Category: Freeverse

AMBUSH

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Nature teaches us
Suspect every corner
Something may be waiting

Cover: Flower crab spider waits for his time.

As I traversed the trail up the hill, the remnants of an altercation with one of the quail revealed itself.

Cerveau de Monarque (Monarch Brain)

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It’s not ADHD
OCD
It’s not.
Is it?

Turkey, quail, coyote, lynx, mice, rabbit, deer, fox. They are all around here doing their life. I bring them around. Entice them so I can see them up close. Well, actually, most of them I don’t bring in. They just show up.
I had high hopes with mourning cloak caterpillars. Maybe I could document some of their life cycle. Then they scattered one night. Not to be seen again. Now it’s the monarch butterfly who’s piqued my interest.
We were gifted a milkweed at Christmas and managed not to kill it since then. I was in the middle of completely ignoring it when one afternoon I caught sight of a monarch circling the plant. Grabbed the FX30 and shot some footage and jpgs. The specimen graced the plant with some eggs and now we’re expecting.
Something new to read up on or “youtube” to get to the bottom of rearing the hopeful new grandkids…grandflies?
Anyway, as usual, I really don’t know anything. You start digging and pretty soon it’s all about propagating more milkweed. “You likely don’t have enough or “Watch out for this, be careful of that.”
It’s a rabbit hole alright.
We’ll see what happens next.

The FX30 is not a photo-centric camera, but it does ok. (No viewfinder…oy)

Still, with a little practice:

What I do like about the camera is 240FPS with 4:2:2 color. Float like a butterfly.

Patterns

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Nature’s plan
Void
Of emotion

Another of my “hopes dashed” sagas.
A moment of peripheral movement piqued my interest. A bird exiting from under the eaves of the house could mean a new nest. Walking to the eave, a house finch protested. He was atop a gate, feet apart in a defensive stance. Our eyes met and I walked away.
Within a week, there was a full nest.
Again, I started planning to document the life cycle in video and photos. I dug up an old action cam that I can operate with a phone app. But how do I mount it? Looking through my hardware, there were some steel straps that could be modified perfectly. Everything was ready down to the 1/4-20 anchor. I was pretty sure the eggs were in the nest. The plan was to install the camera in a couple of days.
The next day, the nest was on the ground and the eggs eaten (partial shell in the photo).
Seems one of our scrub jays took the opportunity to nourish himself with a high protein snack. He had been hanging around the eaves on another side of the house hunting a grasshopper (which I appreciated).
Maybe next time.