Round Robin: Outside In

For the Round Robin Challenge: Inside Out, Outside In, I asked to see stuff outside that you would normally find inside, or stuff seen inside that you would expect to see outside. I have examples of both for you. This first post is of outside stuff seen inside. Namely, critters! From time to time, representatives of many species of Arizona wildlife find their way into the house, from black widows to geckos. For example:

This lizard turned up next to our bathroom scale on July 18th. I photographed him before catching him to release outside. We get lizards in the house fairly often.

This was in my tub on August 2nd. I thought for a moment that it was a centipede, but soon realized it was a caterpillar. I Googled "Arizona red caterpillar" and soon discovered it was a pipevine swallowtail butterfly - or would be someday.

But I couldn't let it stay in my bathtub! So I caught it and put ot on the bathroom windowsill, expecting it to crawl away. But no: it liked the edge of my window, and decided to stay.

The caterpillar changed color over the next few days, until it was fairly obviously a pupa or cocoon. On August 13th, I noticed a slit at the top. The butterfly had emerged! But where was it?

I gently lifted the Venetian blinds. Behind them, two pipevine swallowtails struggled to get a grip on the window, or escape outside, or both.

One of them quickly escaped. The other struggled a moment longer.

Finally it got hold of the edge of the window. Then it was gone. Oddly, I found a lizard on the ledge a few minutes later. It darted away when I pointed my camera at it.

Then last week, John told me there was a new pupa in the bedroom, over the air conditioner. I'm watching for further developments.

I'll have a second post in the few minutes. Meanwhile, check out the other Robins' entries:


Linking List
as of 8/25/2012, 3:05 PM

Karen - posted two entries!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/mavarin
@mavarin

Jeanette - Posted!
Net On The Net
http://netonthenet.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Sue - Posted!
A picture is worth 1000 words
http://susiesphotospace.blogspot.it/

Sinder Ella **Welcome, new participant!** - Posted!
"A Modern Day Cinderella"
http://sandysinderella.blogspot.com/

Rita - Posted!
Cashjocky and the "Old Salt"
http://cashjocky.blogspot.com/2012/08/inside-out-or-outside-in_25.html

Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com

Karen

Archival Butterflies

This week Carly wanted to see butterflies for the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot. If I were still working in Marana, I would have stopped off in Oro Valley on my way home and looked for some, but as it was, in this hot, monsoon-locked city, I knew the chances of finding any butterflies right now were slim to none.  So let's hit the archives!



In the summer of 2008 I had a temp job for three months in Oro Valley, Arizona, on a road that had a lot of fields and flowers. I spent quite a few lunchtimes trying to capture butterflies with my camera. I was never all that successful, but I did get a handful of good shots and some fairly decent ones. This was one of the better ones.


Here's another, in the fairly decent category I suppose. I'm pretty sure this was a pipevine swallowtail, although the light in this case makes it look more brown than black or iridescent blue.



And by the way, there's another insect I managed to photograph that summer. I have no idea what it is.
ETA: It's a Large Milkweed Bug, which is a "true bug" rather than a beetle. Apparently there's a lot of variation in the colors (red to light orange) and markings.

You can see more of my shots from that summer in my Picasa album Butterflies of Southern Arizona.



That was also the summer that my dog Tuffy died. On one of her last trips to the vet, I saw this butterfly just outside the vet's office entrance.

From Tucson Botanical Gardens

Last summer's afternoon at the Tucson Botanical Gardens was rather pleasant in many ways, but when it came to butterflies it did not live up to its advertising.

From Tucson Botanical Gardens

Aside from one shot of a real live butterfly, I had to settle for pictures of butterflies, such as the ones on these tiles.




This is a pipevine swallowtail (probably) that I sort of rescued from my bathroom window last August. Poor thing was much the worse for wear!

Karen

EMPS: A Photographer's Miscellany

For Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #104: Photographer's Choice, I thought I might take the opportunity to shoot fresh portraits, or at least new photos, of Cayenne and Pepper. The trouble is, there's a reason why I seldom get photos that are good enough to successfully convey their unimaginable cuteness. The house is not brightly lit, which in the Arizona heat is a good thing, but not so good for photographing a moving object.



If I'm doing anything around Cayenne, and it doesn't involve petting her, she's definitely on the move, pressing her head under my hand, rolling on her back, and performing other "Look at me! Pet me! Play with me!" antics. So photos of her tend to be blurry. If I use flash, the light turns her brown eyes yellow - and chances are, the photo is still blurry.



