horn galls

Caused by the larvae of various insects (wasps, beetles, etc), these galls look like tiny thorns on the leaves of a witch hazel tree.  The tiny grubs develop inside the gall, which is a structure the plant itself produces in response to chemicals released by the larvae.  The galls provide food and shelter for the developing grubs.

comeback kid

A rather long absence mediated by my laptop breaking, me losing all of my photographs, and the start of med school.  Here are some photos I've taken since then.

 

Watching teammates compete at a medschool class field day competition.

sun(set)flower

Just got home from a few visits and had to snap this one of a sunflower during the golden hour.

horsenettle

This member of the nightshade family (which includes tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplant) packs an arsenal of hair-thin spines that can break off in skin and cause ferocious itching.  This, however, doesn't detract from the papery beauty of the white and purple flowers.

spike

Common mullein, a summer annual with thick, woolly basal leaves.  The flower spike was taller than I was (yes, that's not saying much considering my lowly 4'11").  Used in cough remedies and skin treatments.

aforementioned

Since there was talk of ticks in the previous post, I thought I would show you my tick vial from fieldwork at my summer internship.  These are about 1/3 of the ticks collected on my person...sadly enough I dropped my original, fuller vial in the meadow and couldn't find it in the three-foot-tall grass.   We filled little collecting vials with rubbing alcohol and poked any ticks we found into them--handy for exterminating them when you couldn't find a honey locust tree.

crown of thorns

Honey locust tree.  These have handy thorns for spiking ticks out in the field, since when you catch a tick on your body, it's pretty much understood that you kill it rather than release it back into the wild.  Sometimes, nature bites.

mackerel sunrise

I love mackerel clouds.  Although, since I saw these in the morning, that's technically not good, according to the "mackerel skies at morning, sailor take warning; mackerel skies at night, sailor's delight."

fawns

Mule deer at a golf course in San Jose. 

yuma

Sunset over Mittry Lake in Yuma, Arizona.  I spent a week there visiting a friend, where I snorkeled, fished, and learned to scuba dive.  In fact, all of our activities had something to do with water (including setting up my friend's saltwater fish tank), perhaps because the only bearable thing you can do in the oven-like summer is go swimming.

persephone's bees

Honey bee in a pomegranate blossom.  I caught it brushing its antennae with its right foreleg.

manzanita

Saw these tall shrubs on the mountainsides in San Jose.  They looked like some kind of myrtle at first glance--similar branch structure and leaves, but with striking wine-colored bark.  Definitely gorgeous trees--the whole vacation was full of lovely Californian live oaks, eucalyptus trees, and unfamiliar flowers and vines.  My mom and I like to joke that some people go sightseeing, we look at plants.

california

Power lines and mackerel skies on the foothills near my uncle's house.

Kayaking in Sacramento's Folsom Bay.

toddlers

My recent absence was due to a two-week visit to famiy and friends on the West Coast, where I got to see my cousins, including these two little girls.  Did a little shooting with a 50-prime portrait lens (the first three photos), which filled me with envy and want.  I may have found the next item on my wishlist...

pause in flight

Do I ever take pictures of anything other than insects and plants?  Not often...the truth of the matter is, unimaginative as I am, I would rather do the finding and let Nature do the hard work of composing a photograph.  And besides, could anything I came up with be more beautiful than the shadow of a dragonfly's wing on a reed?

bloodworm

Bait from a weekend in Shady Side, MD.  Bloodworms, well, bleed (excessively).  The weird nodule on the left end is its proboscis, or retractable mouthpart; you can see the four-pointed area that contains its four hollow teeth (that inject poison!).  I wish I had gotten a better photo of the proboscis, but the worm had already retracted it after I took this one.

teej

Like most UVa students, I have a half-joking, half-serious reverence for Thomas Jefferson, the founder of our school.  This picture was taken on graduation morning, as my last look at TJ as an undergrad.

eye of newt

Eye of ornamental dragon, actually, but newts and dragons are both vaguely lizardlike, right?

patagonia

A few throwback photos from the trip to Patagonia my junior year, in 2005.  Evidence that the subject, not the camera, makes the photo (taken with an ancient bricklike Sony point-and-shoot that I thought was cutting edge at the time).

lucky

A weird talent of mine is finding four-leaf clovers.  I am strangely adept at spotting them in clover patches, and I always pluck and press them in books, only to find them years later.  I found three today while exploring the patches in my yard.

If only this luck would translate to real life.  I could put it on my resume: "Good at finding four-leaf clovers and turning that luck into efficiency in the workplace."

Tiny garden slug, about half an inch long.

Leaf miner trails.  You can see the tiny droppings left by the caterpillars living between the two epidermal leaf layers.  As they eat their way through the leaf, feeding on the chloroplast-containing palisade cells, they remove the green tissue, leaving only clear surface layers behind.  Definitely click and enlarge this one--you can see minuscule beads of condensation on the inner side of the leaf epidermis.

gibbous

Taken with a 55-200mm lens on a clear night.

pollination

A honeybee on my friend's boardshorts at the beach.

palmetto

South Carolina's state tree, the palmetto, at dusk.

candlelight vigil

Students light each others' candles at a vigil I attended for a classmate who recently passed away.

tug for the town

A few candids taken at a tug-of-war tournament I participated (and made it to 2nd place!) in.