Readers’ wildlife photographs

If you have good wildlife photos, don’t forget to send them in!  Thanks.

Today’s theme is astronomical phenomena, and we have two contributors. Both contributors’ words are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

First, Bryan Lepore sends two photos and a video.

I submit two photos of the geomagnetic storm on Friday, 10 May, 2024 as viewed from latitude ~42 N ~71 W (Massachusetts), at about 10 PM.

Bryan adds this figure, which comes from a tweet by AuroraAlerts:

One more item occurred to me that should fit with the aurora photos : a map from Aurora Alerts on 10 May :

… you can see it goes down to New England. So I saw that indoors, and immediately stepped outside. Readers can scroll through Aurora Alerts to see the info, and I recommend subscribing.  I think there is supposed to be more solar activity than usual in the next so many months – some cyclic activity of many years length (I’d need a refresher).

Bryan also made a short video for YouTube showing the International Space Station flying by during the aurora:

Our second contributor is Rik Gern, who sent photos taken the day of the eclipse:

Here is a small batch that represents all the remaining pictures I currently have processed and ready to go. They are of varying quality, but there is a theme running thru them; they were all taken in my yard in Austin, TX on April 6th, the day of the full eclipse.

Where I live the totality lasted for about 90 seconds and I didn’t bother to try to photograph the eclipse itself because a lot of people who know a lot more about photography than I do were setting up to take and share some nice pictures of the corona and other great effects. Instead, because I was fascinated by the rapidly changing light, I took pictures of plant life around the yard as the early afternoon light got steadily darker and everything started to look like evening time, but without the long shadows. It was subtly disorienting.

The first picture is of one of my favorite volunteer plants, the false dayflower (Tinantia anomala).  I love the “face” in the flower! This species initially made an appearance in the yard about ten years ago and at first there weren’t many, but when I discovered what a good looking plant it is I let it grow pretty much wherever it made an appearance and now it dominates the back end by the compost pile.

This next plant, common hedge parsley, aka spreading hedge parsley or tall sock-destroyer (Trills arvensis), wasn’t fully in bloom at the time. Even when it does bloom the flowers are very tiny and easy to overlook. The leaves remind me of carrot tops, though I don’t know if they’re related.

The tufted yellow woodsorrell (Oxalis priceae) was growing at the base of a cactus plant. For the longest time I confused woodsorrel with clover and they do look similar, but their flowers are different and unlike clover, woodsorrel in not a nitrogen-fixing plant and livestock shouldn’t graze on it. Both are bee friendly though. You can learn more about the similarities and differences here.

It was too early in the year to observe flowers on this spineless prickly pear cactus (Opuntia ellisiana), but the new pads that appear every year are intriguing in their own right.This picture was taken just a few seconds before the eclipse reached totality.

Despite a light cloud cover at the time, the total eclipse was dramatic and picturesque, and I can understand why people travel a great distance to observe the phenomenon. The eclipse’s totality inspired the hours of photoshop processing that transformed the cactus picture into this personification of nature.