Best of 2013: Favorite spots, favorite critters and my favorite kid

2013 was a weird and busy year, and though I spent as much of it as possible at my favorite nature spots, life conspired to keep me from going out as often--or sharing as many photos--as I would like. Still, no matter what life throws at me and my family, being out in nature is our medicine. And sharing it with you all has made me more awesome friends than I deserve. I love it.

One of those excellent people, the inimitable Alex Wild, issued his annual call for the best science and nature photos of 2013. I'm coming in a little late, as is my wont, and these are just the best of the ones I've managed to go through. There are thousands yet to be processed. But here are mine, all taken this past year, winners in the categories you'd probably expect from me. Happy New Year, everyone.

Best spider:
Of course it's a black widow. Did you expect anything else?

We have a lot of other arachnid goodness--giant fuzzy tarantulas, jumping spiders in fabulous colors, giant crab spiders, wolfies, lynx spiders, you name it. But black widows have a special place in my heart (as long as they stay in my figurative heart and out of my literal hair and clothes).

Western black widow spider (Latrodectus hesperus), our house (don't tell my husband).

Best Combination of my Favorite Things:
A roseate skimmer dragonfly (Orthemis ferruginea) during sunset at the Gilbert Riparian Preserve. One of my favorite insects, at one of my favorite places, during my favorite time of day? Yes, please! One of my favorite people (my son) was just out of frame, and later we got to have chocolate ice cream and watch Star Wars. A good day.

Roseate skimmer dragonfly at Gilbert Riparian Preserve.

Best Dragonfly:
Or, you know, one of them. I can't spend all night choosing. At the moment, I love this red saddlebags dragonfly (Tramea onusta), captured at Veterans Oasis Park in Chandler. I especially like the wings, as well as the fact that a few years ago, this shot wouldn't have happened--not because I didn't have the gear, but because I would've given up. I was chasing this dragonfly, and he insisted on perching way out of reach, directly above me and against a blown-out sky. I didn't get the closeup I was after, but I like what I got even better. And that's the great thing about my nature photography journey. Learning to use my gear? Please. Boring. But make the effort again and again and again (and again and again), and you start to learn a few things about focus and exposure in spite of yourself.

Red saddlebags dragonfly, Veterans Oasis Park.

Best Damselfly:
Not quite as flashy as the dragonflies, but they're just as gorgeous. This year was a great year for blue-ringed dancers (Argia sedula), and I got quite a few "mealtime" shots like this one, captured at the Gilbert Riparian Preserve.

A blue-ringed dancer (Argia sedula) munches a fly at the Gilbert Riparian Preserve.

Best Little Bird, Closeup:
If I'm not chasing insects and spiders, I'm probably watching birds. Here's an Anna's hummingbird (Calypte anna), one of my favorites, at the Demonstration Garden at Boyce Thompson Arboretum.

Anna's hummingbird (Calypte anna), Boyce Thompson Arboretum Demonstration Garden.

Best Little Bird, Full Body:
Mostly because I wanted an excuse to show off the broad-billed hummingbird as well. Also captured at Boyce Thompson Arboretum, which you totally need to visit if you're in the area.

Broad-billed Hummingbird (Cynanthus latirostris), Boyce Thompson Arboretum.

Best Big Bird:
Not the giant yellow alphabet lover. More like the giant grouchy fish stalker. A great blue heron (Ardea herodias) in early evening light at the Gilbert Riparian Preserve.

Great blue heron (Ardea herodias), Gilbert Riparian Preserve.

Best Bird That Everyone Thinks is Our State Bird:
The cactus wren, not the roadrunner, is the Arizona state bird (New Mexico gets the roadrunner). It's a local treasure nonetheless, and 2013 was a fantastic year for roadrunners in our neck of the desert. (Sorry, cactus wrens. You'll get play again when I restart Species a Day.) I liked this one because it showed off the insanely gorgeous iridescence in the bird's tail.

Greater roadrunner (Geococcyx californianus), Veterans Oasis Park.

Best Animal I Usually Suck at Capturing:
I don't know what it is about snowy egrets. I see them semi-regularly, and every single time I mess up the shot. The image is overexposed, or blurry, or I scare the bird away, or it's nothing but tail and legs. I think I've invented new ways of missing a snowy egret shot. So I was happy when this one came out kind of nicely (though it doesn't make up for the fact that my 11-year-old has more keepers of the bird than I do).

Snowy egret (Egretta thula), Gilbert Riparian Preserve.

Best Look Everyone; I Can Photograph Mammals Too!:
It's not all bugs and birds (it's just mostly birds and bugs). This young male elk (Cervus canadensis) watched us as we were surrounded by half a dozen of "his" females coming out of Bear Canyon Lake after a camping trip this year. It was the most wonderful thing--another young family, with a 3- or 4-year-old girl, was there as well. We were afraid she'd scare them away, but she learned from her parents, who were splendid examples. Everyone was still and quiet, and the elk knew we weren't a threat. That's how to appreciate nature.

