Last weekend, after a long time confined to my city by the pandemic, I took a bus to the Oregon Coast. The pandemic had lightened up enough that I felt safe in doing this.
I was going to the city of Newport, and while I might be biased by fondness for my home state, from an objective standpoint, the Oregon Coast in this area is full of biodiversity. It is interesting for a scientist, or a casual naturalist. And of course, it is just aesthetically nice. I was expecting to get many observations. I had brought my battery back-up, and was hoping to get over 100 observations.
Pretty soon into my trip, I realized that my lens had fogged over---which happens sometimes. It usually would defog, but in this case, it didn't, and while I got some okay pictures, most of them were blurry. I also found, despite moving along ground like tidepools that would seem to have lots of interesting new species, that the beach wasn't really that fruitful. Lots of seagulls and kelp, and lots of blurry pictures of weedy plants. Lots of moon jellies. Then, I looked at the schedule for the bus, and realized that the bus was leaving two hours earlier than I thought it was. Then the battery of my camera ran out. My trip had turned up some adequate new things, but it was hardly the break-out experience I expected after being cooped up for so long. Was my big trip going to be a bust?
Once my camera battery had recharged, and I figured out I could defog my camera lens with my body heat, I was back up in town, away from the shore. I was in a park by the library, and I noticed lots of daisies with flies. And, in quick succession, I snapped about 10 good quality pictures that showed pollinating flies. And it seems odd that after coming to the wonderful nexus of biodiversity that is the Oregon Coast, I should find my best observations in a city park.
But of course, those flies are important. Presumably, the daisies that flower first, and the flies that come to them, are going to be a big base for birds, and eventually for the sea life, that is so much more obviously photogenic and interesting. So I am proud of my little flies, buzzing around on one of the first sunny days of the year!
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Congratulations on the flies! Sounds like a frustrating trip, though. But a even poor day at the beach is better than a good day in the valley.
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