3:00 snapshot #1306

[urbpan]

Well I've gotten my computer back, but they had to do a "clean install" of the operating system, meaning that I essentially have a brand new computer, with none of my old data cluttering it up. I have come to embrace this fresh start, since there's fuckall I can do about it. Fortunately iTunes and Amazon saved all my music on their clouds for me, but no one (not even me) thought to back up my photos. If it's not on LJ or Facebook it exists only in our memories. It's like my own little ElectroMagnetic Pulse!

So I haven't stopped taking photos since this all went down, which means I'll be playing catchup. As it happens, this photo is from June 13th, only 8 days ago. Heck I've been further behind than a week and a day before!

On this day I was lurking in a behind-the-scenes area (where the dinosaur thing was last year) as a warm rain fell. You know what warm rain means!



There have been tons of winecap mushrooms popping up at the zoo this year! So much so that I sent an email letting people know what they were (and that I knew about them and they didn't have to keep telling me about them).


They are beautiful things, even when they are being savaged by slugs, as this one is.


I took the opportunity to document this partially dug-out area, for future tracking reference. The creature that made it was laying in the little depression when I spooked it away, and went over to get this photo. Who dunnit?


This creature! I'm almost positive that the rabbits that live on zoo grounds are all eastern cottontails, but there's a very distant chance that they are New England cottontails, a declining and protected species. I used to think that they were impossible to distinguish in the field then I read this:

"The New England cottontail looks much like the Eastern cottontail. However, most New England cottontails have a small black spot on the forehead, whereas about half of all Eastern cottontails have a white spot in the same place. The New England cottontail's ears are slightly shorter than those of the Eastern cottontail and have a line of black fur along the outer edge."

I think that's enough to go on that I'll start photographing our cottontails with an eye on those particular field markings.


This is a peek into a dumpster for collecting metal waste. It's not emptied very often, so it occurred to me that it might be accumulating water. I tossed a few mosquito dunks up into it.


A soggy mulch bed seems to be breaking out into some texture. Closer look?


Well, it still doesn't look like much, but you can tell that it's a living thing of some kind. Experience tells me that these will bloom into bird's nest fungi.