Diario de clightowler

My kids say I'm a geek, and I'm not in a position to disagree with them.

I love my phone and my magnifying clip for getting close-up photos, like the Six-spotted Orbweaver on a Common Milkweed leaf. It means I can get up really close and from a couple of different angles. But I've been wanting to get pictures of birds for a long time, and the phone just wasn't good enough. I got a Canon Powershot SX40 through Marketplace for $100 (CDN). I have no idea if it's considered a 'good' camera by people who know about these things, but I LOVE it. I got the Tribe Oidaematophorini (Plume Moth) from about 3 meters away, just from a quick point-and-click that I didn't expect to work out, and the Teasel, which took a while to get it to focus on the right thing. I'm watching videos on YouTube to learn more, and I'm gradually getting better.

I was standing on a bridge for the Common Comfrey, thinking it was too far away to get a good photo, but by chance I saw the Two-spotted Bumble Bee and managed to get a recognizable photo from at least 10 meters away! I could see some sort of moving spot with the naked eye, but that was it.

As for getting photos of birds, the camera is great, when I can see them. I was very excited to get an awesome picture of an American Goldfinch high up in a tree. Unfortunately, my big difficulty is spotting birds. My Merlin app tells me what's there, and I can hear that something is really close, but I look around for ten minutes and just can't find it. Often, I get a glimpse of something flying away, and I realize it must have been right above my head. Well, I suppose that takes practice, too.

I've also downloaded an app called Geo Tracker on my phone, and used it with a program I found called Geo Setter, to tag my photos with the location, even though I don't have GPS on my camera. Surprisingly, my family were considerably less excited about this than I was, which is where the 'Geek' comment came from. It's not the first (or the 100th) time they've called me a geek, and I'm okay with that!

Visited what we still call Oma's place this weekend, even though my mother-in-law died last year and my brother-in-law has now moved in. The place seems so different with all his things there. He used to live in Ottawa and drive over an hour several times a week to visit her, but now he's moved in and has over an hour's commute each way. My MIL was an awesome woman who lived alone on what used to be a farm, until her death at age 92. Her nearest neighbor was about a kilometer away. She needed help in the end, but she was independent, tough, and still as sharp as ever.

Peter's stuff is almost all still in boxes as he just doesn't have time to organize it as well as working, and looking after my other brother-in-law, who's now sick. He managed to do enough organizing so that our not-an-outdoorsman 17-year-old could have a bed inside, and our 14-year-old slept on the floor inside after one night of the stuffy tent. We got into the habit of sleeping in the tent whenever we went there, because Oma would definitely not allow the dog inside! We lost the dog a couple of years ago but continued with the tent because she found it overwhelming to have all of us in her clean, tidy and well-organized house (we are not clean, tidy or well-organized people!)

It used to be that I would find interesting wildlife and call the kids over to look at it. Now it's the other way around. My husband told me "James has a toad and says you'll probably want to upload it to iNaturalist!" Our 14-year-old got a photo of a spider and uploaded it (jay_the). I had my husband grab it and move it about 200 meters away from our tent. Any spider that can be photographed without my little magnifier is bigger than I can deal with - this one could have been photographed at a distance of 3 meters!

It was great to be away from the traffic so I could hear bird song, but I'm no good at spotting birds and the only ones I actually saw were American Robins, a Common Grackle and an Eastern Phoebe which has a nest in the doorway and regularly flies past our heads when we open the door. My husband is even worse than me at recognizing birds because every time he went through the doorway he said "Duck!" Even I know it's not a duck! Heard lots, though - Great Crested Flycatcher, Eastern Meadowlark, Ovenbird, Red-Eyed-Vireo, Northern Waterthrush, House Wren, Song Sparrow, and a Brown Thrasher who sang loudly for an hour at 5 am each morning. I was hoping to see the Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker that was there last year, but there was no sight or sound of it. Peter is probably happy about that, because it was very loud, banging incessantly on the metal roof of the woodshed.

The only other bird I saw was a dead wild turkey, which actually had some lovely colours in the plumage, along with many flies and American Carrion Beetles.

My favourite observation of the weekend was a Six-Spotted Tiger Beetle, which was beautiful.

I'd hoped to get more bug photos at night, but when I put out a white sheet with a flashlight on it, I got so covered in mosquitos (despite loads of spray), so I didn't stay out long. Luckily, there were fewer of them in the tent. I think the county drops dragonflies to try to keep the mozzies down, but I didn't manage to get photos this time. I'd love to be able to see the bats, sometime, but I think I'll just have to be content with listening to them and cheering them on as they feast on the mosquitos.