Moon over Hopewell

moon over Hopewell, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

Just a photo from New Jersey, taken last week. A moon and a globe and a spire...

Night Lights

The last night in Costa Rica I went up on the hotel roof, on the 5th floor, and looked out into the Central Valley around the city of San Jose.  It was so black, and with little dots of lights here and there.

Then I turned on the camera in night mode (very long exposure, no flash) and realized that you can make totally new images from a scene like that by fooling around a little bit.  So, here are some of my abstractions from that night.  (More photos like this here on Flickr.)

 

'masts'

 

 'flying east'

 

'lonely snake, away from the flock'

 

'sea horses'

The tree frogs are out!

It is definitely spring here in New Jersey, despite the frost in the grass this morning.  Last night we heard the gray tree frogs calling at full speed as high-pitched bubble noises from the trees, and we also heard another frog species from a pond nearby.

Finally spring; this winter started right after superstorm Sandy with its snowstorm 5 days after the hurricane it, and then it never really let up.  Sunshine today, blue sky, the birds are chattering and the frogs are quaking and queaking... Nice!!!

Gray tree frog, Hyla versicolor, photo by Robert A. Coggeshall, public domain.

The deer and the train

Worlds Apart, originally uploaded by ericwill.

Another fantastic train photo by our friend EW. Click on the photo for more information. This photo just won a big award, congratulations Eric!

Furry evening visitor

A few nights ago I met not a nemesis, but a furry face and naked wings when I was about to turn off the lights in the living room downstairs.  A bat was flying around unhappy and couldn't get out.  How it got in is a mystery, since all our doors and windows have screens.

Wise from past experiences with bats you should not try to catch them in the air, you just can't.  Better to turn off the lights on the room (and the rest of the house), and turn on outside lights, and leave the doors to the outside open (and hope not many night-flying insects come in).  LA and I did this, but the bat disappeared.  We turned on the lights again, and didn't see it, but we heard it.

A small high-pitch chirping sound from behind the uninstalled cast iron wood stove... We got thick leather gloves (bats can bite) and the old salad spinner bucket we use to get salad from the garden, and then looked for it.  It was hanging from one of our thick cotton curtains and was not that happy when I tried to remove it and put it in the bucket, but eventually it loosened up its grip on the curtain with its thumbs on the wings.

In the bucket it first acted dead, but suddenly came alive and started walking around in circles on its knuckles on the wings, which looks just like the vampire bats walking towards some unsuspecting cow that will be bitten in its leg (except ours was just crawling, not walking).  Camera out, to prove the presence of the bat, camera on, take picture, take picture 2 while bat is desperately trying to get out.  They can't get out of buckets, at least I don't think so.  We then let it onto the porch railing and it took off fast.

I e-mailed a bat research friend, DW, and asked him what species it was based on the photos.  Around here we have two common species with the most boring names you can imagine for bats: Little Brown Bat and Big Brown Bat (I am not making this up). Do bat researchers call these LBB and BBB?  I don't know, but I would if I was doing bat research. Except LBB is used for any Little Brown Bird by the birders too, so you have to keep track of night and day animals.

What we had in our living room turned out to be a Big Brown Bat (Eptesicus fuscus), but a small version of it, like a teenager.

As DW said: "See the really dark fur around the face? That is actually subadult pelage, and this little guy is just molting into adult pelage. He may not have been flying on his own for all that long, and got a little confused."

pelage:  the complete furcoat of a mammal

Obs-lista June 7-8, 2011

An 'obs-lista' is an observation list of the species you have seen at a particular place, during a particular time, or for a particular project.  When we grew up in Sweden we used to make lists like these for certain trips and cross off as many species as we could.  This is not a complete list at all, just a few notes of special things seen in New Jersey and Pennsylvania during the last 24 hours.

Japanese knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum)- this invasive species has taken over like a 1.5 m tall dusty green plague along the railroad line between Trenton and Levittown, Pennsylvania.  It was initially planted as a nice garden plant in the US, but quickly became a horribly invasive weed.  The rhizomes in the soil shoot up new shoots over and over and the plant spreads sideways very quickly.

