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Yellow flowers cover the golden willows (Salix alba ‘Vitellina’) along Silver Tip Creek east of Belfry in Carbon County, Montana. A variety of white willow, the golden willow grows new stems that are a bright golden color. This bright color makes these trees stand out in the winter. In the spring slim, cylindrical, yellow flower clusters called catkins cover the trees as seen in this photo. These yellow flowers will give way to green leaves as the summer approaches. Golden willows are not native to Montana and Wyoming but were introduced by settlers who used them as windbreaks and shade trees. They escaped cultivation and naturalized across the area.
References:
www.ag.ndsu.edu/trees/handbook/th-3-139.pdf
www.gardeningknowhow.com/ornamental/trees/willow/golden-w...
Tip. Looking Close...on Friday!
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I was delighted to find this orange tip settled with wings closed towards the end of my walk. It was in an area I do not usually visit or expect to see much.
The underside of this species is very different to other butterflies in Britain and makes the male orange tip very appealing in both ventral and dorsal views.
I'm struggling to comprehend the seeming speed with which life has transitioned from manageable to the unimaginable. The preoccupation is rightly with the coronavirus itself. But ultimately the psychological aspect of longterm stress and anxiety might prove equally disabling. Each day brings an increased awareness that this is going to be a long term situation with effects that will surely outlast the virus itself. I'm clinging to daily routines in an effort to maintain mental health. But it's deeper than that. I need to feel a sense of self worth; a need to exist. There has to be more to a day than watching endless news coverage. It's important to be dialed into events, but I fear the hypnotic effect of ongoing news feeds. Balance is key right now. It will be a process of discovery for many of us as routines change, perhaps radically, as we find out how exactly we will fit into the new model. It will be a process.
We're on the verge of the vernal equinox; the first day of Spring in the northern hemisphere is Thursday. Normally a time of year filled with hope and optimism. Likely to go all but unnoticed this year. I was scrolling through an old email queue yesterday looking for a past communication. There I stumbled upon threads from exactly one year ago. They were filled with discussion of problems and issues with jobs that seemed paramount at the time, but utterly trivial now. How I wished those sorts of problems were the worst thing in life now.
The other day I noticed a very challenging astrological makeup for this week starting tomorrow, March 18. An astounding six planets will cluster in the sign of Capricorn. The indication is one of a tipping point being crossed. Perhaps a big disclosure is in the offing. The tension will remain strong through early next week. Stay safe.
After leaving Chambers Farm Wood I popped into this small reserve just to see what might be about. My main target was dragonflies but it turned out that my highlight was seeing this orange tip visiting a flower.
Orange-tip butterfly (Anthocharis cardamines) (female), Buchanan Castle Golf Course, Drymen. I don't know how this photo turned out sharp, as the stalk of grass was swaying gently in the breeze. Olympus's in-camera image stabilisation is definitely superior to my Nikon.
I was lucky enough to take this with my iPhone while looking for a place to set up my DSLR. Ended up the only photo of the day. It is a common Orange Tip Butterfly native to the UK.
2020-09-07, Day 3
Snow clouds roll in over a glassy un-named lake that sits at the foot of a talus-decorated cirque down which we must descend, high in the trackless northern Wind River Range, Fitzpatrick Wilderness, Wyoming.
The descent to this lake marked an incontrovertible tipping point for us. If the weather brought snow, as it seemed increasingly likely to do, it would be impossible to climb back the way we had come with the gear we had on our backs. Above where I stand here are one or two narrow or difficult places that required some Class 3 scrambling, and we lacked both metal foot-traction and ice-axes to make it an option both plausible and safe once covered in (more) snow and ice. As we picked our way carefully down through patches of vegetation interspersed with bands of talus, we crossed paths with a weasel racing uphill with a fat pika in its mouth. Helluva day to be that pika; on the other hand, it's time for a weasel celebration party.
If one looks at this photo closely, it is apparent that there are two lakes, separated by a small bridge of land. Judging from the rocks we could see, we figured we might find a flat place to pitch a tent in the patch of trees at about 11 o'clock on the far shore of the near lake. We also hoped that we would be protected from the worst of any snow and wind that the clouds might deliver after nightfall.
