On Mon, 24 Mar 2008 06:48:03 GMT, Ryan Cousineau <[email hidden]>
Quoted message said:In article <[email hidden]>,
Quoted message said:On Sat, 29 Sep 2007 21:48:12 -0600, [email hidden] wrote:
A flock of vultures, right?
Well . . .
Let's go back a few minutes.
Here they are, executing a turn at lower altitude, coming back over my
head before they climbed to altitude and started soaring:
http://i25.tinypic.com/fee6ud.jpg
And here they are even earlier, taking off downstream moments after I
first startled them:
http://i27.tinypic.com/jiopol.jpg
Without pictures, it can be hard to convince visitors to the Colorado
semi-desert that some of the vultures circling overhead are looking
for fish.
You had a fair number of fuzzy porcupine pictures in this batch, but the
last shot of the pelicans was great.
Dear Ryan,
Forgive the repetition, but . . .
Alas, the porpentine is not merely fretful, but inherently
"fuzzy"--the camera resolution in many of the pictures is good enough
to show individual hairs:
http://i29.tinypic.com/11l1jpy.jpg
Left-click on the lower right in Explorer for full size.
The porcupine is about 15 feet away and looking at the camera.
Its hair and quills are so dense and black around its tiny face that
you'll have a hard time making out the nostrils, but they're actually
visible.
The dark coat creates its own shadow, in which the dark skin, eyes,
and nose are lost.
The forelegs are visible, too, but only if you stare at the picture
for a while and know that the legs are wrapped around the upright
branch.
Even with direct sunlight, most people won't recognize this as the
balding back fan of a porcupine's coat:
http://i32.tinypic.com/2d8qgck.jpg
Again, left-click on the lower right for full size, which is about
half life-size on my screen.
The detail is good enough to show the black needle-tips on many of the
white quills on the balding back fan.
Put your hand on a dog's back, between the hips, and that's roughly
the spot.
It's a well-defined area (well-defined for a porcupine) where quills
predominate and hair is scarce. The quills in the center are much
smaller and worn away, tapering away to next to nothing in the center,
with long quills spreading out like a peacock's fan.
***
Here's an example of a much better photographer being bested by a
long-haired porcupine in a portrait contest, even though the beast is
posing on the ground at point-blank range:
http://www.rivernen.ca/animal_p.htm
That upper black area is not the porcupine's eye--that's the ear.
The eye is the barely visible gleam in the upper left corner of the
lower rectangular black facial area--it's looking right at the camera.
***
I've been able to see porcupine eyes clearly a few times when I've
walked back and forth underneath a bare cottonwood in good sunlight,
staring up at various angles at a porcupine hanging out on the end of
a branch.
Using binoculars at such a ridiculously close range, you can actually
see fleas, yet still have trouble making out the eyes, nose, and mouth
that you know must be somewhere in that frustrating blackness.
The best approach is to tree a porcupine on a 5-foot-tall juniper and
then inspect the creature at arm's length.
An intelligent observer will maintain this arm's-length distance and
resist the urge to try to pluck a quill from the beast, which is just
sitting there, motionless.
A less intelligent fellow will curse and pluck the quill from his own
hand. Porcupines may waddle slowly, but they can arch their backs like
lightning if you're dumb enough to put your hand within range.
Cheers,
Carl Fogel
