16 Saturday Oct 2021
Posted in EBF Refuge, Photography
Fishing by humans is not allowed at the refuge. But the birds are free to fish since it is sometimes their best way to obtain what they need to survive. The Great Egret shown below is an excellent practitioner of fishing. Yesterday, I watched from beginning to end as it plucked a fish out of the marshes.
11 Monday Oct 2021
Posted in EBF Refuge, Photography
Tags
Big Eyes Butterfly., black swallowtail, Edwin B Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, postaday, snowy egret
Here are some not yet published photos of butterflies and a young Snowy Egret I took in September at the refuge.
09 Saturday Oct 2021
Posted in Photography
Tags
We have had a warm beginning for fall, and it feels more like late summer. Some flowers and foliage plants are enjoying it and are thriving beautifully.
03 Sunday Oct 2021
Posted in EBF Refuge, Photography
The French have a great expression for sleeping in: “faire la grasse matinée”, literally do a fat morning. The Yellow-crowned Night Heron, a night hunter and feeder, practiced it when I met him.
01 Friday Oct 2021
Posted in EBF Refuge, Photography
A male Grackle led a noisy band of Grackles to a small island in the marshes. After they landed, he posted himself on the highest branch and called out to them.
29 Wednesday Sep 2021
Posted in EBF Refuge, Photography
27 Monday Sep 2021
Posted in EBF Refuge, Photography
Some birds probably look more striking in monochrome.
25 Saturday Sep 2021
Posted in EBF Refuge, Photography
Tags
Big Eyes Butterfly., Edwin B Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, postaday, Sleepy Orange Butterfly
This morning I went to the refuge to photograph birds. There were indeed many egrets, terns, gulls, vultures, and so on. But I saw two unfamiliar butterflies and could not resist taking their pictures.
The first one, a Sleepy Orange, started to fly away as I took the shot, but you can still see its vibrant colors.
The second one was a Big Eyes Butterfly which took its time feeding and allowed me to take many shots.
18 Saturday Sep 2021
Posted in EBF Refuge, Photography
Tags
Edwin B Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, grackle, great egret, laughing gull, postaday, snowy egret, tern
According to the dictionary, a pose is “a sustained posture, especially one assumed for artistic effect”. The second part of the definition does not apply to birds. Most birds fly, and they do so gracefully as their bodies have to conform to the demands of aerodynamics. At rest, they become more compact and assume natural poses to observe their surroundings, or to preserve heat when necessary.
14 Tuesday Sep 2021
Posted in EBF Refuge, Photography
Tags
Edwin B Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, great blue heron, great egret, ladybug, postaday, snowy egret, tricolored heron
In one more week, summer will be ending. Some birds have already left the refuge but many remain as warm temperatures still prevail and food is abundant in the marshes. Here are some more shots of the Great Blue Heron shown in monochrome yesterday.
Great and Snowy Egrets, including juveniles born this year are everywhere around the refuge.
A Snowy Egret bristled in warning as a juvenile landed close to it.
There was a new bird for me. It was quite far away, but I think it was a Tricolored Heron.
While scanning the marshes, I saw a brilliant, shiny red spot in the middle of the milkweed. Mating season should be over by now, but two Ladybugs did not get the memo.
13 Monday Sep 2021
Posted in EBF Refuge, Photography
09 Thursday Sep 2021
Posted in Photography
Years ago AT&T forced everyone to go wireless and gave me a free Samsung smartphone. It worked but was awfully slow and I only carried it to use in an emergency. I rarely took pictures with it. One of those pictures is shown below.
No matter what I did, I could not get Santiago Calatrava’s creation in one frame without cutting off some part of it.
Recently, I acquired a Samsung S21 Plus smartphone and took the following photos.
The above images were downloaded from the Samsung smartphone to my PC. I did some post processing with DxO software, mainly cropping, sharpening and enhancing color vibrancy.
29 Sunday Aug 2021
Posted in EBF Refuge, Photography
21 Saturday Aug 2021
Posted in Photography
Tags
black-eyed susan, blue dasher, Carnegie Lake, graffiti, gray catbird, hydrangea, postaday, sayen Gardens
I took the following photos over the past two weeks at various places in Central Jersey.