Cedar waxwings ('sidensvansar') - they are back!  Every June we see cedar waxwings that come and eat the fruits on our Amelanchier tree ('häggmispel').  Only problem is that our Amelanchier tree died last summer from a fungal disease.  The cedar waxwings didn't really look hungry, so I hope they find some other berries to eat.  I love these birds and their 'sirring' sounds.

Monarch butterflies - they are back too!  I have only seen one so far, but still, one butterfly can lay a lot of eggs on a milkweed plant (assuming she mated first...). Apparently there is another invasive milkweed called swallow wort that monarchs also lay their eggs on, but the larvae become sick from that species.  Monarchs, stick to the real milkweeds (Asclepias), so you don't fail to make more monarchs.

Box turtle.  This was a sad occasion this morning.  A nice sturdy box turtle had tried to cross our road but got run over.  All that was left was the 15 cm long shell, broken in one end.  I put the shell up on a rock in the forest.  These ancient creatures are amazing, but they don't do well on asphalt with fast cars.

Colorado beetle.  Only one seen so far on our property, and I hope this is not the beginning of this year's garden pest.  It seems like every year a different insect species becomes a problem.  We have had invasions of Japanese beetles, brown marmorated stinkbugs, Asian lady beetles, toxic blister beetles, and bagworms during different years.  I have no problem with killing such insects, but not with poisons - we mostly use the drowning technique. We picked the blister beetles off our beets and swiss chard by hand last year, with gloves on, since they can cause bad dermatitis and poisoning. Not only the weather is out of control but the invasive animals and plants too!

Fire flies - they are back!  I love fireflies.  Their green glow make nice streaks in the hot summer evenings, and make this place tropical (in the good sense).  The heat makes it feel tropical in the bad sense.  Tomorrow it is predicted to be 100 degrees Fahrenheit (=37 Celsius) here. Too hot!

Costa Rica nightlife

Catching bats at night, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

One of the most amazing experiences in Costa Rica this year was when we got to catch bats in the early (but dark) evening using mist nets, the same kind of nets you use to catch birds. Usually the bats would 'see' (hear) the nets and avoid them, but we set up the nets near a water hole where they get some needed drinks before they go out hunting. During about 1.5 hours after darkness had fallen at 6 PM we caught 9 bats from 6 different species. Some larger, some really tiny. Our project leader was bat expert extraordinaire, Don Wilson from the Smithsonian. There are photos of several of the species we caught on my Flickr website. Some were male (easy to see!) and one female was pregnant.

Part of the experience was also to get chewed up and bitten by many many chiggers, tiny little mite-like creatures that suck blood and give you big itching welts for days after wards. They are so small they crawl through sock and pant-fabric, unfortunately. I probably had 100 bites, but most are healed by now. We have chiggers in our yard in New Jersey as well. Not much to do about them.

Things we ought to do:

Motivational Poster, originally uploaded by Forrest Fossil.

Make Time for Things You Love.

Easier said than done. This great photo by Forrest Fossil on Flickr was made with a flashlight, and isn't it great? It probably took a longer exposure time than normal to spell out those words in the dark. Make time... as if you could make time, but you can rearrange time and thereby make time...

Conversation at our house

 "Oh, come kids, hurry up, look, look, you are going to miss it! It is nearly gone now! "
Thump, thump, thump, comes kids footsteps down stairs and dining room.
" Mom, what is it?", says one kid.
" Look, the last sunset of 2010!"
Kid's comment:  "Sigh, you are so silly!"

Happy New (and belated) New Year everybody!
Now it is MMXI.

The moon last night

The disappearing moon last night, right before the total eclipse. Click on the photo for a larger version.
copyright 350z33 (talk) [via Wikipedia].

Lunar happenings tonight...

There will be a full lunar eclipse tonight, which we in North America should at least be able to see, if the skies stay clear (keep your fingers crossed, right now we have scattered clouds).  In Sweden, you have to look at it right before sunrise. Not since 1638 has there been a lunar eclipse on the winter solstice. I am setting my alarm clock to get up at 2 AM to see some of it. Imagine the old vikings, celebrating around a bonfire on the solstice, and then suddenly the moonlight disappears and the moon turns dark red - how could that not be seen as a sign of some sort? 

In honor of these amazing celestial phenomena, I also would like to share a great moon poem by Molly Fisk:

Hunter's Moon

Early December, dusk, and the sky
slips down the rungs of its blue ladder
into indigo. A late-quarter moon hangs
in the air above the ridge like a broken plate
and shines on us all, on the new deputy
almost asleep in his four-by-four,
lulled by the crackling song of the dispatcher,
on the bartender, slowly wiping a glass
and racking it, one eye checking the game.
It shines down on the fox’s red and grey life,
as he stills, a shadow beside someone’s gate,
listening to winter. Its pale gaze caresses
the lovers, curled together under a quilt,
dreaming alone, and shines on the scattered
ashes of terrible fires, on the owl’s black flight,
on the whelks, on the murmuring kelp,
on the whale that washed up six weeks ago
at the base of the dunes, and it shines
on the backhoe that buried her.

(c) Molly Fisk, reprinted with permission, and you can read more about her work on her website.

Evening snapshot - moon and Christmas lights

moon and lights at Nassau Inn, Princeton, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

It is really hard to take a photo of the moon and trees with Christmas lights with a tiny camera without a tripod. I thought it was cool how the color of the moon was so different from the lights, I couldn't really tell that by eye. The moon is also so tiny, our eyes are so often zooming in on it that we forget how small and far away it really is.

After sunset

Hesperus - Blue Lake Ranch, Colorado, 10 PM, a day in August 2010:

At first I thought it was an owl, but then the tone was joined by another yapping sound and another howl and another.  They hunt in packs, communicating by eerie sounds in the night.  I love this sound - last time I heard it was in Yellowstone National Park when at 5.30 AM during a meteor shower in early September a few years ago we heard a coyote pack on a mountain across the wide valley, soon answered by a wolf pack howling from another mountain ridge nearby.  In southern Colorado, you only hear the coyotes, but they are the real thing.  It makes you think about wide expanses of land, the Wild West, and old western movies.  I love the sounds of coyotes!  We have coyotes in New Jersey too, but they are quiet, probably because there are so many more people, cars, dogs, and houses in NJ and the coyotes try to avoid detection.  Out here in the west they can roam free.

Oh, and if you want to go to one of the best bed and breakfasts/ hotels/ inns in the USA for an unforgettable stay, book a room or cottage for a few nights at Blue Lake Ranch in southern Colorado.  The breakfasts are amazing, and Jackie makes the best biscuits and sausage gravy (a very American thing) and chicken tortilla casserole (a very Southwestern dish) for the breakfast table. What a treat!  The gardens are gorgeous, the place is like an oasis in the dry high-desert and pine forests. It is the kind of place you are glad you know about as a refuge that day when you need to get away.  It is probably one of the best and nicest places I have stayed at ever.

More photos from Blue Lake Ranch here.

edible delights

Bento 17-260710Nuit, originally uploaded by NoveiMC.

This is actually the inside of a lunch box, a bento box from Japan, and you can eat all the contents. Some amazing kitchen artist (and mom, maybe) have made this just to it can be eaten a few hours later for lunch. Like that fish for the cat. Isn't it amazing? I would never have time for things like this, but I like looking at them. There are more bento box photos here.

painting the dark

Making art is hard, but I think it is even harder if you paint night scenes. In a recent issue of the Pastel Journal, Don Williams is interviewed and they show some of his night scenes, which remind me of Winston Link's railroad photos, some paintings by Edward Hopper, and old black and white film noir scenes. Take a look at William's art here.