Nature
 

Aaarg motivated me with his pictures of his hiking to find some of my own past photos. These are some of them. They are all taken in Tasmania at various locations that aren't that far away from each other to warrant me remembering where I took them.

Please post images of the great outdoors that you have taken. I'm sure I would upload more if people cared, too.

these are all from the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge right before they flooded the largest trail to add more habitat area

what cool pictures. if you've got more, totally post 'em!

In my parent's backyard:

Willie, are those barns in your second picture? That's also a pretty purple swamp.

Also, that's a fantastic creek your parents have in their backyard. We used to have one when I was growing up. Better than a TV I say.

This one is from Wineglass Bay. COOL ROCKS.


Here is a Tasmanian devil that I saw there. It's only a baby. I wouldn't get that close to a grown one.

You guys have great places to hide bodies.

they are! it used to be a dairy farm before they made it into a wildlife refuge. there were so many swallows nesting in the eaves it was ridiculous.

We have the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge a couple miles from where I live. Srsly, I'm pretty sure there are bodies there.

Horizon's a little wonky, tree must be crooked:



These first two were taken at Lake Loramie in Ohio. I go there to watch herons.



Cherry tree:



Juvenile mantis:

That's so god damn American, I love it.

Agreed. I spent hours out there playing every day during the summer.

closer view of barns w/ swallow nests


a coupla wood ducks!



and i also got some snaps of this great blue heron

oh yeah kitsa aren't you in/near nelsonville? post some pictures from the hocking hills!

Ayuh, about 2 hours from there. (Also, <3 great blue herons)

These first photos are of Cantwell Cliffs:



One of the hikers' cabins along the trail.



This looks like the cover of every biology text I've ever had.







Watch out, that first step's a doozy...


This one creeped me out because it looked like a zoo gorilla enclosure.


This staircase is called "Fat Woman's Squeeze", I think. I didn't test it.

These are from Rock House, a natural cave that was used by Native Americans and appropriated by bootleggers:



I hate curves in the trail like this. I was hugging the wall. That sharp turn you see drops off the face of a cliff.



When there's water, this is a beautiful waterfall.


Inside Rock House, looking out.


Got this photographer as he was taking a picture of one of the openings. You can't see well here, but the floor is littered with dead pigeons.

And the rest of these are from Old Man's cave, which I dislike because it's too touristy, built-up and crowded:

Oh god damn it, why did Ashley never cement the plans she was making for us to camp out in the Hills for a weekend?

Looks like my kind of place. I love rocks and caves and above-ground caves.

She fell off a waterfall there!

Those ph


Tell me, why are trees (in general) in the US all the same colour green? Do you only get one type of tree in each area, or is it that all the different trees are just very well matched? It's strange.

Those ph...... otos are fantastic Kitsa.

Waterfall at Cradle Mountain

Depends on the forest, really. Most forests are made up of a few different trees of a similar species, but yeah for the most part in eastern deciduous forests everything's the same shade of green.


There is some variation in the green, though!

And...

Looks different in the fall (this is just a search engine picture, not something I've taken)

Thanks

Every time I see the Appalachians or the foothills in the fall, I think of those model train sets with all the different color moss blobs for trees. It looks just like that to me.

And representing Britain: The snow that made everyone freak out eariler this year.>:

I still wanna see the bunny fields :(

Those ones by the trees are. So you have seen some!

Top left? I thought so!

a pretty lake on the way up to my friends Bryan and Julie's house a few weeks ago. still amazed that it came out, being that i took it with my cell and was on a moving express train........



edit: oh yeah i'm in northern NJ :)

zhukov, what's that leaf in the second pic from the top?

Hmm. Good question. I checked with my botanist friend at work, and the best he could come up with is that it's probably endemic to the area. Other than that, both he and I are in the dark. It's interesting though, isn't it? The leaf itself is contoured in such a way to maximise water collection - or that's what it looks like.

Second prize is some more pictures of plants from the Cradle Mountain area:

I wonder what that last one is.

A mushroom.

Uh huh.

I can't see the base of the stem. It could be this:

http://www.rogersmushrooms.com/galle...oserresult.asp

Or maybe this:

http://www.rogersmushrooms.com/galle...oserresult.asp

Not sure.

I know absolutely nothing about mushrooms, but I was just looking at a ID key website and I realize I really should have looked at the underside of the thing.

I also like the really spiky one.

I just know enough to be afraid of them.

Meeee toooooooo.

