Tuesday (24-July-2018) — New Jersey.

Backyard Summertime Nature in New Jersey.

For the last several days it has been raining. Rain is good as it is keeping me busy trying to restore some of my wildflower meadows that had been taken over by the invasive “mile-a-minute” vine. I tried many methods to get rid of the vine. Ultimately, I ended up having to use a herbicide. Now I am re-seeding with various wildflower seeds. I hope some take.

Today, I noticed a Clearwing Moth on my Zinnia flowers (Hemaris diffinis, snowberry clearwing,”hummingbird moth”). Later on I saw a caterpillar chowing down on one of my Dill plants that I was letting bolt and go to seed. I am not sure what butterfly it will become (thinking a Black Swallowtail?). Later on I noticed a yellow (tiger) swallowtail butterfly on the Zinnia flowers. While checking the tomato plants in the Garden Tower I saw a giant Tomato Hornworm — covered with hundreds of the parasitic wasp cocoons. These tiny wasps are a good thing as a natural pest control for the Tomato Hornworms.






Yellow Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly on a Zinnia Flower. Image taken with a Fuji X-H1 camera and 80 mm f/2.8 macro lens (DAVID J MATHRE)
Yellow Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly on a Zinnia Flower. Image taken with a Fuji X-H1 camera and 80 mm f/2.8 macro lens (DAVID J MATHRE)


Individual images in the slide shows can be viewed here.

Thursday (26-July-2012) — New Jersey

Summertime Nature in New Jersey. Sourland Mountain Preserve.

Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly on a Queen Anne’s Lace Bloom at the Sourland Mountain Preserve.

Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly on a Queen Anne's Lace Bloom at the Sourland Mountain Preserve in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D800 and 500 mm f/4 VRII lens (ISO 800, 500 mm, f/5.6, 1/1000 sec). (David J Mathre)
Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly on a Queen Anne’s Lace Bloom at the Sourland Mountain Preserve in New Jersey. Image taken with a Nikon D800 and 500 mm f/4 VRII lens (ISO 800, 500 mm, f/5.6, 1/1000 sec). (David J Mathre)

Ever since I had a third party GPS unit attached to my D3x camera cause an electrical fault within the camera, I have been afraid to use a connected GPS device. However, I did like having the GPS location included with the image metadata. Both Lightroom 4 and View NX2 now have options where GPS data collected by a separate GPS unit can be added to the metadata. This requires that the GPS unit can export the data (via a *.gpx file), and that the time in the camera be set relatively accurately. The programs then compare the time that the image was taken with the location from the GPS file at the same time. This location is then added to the image metadata. I do like the MAP feature within Lightroom 4. One issue with Lightroom 4 is that it will not add the data to RAW image files, but rather create a sidecar file with the location metadata. It will add the data to jpg and DNG image files. View NX2 (since it is a Nikon product) will add the data to the RAW image file. One problem with the View NX2 process is that the Google Map that is connected during the process is in Japanese. Both products require that you are connected to the internet since they use Google Maps.

[bingMap width=600 location=”N40 28.3401 W74 41.6544″ maptype=”AerialWithLabels” zoom=”11″ pp1=”N40 28.3401 W74 41.6544″]

GPS: N40 28.3401 W74 41.6544