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Posted by jnrosenthal on 17:34:31 08/26/07
Unreported in yesterday's post was the dismay of my wife Emily at having missed a sighting of the ghost orchid at Corkscrew Swamp. My somewhat blurry photograph, inferior to John Boyd's posted here, even though taken with the same equipment, was no consolation. So, never being one to belittle the desires of others to see strange and wondrous sights, no matter how compulsive the effort may be(see e.g http://www.tropicalaudubon.org/tasboard/messages/14750.html)and always being one to take my own advice, in this case "use a point and shoot digital camera with the available scope at Corkscrew to photograph the ghost orchid", the "minister of fun" loaded his wife and equipment into their car and headed back to the Swamp at 830 this morning.
Government Road provided an opportunity to photograph a trio of caracaras(caracari?) doing their best vulture imitation with some roadkill. On the other side of the road two sandhill cranes also gave me an opportunity for a passable shot. Even with the photo stop we were at Corkscrew by 10 30 and headed straight for the ghost orchid site. Using a point-and-shoot Canon SD 500 I was able to obtain the photograph below. Unfortunately the scope at Corkscrew does not have the image quality of our photographic lenses as do Zeiss ,Leica or Swarovski scopes. And while the scope is on a tripod my hand shook while holding the camera which is not image stabilized. Nevertheless, what you see is a marginally enlarged image, which goes to show that in photography size sometimes matters. The lens John and I use has perhaps a magnification of half an 8x binocular, while the scope, even though inferior optically has a 45 or more times magnification. So you get a sharper, if somewhat inferior image in other respects.
The manager of Corkscrew told us today that the water level atCorkscrew is at a historic low, at least for his 30 years there, and they are extremely concerned about the prospects of fire this winter, particularly because the subsoil is primarily flammable peat. As he put it : one good fire this winter could put them out of business. All the more reason to go see the ghost orchid while you can.
We were back home at 2:30, feeling pleased.
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