We re-watched all the Planet Earth and Blue Planet DVD's recently. Some of that stuff (the time-elapsed footage of parasitic fungi growing from the corpses of insects, for instance) which is absolutely amazing regularly is mind-blowing when you're high.

That's awesome.

I just have a few pictures from the mountains and Shuswap lake from this Summer's houseboat trip. Nothing overly exciting there. I'm more a fan of winter and trees than summer and mountains :\

I love mountains anytime, but I prefer spring/summer/fall as I tend to get uncontrollably unhappy in the winter.

I can't wait for the fall now that I've moved here. For the first few weeks I was down, I commented that "everything is so green here" so I look forward to everything being red and yellow and brown and orange.

The red, yellow, orange leaves do look aweseome, I've only ever seen green.

Well, in the wild. My nan has a Japanese maple that gets a deep red that I really like.

WV is beautiful in the fall.

I fucking love Fall and Winter. Dying and dead nature to me looks a lot more peaceful and serene than when it is covered with bugs and plant life and shit.

I look forward to our winter. can't come to work today, my cars stuck (and the fridge is full of beer).



well, I guess I'll have another few months before this shit comes.

How did you find where I live?! Did you trace my ISP or something?! :x

Hey miss Sparkles, what happens if a person harvests and eats your home? ^^;

Then they'd be doubled over with cramps and vomiting six hours later. My home is deadly poison.

Ah, I was wondering why there was a satellite next to that mushroom.

I'm even more stunned as to how the hell you found my vacation cottage as well. That place doesn't even have an Internet connection.

Your vacation cottage looks hallucinogenic o.o

Not wildlife by any means but this is where I've been living since May:

there are a few more layers of mountains but it's overcast today so they're invisible!

I miss living in the countryside. Suburbia is boring to the point of maddness.

Here are some orchids in flower. There are plenty more where that came from.

Orchids are beautiful. I have two at my mom's house, but my dad keeps over-watering them so they might not last long :(

But are they meat-eating orchids that forgive no one just yet?

I liked the way those clouds looked. Especially because in every other direction there were storm clouds.

it looks like one of those "identify the cloud types" drawings you get in 3rd and 4th grade.

Haha, I was thinking that too when I took it. Well, kind of.

The rest of the clouds looked like this:

Are these pictures you've taken Aaarg?

If I had some of those views at my disposal I'd be a happy man. Shits beautiful as FUCK.

make with pics of the Anne of Green Gables tourists, steve. I know you've got 'em.

One time I was in a Niagara Falls gift shop and this group of Japanese tourists thought I was an Anne of Green Gables impersonator. They were all taking pictures of me. True story.

Fuck my red hair :(

Those are all pictures I've taken. The only one I've posted here that isn't is the picture of autumn colors.

I moved down here in May of this year, and yeah I'm much much much happier here than the DC suburb I grew up in or the shitty West Virginia city I lived in for a while.

Basically going in any direction for 15-30 minutes will bring you to somewhere worthwhile: The Blue Ridge Parkway, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Cashiers/Highlands (the people and towns suck but the nature is fantastic).


That's the "highway" at the end of our street.

The driveway.

i should take some pictures of the nature around here :O

I didn't take this picture but this is basically what i would take a picture of:

yiiiiikes.

no wonder you're so pissy all the time.

no joke, if i lived in a wasteland i'd be the most miserable person ever.

I can't complain about tourists too much, they give a lot into our little economy. but yeah... it gets pretty annoying in the heat of summer.

where abouts do you live Aaarg?

Near the southwestern corner of North Carolina.

In the dot!

:lol
coming from the person with the highest pissy thread creation rate :O haha do you live in an ugly place too?

c'mon, she lives in ohio. . .

I'm not sure if thats good or bad :(

Well I just got back from a whirlwind tour of Australia's Northern Terrirtory and New South Wales, so I have plenty of photos that I need to put in here when I can be bothered.

Sweeeeet.

I didn't get to spend very long in the Northern Territory; I only got a little over a day in two different national parks, and that was it. The first one my female companion and I visited was Litchfield, just south of Darwin.

Darwin has the worst weather I have ever experienced so far in my life, by the way. 33 degree heat is hardly anything to worry about, but the air was so wet and humid we couldn't walk 50 meters down the road without needing to rest, drink water and complain. It was a chore to breathe. Anyway, Litchfield was about 35 celcius, but dry so it was nice.

First photo is of magnetic termite mounds. They look like gravestones. The termite nests act as huge sails that face East; maximizing morning and evening sun and minimizing it in the noon.

