Off on a field trip to Costa Rica

AZPaul, Thanks for your kind words, they are very flattering. There are a lot of better photographers out there. When I see their work it inspires me to work harder.A lot of my shots are the result of luck.

Grasshoppers are sometimes quite colorful. They were surprisingly rare at the places we visited in Costa Rica. At least, I did not see very many, compared to Ecuador, Bolivia or Peru. This one had quite strikingly metallic colors on the pronotum (the green thoracic segment that bear the front legs) and head. It did not hold still for very long and turned away from me so that I could never get a shot of the front of the head. This specimen is fairly young and will go through a number of molts before it is an adult (note, the wing pads are quite short, in an adult they would be long enough to cover the abdomen). The nymphs can have completely different coloration between molts.

I am headed out in the morning on a field trip to the SE corner of Oregon. The Alvord Desert is a fairly large salt flat. There are geothermal hot springs all over the area and some dragonfly species that are unique to Oregon. Five species that are normally found in the Southwestern U.S. are associated with the hot springs in SE Oregon. They cannot live in the boiling water, but their nymphs do survive in the cooler water at a distance from the springs. The springs have dissolved salts of Boron, Sulphur and Arsenic and other compounds that would normally be considered to be quite toxic for insects. At Borax Lake, Boraxo was precipitated out of the water, dried and hauled over 100 miles by mule team drawn wagons to a refinery in Winnemucca, Nevada.This is a shot of one of the dragonflies found at Borax Lake, a male Libellula comanche. A small group of us try and make a trip to this area every year. It is a quest for better photos of the dragonflies, but also in hopes of lightning storms and the night sky and the Milky Way with no light pollution.

Very nice!Some nice archaeological sites in that area, but you aren't likely to get in to see them, and they aren't as photogenic anyway.Look forward to more of your photographs.

One of the guys going on this trip is good friends with the leader of a dig at a cave in the area. Like you say, there is not much to photograph, for the art of it. Most of the site locations are not made public, because collectors will destroy them looking for artifacts.When I was a kid they found a sagebrush bark sandel at Fort Rock Cave. I can remember being excited and blown away that they could find something that exquisite that was 9000 years old. That was before Mount Mazama blew.On my 2013 SW trip I spent a week at Mesa Verde shooting photos and then a friend and I explored Chaco Canyon and the Gila Cliff Dwellings. I am puzzled why the technology was so much slower developing in the Amercas compared to the old world. Bows were developed like 5000 years or more later.You were lucky.....you had one of those fun, exciting jobs.

The Americas got a later start, and had to rely on a small initial population of travelers to populate two entire continents.Would that dig "in the area" be Paisley Caves? That's one really hot site in SE Oregon.If their initial results are confirmed they are going back >14,000 years. And they have some really exciting initial DNA results. Not sure if those have been confirmed yet.But it is interesting, if the Paisley Cave results for one particular mtDNA haplotype are confirmed, then one of the previous oldest results they are beating out are one of mine. But my results have recently been beaten by some from the Channel Islands of California...To get much older in my area I'll have to take up diving... Blub!

I think it is, but will let you know when we get back. We may even have signal from the tower on top of Steens Mtn. It might be fun to post from the REAL middle of nowhere.

We are camped at Mann Lake on the east side of Steens Mtn. Bugs are attracted to my phone screen shining on my face.
so goodbye

This was from our camp at Mann Lake. The water level is lower than I have ever seen it. A lot of different species of waterfowl use this lake, but the strangest thing is that is a renowned trophy fly fishing spot. You would think it would be too warm but the fish are from the desert region and are adapted to the heat.Smoke from a wildfire to the north was just beginning to blow in. The next morning (Sat) visibility was down to a couple kilometers. The Alvord Desert. It is approximately 13 x 24 km in size. The wind always seems to blow and we sometimes see wheeled carts with sails, like ice boats. I have heard the can get up over 160kph. The dragonfly hunting was not as good as we hoped. There were a number of species that we did not see at all and of the ones we did see populations were low.This is a female Sympetrum corruptum. The tip of the abdomen is out of focus. My excuse is, "the wind was blowing".

Out of focus!Bah!That's damn good photography.The new digital equipment is a real boon. Try that with a 4x5![Hold still, little bug. This won't hurt a bit!"]

The problem with giving a cheer to someone like you is it can't do any good. You try to put it in the bucket and it just falls right off the top making a mess on the floor that Percy has to clean up.So here. Have a cup of coffee and a bagel instead.|_|? (^.)Yes, that is a bagel. It even has cream cheese on it. And chives.

Great! Coffee and a bagel are going to help me be the very 1st to break 10? Cream cheese and chives are just going to smear up my 10 and make it look like 1....Thanks A Lot!!!

You have no shame. It's clear that your pointing to that tiny blur was just a reminder of how close to flawless this picture really is. Now if you don't mind, I'll get back to counting whiskers behind the head of the insect.Cheers!Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Within my group of closest friends and travel companions (5 of us) this would not be considered a keeper, unless it was a really rare and sought after species. They would immediately point out the flaws. The five of us strive to produce images that can be printed 16"x25" or larger. Edited by Tanypteryx, : No reason given.

Borax Lake is quite small, but it is the largest body of water associated with a hot spring in the Alvord area. You can see one of my companions on the far right side for scale. The blue patch in the middle is where the hot water is welling up. A BLM guy told us that when they were doing temperature surveys of the lake, their thermometer melted when it was lowered into the spring. I would never go out there in a boat. There is an endemic fish, the Borax Lake Chub, that is only found in this lake. We find the nymphs of one species of dragonfly here also, Libellula composita. We see other species ovipositing but have never found their nymphs. The water has very high levels of arsenic as well as being alkaline and have a witches brew of other dissolved salts.It would be interesting to see if there are any genetic difference between Libellula composita found in Borax Lake and populations from the Southwestern U.S. This one of many springs at Mickey Hot Springs about 40 miles north of Borax Lake. It has boiling water and fumerals that whistle as the steam blows out. There are also domed areas that you can hear water boil inside of, which is scary. I go there to shoot photos, but it is one of the scariest places I have ever been and I am always glad when we leave.