We’ve seen a couple of them, but almost all of them are blooming at some point or the other. Maybe I’ll get back to this year’s crop, but for now we’re hip deep in new birds and various critters…
So I played a bit with focus and depth of field.
Best compromise for an elongated, vertical field.
Foreground…
Middle of the depth of field…
Distant field of view…
Next thing you know, folks will think that I know what I’m doing!
Filed under Flowers, Photography
Another “common” bird that I love seeing around the yard is the mockingbird.
They hide in the bushes and can be very, very hard to see. Trust me, he’s there!
They’re primarily a noisy, raucous, troublemaking breed with a bad attitude.
Get four or five together and they will take on a crow, raven, hawk, owl, or any other predator or raptor that tries to take their eggs. They’re fearless.
They’ll come down to the grass to feed on worms and bugs, which is when that tail starts flipping and dancing around.
They’ll hop more than fly on the ground – dinosaur descendants indeed.
With attitude. They descended from T-Rex and they haven’t forgotten.
Also marvelous is their song, which can trill and soar all over the place or start imitating other bird songs and items from the human world – like car alarms.
If you stay their friend, they’ll be endlessly amusing and fun to watch and listen to.
Don’t stay their friend, they’ll look at you like this and then try to annoy the crap out of you every time you go out in your yard. (Pro tip: Stay their friend!)
Filed under Birds, Photography
While last year we had a pair of finches that built a great nest underneath the porch awning right outside our kitchen window, this year we had at least three and possibly four or five nests being built. It was just never clear it was three (or four, or five) pairs or just one or two pairs building a couple of nests each to see which one they liked. A couple of the nest locations are up behind outdoor speakers, so it’s not clear if there are nests in there or just birds getting together for a quickie.
One of the pairs had built a pretty respectable looking nest, and for at least a week or two I was seeing “MomBird” sitting on the nest for hours a day. From this I started to think that there might be eggs and chicks coming.
Nope. This morning that nest was down on the ground.
There were definitely signs of occupancy (i.e., bird shit on the walls and beam) and some of it stayed up there, but most of it ended up on the ground.
No sign of any eggs in it, and I hadn’t seen MomBird in a few days, so this might have been a swing and a miss.
Maybe they’re off on the other side of the porch, up near the house where the speakers are. Or maybe they’re up in the gutters somewhere, or a tree of some sort.
Better luck next time!
On the other hand, the house finches are a long way from endangered around here. There was one point this afternoon when I counted over fifteen of them out there feeding at once, and I can’t even start to count how many are flitting around in the trees and shrubs at the same time.
Filed under Birds, Critters, Photography
You remember Doctor Lizardo, who always hung out underneath the van in the driveway? At the end of last fall she had apparently lost her tail but had gotten some very nice green scaly highlights. Then it looked like she had pretty much grown her tail back out and was seen a few times in the spring. Now I think she’s back, although there may have been another small bit of color change.
This was taken a week ago, while the van was still here.
There’s another lizard that’s been showing up here from time to time, much darker, almost black, and with a missing tail.
I thought that The Doctor was gone and a different color, but looking back through the photos and posts, I think this might be her.
The green shading is gone, and it was quite distinctive in November, but that might be seasonal or temporary.
I notice that the rest of the coloring is very similar to the previous photos.
But what I really notice is the re-grown tail on this lizard. I know that the Good Doctor had lost her tail just before going into hibernation in the fall.
Now this critter has the full tail, but it’s very prominent where it grew back. The scaling is completely different from that point back. In addition, this lizard didn’t get spooked at all by me, even though I was within five feet or so, and that was always a trait of Doctor Lizardo.
Is she back? Is this her? Maybe some of you can compare scale patterns and colors to the pictures from November and earlier last year and see what you think!
Filed under Critters, Photography
I caught this Leporidiaeic friend chomping away on the tall, sweet grass at the side of the yard. We see them in both the front and the back yard daily, but they’re usually eating the regular green, lawn grass.
It was funny watching that long stem of grass disappearing as he nibbled it in, like a string of spaghetti being slurped up.
But then he went for the next mouthful.
It was too cute. And this was not a particularly small rabbit.
It looked like the top parts were the tastiest and he was stretching to get them.
Nibble, nibble, chomp, chomp! There goes another one!
Wait! Are you looking at me?
He must have been convinced quickly that either I didn’t exist on the inside of the kitchen window or that I was (mostly) harmless.
Back to lunch! (Given the hawk activity around here he was enjoying himself way more than I would have recommended, but I’ll have to assume that he know what he was doing.
Filed under Critters, Photography
I’m sure I’ve ranted at you from time to time over the past two years about my favorite new television show in forever, “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist.” I will do so again tonight.
It was the second season finale and the writers and actors and crew and everyone were hitting on all cylinders, with a final scene “mike drop” that has my head spinning. It was WONDERFUL!!!
Fantastic music – once we get a couple bars in and I realize what the song is, the “heart songs” are almost always perfect for the scene and the characters. Characters that you just want to have be your best friends. Plotting and story lines that suddenly just all fall together and you want to cry and scream and it’s like that moment at the end of “The Sixth Sense,” or even better, “The Arrival.” Amazing choreography and dance scenes.
There’s no word on whether or not the show will be picked up for a third season, but if there’s an ounce of good and justice left in the world (and I know, just look at the freakin’ headlines for the last two years and don’t get me started, but still, without hope…) it will get renewed. The NBC “upfront” conference is supposed to be tomorrow morning, so we may know more tomorrow.
