Figure 1 – Mallard pair, female and male, (Anas platyrhyncos) Fresh Pond Reservation, Cambridge, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015;

The other day I came upon this pair of mallards in the Pond.  The male was standing on a rock and periodically dunked his head in the water. The females was swimming nearby. I had stopped to chat with one of the dog walkers, when I noticed that they were now standing “lovingly” together. And I just had to take the image of Figure 1.

“Lovingly” together? I had to wonder. We all fall victim, well maybe that’s too strong. We all love the cute cuddly animal images that abound on the internet, and I cannot tell you how many times this passed summer I’ve seen fraught-filled ducks with their chicks down a storm drain and humans jumping to their aid. All very sweet and all reminiscent of Robert McCloskey’s “Make Way for Ducklings,” which did after-all take place in Boston.

So I started wondering whether ducks do mate for life, and whether the highly anthropomorphic vision of Mr. and Mrs. Mallard raising Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack and Quack has any reality. As it turns out the story is complicated. And I am not sure that I have really sorted it all out, but in terms of the mating for life scenario that seems not so much. The drakes appear to wander off when the female’s attention falls from him to her brood. How’s that for anthropomorphic. Also the hens often pick new mates the following season. And then there’s the groups of drakes gang-raping hens. Perhaps anthropomorphic, but not happily so. We are left in the end with the point made by Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park that animals do what they are programmed to do. They aren’t evil; they’re just coded.

There have been precious few duck or goose chicks on Fresh Pond this past summer. This I suspect is largely due to the wildlife management process of addling, where the eggs are rendered infertile by coating them with corn oil.  This kills the eggs but the ducks don’t realize it and immediately produce a new set. So I guess that my image that my picture shows Mr. and Mrs. Mallard as empty-nesters looking out reflectively at the Pond as winter approaches (I can just see the pipe in Mr. Mallard mouth) is pure fantasy, still a lovely one.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 200 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE mode 1/800th sec at f/9.0 with no exposure compensation.

Fall along the Assabet, West Concord, Massachusetts, IPhone photograph, (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Just in case you think that the only place that I go to photograph is the Fresh Pond Reservation I thought that I would post the image of Figure 1, and yes it is real.  I was headed for coffee this morning at the Nashoba Brook Bakery in West Concord, Massachusetts and as I was walking across the footbridge over the Assabet River and I came upon this scene. If you look closely in the middle left of the image you will even see a great blue heron, who like me was looking for breakfast.

All that I had with me was my IPhone 6, which, as ever, presented just a bit of glare and saturation, especially as it was coupled with morning fog.  But still I was pretty happy with the results. Pastels are my favorites!, and iIt will be something to look at when the snow falls.

Figure 1 – Fall Foliage along Little Fresh Pond, Fresh Pond Reservation, Cambridge, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015

It is so glorious along Fresh Pond just now. So I have to share the view with you. The weathermen think that the foliage will peak this weekend. The image of Figure 1 is across the Little Fresh Pond. It is amazing to just walk along and watch the leaves fall. The birds seem filled with expectation. The woodpeckers have forsaken their usual diet of bugs beneath park for readily available berries; so instead of climbing up the trees they flit among the leaves, often hanging upside down.

I have been watching very closely for the ducks. The mallards and the ring necks are congregating in the pond. Yesterday I saw a pied billed grebe in the water. Today I saw a raptor flying along the waters edge. But I have yet to see my favorite, the white hooded merganser.

It all makes you think about the cycles of nature and of life. The Earth, save its cycles, seems to never change, but in reality and on a geological time scale it does. You have only to look at the Pond itself – a glacial kettle pond, like it’s neighbor Walden Pond of literary fame.  The landscape of Fresh Pond is indeed a book about glaciation. And to read this book is to realize that ultimately the world changes. But this prospect only enhances the profound sense that the seemingly endless seasonal cycles evoke in our minds. It all is truly glorious.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 91 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/800th sec at f/9.0 with no exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – Changing, Fresh Pond Reservation, Cambridge, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

In follow-up to yesterday’s blog, I suppose that part of the mystery of autumn lies in the changing. It is the mystery of Ovid’s Metamorphosis – that something can be one thing now and something else later, that the static universe is, in fact, precarious. So back to reds. The reds in a New England fall come mostly from the Maples. This is why it is hands down most vivid in Vermont where the Maples abound.

The other afternoon, I caught this particular maple at Fresh Pond in the very act of changing. It is as if the finger tips of each leaf was changing before my eyes from verdant green to orange-red. And there is still visible the warm of early fall sunshine glistening on the leaves.

For the most part what I have seen so far are intimate closeup fallscapes like this.  The broader views are just forming.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 70 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/125th sec at f/9.0 with no exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – Poison ivy by Fresh Pond, Fresh Pond Reservation, Cambridge, MA.