20 Friday Aug 2021
Posted in Photography
Tags
cabbage butterfly, eastern black swallowtail, eastern mud turtle, Edwin B Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, mapleton preserve, postaday, sayen garden, silver spotted skipper, small skipper
Summer is the season for beautiful butterflies that flutter around plants and flowers, their colors and appearance letting us know that the outdoors are where we belong. I photographed the following butterflies at two different spots not far from home.
A small turtle (less than 5 in or 10 cm) was crossing the road as I drove by.
16 Monday Aug 2021
Posted in Photography
15 Sunday Aug 2021
Posted in Photography
It’s Saturday, and I’ll be reviewing only Self-Published/Indie books all day. Saturday is exclusively Self-Published/Indie. Self-Published Saturday is my effort to help Indie authors market their books. As I always say, Self-Published/Indie authors have to do it all, from editing to cover design to marketing. My hope is that this feature will give them a little help. Please remember that if you decide to review the book, leave a review on Amazon, Goodreads, and anywhere else you review the book. This is so important for Self-Published authors. My first SP Saturday feature today is Village Teacher by neihtn, or Hien T. Nguyen. Village Teacher is a wonderful historical love story set in Vietnam.
Village Teacher by Neihtn, who also writes as Nguyen Trong Hien, is a well-written novel set in Vietnam in the late 19th or early 20th century while Vietnam was under French colonization. Teacher Tâm has traveled to…
View original post 468 more words
12 Thursday Aug 2021
Posted in colonial lake, Photography
Tags
bee, blue dasher, dragonfly, hibiscus, mallard, monarch, painted turtle, postaday, primrose
Yesterday I walked around Colonial Lake, five miles from home, to see what I could photograph during one of the hottest days of the year. An excessive heat warning is in effect until tomorrow evening.
The dragonflies enjoyed the heat.
The primroses were thriving.
The hibiscuses were in full bloom.
There were many ducks, mainly Mallards, with some oddly colored ones mixed in with them.
Monarchs were flying around.
Painted Turtles were sunning on an old tire.
11 Wednesday Aug 2021
Posted in Photography
Tags
Around this time of the year, I’ve been going to photograph lotus flowers at a small pond at the Carnegie Center in Princeton, NJ. In previous years the pond used to have beautiful lotus flowers blooming in July and August. This year all the lotus plants have wilted and turned brown as if struck by some disease. The pond looked terrible. Was it some fungal disease that attacked the lotus? Were the plants left to die intentionally? There was no one around to ask questions.
Here are some shots of the flowers I took on July 25, 2020.
08 Sunday Aug 2021
Posted in EBF Refuge, Photography
Great Blue Heron.
07 Saturday Aug 2021
Posted in EBF Refuge, Photography
Tags
asclepias tuberosa, Edwin B Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, milkweed, monarch butterfly, postaday
Following are three images of Monarch butterflies during a drive at Edwin B Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge.
24 Saturday Jul 2021
Posted in Photography
Lately clouds from forest fires in the Western part of the United States have been drifting over the Eastern part, and beyond to Europe perhaps. They have made the sky very cloudy and the moon orange at night. I went to Sayen House and Gardens in Hamilton, NJ to see whether there were flowers to photograph. In one corner of the gardens I found the pond murky looking. The photos I took of the pond surface and some plants growing in the water looked like black and white photos. I converted them to monochrome images which do not appear too different from their color originals.
18 Sunday Jul 2021
Posted in Ocean City Welcome Center, Photography
15 Thursday Jul 2021
Posted in Photography, Short Story
Tags
Khái Hưng, postaday, red river, Self Reliance Literary Group, Tự Lực Văn Đoàn, Trần Khánh Giư, Yên Phụ
Following is my translation of a short story published in 1934. It was written by a famous Vietnamese author, Trần Khánh Giư using the pen name of Khái Hưng. He and Nhất Linh (see Shadow in the Mist) were the two founders of the Self Reliance Literary Group (Tự Lực Văn Đoàn).
“You Must Live” (“Anh Phải Sống”) is the first of 13 short stories written by these two authors. It was published in 1934. At the end of World War II, Khái Hưng was arrested by the Vietnamese Communists and executed in 1947.
One summer afternoon on the dike at Yên Phụ.
