ナショナルジオグラフィックさんのインスタグラム写真 - (ナショナルジオグラフィックInstagram)「Photos by @carltonward | You could say I've been chasing ghosts for the past few years. I set up base camp in the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge in 2016 to begin my Path of the Panther project with @insidenatgeo. I was developing camera trap systems to photograph the elusive endangered panthers in the South Florida swamps. The biologists living in the trailer next to mine were there in pursuit of a different kind of ghost—the rare and revered ghost orchid. They were using a simple game camera in an attempt to capture the first ever photos of a ghost orchid being pollinated. That's when my orchid distraction began. What started as an excuse to make weekly paddle trips into the Fakahatchee Strand soon grew into a three-year-long obsession to help solve one of the great mysteries of the Everglades—what pollinates the ghost orchid. I hung custom-made camera traps above the water and pointed infrared laser triggers just above delicate ghost orchid flowers. I fine-tuned the method and tried for two years but failed to capture any pollinators. I tried again for a third summer, and fellow Nat Geo explorers @macstonephoto and @peter_houlihan (second photo) joined the quest. Peter had been studying ghost orchids in the Fakahatchee for six years, and Mac had first proposed the idea of camera trapping them a few years earlier. Mac's old-growth forest project gave him an excuse to hang a camera trap 50 feet (15 meters) up in an ancient cypress tree at Audubon's Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, where a "super ghost" blooms throughout the summer. Please stay tuned over the next week to learn what we discovered together. #ChasingGhosts #everglades」2月22日 8時38分