It’s not a fly. It doesn’t look like a bee. It can’t be a dragonfly (wings not held at right angles to the body when at rest).
Is it a wasp? Maybe.
These two shots show that even a 300mm-equivalent zoom just isn’t always enough camera.
Even at maximum zoom on my camera, I’m thinking, “Is that a bug?”
It is a bug, but I still don’t know which kind. It’s also a tiny file when cropped.
Even the trailer is inspiring in this classic one-minute #naturevideo meets #TheShawshankRedemption.
It was a windy but sunny day at the lake, and the wasps, bees, and dragonflies were out in abundance, albeit not always perched for very long.
Without a macro lens, the best I can do is crop my photos.
Sometimes, that’s good enough for me.
A smiley face . . . Who knew?
This is post #808 in this blog.
A horse? Yes, a horse.
But what a horse. In 2014, Maclean’s published a list of “10 surprising facts” about Northern Dancer. I admit I don’t follow horse racing or jumping, so almost any fact could surprise me. But look at these two. Continue reading
With sustained winds from 125 to 185 miles/hour, why did it take so long for Hurricane Irma to cross the Caribbean? It was days, not hours, from landfall on Barbuda to landfall on Florida: a distance of about 1,500 miles.
The answer, of course, is that hurricanes are circular storms. The quoted speeds are for those winds whipping around the eye, but the forward speed of the whole storm averages only 15 to 20 miles/hour, and some don’t make even that, or not all the time. Continue reading
The original: I wrote about these pilots and their support crews early on as National Treasure #4.
The follow-up: They were at Kingston’s Air Show on 09 Sep, but had to cut their practice short on Friday due to a drone being in the area.
The original: I covered these as National Treasure #39.
The follow-up: The biggest solar flares since 2006 drove great aurora borealis displays this past week, with possible sightings into the weekend, depending on the weather.
If you want an aurora forecast, there’s an app for that, drawing on information from NASA’s Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) spacecraft.
“This velvety wine is smoot
and redolent with the aromas of blackcurrant and vanilla.”
OK, I’m making that up. Not the whole thing, just everything except “this wine” and “is smoot.” For some reason I blanked out the rest of the sentence on the label.
I come from a line of typo-hounds on my father’s side. I don’t no how long a line, because both my paternal grandparents dyed bee four I was borne. So eye cant say weather they were similarly endowed/afflicted. Continue reading
The Big Guy and I were in Yellowstone National Park in July. I had read about Thomas Moran’s famous painting, and I was interested in getting a shot of the same scene, give or take 145 years.
I couldn’t get quite as far downstream as where Moran had stood because that viewpoint path was closed for maintenance. Worse, we were there in the afternoon, which meant shooting into the sun to replicate Moran’s view. Next time, I’ll go in the morning . . . Continue reading
The fun never stops. This week:
And, of course, those magnificent birds!
Posted: 2025 Jun 13
Thanks to John Whitman for this slightly dismayed face from downtown Ottawa.
This space is available for other submissions.