The Red River was rising and flowing so strongly that it was threatening a small island in the middle of it. Tree trunks and desiccated branches collected from upstream forests were carried by its reddish current. They looked like a never-ending convoy of small boats traveling at top speed toward some unknown destination.
Standing on the dike, mason Thức eyed those pieces of wood, a wishful expression on his face. He turned to his wife and stared at her with an unspoken question. She gazed at the river, inspected the sky, then sighed:
“The wind is too strong, and those dark clouds on the horizon are growing fast. Dear, it will rain soon!”
He also let out a sigh, and began ambling away. Abruptly he stopped and asked her:
“Did you cook yet?”
She answered sadly:
“Yes, but there is only enough for the two older kids to eat this evening.”
The couple looked at each other in silence. Then something seemed to mesmerize them, forcing them to turn toward the river. In the middle of the river, pieces of firewood were drifting steadily downstream.
The husband smiled oddly and said:
“Bold!”
The wife shook her head but did not say a word. He asked:
“Did you go see Mrs. Ký yet?”
“I did.”
“How did that turn out?”
“Useless. She said she will only give us money when we collect that floating firewood and bring it to her. She will lend us nothing before that.”
“Is that so?”
Those words were as solid as the firm taps he made with a trowel on the bricks of a wall he was building. Willing himself to do some superhuman act, Thức turned to his wife:
“Go home and take care of our boy Bò.”
“He has big sister Nhớn and small sister Bé looking after him.”
“Dear, it’d better if you went home. Nhớn is barely five, how can she take care of the two younger ones?”
“I’ll go home then … But you should too. What are you standing around here for?”
“It’s all right. You first, I’ll go later.”
Mason Thức’s wife went obediently back to the village of Yên Phụ.
Seeing their low house, dark and damp, mason Thức’s wife thought about their poverty and felt despondent.
All three of her children were on the bare wooden bed, crying and clamoring for their mother. The little boy, Bò, was wailing, wanting to be fed. Since noon he had not had anything in his stomach.
Big sister Nhớn had not succeeded in calming him and was constantly telling small sister Bé:
“Run out to find mother and tell her to come home and feed him.”
However, Bé refused to go and laid on the bed crying and cursing.
Mason Thức’s wife ran to her son and picked him up, soothing him with words:
“I am sorry! I was out for too long and I let my baby go hungry, I let my baby cry.”
She sat on the bed to feed him. The boy began suckling. But he soon gave up and let go of his mother’s nipple because she had no milk for him. He wailed louder than before.
Thức’s wife sighed, her large black eyes filling with tears. She stood up and walked around singing softly to lull him to sleep.
“I am sorry! I had nothing to eat, and I have no more milk for my baby.”
Eventually, exhausted by his efforts, he fell asleep. The mother told the two girls to go out of the house to let their brother sleep.
She sat down and thought about her life. Her simple peasant mind could not dream or arrange her memories in any order. The things she remembered appeared chaotically, like people and objects on a photograph. One thing she did remember very clearly was that she had never had a moment of leisure, one moment during which she could enjoy happiness like rich people did.
When she was twelve or thirteen, Lạc began working as a mason helper. Her life went on, day after day, month after month, year after year.
At the age of seventeen, she and Thức worked together, he as a roofer and she his helper. They exchanged pleasantries now and then. They fell in love. They got married.
Five years later, in their dilapidated home at the foot of the Yên Phụ dike, there was nothing that could be considered easy in the life of these two miserable people, their poverty worsening with the birth of three children in three years.
On top of that the times were hard, jobs were few and wages low. The couple struggled from one day to the next, never earning enough to feed their growing family.
Then mason Thức came up with a new way to earn a living. He borrowed money to buy a small woven bamboo boat. Every day, they took the boat out to the middle of the river to collect firewood to sell. Two months later, with their debt paid off, they were making enough money to live comfortably.
That is why this year, amid widespread poverty and hunger, the couple was looking toward the day when the river would be high again.
Yesterday, they saw that heaven had granted their wishes.
Lạc smiled and softly laid her baby down on his diaper. Silently, she stepped outside and began climbing the dike resolutely.
At the top of the dike, she did not see her husband anywhere.
