Who knows what horrors lie in patio stairs? Or maybe it this the real Cirith Ungol pass?
@rq, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
Content warning- spiders. Below the fold.
Exterior of the cave, the stone wall of the patio stairs.
More beautiful pictures from Nighjar. Do not be deceived by those fuzzy-wuzzy cute little faces.
©Nightjar, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
We’re starting a new series today on Affinity, courtesy of Ice Swimmer whose photos are always a delight to receive and to share. This time Ice Swimmer is taking us along on an adventure, one delightful chapter at a time and in the spirit of telling a good adventure story we’ll be posting a chapter every few days. I’ll let Ice Swimmer take it from here.
Foreward
This photo series is dedicated to the memory of Caine. The pictures had been taken while she was still alive, but I didn’t get around to making a writeup, so I never sent these to her and then it was too late.
Chapter 1 – Introduction
Harakka from Kaiva, ©Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved
Harakka is an island in Helsinki, Finland. It is located in front of the southern end of the Helsinki peninsula. The island is accessible by boat from Kaivopuisto. The introductory picture is taken from the hill Ullanlinnanmäki, the highest point of the park Kaivopuisto. The island has been home for a lighthouse in the 18th century and during 19th and 20th century in military use, until 1989. The buildings in the island were built for the Russian garrison before the independence and for Finnish forces after that.
Now the island is a nature preserve and there is a Nature Centre to educate children at daycare and in schools about the environmental issues, renewable energy, natural history and conservation coastal and archipelago flora and fauna and also further develop said education. A community of artists also uses one of the buildings in Harakka as studio, exhibition and meeting space.
The Finnish name Harakka means magpie. Supposedly something on the island has looked like a magpie. The Swedish name, which is older than the Finnish name is Stora Räntan. In modern Standard Swedish the name would mean “The Large Interest Rate”, but it was probably something else in the local dialect.
Courtesy of rq whose clever title belies the truth. The photo is actually sunlight seen through beer. What a rich, warm, wet photo. Brilliant. Thanks for sharing rq.
Extraterrestrial Scenery (actually, sunlight through beer), ©rq, all rights reserved
Jack with a bit of seaglass, ©voyager, all rights reserved
Jack and I are leaving Perce today on our way home. We’ll likely go as far as Mt. Joli today, which is about a 6 or 7 hour drive and then on Sunday we’ll make the rest of the trek to Montreal where we’ll spend a few days with family before heading home.
The leaving is difficult. We must say goodbye to the mountains and the streams and the beautiful beaches full of treasure for another year. It’s been a good year, though, and we’re leaving with pockets full of happy memories and a big box of rocks. There’s even a bit of seaglass to add to my jar at home. Jack is sitting beside my jar of of seaglass that lives here. Year by year it grows and someday I might even have it filled, but it’s the hunt that keeps me coming back. It’s taken 25 years and a lot of bending over, one piece at a time, to reach this level. I consider it time well wasted.
Moth Tyta luctuosa on the platform and during takeoff. Gotta love those engines blasting!
©Nightjar, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
Today’s Monday Mercurial is a Carpenter Bee, who are rare and amazing creatures. This is the only thime I saw one and had a camera at hand. They are quite big, easily the size of my thumb and can give you quite a start when soaring past you when you don’t expect them.
©Giliell, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
©Giliell, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
©Giliell, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
Angus is a lucky boy, ©voyager, all rights reserved
This is not Jack. This is Jack’s best friend, Angus, who is a very lucky dog today. Earlier in the week Angus ate part of a carpet that got stuck in his gut. He was sick for a few days before we figured out what happened and we only figured it out because by accident I found a bit of carpet fiber vomit in the long grass at the back. I’m sure that’s already way too much information, but here’s a few more details. The vet gave poor Angus barium and then for two days we fed him mashed potato in little bits to help push it all through. He was scheduled to have surgery today if it didn’t work. Well, early this morning it worked! Out came about a meter of wound up carpet fiber and now Angus seems almost back to normal. He’s weak, but hungry and for the first time in 5 days he barked. I have to admit I’m surprised it worked, but it’s hard to argue with success. Welcome back, Angus.
Today’s Friday Feathers are some of my holiday pics.
i need tore4start the Barcelona series, but for now there’s a young Mediterranean seagull. I love how the juveniles look completely different from the adults
©Giliell
More perfect shots from Nightjar, this time Hummingbird Hawk Moth Macroglossum stellatarum.
©Nightjar, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
It reminded me of a fun anecdote – during my studies at uni, one of my half-classmates mentioned one evening in the pub that he has observed a beautiful hummingbird in his garden. Pedantic killjoy as I am, I have pointed out that there are no hummingbirds in Europe, so what he has in fact observed was in this moth.
It was mildly embarrassing moment, because he was his half-classmateship was the biology half (me studying Biology-Chemistry, him studying Biology-IT). But there was no real reason for him to be embarassed. Nobody has perfect knowledge about everything and their similarity to hummingbirds in flight is really uncanny.
I have seen these beautiful moths occasionaly in my garden, but never when I had camera in hand.
There will be more spiders from you! In the meantime, I think this green spider looked lovely when it waved at me from our plum. The way it was running around on that leaf it looked like some sort of dance routine.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
Shake it to the left…
Shake it to the right…
Oh, didn’t see ya there. Hi!
Inukshuk on the Portage River, ©voyager, all rights reserved
This is another section of the Portage River and if you look closely you can see that someone has taken the time to build a few inukshuk on the shoal, probably while waiting for a fish to bite. The water here is very clean and these are bring home to eat fish if you can catch one.
Since we’re apparently running spider week, here are mine. I took the pics last year at my parents’ place.
The pics are shot with the magnifying lens and each spider baby is about the size the head of a pin.
©Giliell
©Giliell
©Giliell