Summertime Backyard Nature in New Jersey.
Daily Walkabout. My back still hurts and it continues to be hot and humid outside. I only went out for a short time with an even lighter kit than yesterday — Nikon 1 V3 camera and 70-300 mm VR lens. Nikon discontinued this camera and lens, but I have found the camera and telephoto/zoom combination to be excellent for travel and bird photography. At 300 mm its field of view is equivalent to 810 mm on a full frame camera. The combination weighs just over 1 kg (2.2 lbs) vs. 7 kg (15.4 lbs) for a Nikon D5 camera and 800 mm f/5.6 lens. With the lens VR (vibration reduction) and fast focus it is easy to use hand held. Using the Nikon 1 V3 camera and 70-300 mm VR lens I discovered that I have two types of Clearwing moths visiting my wildflower meadow. Until today I only thought I was seeing the Hummingbird Clearwing moth (Hemaris thysbe). There were several working the Zinnia flowers, and I noticed one was slightly smaller and appeared to a a brighter yellow back. While reviewing the images it was clear that it was different, and after doing some online searches found that the new one is a Snowberry Clearwing Moth (Hemaris diffinis). The Hummingbird Clearwing has lighter colored (or white) legs vs. the Snowberry Clearwing has black legs. The Snowberry Clearwing also has a black band that goes through its eyes.
Daily Power Use (53.4 kWh) from Sense and Solar Production (34.3 kWh) from SolSystems and Locus Energy. Cloudy most of the day progressing to heavy rain in the afternoon. So I ended up using 19 kWh more energy that the solar panels could produce.
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