The wind was roaring and the current was strong, flowing fast and noisy like a waterfall. Lạc lifted her yes to look at the sky: it was dark, black.
She stood thinking, her shirt flapping like those strong waves assailing the river bank. Then a sudden thought hit her. She panicked and ran to the side of the dike leading down to the river.
She arrived at the place where they had moored their woven boat. Lạc saw her husband making efforts to tighten the knots holding the bamboo slats together. She observed him silently and waited until he finished before stepping onto the boat and asked:
“Dear, where are you planning to go?”
Thức glared at his wife, shouting angrily:
“Why aren’t you staying home with the children?”
Frightened, she answered:
“They … are sleeping.”
“But what are you doing out here?”
“Where are you taking the boat?”
“Why do you ask? Go home!”
Lạc started to cry. Thức was moved.
“Why are you crying?”
“Because you are planning to go get firewood by yourself, without me.”
Thức was thinking and looking at the sky, the river. He told her:
“Dear, you can’t come along … It’s too dangerous!”
Lạc laughed:
“Dangerous! Then it’s dangerous for both of us … I am not afraid, I know how to swim.”
“All right!”
Those words sounded cold, making Lạc shiver. The river continued flowing strongly while the sky was getting even darker. Thức asked:
“Afraid?”
“No.”
They started taking the boat toward the middle of the river. He steered, she paddled. To fight against the current, he pointed the boat upstream. Still the boat drifted downstream, bobbling up and down, hidden at times by alluvial waves, then emerging again like a dried bamboo leaf on a pool of blood, a tiny mosquito drowning in a tube of lipstick.
Yet half an hour later they had reached the middle of the river. He held the rudder firmly while she collected the driftwood.
Not too long after, the boat was almost full and they prepared to return to the river bank. Rain started falling, followed by lightning which seemed to tear the clouds apart, while thunder threatened to blow up both heaven and earth.
The small bamboo boat filled with water and became heavier. They both paddled, but the current kept taking the boat along with it.
They shouted at the same time:
“Heaven!”
The boat sank. Their collected driftwood rejoined their former ranks and moved coldly forward, taking the overturned boat with it.
He asked his wife:
“Will you be able to swim to the river bank?”
“I can,” she asserted.
“Swim along with the current … Lean on the waves!”
“I can do it! Don’t worry!”
The heavy rain continued, accompanied by ferocious thunder and lightning. The two felt they were living on the border of some abyss. A moment later, seeing his wife weakening, Thức swam toward her and asked:
“How is it going?”
“I can do it! Don’t worry!”
As soon as she said that, her head sank in the water. She struggled tremendously to come up to the surface. He sped toward her. Then one arm holding her up, he swam with his other arm. She smiled and looked at him lovingly. He also smiled. Some time later, Thức shouted:
“I am tired, hang on to me and let me swim! I can’t hold on to you any longer.”
After a few more minutes, he was exhausted and his arms were beyond tiring. She asked him softly:
“Can you swim some more?”
“Don’t know. If it was just me, no problem.”
“I will detach myself so you can swim to the bank, all right?”
He laughed:
“No! We’ll die together.”
A short while later, although Lạc felt it was as long as a day, her husband asked:
“Lạc! Can you try to swim some more?”
“No, why?”
“Nothing. Then we’ll both die.”
Lạc shuddered and said softly:
“Baby Bò! Nhớn! Bé! … No! … You must live!”
All of a sudden, Thức felt much lighter. She was no longer holding on to him. Lạc had thought about their children and had silently sunk to the bottom of the river, giving him enough strength to swim to the river bank.
Electric lights were shining brightly on the dike. The wind had died, the waves had calmed down. A man with a baby boy in his arms was sitting on the ground, crying. Two young girls stood on both sides of him. The family of mason Thức had come to the river to say farewell to the one who had sacrificed herself for her children. In the vast emptiness, the river kept flowing downstream, unconcerned.
14 Wednesday Jul 2021
Posted in Photography
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11 Sunday Jul 2021
Posted in Ocean City Welcome Center, Photography
Tags
10 Saturday Jul 2021
Posted in Photography
Tags
Deers don’t eat zinnias, one of the reasons I planted Forecast Zinnias around the yard this year. Actually, they did sample one plant but since then have given up eating zinnias.
