Just when the tank runs dry, a helpful reader sends in his/her contribution. Today’s helper is Dennis Rankin from Ontario, whose words are indented:

I keep following your writings “religiously” since your publication of WEIT, including your website, although I seldom participate, with not much more than community college, and Spanish as my native language; your academic circle can sometimes be intimidating. Nevertheless, we have had a few short exchanges a while back that I like to use as bragging rights among my atheist friends. Thank you for that.

Here’s a selfie while hiking a tiny stretch of The Trans Canada Trail in Blackwater, Ontario, northeast of Toronto, within the Beaver River Wetland Conservation Area. And then a picture of a cricket (sorry I do not know the species) that I caught while getting gas.

As a last note, I’ve also been following Andrew Sullivan because of your writings and Sam Harris’s podcast. Sullivan is really good, and I can’t say I disagree with him on anything other than his Catholicism. I don’t get it. That’s when I throw my arms up, thinking: I guess human psychology is complicated.

Ceiling Cat bless Doug Hayes of Richmond, Virginia, who sent in a “photos of readers” selection when we had none left. Doug’s captions are indented below. (Doug has recently contributed several “readers’ wildlife photos” selection of birds outside his window: the “Breakfast Crew” series.)

Lorraine has been bugging me to send in a selfie. I hate having pictures taken. Sort of odd for a photographer, I guess. I think there may be about a dozen photos of me in existence since childhood. Oh, well. Here I am with my trusty Sony A7RIV in the backyard where I shoot all the “breakfast crew” photos. You can see the feeders, the plant bed behind me, and to the right are the trees where the Cardinals nest. The second photo is of the camera setup used for shooting all my photos: Sony A7RIV, Sony FE 200-600 zoom lens and Sony 1.4X teleconverter. The camera support is an Ifootage Cobra 2 monopod that has extendable feet for extra stability. Attached to the monopod is a Neewer gimbal head which makes tilting and panning with heavy telephoto and zoom lenses a breeze and is much more portable than a traditional tripod.

I have been photographing birds and other critters for the past three years. I have about 50 years of experience in fine art and commercial photography. No joke, I got my first professional camera at age 11: a Lieca IIIG given to me by one of my uncles who won it in a poker game while stationed in Germany. I taught myself the basics with photography magazines and books from the local library and then studied photography at Virginia Commonwealth University in the early 70s.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, and comrades, this is the last “readers’ photos” feature I have. You won’t leave the tank empty, will you? To rectify this dire situation, simply send me a couple of photos of you (preferably in lockdown) with appropriate captions.

Today’s reader is David Hughes (I’m always amazed at the range of talents and interests in the readers).  I’ve indented David’s captions:

Earlier this year, in that distant pre-Covid era, you were good enough to post some of my wildlife photos from India. You’re always requesting photos of WEIT readers, so I thought I’d audition for that slot too. I don’t have any pictures of myself during Covid lockdown, and they’d be pretty dull anyway, so I’ve attached a couple from my working career. I hope they’ll be a bit more interesting.

Quick biography: I’m a marine biologist working at the Scottish Association for Marine Science, located just outside the town of Oban on the Scottish west coast. My job is now exclusively teaching. I’m no longer active in research, but when I was, my job gave me the chance to study some remote and interesting marine ecosystems.

The photo below was taken on the deck of a research vessel. I’m washing deep-sea sediment samples through a sieve to filter out the tiny worms, molluscs, crustaceans and other animals that inhabit the seabed. Animals living in deep-sea sediments are mostly very small, so we have to use very fine mesh (down to 0.25 mm) to retain them. You can probably tell from my attire that this picture wasn’t taken in Scotland. It’s actually from a research cruise I took part in some years ago to the tropical Pacific, off the eastern coast of Papua New Guinea, where we were surveying the impact of mining waste disposal on the deep-sea environment.

This one was taken in Scotland, about 10 m down on the bottom of Loch Creran, a sea loch just north of Oban. It illustrates the other major type of research I was involved with, namely field studies of the ecology of benthic communities along the Scottish west coast. Here I’m positioning a video camera to record animal activity around reefs built by the polychaete tubeworm Serpula vermicularis. Tubeworm reefs are very rare in Scotland, and Loch Creran has the best and most extensive examples.

The reefs were featured in an episode of the BBC TV series Coast, with me appearing as one of the local “experts”. You can witness my 15 seconds of TV fame here [JAC: David makes his first appearance at 1:32.]

