robwilbourn

Southbound Monarch Migration

September 29th, is highlighted on my calendar each year as the day to expect the southbound migration of Monarch butterflies to arrive in North Texas. This year I was not disappointed, as several of the beautiful butterflies showed up in my backyard naturespace. There they found our Blue mist plants to be in bloom, as well as a couple of other plants to support their southbound migration.

Generally, Monarchs from the Eastern United States and Canada that are making the southbound migration are in a state of reproductive diapause, which means that they will not mate and reproduce until arriving at their winter habitat in the mountains of Central Mexico. I have however, on several occasions captured photos/videos of the females depositing their eggs on the underside of milkweed leaves during the fall, which raises some doubt as to whether of not that individual butterfly was then able to complete the autumn migration.

**A queen butterfly, Danaus gilippus, also common in our naturespace. First cousin to the Monarch Danaus plexippus (same genus, different species), and often mistaken for a Monarch!**

Of course the butterflies must share the food sources with others, in this case, a healthy bumblebee.

Focus Shifting For Better Flower Photos

“Sheltering In Place” by order of just about every state and local politician in Texas has meant a great deal of time spent at home of late. Fortunately, as winter blends into spring, and our weather warms, we see major changes in our lawn and garden. The abundance of flowering plants has brought opportunities to photograph as well as edit photos. Enjoying close-up photography of several of our flowering plants often means using a tripod and a macro lens. While macro lenses generally provide a pleasing “bokeh” created by the blurry background, I frequently would like to see a little (sometimes a lot) more detail in my flower photos. Unfortunately, the construction of most macro lenses dictate that photographing with even the smallest aperture possible, you still may not have enough details in focus to create the photo that you are imagining. This led me to investigate Focus Shift Photography, which my Nikon Z7 handles nicely. While it is possible to take a series of photos of of a landscape using manually adjusted focus locations, for something as small as a flower, it seems prudent to tell the camera how many frames you want it to take, and let the camera adjust the focus point by tiny amounts as it racks off the selected number of frames.

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An interesting photo of a Sweet William a.k.a. Dianthus, but the shallow depth of field leaves me wanting to see more of the flower in focus. f/11 at 1/10th second.

Editing the photos your camera has taken into a single image is another issue. While there are several software programs designed specifically to do this, I find that Photoshop does a superb job of combining multiple images, automatically aligning and blending all of them into a single image of excellent detail and depth of field. Bring on the blossoms!

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A similar Sweet William/Dianthus – This one was made from 18 individual photos stacked, aligned, and blended in Photoshop.

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Another Sweet William/Dianthus – also18 individual photos stacked, aligned, and blended in Photoshop.

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Two separate Sweet William plants. The front one was the target photo. 18 photo stack. Note the the insect left front, also in focus.

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Purple Salvia – another 18 image stack showing serious detail and depth of field.

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Red Salvia – another 18 image stack, also showing great detail and depth of field.

Another Visit To The Medical Center Rookery

I recently had an opportunity for a short visit to the rookery located on University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center property. This time of year, the small four acre plot (about half of which the birds use for nesting) is at full capacity. By far the dominant species was the Great egret, (I estimated at least two hundred individual birds), but I also saw Snowy egrets, Black Crown night herons, White ibis, and a massive Anhinga. With all the squeaking and squabbling, the rookery is quite a sight to see this time of year.

_DSC4933 — ***Great Egret on the nest.***

_DSC4895 — **Black-crowned Night Heron**

Road Trip – Maroon Bells

Along with longtime friends and my sister, we made a road trip from Breckenridge across Independence Pass to the Aspen area, and eventually to the Maroon Bells. We enjoyed a picnic lunch with several friendly Gray jays before going to view the Bells. Fall colors were still very nice just south of Aspen, but many of the trees in the Maroon Bells area had already lost their leaves.

I have photographed the Maroon Bells several times before, and know that it is best photographed in the morning, but that just didn’t fit into our plans. The other issue was the presence of dozens of dead aspen trunks littering the shoreline of the lake. The most photographed attraction in Colorado opened late this year as a result of a massive avalanche this spring, and much of the damage has yet to be cleared.

Forecast snow for Thursday turned out to be accurate. Although it has stopped snowing for now, more is expected soon.

St Elmo in the Fall

Monday morning we decided that a venture to the Collegiate Peaks area of Colorado would be a great way to pass the day. Arriving in Buena Vista, Colorado, we went into the visitors center and received a recommendation from the attendant that led us a to nice drive west, past Mt. Princeton to the old mining town of St. Elmo, where the current human population is two persons.

Along the way we managed a couple of wildlife photos, but the real surprise was that the fall foliage was still in full color there, unlike the Breckenridge area, where the colors are fading fast.

Just a little fatherly advice for those who might be wanting to make this trip, stick to the main road unless you are on a dirt bike or a serious four wheel drive vehicle. We found county road 292 to be a challenge even to my four wheel drive Tundra.

More Colorado Fall – 2019

More wonderful fall colors in Colorado. If you haven’t read the previous blog, I recommend you do that before reading this.

robwilbourn.wordpress.com/2019/10/01/colorado-fall-2019/

We were out early the next morning for a trip west out of Ridgeway in search of Dallas Divide, also a much photographed autumn destination. Fall colors here were magnificent. Continuing on towards Telluride, we found Last Dollar Road. I had seen a couple of videos of this drive and thought we might enjoy it. We spent a fun couple of hours, with many photo stops, winding our way to Telluride though ranch land reportedly owned by clothing magnate Ralph Lauren. Though marked as a four wheel drive road, I never needed that capability in my Tundra, but the road is quite rough in several locations.

_DSC4005-Edit — **Dallas Divide – Quite a few photographers there to photograph**

Colorado Fall – 2019

In the process of planning our current trip to Colorado, I did a little research to find out that the fall colors in Western and Southwestern Colorado should be peaking just before our planned stay in Breckenridge. With that in mind, I planned a couple of days on the front of our trip to check out some of the iconic locations in the Ridgeway/Telluride area of the state.

We started with a late afternoon visit to Owl Creek Pass, found by driving an intricate network of dirt roads, but promising lots of opportunities for “leaf peeping”. Truth be told, I never found the “just right” location for composing one of the photos that I wanted, and it actually seemed a bit early for optimum fall colors in this locale, but I certainly didn’t come away completely disappointed.

The following day’s adventures will follow in another blog. Stay Tuned!!

_DSC3972 — **Never found the right spot (or the right light) to photograph this rock formation.**

_DSC3993 — **Our ride through the fall foliage.**

_DSC3999 — **A wonderful finish, taken exactly at official sunset.**

The Carousel

The carousel was a Christmas gift from our daughter. It occupies a prominent place in our backyard nature space, along with several other devices for attracting and feeding the birds, and yes, that is a real, live hawk, in fact a juvenile Cooper’s hawk, sitting on the bird bath.

It took a while after I erected the carousel for the birds to frequent it’s baskets of seed. I think that the fact that the baskets swing, and even the smallest chickadee was enough to send the carousel spinning, albeit slowly, was an issue to some. Eventually though, the carousel began to experience moderate visitation from the birds. Of course, no bird feeder escapes the occasional visit from squirrels, and we became accustomed to watching their various antics as the squirrels attempted to negotiate the swinging of the baskets as well as the free spinning of the wheel, all much like a carousel designed to entertain people.

Imagine my surprise when, just before bedtime last night, I peeked out the kitchen window to see something much larger than a squirrel occupying the entire bottom tier of the carousel. Based on the previous nights visitors, I had a pretty good idea what to expect when I walked outside with my flashlight. There in the bottom of the carousel laid a misguided marsupial clinging dearly to the carousel with three feet and her tail. It wasn’t so much that she couldn’t get loose, I think she was legitimately spooked by the swinging and spinning motion of the wheel and the baskets. After observing her for a few moments, I offered my help in getting free of the carousel, and after accepting, she eventually made her way down the pole and off into the night. I expect to see her back again one night very soon, but I believe she might have learned her lesson about the carousel.

Gulf Fritillaries

I noticed a couple of Gulf Fritillaries (Agraulis vanillea) in our backyard nature space over the weekend. Although I have seen them there before, sightings in this area are rare. They enjoyed the few blooms that are on our Lantana, and also shared the multitude of blooms on our Mallow plants with our resident Black chinned hummingbirds. I suspect that the real reason they were visiting us was because of the abundance of passion vine, their top choice of host plant for their eggs. The pictures show the bright orange and black markings displayed by this female of the species.

The Splendor of Glacier National Park

Glacier National Park, often referred to as “The Crown of the Continent”, is home of some of the most breathtaking scenery in the world. Glacier is also the centerpiece of the largest intact ecosystem in the lower 48 states, which covers over sixteen thousand square miles. The park itself takes in over a million acres of alpine forests and meadows, with 762 lakes, 563 streams, over 200 named waterfalls, 25 named glaciers, and over 745 miles of maintained hiking trails. For this naturalist and photographer, the opportunities seem essentially endless.

Angel Wing, seen from across Swiftcurrent Lake