Readers’ wildlife photos

Today’s photos are from Dean Graetz, who’s compiled various assorted photos, each with a story. Click on the photos to enlarge them; Dean’s stories and captions are indented.

Photos with a Story

Photography makes my life interesting.  I photograph scenes that look interesting and then explore the story they have to tell.  Almost always, the story is far more interesting than my photograph.  Here are eight examples of photos and their story.

This is the most beautiful flower I know. It is a dry country ephemeral and its (arterial) blood-red flowers are stunning. It is much loved and cultivated under the name Sturts Desert Pea (Swainsona formosa).  Its story is from the ‘Dreamtime’ mythology of Aboriginal people.  A young women (and child) who were promised to a Warrior eloped with another man: an act punishable by death.  The vengeful jilted Warrior tracked them, and at night, killed all three.  At dawn, he was horrified to find these flowers growing where blood had been spilt.  No matter where he fled, dawn relentlessly revealed the persecuting blood flowers, displaying his crime and eventually destroying him.:

The story of this ‘cute’ image is a technological one.  The water-repellent waxy cuticle of this sturdy leaf forces the rain drops to coalesce and form slightly-flattened spherical globules.  Each globule now acts as a lens visibly enlarging details of the underlying leaf surface.  A natural microscope.  In the1670s, an amateur Dutch scientist, Leeuwenhoek, made the first microscope using simple glass beads—a globule lookalike—as lenses.  His invention significantly and irreversibly enhanced human observing power and began the critical science of microbiology.  Since before and after, with raindrops and waxy leaves, Nature continues to demonstrate its small-scale microscopes:

A near-spherical, balanced granite rock poses three questions: why round, why balanced, and how did it get there?  Roundness is a granite characteristic because it (exfoliate) weathers in large slivers (see LHS edge below) like a peeling orange.  The rock is balanced because a line through its centre of mass passes through the contact area with the base rock – thus perfectly vertical.  Because there is no hard rock connection between the balanced and its base, how did it get there?  The geological answer is a step-wise process beginning with the cooling and cracking of liquid magma, millions to billions of years ago, then chemical weathering of hard rock to less resistant material, and finally the eroding away of the softer material.  So, the balanced rock in the picture is the remnant core of very, very much larger volume of granite now removed – like the pit/stone of a peach.  It is difficult to accept this explanation because we just cannot grasp the vast expanse of time involved, but the circumstantial geological evidence is there:

A female Leaf Curling Spider (Phonognatha graeffei) hidden by the structure she built, waits for the vibrations of flying insects struggling in her web.  This one species, though common, has an uncommon set of behaviours such as selecting a leaf, curling and silking it into shape, then hauling it up from ground level and centring it into a funnelling web.  The sexes cohabit in separate locations within the sheltering leaf.  This spider’s story raises the usual two questions.  The Why question is easy – because it obviously works.  The species is sufficiently abundant to be labelled Common.  How could such a strategy come to be?  There is the usual blind faith assertion of Big G’s intelligent design.  Or the reasoned argument that because the behaviour is instinctive, not learned, then it must be heritable and therefore likely variable.  Thereafter, Nature will relentlessly reward the strategy that ‘works best’, as it has done here:

This is a difficult photo to interpret.  I was shooting straight up into the sky.  The uppermost layer is actually a shelf or ledge projecting out over the lower rock wall.  The story here is based on two features.  There are two very different rock types with a very sharp boundary between the two.  The upper layer appears to have been smeared over the lower.  The upper is a layer of rocky ‘rubbish’, materials of diverse types and sizes jumbled together.  It looks like what a bulldozer blade might push up.  The bulldozer here was a glacier.  The timing was about 720 million years ago when this part of the Australian continent was located at the Equator.  Now known as the Sturtian Glaciation, it began the speculation that planet Earth may once have been Snowball Earth.  Geological timing and ages are always thought-provoking:

This magnificently gaudy grasshopper introduces an intriguing story.  Locally known as Leichhardt’s Grasshopper (Petasida ephippigera), its flamboyant colouring says, ‘don’t eat me’.  It is not common, found only on certain plants in three areas of northern Australia.  The intriguing story is about Leichhardt, a young man seeking fame and fortune as an explorer and naturalist.  Which he did with his 1845 expedition (4000 km, 2500 m, 443 days long).  On that long walk, he encountered and described this grasshopper species noting their abundance.  Subsequently, he achieved lasting fame with his 1848 expedition to span the East to West coasts of the continent (4000 km, 2500 m), an expedition that completely disappeared without a trace.  Interestingly, so did the namesake grasshopper.  It was assumed extinct until positively identified more than a hundred years after their 1845 description of abundance.  I photographed this one in the same type of country where Leichhardt first saw them.  This was a minor thrill because I had long known the story and had speculated where in Australia’s deserts the 1848 Leichhardt party had ‘done a perish’:

Kenya (30 years ago): Day1.  Field work with the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).  My local (Kikuyu) Assistants are using my soil colour charts to determine the colour classification of their skin.  I had explained to them that Melanin determined the skin colour of all humans: colour variation was in the amount and packaging.  My sermon concluded with the statement that no people were Black.  Very dark Brown: Yes.  But not the derogatory Black.  My two Assistants agreed but were quite sure that the Maasai were Black.  I knew that the Kikuyu disliked the Maasai and thought this statement reflected cultural bias, not fact.  Nobody was Black!:

Kenya: Day2.  UNEP added a young woman to the fieldwork.  Neither of us knew why.  A young American non-scientist, who was very excited to be out in the African Bush.  My concern was that bra-less may be comfortable but potentially unwise.  Come noon, universal lunchtime, with the wonderful lunch packs the tourist hotels provided.  Right on time, two Maasai appeared, both armed, announced by my retreating Assistants as “Trouble, Bwana, trouble!”  I did think then that it could turn into an SOS moment (aka Shit!  Oh!  Shit!).  However, it was peacefully resolved by international trade.  The two Maasai agreed to one photograph and a swift departure for two unopened lunch boxes, one Australian and one American.  She thought it was all thrilling.  I was both hungry and wrong.  The skin colour of one Maasai was the darkest I had ever seen.  But Black?  I plead selective breeding because the Maasai value Black as a spiritual ‘strong’ colour and that could influence mate choice.  My Kikuyu Assistants were delighted that they knew more than the Bwana: