In the famous exchange on the subject of pastry in the musical Guys and Dolls, in rebuttal to Nicely-Nicely Johnson’s encouragement to try to the cheesecake or the strudel, both wildly popular, when it is discovered that the restaurant in which they are sitting is sold out of Danish that day, Nathan Detroit observes “That’s just it. Everybody’s on cheesecake and strudel. Makes me feel like I’m playing the favorite.” As of late, I have been becoming increasingly aware that when it comes to my areas of interest in natural history, I am proving to be much like Nathan in my aversion to favorites.
Ever since I was a boy, I not only wanted to know what other people generally didn’t, I wanted to know what most people didn’t even think about knowing – in some cases what the average person didn’t even assume could be known. This is not to say that what I have spent years studying is necessarily odd or strange; merely that the things that have tended to interest me most are those things which would be commonly thought obscure.
Case in point: thanks to my acquisition last year of a Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro lens and its natural accessory, a Canon Macro Ring Lite MR-14EX, I have been exploring the world of macro photography. While this originally took the form of photographing butterflies, moths, and other members of the invertebrate orders, it has recently veered off into the world of plant life – most particularly the world of the Bryophytes.
There is simply something sublimely beautiful in the myriad forms of these ubiquitous but too often overlooked life forms. Living at the base of the coast range in the Pacific Northwest as I do, a Bryophyte paradise thanks to the year-round cool moist climate, the study of mosses and lichens is a particularly appropriate activity. However, as with the study of many less-commonly studied subjects, the quest for knowledge may not be easy or straight-forward (which actually makes it all the more fun).
Nevertheless, I intend to press onward toward acquiring a better understanding of these miniature marvels. As part of this I plan to photograph them as opportunities arise; said images, as may be expected, as well as useful resources I may discover along the way will of course be shared with the Born Again Bird Watcher readership.