Pepper is generally more laid back about getting attention. In fact, the first year we owned her, she just wanted to be left alone. But when Cayenne is rolling around on the bed or the couch, that disturbs Pepper. And in any case, she knows and dislikes the camera. As soon as I point it toward her, Pepper usually gets up and leaves.



Dogs aren't the only animals that tend not to hold still for a portrait, of course. Two years ago, I spent many lunch breaks at my temp job in Oro Valley, trying to photograph butterflies. I doubt that I ever got a single portrait of those restless creatures. But this morning I got lucky. I was in my bathroom when I heard the fluttering of wings in the casement window. It was a butterfly, sort-of trapped between the pane of glass and the venetian blind, batting its wings ragged rather than easing out through the opening it probably used to get in.



I pushed the blind out of the way and nudged the window further open. The butterfly just hung there, resting, giving me plenty of time to go for my camera.



I think it's a pipevine swallowtail, the same kind that was so common out in Oro Valley; but this one had barely a hint of blue on its wings, and if it ever had a swallow tail the feature had been sacrificed to the creature's accidental self-harm. Still, it survived its ordeal, and flew away shortly after I left for church. And John says there are three pupae at the top of that same window. Perhaps we'll see brand new butterflies, alive and whole, before too long. Meanwhile, I need to wipe up the sad flecks of butterfly wing that are currently littering my bathtub.



Let's finish up with another kind of moving object, also trapped in glass. I've been sitting on this shot for a week or two: clouds reflected in the Williams Center building where one of my recruiters has an office.

Karen

Last Day in Oro Valley

...and I won't have my camera with me!

Totally unedited camera phone shot #1

Tomorrow is my last day at Interesting Manufacturer, or whatever pseudonym I gave the company three months ago. They actually ran out of work for me today. To keep busy I washed my desk, wiped down counters and tables in the kitchen, and even did other people's dishes; but I was still off the clock by 3:30. Tomorrow, if the HR director remembers her keys, I'll have a full day of filing and that will be that. Done. Finito. Unemployed.

Totally unedited camera phone shot #2

And I won't even be able to take one last set of semi-decent landscape photos or inadequate butterfly photos with my Canon Cyber-Shot. On Sunday, I served in church for the first time in a new capacity, as Verger. (I keep forgetting the title, and my brain keeps offering the term Valeyard instead, which is very different!)

The Verger is sort of a master of ceremonies and sergeant at arms in an Anglican church. At St. Michael's the job includes wearing a snazzy red medieval robe, which actually fits me. Since it was my first time wearing it except to try it on, I asked the two torchers (candle bearers) to take a few pictures of me during Mass. They did - but then one of them, who is about 12 or 13 years old, left with his parents about two minutes after Mass, with my camera still in his pocket! They live in the boonies, so I'm picking the camera up from his dad (who works evenings) after I get off work tomorrow. So, no final butterfly photo hunt!

Totally unedited camera phone shot #3

Funny thing, though. The company's head of IT, a great guy by the way, saw me taking a few lame photos with my phone tonight as he was leaving work and I was waiting for John.

"Hard to catch, aren't they?" he said, calling out the window of his truck.

Not sure I'd heard him correctly, or what he meant, I just said, "Yes."

"I've been chasing that black butterly for the last week and a half," he said. "It's just impossible!"

I nodded and chuckled, and he drove away.

Slightly edited camera phone shot

But I think tomorrow I'll email him this picture:

From Butterflies of Southern Arizona

Karen

Republicans or Butterflies?

I had two topics in mind to tackle tonight, alone or in tandem. I could rant for a bit about the nasty, bitter, wrong-headed speeches from the Republican National Convention tonight, which reached me in the form of page after page of two-line Twitter tweets from nprpolitics. A sample, from Palin's speech:

nprpolitics "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer except you have actual responsibilities."

It makes me angry, and if I try to explain why I'm going to get all frustrated and depressed.


Or I can tell you about my attempts to photograph butterflies today at lunch. Yes, I know I said before that I'm not that fond of butterflies, but I've become much more interested in them this summer working in Oro Valley, simply because there are a lot of them fluttering around out there. If I watch for birds, I might get a hummingbird, a flycatcher, a cactus wren or a gila woodpecker once every couple of days. Once there was a roadrunner, but he was gone when I returned with my camera. But the butterflies are pretty much always outside that lunchroom window. Frequently they're nearby as I wait for John's car after work as well.

So today, on the theory that

a) I'm down to my last week working out there,
b) it's not as hot as it was, and
c) I might be able to get closer and better shots of butterflies if there's no glass between me and them,

I went outside at lunch and walked the grounds a bit. The first thing I found worth photographing was this little orange and black bug. I have no idea what it is, but it held still, more or less, while I photographed it.