Best Scenery:
Snow on the Superstitions this past winter. Also a runner-up for Best Shot I Ran Out to Take Even Though I Should Have Been Doing Other Things. Rare snowfall, followed by a short-lived break in the clouds for some afternoon sunlight, all topped off with our iconic saguaros. I took a detour just to take the shot. I don't remember what my excuse was for being late to my actual appointment, but I think it was worth it.

Snow on Superstiton Mountain, February 2013.

Best Water and Best Sunset:
I'll probably share entire posts on both sunsets and water soon, but this shot as the sun set at Veterans Oasis Park in Chandler captured the goodness of both at once. The great thing is, this is just a 15-minute drive from our house. The nature opportunities around here are pretty awesome.

Sunset reflected in the pond at Veterans Oasis Park, Chandler.

Best Kid Holding Insect(s):
We attended the grand opening of Butterfly Wonderland, the largest butterfly atrium in North America. Many people just slowly but constantly made their way through and around the huge enclosure. Not my kid. He sat for ages in humid corners, gazing at the huge insects. At one point this mating pair of blue morpho butterflies fluttered from a shaken branch to his finger. He quickly made a more comfortable perch for them, sat down, and hosted the pair (and fascinated bipedal onlookers) for several minutes. Never have I seen someone so thrilled at a designation like "the boy with the mating pair on his hands."

My son holding a pair of blue morpho butterflies (Morpho peleides) at Butterfly Wonderland.

Best Kid Not Having Much Choice About Holding Insect:
Silence of the kid? Actually, it was, and you have no idea how rare that is. This yellow-edged giant owl butterfly decided to perch on his nose for ages. He was quite thrilled, even though it was surprisingly heavy and its legs plucked and pulled at his skin, and the butterfly showed no sign of wanting to move. He might still be there if we hadn't coaxed it onto a nearby bush.

Yellow-edged giant owl butterfly (Caligo atreus) and a happy kid. 

Best Kid Holding Arachnid:
It's not an insect, so I totally get to share this too. We went to the University of Arizona's annual Arizona Insect Festival in September, and this was a favorite of both of ours. My favorite thing as my son held this giant vinegaroon (Mastigoproctus giganteus) was that his face doesn't say "Ew, gross!" or even "OMG; there's a monster on my hand!" but rather something like affection. Indeed, he said he found the docile creature "adorable." What's that they say about apples and the trees from which they fall?

Giant vinegaroon (Mastigoproctus giganteus) and very happy boy (Homo sapiens), Arizona Insect Festival, University of Arizona.

Best Macro:
I didn't have the stellar macros that I was able to get last year when I rented the heavy-hitting MP-E 65 mm lens. Still, even a kit lens and a cooperative widow skimmer dragonfly do well to show off some of those 30,000 facets.

Female widow skimmer dragonfly (Libellula luctuosa), Gilbert Riparian Preserve.

Best "Secret" Spot:
One of my son's favorite spots on the planet. At the riparian preserve, if you veer slightly off-trail at a spot he is insisting I keep quiet, there are some really inhospitable bushes. If you tunnel through them--after picking stickers out of some very uncomfortable places--you come to a shoreline clearing that doesn't disrupt a single animal, but is beneath a huge tree full of egrets. We sat there for a hour the first evening, watching them soar in and listening to their barks and belches. It's not all that secret, but it's secluded, and it's nature, and it's special to us. The best kind.

Great egrets (Ardea alba), Gilbert Riparian Preserve.

I hope everyone had a wonderful year, or at least some wonderful parts of it. Happy New Year, and happy nature watching.

New Year's not-resolutions

I never make New Year's resolutions. I'm too backlogged. By business. By family stuff. By photos, writing, my blog queue, my pitch queue, the queue of people outside the door every time I open it. And most of all, by my own internal clutter. I dwell on everything, and it guarantees I'll stay stuck in the backlog, rehashing and revisiting things for months after they happen (or don't).

See, I make resolutions all the time, and I'm stoked. Then, when things don't go smoothly, I get majorly stuck in this evil feedback loop of what-ifs and I-wishes.

So here are the things I wish, which I know will never happen, followed by what I do have, and a to-do list, from my 2011 self to my 2012 self. Maybe I can publicly shame myself into purging the I-wishes and getting my ass in gear on the to-dos.

I wish I could get to write the stories I know are good, instead of sitting on great ideas while waiting to hear back, only to have someone write in my place who thinks psychics are real and St. Nick's name is spelled "Santa Clause." I wish I weren't so dumb as to worry about it instead of sending off the next batch of great ideas. I wish I could know for sure my ideas were great.