Meanwhile, if you haven’t listened to my incredibly well-informed opinions of the show so far, you can catch it on the Peacock streaming service and they said something tonight in the commercials about a marathon showing of the first two seasons on the E! Network on the next few weeks. I can’t think of a better way to spend twenty-four hours.
Filed under Entertainment
Today’s photos aren’t about astronomy, since this is what the sky looked like. The brown stuff in the lower right is smoke from the brush fire in the Palisades and Malibu. So, no moon or stars or ISS (and it was a GREAT pass) tonight.
(Click to enlarge image)
A couple days ago I, subconsciously or randomly or somewhere in between, picked some “random” old photos, and it turned out to be my van that brought home just about twenty years ago. Here are their matching photos from today.
She was a great car, over 203,000 miles, but it was time. She never got driven much any more, and we don’t need an eight-passenger van.
She was often ridden hard and put away wet, but she rarely failed me.
Just shy of twenty years – can you count all twenty tags?
Filed under Castle Willett, Photography
And Venus.
Last night the Moon and Mercury were close to one another, able to fit into the field of my 300mm zoom lens. Venus was way, waaaaaay down near the setting Sun and while folks with flat horizons were seeing it, I have trees, houses, and a small mountain to my west.
Tonight everything had moved, as celestial bodies tend to do. It’s that whole space-time, circling around in the gravity well thing. Which meant that Venus was a bit higher, and even though it was still too bright to see Mercury, Venus is a lot brighter than Mercury and I could juuuuuust see it above the trees as it was setting.
See it? To the right of the phallic tree, just barely above those trees. If you click on the image to get the full-sized photo, you’ll see it…
This cell phone image, blown up to the limit of resolution looks fuzzy – tomorrow night go out (assuming it’s clear) and if you can, take a pair of binoculars. Venus is very bright, looks like a diamond shining against the gathering dusk. Spectacular.
Sort of like this, with the good camera, just as it was disappearing.
Even without a lot of magnification, similar to what you would see with the naked eye, it stands out pretty well.
But there weren’t any pictures with the Moon, Mercury, and Venus. Too bright as Venus was setting. So I waited until it got darker.
About a half hour later, the Moon in the upper left, Mercury about halfway between the trees to the right of the phallic tree, just below being level with the top of it.
Compared to last night, it’s easy to see how much the Moon moves from one night to the next.
A cropped image of the crescent moon, three and a half days past new moon.
Similarly cropped image of overexposed moon, showing the dark portion of the moon in Earthshine.
Full-frame crescent moon in Earthsine.
It will probably be a couple of days before Venus climbs up high enough to be seen in the dark sky with Mercury, and by that time the Moon will be close to or past a quarter moon, way out of this picture. Just as well, the forecast is iffy for the next couple of evenings here.
However…
On the early morning before sunrise on Wednesday, May 26th, there will be a total eclipse of the moon. (See examples of what it will look like here and here.) You won’t see it if you’re on the US east coast or Europe, but you will probably see some or all of it in eastern Asia or on the west coast of North America. In Los Angeles, the partial eclipse begins at 02:45 AM, totality begins at 04:11 AM, maximum eclipse is at 04:18 AM, totality ends at 04:25 AM, and the partial phase ends at 05:52, right at sunrise.
As they say, mark your clocks and set your calendars!
Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space
Most folks never get a chance to see Mercury. It’s only visible, dimly, in the early evening sunset or just barely before sunrise.
If you’ve got a clear western sky for one of the next few nights, it’s a great chance. Mercury is rising about as high as it ever gets, for the next night or two the crescent moon will be nearby (although getting further away and more full every night), and in a few days Venus, VERY bright, will be climbing up from the horizon below it, to also serve as a beacon to tell you where to look.
In these first three pictures, the moon is to the upper left of the phallic tree across the street, Mercury on the right side of the tree.
As always, expose for the brightly lit rim of the moon and the rest of the lunar disk is dark, but overexpose just a bit and you start to see the dark portion of the lunar surface illuminated by Earthshine. Finding the right spot in the middle – that’s art.
And then, just before Mercury goes down into the coastal clouds and fog rolling in or behind that tree, move a few feet to the left to find a spot between the trees where you can see them both.
Let’s hope that tomorrow’s clear and a million at sunset as well!
Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space
A little over a month ago I wrote about a new bird that had been with us since October, the dark-eyed junco. We had something like 15-20 of them living here all winter. Then, a week or so after that first post, I noticed that I hadn’t seen any in days and days. And days. A little research showed that they were migratory and it was about this time we should expect them to leave, as they apparently had.
Except for one.
After a good two weeks where we hadn’t seen a single one, this guy started showing up again.
We call him “Solo Junco.”
I’m not sure why he’s here when all of the rest of his flock took off back to Canada to mate.
He doesn’t appear to be hurt or have any issues that would prevent him from flying north.
He’ll eat with the finches without any problems, just like the whole flock did with the dozens of finches that descend after the food is put out for them.
Maybe he got a few days out, got hungry, and came back. Canada and sex are all well and good, but nothing beats a steady handout!
Of course, there could still be a dozen of them in the bushes and they only come out one at a time to fool us and keep us feeding them, while still maintaining the illusion that they flew north for the summer. You know, to keep the Finch Union guys off their case.
Or I could be overthinking it.
Filed under Birds, Photography
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