The shots of it aren't exactly crystal clear, but it's still pretty cool.



The thing is, I finally figured out why I can't get any really good photos of butterflies. I just have a Sony Cyber-Shot, which gets 8.1 megapixels of resolution. It's probably the best digital camera I've had to date, but it's not a serious, professional-grade camera. I'm starting to wish for a digital SLR with a nice big lens. Assuming I get my employment situation resolved, someday I'll have one.


Meanwhile, I must settle for blurry but mildly interesting shots, or, at best, a few sorta kinda almost decent ones.

Basically this afternoon I watched for butterflies to arrive at the flowers I staked out, pointed the camera in that general direction and started snapping. Some photos had no butterflies at all in them, but occasionally I got lucky with something my eyes never saw. The black ones in particular were impossible to get completely in focus. They were constantly zooming in and out. Even when they lit on a flower they were in constant motion, their wasp-like bodies vibrating. As closely as I've watched them, I still haven't quite been able to tell for sure whether the black with blue ones are the same species as the black with orange ones, just showing different bits of themselves, or catching the light differently. I think the blue ones are separate, but I'm not quite certain. Or they may all be Pipevine Swallowtails - except that there seem to be a few species like that in AZ.


There are definitely more than a few species out there, though. Beside the black ones there are at least three kinds of orange ones, and at least three kinds of yellow ones. I tried at lunch on Tuesday to identify them online, but when I asked for Arizona butterflies in black, blue, orange and yellow, the database gave me nearly 300 species! A different site gave me a more manageable list, but not everything has a picture. From what I saw, the very different orange butterflies seen in this entry may both be the Gulf Frittilary.

I'm semi-sure none of them I've seen lately are Monarchs, though, which were the main kind I grew up with. Some are similar to the color pattern I remember, but none are identical.

I like the plain yellow ones, too. I can buy into this critter being called a butterfly, because it's butter-colored, and it flies.


Here's the website I'll explore tomorrow: Butterflies of Southeastern Arizona. That's us! And I must say I'm intrigued by some of the nomenclature.

But I still prefer chordates.

Karen

Extension - Don't Make Me Beg!

I'm extending the Weekend Assignment from last week, Create An Award!, for one day, with results to be posted on Friday night instead of Thursday night. This is for three reasons:

1. So far, only Julie and I have done the assignment, which involves creating a blog award and giving it to just one worthy recipient.

2. This will give me more time to also pass on that other award thingy I got recently, and still get adequate sleep.

3. I noticed tonight that I forgot to update the "current memes" section of my sidebar with this Weekend Assignment, the current Monday Photo Shoot, and the upcoming Round Robin Photo Challenge! How can I expect you folks to play along if I don't make it easy to find out what this week's memes are?

4. Certain people haven't done the Weekend Assignment in several weeks, and I miss them. Don't make me beg, you guys. 'Cause I will! I'll get all depressed and pathetic and question my own value in the world, or at least the blogosphere, and it will get really annoying really quickly. So just do your entry, okay?

I'll also post the new Weekend Assignment topic tomorrow night, but with a six-night deadline to make up for the 8-day one. Don't worry; it will be a fun and easy one.

Meanwhile, here are today's attempts to photography two butterflies and a flycatcher. I have no particular narration for them:

The yellow one. I think the black one is there too.

The black one. No blue this time. Different species?

And again.

Meanwhile, one a nearby bush...

...this flycatcher was catching flies. Or something.

I still lay awake after taking the Sleep Assure stuff, but I've taken it again tonight - over an hour ago, in fact. At work I didn't take any caffeine pills, or even drink Diet Pepsi after noon. Will it help? We'll see, but at this moment I'm not exactly yawning, and it's just past 1 AM.

Oh, and the vet's office across town sent us a reminder notice for Tuffy's annual shots. Guess I'd better tell them, huh?

Karen

A Bottle of Sleep

Well, here it is: tonight's attempt at a quick fix. I'm trying to work up the nerve to take it, because, you know, what if it tastes bad? It claims to be delicious, but what are the chances?

Shake-shake-shake! Open the bottle and do battle with a safety seal. Pour a capful. Blueberry-pomegranate concoction at the ready to wash it down. Here I go!

Well, except for the part where it overflowed onto my desk and my, um, skin, that wasn't bad at all.

I got it tonight at a vitamin and health food store, where the proprietor / clerk / whoever claimed that she takes the stuff, and that it's effective. We'll see.

Thanks to those of you who have offered advice and/or sympathy today with regard to my sleeping problem. I'll let you know how this works out! But yes, I realize it's just one small part of what I need to do.

