Magic Lens

Honeysuckle Berries

A new digital camera opens my eyes even further....

Unselfconscious Wings has gone over well with my friend who had inspired it, so that makes me happy. I've also brought a few collage files to the printer, who did a great job enlarging a sample.

But upgrading to a new and better digital camera has had me going Holy Moly. Today marked its maiden voyage on my post office walk. I'm still learning how to use it, but its zoom capability and finer detail take me well beyond the Argus. Everything here was shot in the space of a couple of hours.



These sea oats catch my eye every time I walk to the printer. My Argus can get a half-decent shot of them, and of the Spanish moss below, but not with as much detail as this -- and I've compressed the photos here to a small fraction of their original size (each is under 100K).

One of our local crows on a rooftop. I am discovering the joy of having a telephoto lens.

A shy Gulf Fritillary blurs behind dried grasses and emptied seed pods. Butterflies and dragonflies have proven to be the most elusive so far.

Found this hibiscus at the local strip mall.

Not everyone adores love bugs as I do. They're not harmful, except maybe when too many of them splat into radiator grilles in flagrante delicto muerte. They swarm in May and September; these were two of numerous happy couples at the mall. After coming across so many in mid-mate, I feel bad every time I see a singleton. I hear sad country lonesome cowboy music, picture the poor thing drowning its sorrows in some seedy bug bar.

I was thrilled to find this mantid above me at the post office. Praying mantises were childhood friends of mine until they vanished from Brooklyn. This is the first one I've seen up close and personal in at least 35 years.

This damselfly was also hanging out at the mall.

I believe this is a skink. Small, adorable lizards scamper everywhere here.

This polyphemus (giant silk) moth has a wing span of at least 5 and more likely closer to 6 inches. It stopped traffic at the mall and blew me away. It didn't open its wings, but you can get a good view of that here.

Closer to home -- one of the local gardeners gave us some portulaca, which belongs to the purslane family. We've been growing it on the back porch.

We had this trumpet honeysuckle planted in our front yard shortly after we moved in. If I am very, very lucky, I might some day snap a shot of the hummingbirds who visit it.

This bird's nest is inside our hedge, which is a melange of holly, azalea, and volunteer trees thanks to seeds dropped by visitors. Our first summer here, the hedge became home to a brood of mockingbirds -- though I'm not sure whom this belongs to. Back in Cambridge I once found a bird's nest fallen from the tree and marveled at how it retained and concentrated my body heat as I held it in my hands.

This small, now empty wasp nest (mud dauber, I think) remains glued to one of our window screens.

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