I have a love/hate relationship with spring. In the love category we have the fact that when a breeze hits your face it doesn’t feel like it will freeze off. Also the twittery, fluttery birds all excited to be making more birds. Tree frogs. And the lovely green of the pale leaves as the trees come back to life. How about them flowers? What’s not to love you say?
Bugs.
For those of you who have never ventured into New England in spring are only missing one thing.
Black flies. Mosquitoes.
Ok, two things. They really make me miserable. I have excellent anti-bug goo, but all it does is keep them from actually biting me, which I suppose is good, but I wish it would keep them away, too. Instead I get a cloud of them buzzing around my head. Very distracting and frustrating for the nature photographer. Especially since I do a lot of tripod work very close to the ground. Bah.
But I put up with them the other day and came up with a few lovelies including this big girl –
I met her trying to get up the steep embankment of an old logging road in a state park. Well, steep for a turtle anyway. So I helped her up it and set her by the tree. Waiting for her to stick her head out was agony because of the bug cloud encircling my own. Eventually she did though she never moved or put a foot out. Luckily I had the legacy 90mm f2 lens for some extra reach. A fellow photographer corrected my ID and pegged it as a Blanding’s turtle, more rare in NH, but known in the area I found it.
Earlier I’d been wildflower hunting. I didn’t find what I was after (the ever elusive bloodroot), but I did find some purple trilliums sunbathing. They were about a foot high so I could shoot an up from under microscape and get those great leaves in the sunlight. They just pop.
These are right next to a tiny cemetery and so I think people planted these lilies and forsythia which made for an eye-catching swath of color –
I’ll try to remember to go back when they bloom. If I can brave the bugs that is.
It wouldn’t be Spring in N.E. without the bugs. I find the black flies most annoying the way they get in your face, up your nose, in your ears. Then there is the absolute best part, 1-2 days later their bites itch so bad you want to scratch off 5 layers of skin.
My biggest bug issue, with lyme disease, triple E, west nile, etc., I’ll take all the black flies mother nature can throw at me, but could live without the ticks and mosquitoes!
Awesome set of pictures! The purple triliums do pop.
I love the woods in spring when so many little treasures can be seen popping up out of the leaf litter. Those trilliums are gorgeous! (I like the shot of Miss Turtle,too!)