Figure 1 – Great Blue Heron with beaver dam – Assabet River Wildlife Refuge, April 16, 2016. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

I was going through the bird photographs that I took yesterday and realized that there was another that I was really pleased with. This is shown as Figure 1. It shows a Great Blue Heron, Ardea herodias, one of North America’s most dramatic birds. Great blues are ubiquitous over the continent. Still you get this “Welcome to Jurassic Park” sense whenever you see one, especially in flight. They are a challenge photographically, both because they tend to be at a distance and also because at a distance it becomes difficult to keep your spot-meter on the very slender head and eye.

Here I am happy to say the eye is sharp, but what really appealed to me was the slightly out-of-focus beaver dam behind the bird and the colors, which truly capture the essence of the Assabet River site on a cool April morning. You will note also that the bird has a discolored spot  on its wing, which I suspect is from a healing injury.

Here again, as in my cowbird image of yesterday, I am shooting hand-held at 350 mm with my 100 – 400 mm zoom and am reasonably happy with the results. I was looking yesterday at a comparison of the original version of this lens which I have and the new version. While the MTF of the old version is good for reduced frame cameras the new one is really impressive, and I am just a bit envious.

Canon T2i with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/3200 nd of a sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – Brown-headed cowbird, Assabet River Wildlife Refuge, Sudbury, MA. April 16, 2016. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

The brown-headed cowbirds have returned to Massachusetts, in this case from Florida, Baja, and Mexico. I photographed the one shown as Figure 1, a male, on the grounds of the Visitors’ Center at the Assabet River Wildlife refuge. Here is a bird that has benefited from human building. They were once confined to the grasslands of the Midwest, but as forests were cleared for human building and agriculture, they have surged in number.  They are famous for their “odd” approach to reproduction. All of their reproductive energy is concentrated on egg production – perhaps as many as three dozen a summer. These they lay in the nests of other birds to be reared by foster parents, often to the detriment of their foster siblings.  This, I believe, explains the origin of the genus name as a probable modification of Greek molobros meaning “greedy fellow.”

I continue to experiment with my big zoom hand-held with image stabilization. Still I am quite clumsey with it. Here I went up to 350 mm and got reasonable sharpness. The fun of bird photography for me continues to be the challenge. I saw several species of birds on the crisp windy morning: Tree Swallows, Chickadees, a Great Blue Heron, a Cooper’s hawk, Canadian Geese, Mallards, Common Mergansers, Robins, Blue Jays, and these Brown-headed Cowbirds. Of the photographs that I took this was the one that I was most pleased with.

Canon T2i with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM at 350 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE mode 1/4000th sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – Palm warbler, Assabet River Wildlife Refuge, Sudbury, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Well, let us castoff the Cthulhu gloom and celebrate the coming of spring to the Assabet River Wildlife Refuge. The tree swallows now abound, and today I took my big lens and on my trip to the reserve and managed to hand hold the shot of Figure1 at 200 mm of a beautiful palm warbler – Setophaga palmarum, who was kind enough to pose for me. The problem with this lens is it has slightly worse MTF than my 70 – 200 mm lens and is really tough to hand-hold. I always try to hold back from going all the way to 400 mm, which is where the MTF quality falls off. Certainly I could have gone a bit farther here. These little birds however, require rapid dexterity to photograph, and I rapidly abandoned trying to photograph them with my camera mounted on my monopod.

The other point that I am starting to realize is that not all birding sites are equal. AT Fresh Pond in Cambridge the density and height of the trees make it possible to generally get closer to the birds than at the Assabet Refuge, with it’s flooded landscape and tall pines.

In any event there is no surer sign of spring in New England than the return of the spring warblers, in this case on their was from the Caribbean to Northern parts of Canada. It is such a remarkable journey. And as a result these dramatic visitors greet us first in the spring and then in the fall on the return.

My friend Jane was kind enough to join me today and tolerant of my slow and silent bird photography pace. She headed to the gym after for some real exercise!

