Amanita mushrooms abound in the woods

 

I think that this is Amanita muscaria, but I am not certain. We found so many of them in the woods that I was able to photograph them in all stages of growth.

Amanita muscaria are poisonous and hallucinogenic mushrooms. The cap can be yellow, orange, or red. These warts are lightly yellowish to white. One of the characteristics are the concentric rings above the bulb. These rings are the remains of the volva (a sort of veil that surrounds the young mushroom.)

You will also notice that the stalk looks rather hairy. The warts on the cap are also left over pieces of the universal veil that stay attached to Amanita mushrooms.

Another characteristic of Amanita muscaria is the orange color in the center of the cap as well as the bulbous shape of the stalk base.

As they get older, the cap starts to flatten out and the warts seem to get a bit worn away.

The underside of the cap has gills that are quite close together and are filled with white spores. By the way, I measured the cap and it was about 5.5" in diameter while the stem was about 5.5" long.

Do you love chocolate? Me too... Especially Chocolate Milky Mushrooms!

This is a Chocolate Milky Mushroom (Lacterius lignyotus) that is in the milk cap genus of mushrooms. They contain latex (milky material) that seeps from the shroom when cut. The latex is different colors, and can turn different colors when exposed to air, depending on the species. It is also called Velvet Milkcap and looks so soft to the touch. Cool! Drew found this specimen on the side of our old county road, back in the forest, on the way home from a walk to what we call Beaver Bog. There are so many poisonous shrooms on our world, that we don't collect them to eat, just to photograph!

These mushrooms are mycorrhizal with spruce and fir, but can also be found growing from rotting wood, which I think this specimen is doing. They appear during late summer and fall. There is a great website, called Ultimate Mushroom, that has great photos and commentary on all kinds of shrooms. Check it out!

Fall Foliage Report Sept.22

 Yay! It's happening...the deciduous trees are changing color! Right now, the maple trees seem to be the first to change. Here is the Foliage Report that is put out by the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry. Check out MaineFoliage.com for information about leaf peeping around the state! By the way, In Bowdoin, we are on the border of Zones 1 and 3. Lewiston is in Zone 3.

Gray Treefrog

My buddy, Shannon, found this Gray Treefrog (Hyla versicolor) on the lid of a garbage can. It was the perfect spot to hang out on a cool late summer morning since the sun was shining intermittently on it through the trees. So, of course Drew and I had to hightail it over to her house for a short photo session. I had to add a ring light to the camera lens to illuminate the frog as it was still too shady in this location.

Did you know that Gray Treefrogs are actually bright green during breeding season and then slowly turn more greenish-gray as the summer wears on? They can change their color for camouflage when they need to. Sometimes they are even a grayish-black color in darker locations.

They often have a light colored patch under their eye which you can see here as a light green color. And, check out that bumpy skin! Some gray treefrogs have smooth skin!

They are generally no longer than 2.5" and feed on insects, along with the occasional frog meal since they are cannibalistic as well.

And, for fun, I did a close-up on the frog's eye. Pretty cool, huh! 

Attack of the Killer Tomato!

 Yowzer! The monster Hungarian Heart heirloom tomato weighed in at 2.048 pounds.

Photographing Sunspots

Here comes the sun! AND sunspots! Yahoooo! 

The tripod is sandbagged to reduce any motion as the camera lens is extended to almost its maximum length.

Yay! I have been waiting for sunspots to appear on the sun for awhile now. We have been in solar minimum for several years, but the sunspot numbers are growing and the sky was sunny and clear this morning making it a perfect time for photography.

In order to photograph the sun, you must put a solar filter on the camera so that the sun's rays don't enter the lens and blind you or ruin your camera sensor.

You have to put the threaded filter on the outside of the camera lens as you see here. The SolarLite filter is inexpensive at somewhere between $50-$70. Yes, there are much, much, much more expensive filters, but this one fits my budget.

It makes the solar image that you are taking look yellow-orange in color. This filter has a metallic polymer coating that blocks 99.999% of the light coming into the camera. 

Here is the first photo showing you the basic placement of the sunspots on the right side of the Sun. In this photo, you can just make out some darker smudges on the surface.

Our Nikon P-1000 has a equivalent 3,000 mm zoom. It is not as powerful as a telescope, nor will I ever get as sharp a photo as I would through a high end camera, but it does the job I need it to as it fits my budget!

Here I zoomed in a bit more and you can see the sunspots a bit better.

But wait! What are sunspots? They are areas where the magnetic field of the sun is disturbed. UCAR, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research has a somewhat simplified explanation.

Sunspot groupings are numbered by astronomers for research purposes. How cool is this? And, to think that I can image sunspots on a star that is 93 million miles from Earth is out of this world! Of course, the sun is massive (you can fit a million Earth's inside the Sun) and the sunspots themselves are massive, oftentimes bigger than Earth!

Here is my close-up photo of the sunspots where you can see the magnetic field has been disturbed. You can also see surface granulation that looks a bit pebbly all over the Sun's photosphere. This is where convection currents bring hotter plasma up from deep in the Sun and then cooler plasma sinks downward. By the way, plasma is a state of matter (along with solid, liquid, and gas) that occurs in super hot temperatures (like 100 million degrees F in the center of the Sun.) It is created when one or more electrons get stripped from a gas and the gas becomes electrically charged. It is affected by both electric and magnetic fields. Neato!

Do you want to keep track of what is happening on the Sun and our atmosophere? If so, you might want to check out Spaceweather.com, my go-to place for up to date information. I also get an Aurora Alert from them to let me know when to go outside and view auroras (aka the northern lights.)

Loons Vocalizing and Feeding

I spent 3 hours out on Caesar Pond thoroughly enjoying this cool, calm morning.  At first, the loons were swimming on the opposite side of the pond from me and started vocalizing. Luckily, I had my Nikon P-1000 camera and was able to zoom in for some nice video. A bit later, I was closer to them as they started feeding and the large male caught and ate a fish! Because it was somewhat cloudy, conditions were not too harsh for photography. Enjoy!

P.S. I was far enough away that the camera had to do a lot of autofocusing, thus the annoying clicking sound. My apologies. If I had put it into manual focus, I would have had to constantly change the focus and the camera shake would have been more disastrous than it already was. The breeze kept moving the boat as I tried to capture video, and I was hand holding the camera. One cannot have it all! 

Canada Goose tragedy on Caesar Pond

Sadness this weekend. Drew and Toby walked to the public put-in for Caesar Pond and found a pile of dead and decomposing Canada Geese just inside the road entrance to the pond. When I looked at them, I figured there had to be between 8-10 geese being scavenged upon by crows and other organisms. I didn't take a photo because it was too gross. I am assuming they were shot. The bag limit is 10 geese, so on the surface it looks like someone did a lot of target practice and had no use for the geese. I am just thankful the individual didn't kill the loons. They are safe. I think all the geese on the pond are now dead. Hunting season for the geese is from Sept. 1 until Sept. 25. I am hoping that a few more geese will fly in and stay put for a few weeks without getting shot. I love their call and find it relaxing to have them paddling around on the pond.