Cathedral termite mounds dotted the place too. They just build massive nests that get to be as big as trees and hundreds of years old.

More Litchfield.


Twin Falls; I swam there.


Twin falls was where I began my love affair with a reasonably large type of green arsed ant that when you licked it's abdomen it tasted like lime. For the next five days I licked these ants wherever I saw them :\


I think I might have known what this tree is called at some stage, but I can't remember. It is a parasite sucking on another tree.


Swam here too.


This plant is a carnivore. It attracts insects by smelling rather nice, then when they wander in to have a gander, they get stuck on the sticky, dew tipped hairs. The leaf then folds in on itself to consume it's victim. I think it's called a sun dew something or something. Maybe not.


More to come.

drosera, sundew, yeah. Very cool :) I've only ever seen one, and not in the wild...just in a terrarium :(

Edit: the lime taste (lime because it's green?) is formic acid. Ants squirt formic acid from their asses when they're threatened; I'm guessing having their asses licked is perceived as enough of a threat to give you that burst of lime flavor. Most people say it's lemony, so it's interesting you went with lime. The french word fourmi, ant, comes from the same root as formic acid.

Anyway, humans aren't the only ones who learned to take advantage of it. Certain species of birds practice something called "anting"...mostly jays, who are pretty intelligent although they're asshole birds. They antagonize the ants and stuff them under their feathers. The threatened ants squirt formic acid, and the acid kills the mites that are bothering the bird. As a consequence of anting, jays are typically pretty clean birds.

Alot of the time it's the small things (not always literaly) like that that can be the thing which interests you most. I didn't expect to see them there, because I had read about them and thought I remembered that they grew in boggy or marsh like areas. There were hundreds, and although most were only about ten centimeters across, there were a few as big as your hand. Or clusters of several plants, I should say.

I like stumbling across plants in the wild that I'd only seen in books before. I remember when I came across some Viper's Bugloss in a waste area and being so excited. My field botany teacher encouraged me to harvest one for my pressings project, but was enough of an asshole to neglect to tell me that I needed to wear gloves.

Turns out that there are little poison spikes in the stems that protrude when the stem is compressed, injecting fun little squirts of poison into your hand, like nettles. I had a bad rash on my hands for days :(

No consequences from your self-anting?

Ha, was that meant to teach you some sort of lesson?

No, I had no side effects come with my anting. You don't go around tasting things in Australia without knowing with 100% certainty that it wont kill you, so I wasn't as surprised with the ants as I was with the sundew.

On a related note, these are deadly:


Not really. Actually, they could have been, so I didn't try them just in case.

I'm not sure. Science professors can be inscrutable.

Awesome pictures. Makes me want to visit Australia.

Also, Kitsa, I love your random nuggets of information. Have you taken courses in natural resources/wildlife/etc. or are you just a reader/observer?

All of the above. One of my undergrad degrees is in music and the other was biology with a zoology emphasis. I was taking medschool classes at the same time by special permission, but I had to leave school for health reasons before I could do my MCAT and get in for reals. But then I did some graduate work anyway. And I used to keep massive amounts of reptiles and amphibians, because I liked to raise them.

But I think most of what I know comes from me being a paralyzed kid who read for entertainment instead of running around and being an idiot like a normal kid, heh. Also, I basically grew up in a hospital.

Documentaries are more interesting than crap fictional tv anyway.

Ah, cool.

Yeah, we've been watching Cosmos and I really like it regardless of how silly Sagan was.

You're too young to remember Leonard Nimoy "In Search Of...", I think, but that one was fun too. But it was more BS science than real.

Kitsa, you remind me of Stephen Fry. In a good way.

This is a random billabong somewhere in the middle of nowhere. I found long necked turtle shells all over the place, and lots and lots of fish skeletons. This area was ruled by a large white eagle that was hovering off in the distance. Did not swim here as it would be filled with crocodiles.


This was called Yellow River or some such. Lots of birds. In the distance you can just make out some water buffalo.


These were bigger than they look. The seeds inside tasted like peanuts.


THERE'S ONE.


There's another one.




Good sunset, but obscured by clouds today. Like Aarg, I seemd to be interested in the clouds in a lot of these photos. Good clouds make a photo more pituresque I think.

I like Stephen Fry. I just hope you're not talking about the manic-depressive way :(

That's a beautiful wading bird there at the end. Is it some sort of crane? I can't see the markings, but it didn't look like a heron at first go.

Are snakes a big problem on your hikes? I know that in NZ they're not, typically, but you seem to hike a bit north, too.

