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The Mattawoman Creek estuary is a high-quality but threatened tidal creek flowing into the freshwater-tidal Potomac River in southern Maryland. Its name in the Alonguian tongue means "where one goes pleasantly." It remains so today. But fisheries scientists now say its waters are faltering from their status as "the best, most productive tributary to the Chesapeake Bay."
The fluvial (i.e. flowing) Mattawoman Creek flows twenty miles before feeding the estuary. Its tannin-stained waters bring appropriate forms of carbon and nutrients from extensive forestlands, but also increasingly pollution from overdevelopment.
Lick Brook is a tributary to the Inlet, itself a tributary to Cayuga Lake, the longest of the Finger Lakes. Portions of Lick Brook are preserved by the Finger Lakes Land Trust.
Buttermilk Creek flows through the eponomous New York state park before eventually feeding Cayuga Lake by way of the Inlet.
Taughannock Creek is namesake to the NY state park on Cayuga Lake's western shore, where the gorge opens onto a delta on the lake. It is famed for having the highest free-falling waterfall east of the Mississippi River.
Enfield Creek's dramatic gorge is surrounded by Robert H. Treman State Park. The stream flows to the Inlet and on to Cayuga Lake.
"Every creature is better alive than dead ... and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it."
Henry David Thoreau, from The Maine Woods
Published in 1864, before nature's checks and balances were so wholly disrupted by one of its primates that conservationists today find themselves routinely destroying non-native invasive species.
With apologies to molecular cladistics, which tells us that fungi are more closely related to animals than plants.
Some conservationists advocate the term funga to elevate this kingdom in the mind's eye to the importance of fauna and flora. The biomass of the fungi, after all, is six times that of all animals, including humans and livestock.
Photos taken in the field with a flash allow crisp portraits dramatically imposed on a black background.
Taken with the same in-field flash photography as used for the Floral Portraits, but applied to mushrooms. Unambiguously identifying mushrooms is beyond this photographer's pay-grade.
Hay rolls Pastoral ephemera, bundled hay periodically erupts on the land like gigantic shrooms. As haystacks they inspired Claude Monet, Martin Johnson Heade, Vincent van Gogh, and surely many others. Are today's mechanically baled hay-rolls as picturesque?
Astro The digital camera simplifies photography of the heavens.
In July of 2020, comet NEOWISE visited our solar system after an absence of nearly seven millennia. Though barely visible to the naked eye, the comet glowed for exposures of several seconds.
In October of 2024, comet Tsushinchan-ATLAS visited the solar system. If the dirty snowball lasts, it is predicted to return in 80,000 years. The comet was not visible to my eye, but the camera had little problem. For the first few days of observing, a full moon illuminated foregrounds and brightened the sky. But later, as the comet waned, the moon hid below the horizon, thus darkening skies to reveal the Milky Way.
Fall Creek One of Cayuga Lake's major tributaries, Fall Creek meanders for about twenty-five miles before reaching the Cornell University campus, from which it rumbles down the impressive Ithaca Falls before entering Cayuga Lake at Stewart Park.
Barns The school of utilitarian picturesque.
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