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Thursday, May 31, 2007
The Loch Ness Monster, Redux
On my honeymoon, I drove around Scotland, amongst other places and Kara and I made a point of seeing Loch Ness. Aside
from Nessie, whom we did not see, the Loch is the deepest one in the UK and extremely beautiful. The road that winds down
around the northwest side is as pretty as it gets.
Anyway, all this is relevant because there is a new video out today that purports to show the Loch Ness monster interupting an interview on a boat.
The news reports I read state that the video and incident appear to be genuine. Now, it's certainly possible that some
cheeky highlander with SCUBA gear is pulling a fast one on all of us, but it still makes for a fun video.
The wave associated with this thing is dead center in the screen. The interview is to the right, but the cameraman has
already panned away having noticed the thing in his peripheral vision. You can see the back of whatever it is break the surface
twice and make a lot of wakes.
Now for some additional comments. I have some experience on the water as an angler and there are plenty of really nasty
fish out there that most people never really hear about. Oh sure, most people know that caviar comes from sturgeon, but not necessarily what a sturgeon looks like. Or even worse, a gar. Gar are totally nasty. In the New England area (and southern Canada) the muskellunge is pretty high up on the nightmare list. These things get to be huge, have tons of razor sharp teeth and have been known
to muscle up to a public beach and take a big bite out of someone's leg just like a shark.
OK, so now I'm way off topic. The point is, there are plenty of things that this could be that don't end up
being a rediscovered prehistoric creature like the coelacanth. And although someone in the clip talks about how much water the wake displaced, I think that's misleading. In my experience,
the topwater pattern is not necessarily related to size. However, I wasn't there. They could see under the water a bit and
that just doesn't come through on the video.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Another Bird Picture
I know, you are probably getting bored of this. But I was walking by the river with Alex today and he
spent about a half hour throwing stones in the water while I sat there and talked with him. About halfway through, an enormous
bird popped off a branch downstream, and flew up the river right in front of us.
This is a black-crowned night Heron. It's quite large - over a foot tall and a wing span probably three times
that. Very impressive.
Hey, check this out. As it was flying away, I kept shooting and I managed to snag a shot of it through the
trees with...oh, never mind, just check this out.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
A Recent Walk in the Woods
I had a few hours off last week and so I grabbed my cameras and headed into the woods for a little rest, relaxation
and photography. Since I was short on time, I drove along South Border Road to see if things were busy at the Middlesex Fells Reservation. There was not a single car at Bellevue Pond, so I pulled in and went for a hike. Here are a few pictures from that day.
I always thought mourning doves were really beautiful birds, and I suppose they are, but this one looks a bit creepy to me. Bad angle, I guess. In this case,
the dove was high up in a tree at least 35 or 40 feet above me. In retrospect, I should have cut back up along the path and
gotten above it. I'd have probably had a much better shot. Live and learn. I won't make that mistake next time.
On the other hand, I like this approach, although I 'm not sure I'd call it a keeper. I do call it Dirty Dishes.
And finally, I bring you the caterpillar. This shot was done handheld with my Canon G3 infrared camera in macro and manual
focus mode. That basically means it was really, really unpleasant trying to take this picture. Since it was an infrared
shot, I converted the image to black and white and made some adjustments via curves.
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