Canon T2i with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens at 200 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/4000th sec at f/7.1 with -1 exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – Mannequin violence, “to the victors belong the spoils.” (c) DE Wolf 2016.

I think that I may have been spending too much time thinking about the Cthulhu mythos. As a result I reacted to this innocent scene at the mall this morning as if it were something much more than it is and produced the, I hope not too gruesome, image of Figure1. It is meant, really, to be a study in incongruity. The mannequin world is a reflection of our own world. It is a sad place of our own creation where mannequins appear more and more disembodied and depersonified, first hairless, then faceless, and finally headless. So perhaps it is not too surprising to see, or is it imagine, a scene of mannequin war and violence. “to the victor belong the spoils.”

The phrase seems to beg a Latin origin or etymology, but in fact refers, in fact, to the nineteenth century political “spoils” system in the United States, where the victor was rewarded with the political spoils – that is all of the choice political appointment which he could bestow on his friends. It appears to have been first uttered by New York Senator William L. Marcy, referring to the victory of the Jackson Democrats in the election of 1828,

Figure 1 – Cthulhu’s tree, Assabet River Wildlife Refuge, Sudbury, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

This past winter has revealed a vulnerability to New England trees. Many of the trees here are old and in many cases these trees become hollow and this makes them vulnerable to winds and excessively wet ground. Which is of course what the el Nino winter has served up in great quantity. As I have mentioned at the Wildlife Reserve, which is a wetland, there is a continuous process of tree limbs and whole trees crashing to the forest floor. Of course, it is a natural process as the forest evolves to its climax state.

I have begun to explore other areas of the reserve and on Saturday came upon the venerable old tree, of Figure 1, just off of the main road. Of course, it is always nice to see trees without the obligate telephone and electric wires – in their natural state as it were. And as I have also pointed out the Assabet River Wildlife Refuge, with its ammunition bunkers, has a brooding mythic quality to it – shades perhaps of H. P. Lovecraft. So this tree was striking both for its hollow trunk and for the limb that appears to have started growing in one direction – to the right – only to “change its mind” and bend to the left. A botanical decision made perhaps a century ago. So I call this tree Cthulhu’s tree in honor of Lovecraft and in the spirit of the gloomy day when I took this photograph.

On a brighter note, I will observe that spring is inexorable and yesterday I saw a pair of king-birds building their nest. The great thing about forests is the duality of change and changelessness.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 70 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/2000th sec at f/7.1 with -1 exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – Eastern chipmunk – Tamias striatus. Assabet River Wildlife Refuge, Sudbury, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

All of a sudden our early spring has taken a step back. We have had two early April snowfalls. However, the snow was gone before we really had time to admire it. Such is the way of spring snow. The changing weather has been all the more reason to venture out into the forest, and I have been regularly visiting the Assabet River Wildlife Refuge. I have to say how much I love this place. It is the quintessential wetland. And I keep thinking how much my father would have liked it.  Everywhere are tall pine trees, and everywhere trees have broken off and crashed to the forest floor. The park rangers wage a constant war against debris and dangerous overhanging limbs.

The other day I was walking up the road to my favorite entry point when I spotted the little Eastern chipmunk of Figure1 playing hide and seek with me along the stone wall.  Despite the abundance of the chipmunks – as if that made them less than worthy photographic game –  I decided to photograph him anyway in this very natural setting and I liked the colors of the dried foliage behind him and the red-brown pine needles in the foreground. Then down by the water I found the foreboding scene of Figure 2 showing looming storm clouds reflected in the pond, where tufts of marsh grass and twigs broke the surface. The face of the pond changes continuously. You have only to look.

A short-while later I was deep among the pines when it started to hail. It was a cold and wet reminder of winter and accentuated the raw beauty of the forest.