I'm trying to remember what the birds were in an Attenborough special on NZ that I was so taken with, but now I can't. Some sort of flightless mountain birds, they were fascinating.

The manic depressive way is hardly the "good way" now is it? Stephen Fry amazes me by being full of knowledge but also full of wit and humour. Most people can only have a little of column A, a little of column B. If they are lucky. You and he seem to have lots of both.

It is a crane. Or a heron... or maybe an ibis. Honestly I don't know too much about birds. I took many photos of herons and cranes, but you can't post them all, can you? There were snake-necked herons that would dart into the water, then pop their head and S shaped neck out while zooming around looking for fish; it looked gloriously absurd.

On a related note, I was attacked by White Ibis in Sydney for my sandwich. They are native, and can usually be found hanging around bins.

Snakes are only a problem if you go looking for them, off any tracks. You can run into them, but they generaly are well hidden and will try to stay that way. People that get killed by snakes are usually trying to antagonise them, or getting "a closer look". My photos of snakes (actually, just 'snake') are blurred and don't show anything other than the speed at which I was flinging the camera about. I only saw a few little snakes, in fact I see more snakes here in Tasmania than in the North.

The NZ bird... are you talking about the Kiwi? The MOA? That big, grey, parrot look-alike that has trouble mating and whose name alludes me right now?

That's very nice of you to say. It all seems a bit bizarre that my big, expensive education all came to nothing for health reasons and that now I'm doing art. But I hope I can pass stuff on to my kid. Learning is good.

I have a catalog with a Stephen Fry alarm clock. Apparently he wakes you with 100-odd spoken phrases.


This is part of the documentary...

This is a view from the trails I ride near home. It's sagebrush and dry but I think it's pretty

Here is my ride,

Wow, cool. Where is that? My first thought was Spain, but somewhere like California or nearabouts seems more likely.

Also, horse. Cool.

Yes I'm in California. We have some nice oak trees on that trail, I just did not get a picture of them.

That horse looks so ashamed.

Oh yeah, it does. :lol


I promise I'll be done now. Sorry for hogging.

St. Andrew's Cross spider. They look great and some of them have weird zig-zag effects on their webs. I say 'effects' as if they used photoshop.


One aspect of my short trip I didn't think would appeal to me was Aboriginal cave paintings, instead, however, I was totally in awe all of the time I spent in Ubir, a sacred painting site. There were probably around a hundred visable paintings, all between 20-40 000 years old, apparantly. I thought it was quite impressive and took way too many pictures. There was a European painted standing near a boat with big boots and a pipe, ahaha. A Tasmanian Tiger, too, because ten thousand odd years ago they lived all over Australia.



Good view at the top, too.


See that debri stuck on the tree on the left? That's bark, branches leaves etc that get washed around during the wet season. The whole place gets flooded and is pretty much underwater. Hard to believe it right then. We visited on the cusp of the wet seaon, and actually experienced the first rain the area had seen in 8 months. Monsoonal rain is intimidating, since it doesn't drilzzle then lead up to heavy rain, it just drops it all in one go, then stops soon after.


Most fires are started under controlled conditions so the bush can regenerate as naturally as possible while still being SAFE.


Luckily for me there were plenty of signs about. Really though, you just have to stay away from water that is murky or has plenty of wildlife/food around.


Did swim here though.


My gal.


Thanks for looking. Now, more pictures from other people please.

That's a really beautiful set of photos.

I've been a little depressed that I can't hike as much as I've been doing due to my various issues. My parents have suddenly gotten very active outdoors and have been all over, I'll have to see if they came up with anything pretty I can show you.

I have photos of native american pictographs and petroglyphs. I took way too many pictures of them too. I'll have to post some of them later. I've been to Yellowstone and Yosemite this year maybe I'll will post some of those as well.

Not nature exactly, but this is the typical scenery, an Amish traffic jam in town:



These are from Charleston Falls and some other little woodsy parks near here that make for nice day hikes. My mom took these:

It snowed today! First day of Winter!

you guys always get the white stuff first.

kitsa, is that in the hocking hills?


also zhukov, keep hogging. the pictures are gorgeous.

i'll probably take some hikes in the near future. things are dying, colors are changing.

Nope, not Hocking Hills. This is about 1.5 hours away from (west of) Columbus, around Springfield and Yellow Springs.

Here are the petroglyphs:

Arches national parkDouble arch, My daughters are in the middle of the picture

very cool. Much cooler than our local "twin arches", which I excitedly went to expecting a natural rockbridge and instead found some old rotting canal gates :(