Well, I can't. What I do have: ideas. Some of them, I'm almost certainly sure, are pretty great. And if that one idea that got turned down multiple times "because there won't ever be that much interest," in favor of a really dumb article -- If my story did turn out to be a big story, months and months after I first pitched it, and Big National Publication did a big national thing about it ... well, at least my husband saw it, and got furiously indignant on my behalf. And whether or not Big National Publication's version actually "sucked all kinds of ass" as my husband asserted, it was nice to have someone on my side.

[To do: Just write the damn pitch, you self-absorbed moron. If it tanks, write another. Repeat for all of 2012.]

I wish everyone in my family enjoyed perfect health. I wish no one was hurting, or suffering, or in the hospital ever. I wish this could be a migraine-free, puke-free, fever-free, surgery-free, mortality-free, pain-free, just normal ... year.

Not going to happen. Not everyone escaped unscathed this year, and they probably won't in 2012. Not all of them. It's horrible, seeing people you love hurting. I don't really have anything to say except that it's a terrible, helpless feeling, and I hate that most of you probably know firsthand how awful it is. We won't be pain free. But my family is a together, tough bunch. We don't hand out I-love-yous and you-can-do-its like crazy, but in a way, that's better. We just help, we're just there. We're sarcastic, we quote stupid movies to ease the tension, we nag one another, and when we bring out I love you and You can do it, it strikes home -- I'm really saying you can actually do it. Now get to it. And I really, really love you. If I don't have anything better to offer than a listening ear, chauffeur services, and situation-appropriate quotes from Monty Python and Mel Brooks; then I'm glad I'm good at those things, at least.

[To do: Be more helpful. Reach out. Do more. Make more phone calls, even though you hate it. Also, find new movies to quote. "Put ze candle back" and the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow are only applicable so many times.]

I wish I had money. Not a ton. Not even lots. Just enough to avoid waking up in a cold sweat at 3 a.m., wondering who's going to call and harass us today.

Well, I have enough. Not enough to avoid cold sweats, but enough to wake up in a bed, in a house. That really is something.

[To do: Get finances in order, and who cares if no one ever taught you. You're a grown-ass woman, and your husband's a grown-ass man. This is getting ridiculous. Then, help others. Even a little.]


I wish I had time. Again, not a ton. But here's the thing -- I want consecutive minutes. This minute here, minute there, half-hour if I'm lucky AND if I stay up until 2 a.m. -- it's making me insane. I cried the other day because I couldn't find the margarine. I just a moment of calm. I need my mind to work like a normal person's mind.

I don't have time. At least, it never feels that way. I don't have big chunks of time, and I can't focus in little bite-sized chunks. My brain is focused on a million things at once, and that's usually a bad thing. Then again, connecting disparate things is occasionally wonderful. The really important things always seem to carve out their own time. Sometimes I really don't notice or deal with things like everyone else does, and that's OK.

[To do: Calm the hell down. Stop trying to steal time -- stop even trying to make the time -- and just make do with the time you have.]

I wish I could travel. I want to go to the Galapagos Islands, Tanzania, Yosemite, the Congo and the Amazon, Antarctica, Borneo, with sharks, with bugs, in the air, in the water ... yeah. I'd like to travel, one day.

Yeah, right. Like, who doesn't wish this? (Answer: My husband. He told me I could go to Borneo when we have the money, as long as I don't make him go. I'm penciling it in.) Seriously, this isn't a unique wish, nor a unique failing. My failing is, of course, neglecting my backyard. I live in a freaking awesome place. I haven't even been to the Grand Canyon in years, to say nothing of a thousand other trails, hikes, climbs, drives, and haunts. And that's not even counting my own backyard. This to do almost goes without saying.

[To do: Travel, just in the state. Travel travel travel travel. Travel some more. Travel to the Grand Canyon, those hikes I grew up on, that place I got lost once, new hikes I've been wanting to try, and ones I've only just heard of. Check out side roads and creek beds, cliffs and mountains; and, of course, my own backyard. Take photos. Write words. Share. Repeat.]

I wish you all a happy New Year, and a happy entire year, full of love, beauty, health, sunsets, spiders, giant beetles, rattlesnakes ... wait. Those last three were wishes for myself. That other stuff is for everyone. Take care, everyone. Happy 2012.

Happy New Year, and things I've learned

We don't traditionally make a huge deal of New Year's in the Hosey/Wilson/affiliated clans. We recognize it. And today I'm going over to spend the day at my mom's for a relaxed excuse to eat ourselves silly visit. And I try to "ring it in," somehow, every year. Ever since I was 8, I'd creep back out of bed (I am decidedly NOT a morning/waking-up person, but can "program" my body to wake up when I choose). I'd pretend I'd been awake the whole time, and tiptoe to the living room, which everyone had vacated but my dad, who would pretend he'd been awake the whole time. I'd stretch the nightgown, the scratchy one that caught on my elbows but that I loved anyway, over my knees and sit beside him and watch the ball drop on the television. And it was plenty.

