The Orchid Hunters

Rare and fleeting, the wild orchids bloom only once a year, and if you miss them -- well, better luck next time. They're strange, exotic, and they hide in the woods. This is what we were looking for:

The wild "spider orchid," Adelaide Hills, November, 2016

So, nothing daunted, we mounted an expedition, aware that we would do some serious bushwhacking to find these elusive beauties. They don't grown anywhere near the beaten path...

Step one: pack picnic basket and cameras. Step two: actually get out the door! The weather was iffy, the light was not very good -- you see the white sky in the above picture, which shows one of the trails to Upper Waterfall at Belair. It wan't very warm at all, no matter the fact this is November downunder and summer comes in, in a couple of weeks now. So, don't forget the jackets --

Dave the Intrepid Orchid Hunter. 

Even Dave took a jacket and wore it! I think we've thawed those Alaskan bones at last. Lately, he really does seem to feel the chill -- and we live in a part of Australia with a Mediterranean climate, so we can get chilly, though we rarely see frost, and never snow unless you're very high in the hills indeed: altitude.

The trail to Upper Waterfall leads through a small part of Belair National Park. In summer it can be scorchingly hot, and it can be a complete quagmire in winter. This has been the coldest winer, and the wettest, in anyone's memory, so we weren't surprised to wear the jackets the whole time ... but we didn't get rained on. Above left: a selfie of the photographer, on the day, sitting on a rock at the waterfall -- which was dry, save for the tiniest trickle; but the trail in showed several patches of very wet earth, testimony to creek-like torrents that had been flowing until the last few days. We timed this well!  And as for the orchids ... I'm going to stop talking now and let the gallery pictures speak for themselves. Here we go:

Photographing these tiny beauties in a stiff wind was far from easy. They are very small -- for scale, see the shot where Dave is steadying the flower while I get the picture. You're working in macro and super-macro the whole time, and with each gust the flower sways out of your field of focus. You wait for a lull, shoot fast, and shoot a lot, because a lot will often be out of focus as the plant moves. The other challenge is, these flowers have a prominent white area which, in digital cameras, tends to burn right out to harsh, pure white and look quite nasty. Getting around that is ... a challenge.

And orchids weren't the only wild flowers growing along the trail. In fact, Belair has been carpeted in flowers for a couple of months now, and with the cold, wet spring they've lasted much longer than usual, almost into summer:

Back soon with a post about birding ... kookaburras, black-tailed yellow cockatoos, and more.