03 Saturday Jul 2021
Posted in Photography
Tags
cicada, forecast zinnia, paw paw, photography, postaday, zinnia
Yesterday, the silence was deafening! The 17-year cicadas were gone, and so was the noise they made. In our local paper, high school students were promoting cicadas as food, deep-fried or what not. Claims were made that these insects do not harm anything, but one look at our backyard convinced me otherwise. Many trees have clumps of dead leaves, as seen in the following shot of this year’s Paw-paw fruit.
Paw-paw with dead leaves left behind by cicadas.
Meanwhile Zinnias have started to bloom after the spring flowers like peonies were done with putting on their show.
27 Sunday Jun 2021
Posted in Ocean City Welcome Center, Photography
The Ocean City Welcome Center rookery has many White Ibises this year. They make perfect subjects for birds in flight photography.
26 Saturday Jun 2021
Posted in Ocean City Welcome Center, Photography
Tags
Black-crowned Night Heron, Ocean City Welcome Center, photography, postaday, yellow-crowned night heron
Night heron babies are not among the cutest by any stretch! They do grow up to be very handsome adults, and require a lot of feeding for that. That’s why their parents come back every year to the rookery which is surrounded in all directions by an ocean brimming with crustaceans and fish.
In a nearby nest, a Black-crowned Night Heron juvenile was going through the same hunger pains.
25 Friday Jun 2021
Posted in Ocean City Welcome Center, Photography
The Ocean City Welcome Center was built as part of the Route 52 bridge that connects Ocean City, NJ to Somers Point, NJ. The 2.74 mi (4.41 km) bridge was built between 2006 and 2012, at a cost of $400 million.
A few days ago, I walked down to the bottom of the bridge. From the Welcome Center sidewalk, one would look down on the rookery with many trees where the herons, egrets, ibises and other birds nested. Few birds, if any, were nesting at the bottom. Most photographers stay on the pedestrian walk above the rookery.
There were ducks and night herons swimming and drinking from small depressions where rain water had accumulated.
When the weather is nice, the bridge is a very active place. Thousands of cars cross it every day, as do pedestrians (walkers and joggers) and cyclists. There is also an area in the middle of the above photo which is reserved for people who want to fish from the ocean.
20 Sunday Jun 2021
Posted in Ocean City Welcome Center, Photography
Tags
glossy ibis, great egret, little blue heron, Ocean City Welcome Center, photography, postaday, rookery, white ibis
With bright sunshine, white clouds on blue sky, bearable temperatures, and a cool breeze from time to time, it was a perfect day for photography. There were already about a dozen photographers with their massive long lenses pointed at various points of the rookery.
Except for the sleepy night herons, the birds were very active, flying in and out of the trees every minute or so. I ended up taking many more pictures of birds in flight than I had planned.
19 Saturday Jun 2021
Posted in Ocean City Welcome Center, Photography
Tags
Black-crowned Night Heron, Ocean City Welcome Center, photography, postaday, yellow-crowned night heron
Last year I missed going to the rookery right next to the Ocean City Welcome Center in Cape May County at the southern end of New Jersey. Three days ago, I went there in mid season. The rookery was filled with many birds, some I had never seen before.
The night herons have built nests, incubated their eggs and some were busy raising the young ones. There were probably some nests well hidden behind tree branches and leaves, with eggs that had not hatched yet.
The night herons, as their names imply, are most active after dusk when their eyes serve them well. During the day they appear somnolent, almost lethargic, which of course is good for photography as they can hold their poses for a long time.
These herons migrate long distances to their nesting grounds in New Jersey, and they do look impressive in flight.
06 Sunday Jun 2021
Posted in Photography, Weekly Photo Challenge
Tags
The Knock Out rose was introduced in 1989 by William Radler. It rapidly became a favorite rose for many as it proved to be sturdy, disease resistant, and also beautiful. In 2004, Double Knockout came out and we have been growing it for the past decade. All our other roses died for one reason or another, but we have two bushes of Double Knockout which are thriving. Japanese Beetles love them as food , but one or two traps seem to take care of that every year. So, here is my entry to Cee’s CFCC: Flowers:
https://ceenphotography.com/2021/06/01/cffc-flowers/
05 Saturday Jun 2021
Posted in Photography
This spring has been marked by rain and cool temperatures, and has thus prolonged the Brood X cicada season. They will live on a few weeks longer so that they can finish their mating activities and make sure, before they die, to give the world another generation in 17 years. I started seeing them in mid May, and as of now they are still singing incessantly during the day, the noise managing to penetrate closed windows and doors. Hopefully, that will end in another two weeks or so.
