poke weed — 2016 — The 21st Century Matriarch

My husband and I are exploring some natural areas near where we live this fall. I’m using The Howard County Bird Club web site to guide our explorations. Last weekend I picked High Ridge Park (County web site for the park) from their site guide map. The path through the woods is paved – a gentle walk. The Patuxent River was just barely visible down below; we’ll go back after the leaves fall off to see it better.

I took a series of pictures of poke weed berries – green with dimples, black with dimples, then very round and ripe. The pink stems always seem very bright next to the dark purple of the berries.

There were also abundant thistle seed pods. Only the dampness of the morning was keeping the fluffy seeds from floating away.

But the new-to-me discovery for this short hike was funnel spider webs. They seemed to be everywhere – maybe more visible because of the heavy dew. I didn’t know what they were when I was hiking – and did my usual picture taking to help identify it after I got home. After loading the pictures onto my PC when I got home, I did a search for ‘funnel spiders in maryland’ and found a reference for Funnel weavers/Grass spiders (Family: Agelnidae) from Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources. Next time I see a web like this I’ll look for the spider more closely! Since there were so many of them at High Ridge Park – I am confident that I would have found at least one spider ‘at home!’

Instead of making collages from clips of images – I’m doing Zooming past the 30x my camera will do with its lens. It will do up to 120x although it is essentially in-camera cropping because it is utilizing the resolution of the sensor rather than the lens. At 120x the images sometimes begin to look like an impressionist painting with a softer focus – but they can also show a lot more detail than the eye can see. It is easier to get good results with a monopod (I dislike the bulk of a tripod although I might try it more frequently. I picked 8 of my favorite zoomed images from the past few weeks.

I like to be well back from insects so that my camera does not influence their behavior. I once had a praying mantis jump on my camera! So using the zoom to capture the milkweed tussock moth caterpillars was my preference. They are about only about a half inch long.

Reaching back into the overgrowth along a path if often not a good idea: too many plants with thorns (like these wine berries) and poison ivy. Standing back and using the zoom to get the picture is the way to go!

I didn’t want to chance getting the web these caterpillars were creating on the front of my camera by getting close…and zooming worked very well.

I’m sure this bug would have flown away if I’d tries to get close. I also like that the background is still there but out of focus. The flower is chicory; it was about the same diameter as a quarter.

Aphids! The white ones are an earlier stage than the yellow ones. They do move around so zooming rather than getting close is my preference.

This seed stalk of a pokeweed was back in the waste high brush – glad I didn’t have to push my way thought it to get this image. I liked the pink and green. Later the seeds will be a deep purple.