June 11, 2026 Goldfinch and Progress on the Praying Mantis Model

   Martin managed to get a just good enough photo of a goldfinch to identify. Now that Martin has gotten used to the new, upclose optice, he’s back to work on the praying mantis mode.

The finch was only here for a moment, so Martin didn’t have a chance to move up for a closer picture and had to use extreme zoom on the iPhone 17 camera. However as you can see on the Audobon American Goldfinch page, there she is on the right.

This was a surprisingly difficult shot. A 3D object sitting on a 2D picture makes it very difficult to get everything in focus. What finally worked, was stepping back a few feet and then zooming in.