Posts

The Colorado River - Endangered?

Image
The Colorado River in the American Southwest The Colorado River is heavily dammed.  There are 7 major dams that produce reservoirs along its 1450 miles.  Along its tributaries, there are another 50 or so.  The largest of these include Parker Dam, Hoover Dam, Glen Canyon Dam, and Grand Valley Diversion Dam.  These store not only vast amounts of water, but they are also important for hydroelectricity and as a source of fresh water. It is the demand for fresh water that is causing the problem.  Irrigation, water for industry and public consumption, and evaporation all contribute to its depletion.  The river system supports some 40 million Americans and irrigates over 5 million acres of farmland.  Much of California, Nevada, and Arizona get their water from the Colorado River. The river basin provides water for about 10 percent of all the United States. Between the dams, water extraction, and reduced rainfall from global warming, the river is running dry i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Cool things you didn't know - 4 - The Jerusalem cricket

Image
Jerusalem (sand) cricket I photographed in 2008 with my Nikon D70 and macro equipment. Neither from Jerusalem nor a cricket, this is a strange insect.  It turns out that there may be anywhere from 20 - 100 species of this unusual nocturnal forager.  Scientists aren't sure about the number because of the relatively small area each population lives in.  Genetic variation may show a high degree of overlap between groups, making species identification somewhat challenging. Being wingless and fossorial, they don't travel far from their burrows, only going out when it is dark to feed.  Although they are somewhat docile, they have a strong bite and can inflict an injury on anyone mishandling one.  They use that bite to capture other insects or to eat plant matter, or scavenge.   They dig their own burrows.  Their strong legs, strong jaws, and bulbous head all allow earthen material to be excavated and then moved to create a hollow.  These relatives ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Cool things you didn't know - 3 - Temperatures affect dragonfly wings

Image
Whitetail dragonflies.  Center:  female.  Corners:  male.  (right one isn't my photo). Whitetail dragonflies are fairly common, one of the most ubiquitous in North America.  They live in all Canadian provinces and all US states in North America.  Their range is reduced in arid climates but they are still present where freshwater bodies exist.  As you can imagine, the variation in habitats over that range would likely affect the insect's phenotype (outward genetic expression).  One of the big drivers of adaptation and selection is temperature. As you can see from the above image, male and female whitetailed dragonflies do not look the same; mature adult males have a pronounced white abdomen (juvenile adult males do not) while females have white markings on theirs.  Another difference is in the wings, where the males' are relatively shorter, requiring more effort but also allowing greater manoeuvrability.  This comes in handy when the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Lines to live by: Pointing using lines, or the occasional anchor.

Image
  "The van is easy to find.  There's an arrow on my front lawn pointing to it." OK, it's not an arrow, it's an anchor.  I photographed this in Nelson's Dockyard in Antigua.  But you get the idea that you can use lines to direct your attention to a subject or feature in an image.  The interesting thing here is that it's hard to "unsee" the anchor as being an arrow.  Would it look the same if the van was parked somewhere else? Some photos I have taken where lines play a large part in their impact. You can see the above images all have lines that deal with pointing to some degree.  You can use lines to frame, draw your eye, or enhance some aspect of a photo.  The images above all deal with pointing towards a subject.   Lines can be natural or artificial in nature.  They can come as single entities or multiple ones.  They can be of the same makeup or of many different kinds.  What they should have in common is the ability to s...
Post a Comment
Read more

Cool things you didn't know - 2 - Water of metabolism: Some animals never drink.

Image
Kangaroo rat (added in post) in the Palm Springs Desert Water is necessary for life.  And yet, there are plants and animals that don't need direct access to it in order to thrive.  A good example of that is the kangaroo rat, a rodent that is neither a rat nor a mouse.  They live in arid regions of North America.  Although they are capable of drinking water, an individual may go its entire life without ever drinking.  That's because they get their water from somewhere you may not expect. As you probably know, photosynthesis involves turning sunlight into sugar by using carbon dioxide and water.  The opposite of this is cellular respiration, the cellular process of converting sugar (and other foodstuffs) into carbon dioxide and water.  The carbon dioxide is dealt with through breathing (CO2 out and O2 in).  The water stays behind. The ability of kangaroo rats to conserve water is amazing.  The seeds eaten by kangaroo rats may contain some water...
Post a Comment
Read more

Keeping your old digital files - all of them

Image
Bend Oregon.  Shot with my D70 camera in 2010.  I haven't looked at this image for over 15 years. I have been organizing my digital images lately, saving all my 2025 stuff.  In doing so, I have also been perusing my archives for old photos, ones that I haven't worked on before.  This one (above) fit the bill for the blog I want to do today. Keep your old files/images.  You may never need them, but having them allows you to access them should the desire or need arise.  Memory is cheap; you can buy a 6 or 8 TB hard drive for around $250.  Unless you shoot a lot of video, that is enough memory to hold hundreds of thousands of images. Most of my images are in raw format, so I can open them anew and work with them using editors that far surpass the ones from days of old.  As well, my understanding of the workflow has improved and so I am also better at the adjustments.   Over the years, I have upgraded my cameras, starting with my Fuji S1Pro ...
Post a Comment
Read more

American coot - alone?

Image
An Individual American Coot at Munson Pond, Kelowna.  Feb 14, 2026. Inset:  a group of coots I photographed in 2012 (location unknown). American coots are highly social birds.  Whenever I see one, I know there are others nearby.  What I found in this case, though, was that it was alone.  Now, I can't prove that, as others may have been hiding in the nearby clutter of overhanging branches, but it still was, in my mind, unusual. It turns out that coots do migrate in groups, but not necessarily with others of the same species.  Coots may hitch a ride with ducks or geese that are migrating, both to and from their breeding area.  Another possibility is that this individual may not have migrated at all.  Coots are known to stay in the Okanagan Valley throughout the year.  Given the mild winter we have had, this is a very plausible explanation.  They like open water, so the pond where I found them wouldn't have been an option as it was frozen o...
Post a Comment
Read more