As I mentioned last week, the reds are key to fall color and some of the first reds that we see are the poison ivies. It’s almost startling just how much poison ivy there is. It is everywhere. I found a particularly well-lit bunch this afternoon, which contrasted very nicely with the water of the pond. This is by the Glacken Slope and is shown in Figure 1. These leaves are a combination of reds and oranges, as if they cannot quite make up their minds.

It is always interesting to encounter not only something beautiful but also to mentally encounter the associations that it conjures up.  I cannot see poison ivy without remember reading, as a post doc, a discussion in Herman Eisen’s “Immunology” about the “fact” that native Americans ate poison ivy to cause themselves to become immune. Don’t try this at home, and let me explain with Eisen’s own words (please excuse the scientific lack of word mincing):

“Recently a similar approach, refined by feeding the purified catechol responsible for poison ivy sensitization, has been found to be of dubious value: the presence in feces occasionally produces in sensitized individuals an unusually severe perianal contact dermatitis, once referred to as the “emperor of pruritis ani.””

I have written in the margin the word “ouch.”

It should finally be noted that domestic goats do not appear to suffer from the same problem and in Massachusetts having goats consume you poison ivy infestation is considered to be the ecologically friendly approach.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 70 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE mode 1/1600th sec at f/9.0 with -1 exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – Black walnut, Fresh Pond Reservation by Lusitania Field, Cambridge, Massachusetts. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Over the last few weeks at Fresh Pond the black walnut trees have been fruiting. These are wonderful green spheres, beautiful in their geometric simplicity, that make a major mess if you step on them. But they bring back memories of graduate school days in Ithaca. The Cornell Plantations, which is a university arboretum, has a grove of these trees and they harvest them every fall. But more significant is that they used to, I don’t know if they still do, serve the most tasty black walnut ice cream at the Cornell Dairy, made, of course, from university cows (Big Red Cows). Yummy! I want to race back and see if I can get some right now. This is the time of year hen the first flakes fly in Ithaca, NY.

The picture of Figure 1 I took of some yellowing leaves and some beautiful examples of the nut pods still clinging precariously to the tree. It turned out best in black and white and almost as a silhouette in reverse. That creates and abstract and dreamlike quality which fits my personal memories so well. Other readers, who were there, will have their own favorite flavors. Mine was black walnut.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 84 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE mode, 1/1000th sec at f/7.1 with -1 exposure compensation

Figure 1 – The first color of fall 2015, Litlle Fresh Pond, Fresh Pond Reservation, Cambridge, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Well, it is time for nature to work its magic in New England. I went out for a walk along Fresh Pond today, to catch the early fall color. The key to autumn is the reds. The yellows and the recalcitrant greens are beautiful, but it is always as if they would be nothing without the brilliant reds. The first act in this chromatic parade is, believe it or not, the poison ivy, and that abounds with its brilliant crimson shades. But today I was attracted to this little tree along the shore of Little Fresh Pond. I intentionally captured just out-of-focus the surrounding reeds and the deeply out-of-focus pond itself in the background. And like I said, this is just the beginning.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 84 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode 1/2000 th sec at f/7.1, with -1 exposure compensation.

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Well, there is no denying the fact that in New England summer has given way to fall. We have knocked on the door of October and entered. Here we are excited. This is our most beautiful month. The leaves are just beginning to show their color in a last dramatic performance before giving way to winter. It is time at Hati and Skoll to post our Halloween Gallery. I’ve put it here. But all month long you can also find it among the galleries. These are photographs of Halloween soft sculptures ready for hoards of trick or treaters,

As the Second Witch says in Macbeth:

“By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes. [Knocking]
Open locks,
Whoever knocks!”

Figure 1 – Door in the shadows, the lady or the tiger?  Natick, Massachusetts, IPhone photograph. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Last Sunday I posted about the unusual sunlight during my morning walk at the mall. I wanted to share Figure 1 another IPhone photograph that I took that morning. This shows slanting shafts of sunlight and a hidden doorway buried in the shadows. It is kind of a tribute to the IPhone that it was able to pull off the necessary dynamic range for this photograph without my having to activate HDR. The door is just barely visible, but the lines of shadow draw our eyes first to it and then away from it.

Doors are intrinsically mysterious. They relate both to the famous logic problem of which door leads to freedom and the Edward R. Stockton’s famous short story “The Lady, or the Tiger?”

The story takes place in a land ruled by a king who practices “trial by ordeal,” where guilt or innocence is determined by giving the accused the choice of two doors, Behind one is a tiger. Opening that door, well, does not have a very positive outcome. Behind the other door is a lady whom the king has chosen for the accused. The king learns that his daughter has a lover and he is brought to trial by ordeal. The clever point is that the king has solved his problem either way. One door leads to the man’s death the other to marriage with someone other than the princess. The princess learns which door is which. When the man is brought to the arena, he looks to the princess for a hint as to which door to choose. She gives him a discreet signal.

Now herein lies the problem. Will she send him to his death or to the arms of a rival. Stockton in a famous tease doesn’t give us the answer. But instead leaves his reader with the words:

“And so I leave it with all of you: Which came out of the opened door – the lady, or the tiger?”