And I've had memorable New Year's moments since then. There was the New Year's Eve that I learned that Jell-O shooters are not equal to Jell-O Jigglers, the New Year's Day I discovered that neither tequila nor smooth talkers are anyone's friends, the New Year my husband (then my secret boyfriend) and I rang in with a kiss in the movie theater parking lot, when no one knew we were "back together" yet (except, I eventually discovered, my mom, who always knows such things).

Last night, we took my son to see a movie, and cuddled, all of us, in the back of the theater. We went out to eat, put him to bed (after reading the couple of pages I promised ten pages twelve pages a whole chapter of Prisoner of Azkaban.) My husband and I sat on the couch. We fell asleep and woke back up at exactly midnight to ring it in. And it was plenty.

But in the name of taking stock, it occurs to me that there are a few things I learned in 2008. Not much, really. But I did learn:

• That my son's capacity for wonder, curiosity and tenderness knows no limit.
  
• That it is possible for a child to be obsessed with a single body part for an entire year, and that I will get so used to it/fed up with it that I will shout things like "I don't want to be poked in the butt, slapped on the butt, hear about your butt, hear about my own butt, hear about any butts, hear words that mean butt, or hear the poop song EVER AGAIN, and I mean it!" in the middle of Target and not think there is anything odd about the sentence until I notice weird looks from fellow customers.
• How much I'd missed seeing the stars, really seeing them. And how clear the night sky is from our new house.
  
• A whole heck of a lot about mortgage rates, credit scores and loans; as well as how to bitch just enough at the Realtor and loan guy to get things moving, but not so much that they hate me.
• That my ex-landlord sucks big bovine gonads.
• That the view from our house totally rocks.
  
• How to fold killer paper airplanes, ones that stay in the air for at least 15 seconds.
• That, until very recently, my husband did not know about my webbed toes or my ADD. (Though, on the latter, he seems to think a lot of things "make more sense" now.)
• That my marriage still needs some work.
• That, generally, my marriage is pretty darn awesome.
• The meaning of the word "apropos." And that I'm the only smart person I know who didn't know the meaning of the word "apropos."
  
• How to work a Chinese yo-yo. Sort of.
• Did I mention I'm happy with the new house and its view?
  
• How to pack an apartment's worth of stuff in record time.
• That most of my family reads this blog, and that's a good thing.
  
• A whole lot about crickets, astronomy, child psychology, the education system, Nickelodeon cartoons, paleontology, eyeless albino millipedes, politics and economics (but probably not enough about any of those things).
• How to take waaay better pictures than I did in 2007.
  
• That, generally, my pictures still need a lot of work.
• To prioritize.
• That I should never, ever, no exceptions (I mean it this time, self) eat beef products after 8 p.m.
• That I don't listen to myself. Neither does anyone else. I must learn how to be stricter with us all.
• How to bake a number of really awesome casserole dishes, cakes, and breads.
• How to clean up in twenty-one minutes when six out-of-town family members are on their way and I only JUST THEN find out, and we've just moved in and just had Christmas and there's not one clean spot in the house. (Hint: Cupboard space, garage = your friends.)
• That I'm pretty down with the suburban existence.
• How to come to terms with my totally receding chin and those line-things on either side of my face.
• That sometimes, I just screw up with the parenting thing -- but usually, I'm pretty OK.
• That, as of last night, my son still wants to sit in my lap. And that I still get choked up about it, and that my husband still rolls his eyes about it (but secretly seems pretty happy when I lean over and we all end up in a cheesy, hokey pile of family).
• How to identify major constellations by season.
• To document, document, document everything. (Unfortunately, this lesson was learned by experience.)
• How to use teacher strategies to get my kid to listen to me.
• That I will not be excommunicated from my family for voting against the familial party (and that I should have known better, anyway).
• That worrying about things does not count as working toward their resolution.
• That I'm addicted to the show Lost (and Battlestar Galactica when it finally returns), but other than those shows, if the television disappeared I wouldn't notice.
• That traffic cops do not care if you're "very sorry."
• How to take chances on things that may not work, and what to do when they do (and when they don't).
• That I'm better than I think I am at some of the things I try to do.
• That I'm not nearly as clever as I think I am.
• How to let things go, and which things those should be.
• How to love a year, love the lessons learned, and hold my people so darn close I squish them -- but move the hell on from the crappy stuff, and tackle my life. I've got some plans for 2009.

Have a joyous, safe New Year and a better 2009 than 2008, whether your 2008 sucked or rocked. Happy New Year, everyone.