Our streets are littered with cicada shells and messy carcasses after they’ve been run over by cars. Our walls are sometimes covered with long rows of full-fledged cicadas. Fortunately, they don’t seem to eat any plant as they only spend their time and energy mating. Here are two pictures of them taken yesterday.
Some flowers have thrived, such as the white Bleeding Hearts pictured below.
In our vegetable garden most seeds have taken longer to sprout, but the tomato plants, bought from a big box store, are flowering and doing well.
Finally, a picture of East Point Lighthouse taken from a different perspective. This is how most people will see it as they arrive on site.
29 Saturday May 2021
Posted in Photography
Two days ago, the 2021 Horseshoe Crab season was at its peak with bright sunny skies during the day and a full moon at night. Horseshoe Crabs (which are not really crabs), came ashore and gathered along the geotubes in front of East Point Lighthouse. The females laid their eggs in the sand and the males attached to them tried their best to fertilize the eggs.
In late May of each year, similar mating scenes occur at many beaches in South Jersey, especially those fronting the Delaware Bay. Migratory birds swoop down to gorge themselves on the eggs. There seems to be enough eggs for such feasts. A female, which is usually 20-30% larger than a male, can produce as many as 120,000 eggs each season.
While I was photographing the above scene, a Bald Eagle flew overhead with a long fish, perhaps an eel, in its talons.
Not far from where I was, a Barn Swallow perched on an electric wire was looking at the scene and singing .
28 Friday May 2021
Posted in east point lighthouse, geotube, Photography
Six years ago, in 2015, I went to the East Point Lighthouse in Heislerville on the Delaware Bay coastline at the southern end of New Jersey. It is a small but working lighthouse which somehow survived Hurricane Sandy but was in danger of the next major storm as the sea continually eroded a sandy beach less than 100 ft (30 m) away.
Here are a couple of pictures taken in 2015.
Yesterday, I went back to see the lighthouse. Over the past several years, the Maurice River Historical Society which has managed the lighthouse since 1972, has done its best to restore the lighthouse. It definitely looks much improved from the outside.
To try and deal with the real danger of beach erosion and flooding, in 2019 the state of New Jersey spent $460,000 installing giant sandbags called geotubes on the beach near the lighthouse.
Critics say that the geotubes are not high enough to prevent waves at high tide from spilling over and flooding the lighthouse. In a major storm, all bets are off, and anything could happen.
In the meantime, New Jersey authorities and the Maurice River Historical Society are in a contract dispute, and the inside of the lighthouse is closed to all. Visitors could still come and walk around the beach to look at horseshoe crabs in their annual mating rituals.
23 Sunday May 2021
Posted in Photography
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21 Friday May 2021
Posted in Photography
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2021 is the year when brood X of the 17-year cicada emerges from the ground to mate and procreate. A few weeks ago, I saw many small holes in our backyard and one corner near the woods had been turned over by some animals, perhaps red foxes, hunting cicadas for food. Not to worry, for billions of cicadas will emerge this year in North America. There will be plenty of them and enough will survive to give us their next generation.
This morning I went out with my camera to look for them. They were on tree trunks and branches, and on the grass. I had never seen so many!
Over the next few weeks, the cicadas will mate and the females will lay eggs on tree branches. Their mating calls is already starting to be a constant din that will annoy some people. Their eggs will hatch and cicada nymphs will fall to the ground and bury themselves there, eating sap from tree roots without damaging them.
17 Monday May 2021
Posted in Photography
On a recent visit to Sayen Gardens, I noticed several tall (30 ft or more) magnolia trees with white flowers shooting straight up to the sky. The tree is Magnolia Tripetala, also called Big Leaf Magnolia or Umbrella Magnolia, a native plant to the Appalachian mountains in the eastern United States , the Ozarks, and the Ouachita Mountains further West. Here is a monochrome shot of this magnolia.
