Fish and Frog - Turtle and Blog

Monday, September 29, 2008

Just Passing Through?

Back at the beginning of the summer we discovered that we had dozens of dragonflies around, particularly at the pond. Before too long I had dozens (then hundreds) of dragonfly photo's. When you add the damselfly photo's the numbers may now go into the thousands. Of course not all the photo's are of a good quality. And naturally there are quite a few that are virtually duplicates of others. I will often take multiple shots of one perched as I am approaching closer so the numbers add up fast. I realized that I had so many photo's that I might be tempted to flood the blog with dragonfly and damselfly posts and photo's at the expense of other things going on around the pond so I elected to limit my dragon and damsel posts to once a week on Monday.

Well the dragonfly and damselfly season is slowly coming to a close. There are still some around and I am still observing them and taking photo's of course. But, now that the season is closing, I figured I might as well retire the Monday Dragon/Damsel post. I will still be adding Dragon/Damsel posts in the future, but just not on a weekly schedule. Actually this will give me a chance to catch up on researching some of the behaviors I have observed and putting names with some of the species I have seen and captured.

Today I thought I would share with you a few of the butterflies we were able to capture last week at the neighbor's flower garden. We haven't seen many butterflies this summer. Well, I should say we haven't seen many congregations of butterflies. We see butterflies often, but normally they are individuals cruising about and they often don't stay in one general area long enough to track them down and get a photo.
On a couple of recent visits to the flower garden I have had a bit better luck though. There were quite a few butterflies around. The most numerous were the Gulf Fritillary. We had not seen any earlier in the summer, but all of a sudden several showed up. As a matter of fact, one day while I was there they all showed up within a matter of minutes as though they were traveling as a group.
I understand that the Gulf Fritillary is a migratory butterfly so we think the sudden arrival of several may mean they are just passing through. Whether they were residents or just passing through it was a great opportunity for a few colorful photo's.

I found it really hard to pick a favorite. I eventually decided just to make a collection with a couple of those above plus a couple of more. Of course it is best viewed enlarged.

And one more thing. I want to thank our neighbor for planting all those colorful flowers out where we can all enjoy them.

New View

You probably have no idea the lengths I sometimes go to for a photograph for the weekly PhotoHunt theme. Or perhaps I should say heights in this case. Some of the weekly themes are relatively easy to meld with the general subject of the blog. Some present more of a challenge. This week's theme of 'view' was one of the challenging ones.

Of course I have lots of photo's with views of the pond. There are views from north, south, east, and west. There are views in sun and in rain. There are views featuring reflections of the trees, sky, and clouds. There are views from the center of the pond back to the shore. Believe me, I've got views. The problem was I have used a lot of those before in other posts. I needed a new view. Well, I got one. This view was taken from close to 25 feet above the pond. Now that is pretty high off the ground for taking photographs in my world. It took a tall tree, an extension ladder, and a limb saw to get the shot.

Actually I had an ulterior motive though. I was looking for fish. Big fish.

For the last week or so we have not seen the large grass carp nor have we seen many of the larger turtles. Normally the carp would always come up to eat when we throw out the fish food. In fact they would often be the first ones there and the most voracious.

I'm not sure why they disappeared all of a sudden. Evidently it has to do with the change of season, but the weather has remained fairly warm. I was surprised that they may already be going into their cold weather mode where they eat less, slow down their metabolism, and move to deeper water. Perhaps the cycle has more to do with the change in the length of the day than the specific changes in the weather.

Now these are big fish for a small pond. It's hard to show exactly how large in a photograph because there is usually not a good point of reference. They are about 24"-28" long and may weigh around 20 pounds. Some of you may recall the catfish used for the 'dark' theme in a prior PhotoHunt. These carp are probably twice the size of that catfish.
I knew that if I could look down into the water from a high point I might be able to spot them if they were toward the shallow end. And it just so happens I did. I spotted 3 together in water that was about 3-4 feet deep, but they were too far away and too deep in the water to get a photo.

We had a total of 5 of the grass carp in the pond. The three I saw were ones that were put in about 18 months ago and they grew tremendously fast over the first year. The other 2 have been in the pond for years, but we rarely see them now. Every time we write them off as dead and gone they show up.

It's easy to tell them apart from the younger ones as they are probably 50% larger. Usually they are too far away to get a photo, but I was able to get a short video of one of them this summer. I'll have to track it down and post it soon.

PhotoHunt