Readers’ wildlife photos

Please send in your wildlife photos if you have some good ones! Thanks.

Today we have photos from Matt Young, who’s often posted at the Panda’s Thumb site. His captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. This is the first of two installments.

Here are some photos I have taken since the beginning of the year. I have posted most of these on Panda’s Thumb, so some of the text may be familiar to some readers. Most of them were taken with a small camera, Panasonic Lumix DC ZS200, which I carry around with me almost all the time. It is very good except at the longest focal length, at which the image gets slightly blurry. All of the pictures are essentially grab shots, mostly taken while strolling around Boulder, Colorado, generally at Walden Ponds, Wonderland Lake, or Coot Lake.

It is hard to know what to include, and I do not want to wear out my welcome, but I think I can divide these pictures into 2 categories: things that are insects and things that are not insects. Let us start with things that are not insects.

Golden columbine, Aquilegia chrysantha. This summer, I was, as Feynman might say, observing the gorgeous garden of my friend Ron Wittmann (coauthor of Colorado Flora: Eastern Slope, Fourth Edition: A Field Guide to the Vascular Plants, as well as a companion volume on the western slope). It was raining and fairly nasty, but I managed this snapshot before we ducked back inside.

The golden columbine is not the Colorado state flower; that is the Colorado blue columbine, A. caerulea. I have a picture of that too, but unfortunately it lacks the raindrops:

While we are talking about plants, I came across this ginkgo tree – Ginkgo biloba – along Boulder Creek, in June. An ancient tree, supposedly very similar to its 170 million-year-old ancestors. The tree and its wood are very resistant to insects and diseases, and I remember hearing that it had outlived its enemies, which seems incorrect to me. I saw this specimen while strolling along the Creek near the Boulder Public Library.

Though I lived for many years more or less across the street from some ginkgo trees, I have to confess that I never noticed before that the leaves grow in bundles, like pine needles; the Wikipedia article tentatively classifies them in the division Pinophyta. The leaves themselves show veins, which are somewhat hard to see in this picture, that radiate outward like flattened pine needles. Unfortunately, despite the wet weather, the tree now shows signs of stress.

I found this juvenile red-tailed hawk – Buteo jamaicensis – sitting on the sidewalk next door and being harassed by a couple of blue jays – Cyanocitta cristata. Here are the hawk and one of the blue jays, as well as a portrait of the hawk. While I was out on an errand, my neighbor took her to a rescue place, where they pronounced her to be female, 1.5 months old, and unable to fly yet, but not injured. They said they would keep her and release her when she can fly. She probably fell out of a nest in a nearby tree, but I saw no sign of parents taking care of her. The blue jays may also have a nest nearby, because they get very agitated when a hawk lands on a telephone pole in the backyard.

One day this spring, at Coot Lake outside Boulder, I noticed this Canada goose – Branta canadensis – being shadowed by a snow goose – Anser caerulescens. The solitary snow goose followed a meter or two behind the Canada goose the entire time we watched. Since the two species are known to hybridize, I wondered whether they were a pair.

The end of April seemed kind of late in the season, but these Eurasian collared doves –Streptopelia decaocto – were acting kind of, well, lovey-dovey, so I pruriently snapped their picture. The collared doves seem to have colonized the city, and (as I have noted earlier) I no longer see nor hear mourning doves – Zenaida macroura – within the city limits. I do not know whether they have universally outcompeted mourning doves in urban settings, and I sometimes encounter a mourning dove at Walden Ponds. There are many more collared doves in the city now than there ever were mourning doves.

Decidedly non-insect, these mushrooms were growing on the top of a cottonwood stump. I have not the foggiest idea what they are.

And finally, technically non-insect, a harvestman – order Opiliones – who took up residence on a cedar fence.

Technical notes. Walden Ponds are named after Wally Toevs, “the Boulder County Commissioner who spearheaded the plan to convert the gravel pits into a wildlife habitat in the 1970s.” They have nothing to do with Henry David Thoreau. Coot Lake was famous for a while because of nudists skinny-dipping there.

All these pictures were taken with the Lumix ZS200. It is a nice little camera with a zoom range of 24-360 mm (35‑mm equivalent), though as noted you cannot push it too hard at the longest focal length. I am not, contrary to what my wife will tell you, a shutterbug, but I crop my pictures, adjust the exposure, and sharpen them. I have been known to dodge or burn, but rarely since I gave up my enlarger. Figure 1, incidentally, would have been nothing if I had not sharpened it to bring out the entirely fortuitous raindrops.