Just outside San Angelo, Texas, is a seven thousand acre state park, San Angelo State Park. In November of 2018, the Friends of San Angelo State Park conducted a Nature Walk. I was there with my brand new Canon 100-400mm zoom. Here are Five Frames from San Angelo State Park.
Gulf Fritillary
Here’s what I know about butterflies: they are pretty. So I have to have help identifying bugs in general and butterflies in particular. Thanks to extensive research on Butterflies at Home, I can confidently say that this is a Gulf Fritillary. Cool, eh?
Red on Green
This is a pencil cholla. It is also known as “Tasajillo” and “Christmas Cactus”. I liked the red fruit bodies against the green stems. Later, fresh green stems will grow out of the fruit.
Red Admiral
Here is a Red Admiral on a prickly pear cactus. Thanks again to Butterflies at Home.
Fungus
I liked all the subtle colors in this one. The yellow-brown of the fungus, the brown of the tree bark, and the yellow green fungus spread all around.
Animal Tracks
This is a bunch of animal tracks in the dirt. I took this because of the relatively clear raccoon print just below the center of the picture. (Many thanks to the Greenbelly website and its Animal Tracks Identification Guide!) There are also several deer tracks mostly going right to left and a smeared one in the top right of the photo that might have been going left to right. In the bottom left there is a human print that was made before a deer came along and left a track in its toes.
These photos were taken with a Canon 6D wearing a Canon 100-400mm f4-5.6 zoom lens. I took the pictures during a nature walk in bright sun. I was using the zoom hand held. This lens has image stabilization which is quite effective. The depth of field is narrow at 400mm and I did miss focus on several shots where I suspect the camera moved forward or back slightly as I was shooting.
The images were all processed from RAW files using Darktable, which is free darkroom software available for Windoze, Mack, and Linux.
I like the Gulf Fritillary best. I never could take a butterfly picture that looked worth a ding dong.
The Gulf Fritillary is my favorite, too. Depending upon how the coronavirus thing goes, I’m going to try for some more butterflies and bugs this spring.