Another piece of the puzzle is the coping at work part. Having read last night that caffeine can affect you for up to 12 hours, I didn't take any after 1:30 PM, unless you count a few ounces of Diet Cherry Pepsi. My main gambit for keeping alert today was to ask to tackle something other than this deadly dull project I've been working on for a few weeks, which consists mostly of writing the number 65 all over a bunch of UPS bills. There's more to it than that, of course, but not enough to keep the brain engaged. So I talked my way into doing something else entirely for a couple of hours. It helped a lot.

As I waited for John to pick me up after work, I noticed several butterflies (at least one yellow one, and two of the black-and-blue ones) zipping around the flowers behind me. Always curious as to whether I could ever manage a butterfly photo that's even a tenth as good as one by Carly or Steven, I made numerous attempts to capture one or both of the black ones digitally. Here are the best of the shots:

Extreme non-closeup

It seems a shame to have such a magnificent background and not show it off. But at this magnification, the butterfly could be anything from a large and scary beetle to a distant hawk. Zooming in on this particular shot doesn't help much, because he was moving and the focus isn't very good. Let's try the next shot:

Oh, it's a butterfly.

It's still not a detailed photo of the butterfly's markings, but at least you can tell it's not a bird or a beetle.

Aha! A flash of blue!

And here he is in flight!

Okay, I won't win any awards with my butterfly photography, but I had fun anyway.

Time's up! Good night - I hope!

Karen

The Butterfly Heresy

Let's play Spot the Butterfly!

As you probably know if you read this blog with any frequency, I'm not a big fan of flowers. Flowers completely fail to give me any kind of emotional stimulus, except perhaps a vague guilt that I should be admiring them and making a fuss about how pretty they are, when in fact I haven't the slightest interest in doing so. I'm not quite sure why this is. I tend to theorize that because I'm allergic to any flower you can smell, I have developed an antipathy toward all flowers as a defense mechanism. But I'm not allergic to all flowers, and there are other pretty things that leave me cold in exactly the same way.

Butterflies are the main example I'm thinking of here. Cats too, but that's a separate issue. Tonight I'm talking about butterflies.

My friends Carly and Steven both take really extraordinary photos of butterflies on a regular basis. (Steven does an amazing job with a whole variety of tiny critters, while Carly is more of a butterfly specialist in that aspect of her photography.) I appreciate the artistry of their photos, the composition, the colors, the amazing, sharp detail seen in these digital images of tiny creatures. Carly has written about the fragility and delicacy of butterflies, the damage they sustain so easily, and the amazing migratory flights some of them make during their brief lives. I want to care about these pretty gadabouts, but somehow I just don't.

I was thinking about this as I finished eating lunch at work today. A yellow butterfly was flitting in and out of sight on the other side of the picture window in the lunchroom, and I wondered whether I could get a decent picture of it. The camera was at my cubicle, but my phone was right there with me. So I snapped four shots with the Rumor, after which the butterfly flew away. I then went and got my real camera, but the butterfly did not return.

It's not that I cared about the butterfly. I just wondered whether it was possible to get a decent shot of one through that picture window.

The answer is, not with the camera phone. Not as such, anyway. Here is the unedited version of the best of the four photos, the only one in which it is even possible to tell the yellow butterfly from the yellow blooms:


From a technical viewpoint or a butterfly fan's viewpoint, it's a terrible photo. But I like the impressionist look that comes from the muted colors and low resolution.

If I autoenhance and crop, you can just about see the butterfly:

Impressionist butterfly. Do you see it?

It's right in the middle there, yellow with orange at the tip, almost perfectly camouflaged among these particular flowers. And although it's still a terrible butterfly photo, I kind of like it as a landscape, even though it has flowers in it. Go figure.

When I got into the car after work, I told John about my failure to appreciate butterflies.

"That's because no butterfly has ever done anything nice for you."

I laughed. "No, that's not it. I like an animal with a personality. Butterflies might have a personality, but...." I trailed off. I have no idea whether it's possible for a butterfly to have a personality, but I doubt it.

"It's because they're not mammals," was John's next guess. That was closer to the truth. I'm really not fond of insects in general, but I used to pore lovingly over picture books featuring mammals.

"I would go so far as to say I only like chordates," I said. "'Cause I might like a turtle."

"You like birds," he said.

"Right. There are birds I have liked."

"How about fish?"

"I've liked fish, too." I used to have a few favorite tropical fish, the ones that had some semblance of a personality.

"Fish I have liked, by Karen Funk Blocher," John said. Or words to that effect.

Yeah, well. They're not as good as mammals, are they?

Karen