Figure 2 – Looming reflections in the marsh. Assabet River Wildlife Refuge, Sudbury, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Figure 1 – Armani waisted, a study of floded cloth. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Hmm! It is a miserable rainy day in Massachusetts and as a result instead of venturing out into the woods I chose instead to walk at the local mall. The photographic pickings there are slim, but I did take the image of Figure 1 with my IPhone. It continues my study of folded cloth. This is actually the waist of a beautiful Armani dress in a store window. What drew me to it was the gorgeous slate blue color, although in the end, I chose the sepia toned black and white mode for the final; so that it would emphasize the folds, the tones, and the shadows. And then there is the texture and the feel of the fabric. It is the quinessential tone-on-tone.

I am for some reason reminded of the famous 1940 paper by Jane Richardson and Alfred L. Kroeber studying the trends in women’s fashions over the course of three centuries “Three Centuries Of Women’s Dress Fashions: a Quantitative Analysis,” which I read in college. There you have the essential point that cultural anthropological understanding may be enhanced by quantitative analysis – that secrets yield to measurement and numbers. Who would have thunks it? And what Richardson and Kroeber found was that, in general, there is an approximately one hundred year cycle to any given fashion parameter like waist line. That they swing or oscillate between extremes over the course of a century.

It seemed enough profundity for a Saturday morning. And it also seemed (seamed?) high time to get back to doing what I should be doing. But photographically I am pretty satisfied by the effect, and by the glory of folded cloth.

Figure 1 – Cat bowl caustic, (c) DE Wolf 2016.

It’s been a while since I posted about “Reassuring Moments in Physics,” that is reflects on a photographic encounter of something that requires a little physics to explain it. Such is the case with the image of Figure 1.

The other morning I went to give my cat a bowl of fresh water and I discovered that a beam of sunlight was reflecting off the surface of the bowl and casting a circular disk of light on the wall. Okay, that makes sense. Then I discovered that if I tapped my foot on the floor it created a shadow pattern on the wall that captured the structure of the vibrational modes of the surface. You may recall the scene of the vibrations on the surface of a glass of water in the movie Jurassic Park when Mr. T-Rex makes his first appearance.

The physical phenomenon at play here is actually pretty simple. If you create a concave depression on the surface of the water it’s going to act like a concave mirror and focus the light at the center. On the other hand, if you create a convex hill, it will act like a convex mirror and diverge the light thus creating a shadow. This is very much akin, indeed complementary, to the light patterns on the bottom of a swimming pool caused by wave distortions on the pool’s surface, which in that case act as lenses. These patterns are referred as caustics. The term caustic means to burn and appears to derive from the ability of lenses to focus the sun and to ignite fire.

In the image of Figure 1, taken with my IPhone, we see two types of caustics. The first are the circular waves radiating outward from the center due to the vibration induced by stomping my foot. The second the two v’s on the right and left hand sides caused by the sides of the bowl. I think that there may be some interesting variations of these images, but this is my first try at it.

Figure 1 – Purple sandpiper, Madison, CT, March 27, 2016.

It is officially spring, and time to get back out and photograph some birds. I found myself this chilly but sunny Sunday morning along the beach at Madison, Connecticut. That is an interesting spot, because the first birds that grab your attention are the herring gulls, and you get the impression that that’s all there is. But then you focus, calm down, and look around. There is a duck or two bobbing in the waves near shore and further out are the cormorants. Then I noticed a little bird hopping around on one of the small rock outcrops and started shooting with my camera as I approached. He was quite accommodating and in the end allowed me to get close enough to get sharp images with my 70-200 mm lens.

I love to photograph the shore birds and was very happy with the results here, shown as Figure 1. Identifying the bird proved more difficult than usual. The Merlin Bird Identifier App on my cell phone failed me for really the first time. I consider this to be an essential tool for bird photography and also I think that a test of the photograph’s quality lies in containing sufficient characteristic marks to make an identification. I am pretty sure that it is a Purple Sandpiper (Calidris maritima), here having Sunday brunch along the rocks. You will note as do some of the ornithology guide that it is a stretch to call it purple.

Canon T2i with EF 70-200 mm f/4L USM lens at 200 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/4000th sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.