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Posts Tagged ‘Tamron 50D’

Flicker in December

Posted in Autumn, Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged , , , , , , on December 13, 2020| 19 Comments »

I love the colors and patterns of Northern Flickers (Colaptes auratus), like this one that I spotted on Monday at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge. In the United States there are two variants of this colorful bird, an Eastern one and a Western one. The Eastern males, like the one in the image below, have a red nape, black “whiskers,” and yellow shafts on their flight and tail feathers. Western males, which I have not yet seen, do not have a nape crescent and have red “whiskers” and red-shafted tail feathers.

Northern Flicker

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Fishing Spider

Posted in Arachnids, Nature, Photography, spiders, Summer, wildlife, tagged , , , , , , on August 3, 2020| 20 Comments »

I am catching up on some photos and thought I’d post this image that I captured in mid-July of a cool-looking fishing spider that Walter Sanford spotted while we were hunting for dragonflies at a creek in Fairfax County. I am not sure of the specific species of the spider, but I am pretty confident that it is of the genus Dolomedes. Most of the times in the past when I have spotted similar spiders, they have actually been in the water, but this one seemed to be hunting from a crevice in the rocks at the edge of the water.

I love the texture of the rocks and especially the lichen that add a lot of visual interest to this image. If you would like to see Walter’s take on our encounter with this spider, check out his post ‘Fishing spider Friday.’ Walter noted that he sees “a mean monkey face on the front half of the spider and a baboon face on the back half.” Be sure to click on the image to see the spider more closely, if you dare and let me know what you think.

 

fishing spider

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

 

 

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