We made beef and bean burritos with cheese and rehydrated salsa for dinner, and we brewed a hot cup of herbal tea. Before our repast was complete, the temperature began to drop, the light commenced to fade, and the first flakes floated down through the wind-battered trees and landed on our jackets. We cleaned up the pot, hung the food, and climbed into the down sleeping bags to stay warm. The snow began to drive into the tent fly as it got dark, and I watched pellets of corn snow repeatedly gather in a few flatter parts of the fly, then slide down the vestibule toward the ground once a certain critical mass was attained. The tent did seem to be protected from the worst of the wind but the thin canopy of trees was doing very little to shield us from the accumulating snow.
Not long after dark, the snow and wind were joined by near simultaneous exclamations of thunder and lightning. The inside of the tent lit up like bright electric day, and enough detail could be made out of the sky immediately above us that it seemed as if we were on the inside of a snow-globe. Up to this very moment, I had never camped at the very edge of timberline in a high-elevation cirque in the middle of a full-on raging winter storm, with no trail anywhere close-by, and the surrounding talus now getting buried in who-knew-how-many inches of snow and ice. I thought somewhat academically that rest might be a good idea, but it proved difficult to relax. Every time I rolled over and glanced up at the tent fly, I noticed the weight of accumulating snow, and I hit the nylon to keep the vestibules on either side of the tent from collapsing. I have a two-person MSR backpacking tent that weighs just over 3 pounds (1.4 kg), including poles and stakes. It is a fabulous, light-weight, 3-season tent, and the conditions outside could only properly be described as that other, most unwelcome fourth season.
Wearing all of our clothing, and wrapped tightly in the down sleeping bags to try and retain as much warmth as possible, I can report that we were not downright cold. As the hours slowly passed, we noticed a change to the tenor of the storm. What was corn snow gave way to gusts of snow flakes complemented with a peppering of larger pea-sized ice particles. These hailstones irregularly collided with the aluminum poles of the tent frame, and we were treated to the relatively frequent pinging sound of the ice as it danced merrily off our stretched nylon bubble.
The only way out of this place in the morning would be to navigate the talus and attempt to find the nearest trail. The maps we consulted a month or so earlier when we identified bail-out points suggested that would be a distance of a little over 2 miles (3.2 km), with a descent of 1,000 feet (300 m) through what we surmised would be talus of some size, interspersed with bands of spruce forest and copious downed logs that would be slippery with snow and ice. Our initial assumption that the storm would likely bring only a few early-season inches to the Wind Rivers was clearly incorrect, and we would now pay whatever price the wilderness required to return to the warmth and comfort of the vehicle, which was over 20 miles (32 km) and one 11,000 foot (3,350 m) pass away from where we huddled. Apparently, getting older does not necessarily guarantee that one accrues any real wisdom.
Flynn came on a snowdrop hunt with me this week! It always make me happy to find these first little flowers of the new year... I don't mind our winter weather too much (unless we have an unusually soggy one!) but the short, dark days are a drag. Once the snowdrops begin to bloom, it's a sign that brighter days will soon be here again!
Other than the day we went to the woods to hunt for flowers, Flynn's had a pretty quiet week. It's the first full week of him being on new meds, so we've been taking it steady, in case he feels funny. I won't stop fretting til he has blood work done & but as far as I can tell, Flynn seems to be tolerating these drugs better than the ones he tried at the end of last year - admittedly, he is currently only on a 1/2 dose, so I think that's helped limit side-effects! The first couple of days were rough - first night he was really agitated, the next, he seemed to be dizzy... but he now appears fairly normal, if a little tired at times (hard to say if that's the medication or his health problem). Anyway, we're just doing as much as Flynn wants really! Today, it's tipping down with rain, so we're having an indoorsy day...
Orange tip Butterfly resting and showing the attractive underwing. Large numbers on the wing in this hot sunny Spring weather
White tip reef sharks grow to about 2.5m and are harmless to humans but not so to reef fish. They are especially very thorough hunters by night.
GBR FNQ
To read our story about Lihou Reef Atoll click
I'll start a little series with this one and I'll call it:
Behind The Scenes Of The Parade
Ricoh GR III
Ricoh GR Lens 18.3mm/f2.8
First shot of the orange tip from the other evening before moving in closer, Kingcombe meadows, Dorset.
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shot with an olympus om-d e-m10 mark iii and a panasonic 20mm f/1.7 mark ii lens
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my thoughts on this camera:
aarondesigns.org/Olympus-OMD-EM10-markiii-long-term-review/
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House Sparrow, Passer domesticus
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