Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: mineral

This rock and several others, plus a few cacti, were displayed in a raised "flowerbed box" at one of the farms we called in at on 28 December. This is the farm where I love photographing their big, whitish dog and their farm cat. I don't know what kind of rock this is and I am only guessing that the pattern seen is formed of some kind of mineral. I don't know if this is a usual pattern or just coincidence - a completely different example that comes to mind is Dendritic Marble, which has a distinctive pattern. I also don't know if this rock was found locally or maybe collected on a trip. Quite a neat pattern, I thought. Three days after Christmas, on 28 December 2015, I took part in the annual Audubon Cochrane Wildlife Reserve Christmas Bird Count. The area that my small group of seven people covered was N of Cochrane and E of Highway 22. Though the word 'Reserve' is in the name, this count was like most others, driving all the country backroads and calling in at several farms. The weather was bad, with poor light and gently falling snow pretty well all day long. Thanks so much, Stephen, for driving the four of us safely! I will add our leader's report for this day's count below. Not a huge number of species, with a Pileated Woodpecker being the highlight plus so many Snow Buntings. "The day was overcast, light snow most of day, calm, -09°C. 20 cm snow on ground. Most streams frozen over. Total Party kms by Car - 84; Total Party kms by foot – 2km. Total Party hours by Car – 3; Total Party hours by foot -2 hrs Total Party hours feeder watching – 1:40 min. Rough-legged Hawk-1 Rock Pigeon-4 Downy Woodpecker-10. Hairy Woodpecker-3 PILEATED WOODPECKER-1 Black-billed Magpie- 19 Common Raven- 18 Black-capped Chickadee- 41 Red-breasted Nuthatch- 3 White-breasted Nuthatch-1 American Tree Sparrow-7 Dark-eyed Junco-1 Snow Bunting-3550 Pine Grosbeak-25 White-winged Crossbill-15 Common Redpoll-1811 House Sparrow-106 Red Squirrel-2"

"Striations are a product of a mineral's crystal habit. They can be very diagnostic and can even be an enhancement to the attractiveness of a specimen. They are incorrectly referred to as scratches, especially on transparent crystals. The most common cause of striations are the convergence or juxtaposition of two crystal faces. One of the faces gets truncated or "overtaken" by the other, but manages to leave its mark in the form of an almost imperceptible edge or stria. This edge is repeated again and again as the mineral grows and can fill an entire face with these tiny edges or striations. Generally striations are parallel, but some are triangular or even crossed. Striations are generally common, but the best examples of striations are on the minerals quartz, pyrite, apophyllite, tourmaline, sphalerite and the feldspars, but there are many others. Pyrite has striations on its cubic faces that are caused by faces that are not usually on the crystal at the time. Pyrite's striations are caused by a juxtaposition of two pyritohedron faces on the cube face. Generally the pyritohedron faces are not even formed on the typical cube habit, but their striations are there as straight lines. It is interesting to notice that the striations on one side of the cube are perpendicular to the striations on the other side (shown in the photo below)." www.galleries.com/minerals/property/striatio.htm en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrite

The largest of these tiny crystals is maybe half an inch tall - can't for the life of me remember if they are Quartz crystals or something else. I think they came from one of the mines in India, many years ago. Feels a little strange to be posting this kind of crystal at this time of the year - normally, I would be posting ice crystals from an overnight frost! Not as sharp as I wanted, but it was a heavily overcast day yesterday (with a weather advisory in effect), and there was absolutely no light in my place.

Well, not exactly, but that is what this image makes me think of : ) Should have saved this photo of tiny (maybe half inch tall) Quartz crystals to post on a day with heavy snow and bitterly cold temperatures. Not too organized at the moment! If you are living in a world of white with frigid temps at the moment, hope this colour warms you up.

For many years, I collected all sorts of pieces of Iron Pyrites. They come in many forms, and this photo is of a tiny Pyritohedron crystal. Another name for Pyrites is Fool's Gold. I have a handful of photos of other pieces in my Shells and Minerals Set, if anyone is interested. A pyritohedron has twelve pentagonal faces. It has 24 short edges, and 6 longer edges. It is one of the two common crystal forms of pyrite, the other one being cubical.

Another mineral specimen from my little collection. Not sure, but I believe this piece came from one of the mines in India.

I've had this Marcasite "sand-dollar" in slate (?) for many years now. Quite beautiful. Now wondering if perhaps this is Pyrite, rather than Marcasite?

I think Iron Pyrites is my favourite metal. It comes in so many different crystal shapes - these ones are cubic and beautifully grooved.

Part of an Amethyst geode - the colour isn't accurate, shows the crystals more mauve than the true purple.

This photo is roughly life-sized, of an Iron Pyrites cube. Need to do some experimenting with lighting, reflections and so on, as I can't seem to get the image that I want.

Another angle on this particular specimen of Iron Pyrites.

A piece of bedrock in which many small crystals of Iron Pyrites have formed.

This piece of Bismuth was grown in a laboratory. I love the square step crystal formation.

A few dog-tooth crystals on a slab of Amethyst from Brazil.

Amethyst taken from another angle. Love those flat, shiny, triangular crystal sides.