First Water Overlook

On Wednesday, Erik and I headed for the First Water Overlook trail near Canyon Lake. Erik wonders why it's called First Water Creek when there is obviously no water in it. Good question, but I don't name these things. Well, I only name a few of them.

As usual, the view was fantastic.

Erik is a very adventuresome person, always looking for new things to try, always looking for new experiences. He's one of those people that when he's old and gray, he won't be saying, "I wish I'd done such-and-such". On this hike he did something that I haven't done in six years of hiking in Arizona.

I usually see a lot of these ants while hiking. Horned lizards eat them.

On my hikes, I usually come across large red or black ants. A lot of people here call them fire ants, but they are not fire ants. I've had numerous encounters with fire ants. These large ants are very gentle compared to fire ants. In 6 years of hiking past them and probably over them, I have never been bitten. On his second hike in Arizona, Erik stopped to get some pictures of a particularly busy ant nest. (I started to call it a mound, but they don't make a mound. They carry the dirt they excavate away so there is no mound.) He didn't seem to notice that he had stopped in a heavily traveled ant path (these ants leave visible trails along their heavily traveled routes). Soon his pants legs had about 20 ants each. He tried to shake them off and we went on our way. I asked him to let me know if they bit because I've never been bitten by one, to which he replied, "Ouch!". Before they were done they had bitten him 4 or 5 times (fire ants with as much time as these had would have bitten him about 30 times). He said they were quite painful for a while.

While trying to figure out what kind of ants they are, I found out that Arizona has 318 species of ants, which is more than any other state. I haven't found a web site that's good for novices to look up ants, though.

That evening we went scorpion hunting. We had been looking for about 10 minutes and I was about to give up and go look someplace else when I spotted the biggest scorpion I have ever seen in Arizona. I should have put something next to it for scale when I took pictures, but I didn't think of that. Also, I didn't have a tripod with me so I didn't get very good pictures. Erik had been saying he wanted to catch a scorpion, but after his encounter with the ants he didn't seem anxious to tangle with a scorpion.

A large scorpion. Erik took a flash picture while my shutter was open, which produced an unusual effect.

2009_08_19

Scorpions

A year or two ago, I had gone out at night with my ultraviolet cap and gotten a few pictures of scorpions. They were all blurred, though, because I didn't have a tripod with me. I finally went again tonight, but a lot of the pictures are blurred again because I didn't have the lens on the camera that I should have had. So many excuses. Anyway, here's a few pictures.

I found 3 scorpions, but this is the only one that waited around while I got the camera set up.

I think it was chasing bugs when it moved around, because it moved really fast.

Instead of enhancing details, Photomatix decreased them in this case. Well, it is a really strange picture. Maybe if I played around with some parameters, in my spare time.

2009_08_14

Night critters

I've been meaning to use my ultraviolet light out in the desert for some time now. I didn't during the summer because it gets dark so late, and I'm usually falling asleep by 9. It's pretty dark by 7 now, though. I walked along a couple of trails looking for anything that fluoresced. I found a piece of plastic that glowed very brightly. A few steps later I found something else glowing just as brightly and started to pick it up. My hand was 3 or 4 inches away from it when I noticed that it had legs. I did not pick it up. It started running around and then it was easy to tell it was a scorpion. I took some flash pictures. I need to work on taking pictures at night

From Meridian_2008_10_07

I continued walking along and suddenly realized that I should have tried to get a picture of it using just the ultraviolet light. I headed back but couldn't find it. No problem. It wasn't very long before I found another one. This one was a lot smaller. I didn't have a tripod with me so I had to put the camera on my knee, and it wasn't steady enough for the 1 second exposure. Then the batteries in my ultraviolet light started going dead. The light clips on the bill of a cap, which leaves my hands free to mess with cameras or whatever. I needed to hold the quickly fading light closer to the scorpion. So I'm half laying on the ground with my face almost on the scorpion trying to get a picture. Yep, I'm taking the tripod next time.

From Meridian_2008_10_07