th sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.

Figure 1 shows an African redhead agamas (Agama agama) that I photographed at the Viscaya in Miami, Florida. Also called the “rainbow lizard,” it is another beautiful but invasive species in Southern Florida. Originally from subsaharan Africa, it is spreading like wildfire in Florida’s hospitable environment,

Canon T2i with EF 100-400 mm F/4.5-5.6 L IS USM lens at 275 mm, ISO 800 Aperture Priority AE mode 1/200th sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.

I thought that I would take a break today from photographs from my Florida trip and post the image of Figure 1, which I took on one of the Skygems Observatories robotic or remote telescopes. This was taken on a twenty inch telescope in Namibia. It is 31.1 million light years away and has a a diameter of approximately 49,000 light-years.

M104 resembles a Mexican sombrero and for that reason as well as its head on orientation is truly one of the most dramatic and appealing of the Messier objects! In the 1990s, a research group led by John Kormendy demonstrated that the Sombrero Galaxy contains a supermassive black hole, with a mass of ~ a billion times that of the sun.

Unfortunately and for many reasons, it seems that there are uneasy times. Maybe it is always that way. Dicken’s told us that:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Always is and always will be!

With Figure 1 today I want to return to those beautiful tropical gardens in Southern Florida. This one was taken in Key Biscayne itself, another “artificial” display. Real rainforests can be more troublesome. There are snakes, jaguars, maybe even tigers. And, of course, lots of bugs! But there is something off-putting here. There is the matter of the cement wall in the background and the garden hose, lower left. Still to the extent that this is a living “painting” of what the gardener wanted there to be, we can still delight in the beauty and the desire for the primordial.

“More primordial than any idea, beauty will be manifest as the herald and generator of ideas.”

— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

I know that for those of us in northern climes complaining about the heat at this time of year, when we are dead sick of winter, seems excessive. Nevertheless I discovered in Florida that mornings and evenings are the best times to be active and outdoors. Noon until about five in the afternoon is a good time for a siesta. So…

As we were looking birds at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden and it was nearing noon, TC and I came upon this pair of very sleepy white ibises (Eudocimus albus) sitting in a tree. They could barely keep their eyes open to watch me warily. I was reminded immediately of John Tenniel’s “The Dodo” from Lewis Carol’s Alice in Wonderland. Perhaps it is that they seemed to have smiles on there faces. In fact, like Alice I felt just a bit bratty in the heat. I wondered what would happen if I started, like Alice, talking to these birds. “The best way to explain it is to do it.”

For me this pair is truly memorable of my trip. And if you look closely you will notice what I noticed only after I “worked up” the photographs. Ibises have beautiful blue eyes. How delightful.

Canon T2i with 100-440 f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM Lens at 300 mm, ISO 400, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/400th sec at f?7.1 with no exposure compensation.

The name Egyptian goose (Alopochen aegyptiaca) clearly invokes images of The Nile, perhaps neatly fitted into a poem about crocodiles. As Figure 1 indicates they are striking in appearance. This image was taken at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, and clearly is another of the invasive species that I encountered in Coral Gables, FL. We came across it on the lawn by a pond along with its mate and a very impressive brood of goslings. My traveling companion (TC) captured an impressive encounter with a snapping turtle. The turtle was lumbering down the hill towards the water, and this goose started squawking. I was impressed by just how fast the snapper could move. Said goose finished the not so friendly meeting with a poke and bite behind the snapper’s neck as it finally made it to the water.

For my photograph, I decided that the best was this close-up of his head and distinctive plumage.

Canon T2i with 100-400 mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS USN lens at 275 mm, Aperture Priority AE mode, 1/4000th sec at F/6.3 with no exposure compensation.