Get your photos and captions in, folks? Who doesn’t want 15 minutes of fame?

Today’s reader is Daniela Quinsani, and I’ve indented her captions. Once again we have a reader with an avocation showing real talent.

I’m Daniela Quinsani, I’m from Brazil, but I moved to Minnesota, so we are almost neighbors now.

I’m a biologist and I started reading your blog thanks to my advisor from my Master’s in Genetics. He used to show me some of your posts and we discussed them. I’m very thankful to him!  It has been five years now that I read the blog everyday.

My first picture was last year, I’m with my husband in the Gruta do Lago Azul (Blue Lake Cave), in Brazil. This is in a city called Bonito, which means beautiful. It is a really wonderful place with caves, waterfalls, and incredible nature. You can see toucans in the city, and we even saw an armadillo in one of the parks.

In this quarantine, I’m reading a lot. Other than that, one of my hobbies is drawing.

Well, this is the last one in the tanks, and th- th- th- that’s all, folks! Unless, that is, someone steps up to the plate.

Today we have engineer, physicist, and origami master Robert Lang, whose creations have been featured before (here), as well as several dollops of photos (e.g., here and here).  Robert’s captions are indented:

I saw your plea for Photos of Readers contributions today, and while I have no pictures of me since COVID began (all my travel and lecturing went poof), I will offer two pictures from past times.

The first is from my last exhibition before COVID closed everything; a show at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, WI. This past winter they brought in 3 separate exhibitions of origami, and were kind enough to include my work in all three parts of the show. This photo was taken at one of the gallery walks (an informal walk-and-lecture); the piece just behind me is “Ghost Deer,” a family of deer, each folded from a single (large) uncut square of mulberry paper.

The second photo is inspired by one of yours, adventuring in the mountains (from about 25 years ago). That’s me halfway across the Tyrolean traverse after climbing the Lost Arrow Spire in Yosemite with a group of friends. The Lost Arrow is a pinnacle that is separated from the cliff next to Yosemite Falls. To climb it, one rappels about 250’ down from the rim to the notch at the base of the spire, then climb back up the spire, dragging the rope that is still attached to the rim; once you get to the top, you pull the rope taut and traverse back to the rim (which is what I’m doing in the photo). It was pretty adventurous, but still cannot compare to your photo, because, well, I’m still wearing clothes.

There’s only one submission in the tank after this, and if I don’t get any for several days I’ll be forced to ditch this feature due to lack of interest. However, you can always fix that. . .

Today’s reader is Heather Payne from Australia, whose captions are indented.

It’s been a long journey – 16,500 km and 73 years – from my childhood in the East End of London to retirement in sub-tropical Australia.

After a bachelor degree in Exercise & Sports Science and a graduate diploma in Library and Information Management in Adelaide I sold almost everything I owned and headed north to spent 10 years ‘living lightly on the land’ on a communally-owned property near the Queensland/New South Wales border.

The 1.5acre property where my husband, Phil, and I now live, 60km inland from Byron Bay, is a refuge both for us and for our abundant wildlife.

So many large, hollow-bearing trees have been felled in cattle farming in this area we decided to install nest boxes for various species. I’m harnessed up and ready for the climb to put them in place.

For some years now our property has been invaded, as has much of Australia, by cane toads (Bufo marinus). They’ve devastated native snake, frog and raptor species. We carefully researched the most humane ways of drastically reducing toad numbers. Even so, I can only cope with the gruesome business by clowning it up a little.

I’ve ridden 1000s of kilometers on two wheels. Then I discovered recumbent trikes.

I received one more, so after this I have one in the tank. That means that unless I hear from other readers, this nice series will go toes up. Send in your profile, please!

Today’s reader is Joe McClain, whose words are indented below:

Here are a couple of photos. My wife and I moved to a 46-acre spread in Floyd County, Virginia, in February. I am working remotely for William & Mary. One photo, taken today (July 21) is me with a stunning and stunned specimen of Melanerpes carolinus — red bellied woodpecker. This fellow smacked into the window of my home office. I went outside, gathered him up and soothed him. He flew off after a few minutes, landing on the trunk of a tree and immediately began pecking for food. The second photo is me with my wife, Helen, inside a yurt. Floyd has a yurt store, but this one is the first I’ve ever entered. This yurt is along a trail on the property of RiverEdge Farms, where we get produce that our own garden is not producing.