Our five year old has always been intensely interested in animals. Now his interest has expanded to examining their entire habitat. This was on one of our walks down to the Ft. Rachel Marina. Along the way is a small public boat launch area where he spotted a pair of spawning horseshoe crabs. It is now one of his favorite spots to examine some of the smaller visitors and inhabitants to the estuary.
This time we spotted a large whelk, a few green crabs, hermit crabs and a mud crab. Always present are the mussels, European periwinkles and of course the seaweed. Since some of the crab were hiding in this brown seaweed (species? some sort of wrack?) he decided to explore it in more detail, especially the gas filled floats.
Ok, let’s get back to some wildlife instead of flowers. I have a lot of images from the 22nd and a few of our walks that I haven’t had time to go through yet…time to get to it.
A beautiful great white egret (Ardea alba) with a fresh catch of a young eel common in the Mystic River estuary. This fellow provided my son and I with a good half hour of enjoyable watching as he repeatedly (and patiently) struck for fish, frogs and shrimp. Catching this eel he took off for a "sandbar" in the estuary to eat and then continue fishing. This is CRW_9996, one of him in flight is CRW_0001 (Rolled it over!) after rolling over 10,000 images!).
In the Nature & Wildlife set I have put the photos in the actual order taken instead of order uploaded.
In other news the entire family had a blast at the Seaport’s 75th Anniversary and it’s 2nd Annual Mystic Community Picnic. They opened up the Seaport to the local community (and anyone who happened to just be in town..) for free from 4pm to 9pm. A great boon to us as we have yet to get a Seaport membership. There were activities for the kids on the green, different bands playing period or sea related music, free rides on the Sabino and of course the picnic itself — bring your own or buy from an assortment of clam shack and bbq offerings. Although it finally rained during the event, it didn’t dampen spirits, especially as it was a light rain that spurted on and off for about an hour only. More later… but it was a great time for all.
After two days of solid fog everything was covered in water beads. This hosta(?) was in bloom and virtually cried to be photographed. Naturally I obliged. Hopefully I did it justice. I have also done a post-processed version of this image: Beads in White II.
The fog itself has been quite strange. Came on yesterday in the early, early a.m. (like 1:30am EST) I thought it would burn off by late morning, but it never did. Temperatures were in the mid 80’s but the humidity was 100% all day. At mid afternoon the best visibility was about 1 mile. Most of the day it was more like 1/10 of a mile. Unfortunately the fog claimed four lives as a small plane attempted an instrument landing at the local airport. Search efforts by police and the coast guard were also hampered by the dense fog.
We thought it would either rain or clear off overnight. Last night it was pretty thick again. I went out at midnight and came upstairs as wet as if I had taken a bath. This morning the sidewalk and cars were all wet as if it had rained. The fog provided me the opportunity to get some good shots of water beads (one of my favorite macro subjects). I couldn’t go far, but fortunately the blooming hostas along our front walkway provided good shots of both leaves and blooms with water beading on them.
A quartet of pink rose blossoms in various stages along our nightly walk to the Ft. Rachel Marina. These are growing on the river side of the road right outside one of the boatyards.
A humble snapdragon(?) found near the road on Water Street, on our way back from a visit to the Ft. Rachel Marina. The lush color drew me to it. Unfortunately I didn’t have any macro gear with me, so this along with the other 10 or so flower shots I took along the way (some wonderful gardens on that walk) were “faked”. This was shot with a 70-200 at 200mm + 2x converter. This meant standing back quite a bit to get within the focus zone.
