Yes, spring is here and since I had a post on the first cherry blossoms, I figured why not post on the first babies? Here they are – all eleven of them… and they don’t seem the least bit concerned about global warming! Really this post is just to remind you to take a break and don’t get so involved in all that depressing market stuff that you lose sight of the fun. Damn… I really should have gone fishing today…

This mother mallard has eleven healthy ducklings

Mother mallard and ducklings out for mid morning meal

It’s officially the first day of spring. And despite the dusting of snow this morning, it’s a pretty nice day. A day worth documenting, I thought, with a few glimpses of what’s to come in a few weeks. It’s over faster than you can say “Hooray! It’s Spring!” so get out there!

The very first cherry blossoms

Crocus flowers

Magnolias ready to burst

Part of my daily routine includes a walk in the park where I practice being as aware of my surroundings as possible. These are techniques I learned reading Tom Brown Jr.’s nature observation and tracking guides, but is also something that I think comes from just being interested in a lot of different things. Aside from Tom Brown’s ’splatter vision’ which I read about it some years ago and have made a habit, I find that the best way to develop awareness is to pick out something that interests you and start looking for it. Eventually, you can spot it anywhere. At that point, you move on to something else. Before you know it, you can spot a lot of things without even looking. That’s probably why when I first went bird watching some years ago, I spent the entire day in sub-zero temperatures seeing nothing but tree limbs and today I am usually the only one who even notices the birds.

Anyway, by now I have an eye for wildlife, especially bugs (smile).

On my latest walk in the park I came across this tree limb, which is absolutely covered in springtails.

Limb of tree covered with springtails

They’re hard to see in this picture, try this one:

Closer view of tree covered with springtails

See those tiny black dots? No? Okay, how about this:

Even closer, but this doesn't give you any idea how many there are (a lot)

They are pretty small. How about this:

Springtails as big as I can make them with this little point and shoot...

Hungry little buggers.

Anyway, I knew they were springtails, but I didn’t know what kind. After a little internet research, I’ve decided they are Neanura muscorum, although I am really not certain of that. If anyone has any idea, do let me know, as I like to ID animals whenever possible – it gives me a name for the face (smile) – and also let’s me discover something about them, although frankly, I can find next to nothing about the habits of this particular species. Any entomologists out there?

From the little that I do know about springtails, they are not necessarily a bad sign for the tree – although the missing bark might be.

That's me!

Continued…

I’ve had this little Canon PowerShot SD850 IS for a little over a year now. I bought this little camera with a particular purpose in mind. I wanted to have a camera with me at all times, especially when I was out for a walk; something lightweight, something so that if I happened upon an interesting critter I would be able to document it. I have an eye for interesting critters, particularly insects, and I’m always catching something that I wish I was able to get on film. I was tired of missing the shot so to speak. This little camera is perfect for that, but something is definitely lost in quality when you are dealing with these little lenses, especially if what you want to take a picture of is particularly small… like a bug. Up until now I have been zooming in with the digital zoom in order to get the shot, while all along this little camera had a macro setting! Once I realized this, I went out with it in mind to try it out. These photos are the result of that. Continued…