First of all, a wind storm about two weeks ago stripped all of the roses of all of their petals.
But this favorite rose of mine, the one with the magnificent color, basically said, “Up YOURS!” to Mother Nature’s more malevolent side and burst out with two magnificent blooms.
Maybe it’s not just the color that makes these my favorites. Maybe it’s the attitude, especially when I can use the reminder.
Filed under Flowers, Photography
A couple of days ago, near sunset, as I was taking trash out to where the bins are on the side of the garage, I noticed a single thread of spider silk floating overhead. It was connected to the garage room about 10 feet up, the other end anchored about 15 feet up to the Italian cypress trees next to the driveway. Along the line I could see a single large-ish spider working. I’m no expert on spiders by any means, but I think it’s an orb weaver?
Today when I was heading out to get groceries I went to look and see what might have been built up there, lit up by the early morning Sun.
It’s been moderately windy here for the last couple of days, so the web must be pretty sturdy to not get torn apart by either the tugging of those cypress trees as they sway in the wind or from the wind itself.
The circular portion of the web here is about three feet across, roughly the size of a trash can lid.
While orb weavers are reluctant to bite and their venom is mostly mild and harmless to humans, my biggest concern is having a web like this built at head level, not 15 feet overhead. If I blindly walk into this in the dark while taking the trash out at night, then A) I’m going to be flailing and making dance moves that have never before been seen by man, and; B) I’m going to pull every muscle in my body doing so.
It won’t be pretty.
The instinctive engineering skills portrayed here are amazing. Having acknowledged that, let’s agree to keep to our separate spaces. I won’t destroy hours of your work and significant amounts of your resources which you’re using to feed yourself, and you won’t scare the shit out of me at random times.
Good talk!
Filed under Critters, Photography
Shortly after 08:00 this morning the Moon began to move in front of the Sun, causing a partial solar eclipse as seen from here in Los Angeles. In other places, along a path from Oregon, directly over Albuquerque, into Texas, directly over San Antonio, into the Gulf of Mexico, over Central America, and over South America, folks got to see a “Ring of Fire” annular eclipse. NASA-TV had an excellent program covering it.
Here I made a simple attempt to photograph the progress of the eclipse. No fancy solar telescope, no H-alpha filters, just my 300 mm telephoto lens, a Canon xt DSLR on a tripod, and a handheld solar eclipse filter held in front of the lens.
09:45, a minute or two after maximum coverage in LA. The Moon has come in from the upper left and is moving down toward the lower left.
09:53 – the color of the Sun varies a bit depending on the length of the exposure. Even with the eclipse filter and the Sun’s disk partially obscured, the Sun is BRIGHT.
10:06 – For each set of pictures I was shooting a series of images, “bracketing” the exposures from 1/4000 second down to about 1/100 second. Then from each set I picked the best picture based on focus, exposure, and other factors.
10:26 – The dark film used to make the eclipse glasses isn’t optically flat, so taking pictures through it introduces a fair amount of blur. To truly do a nice job on this subject I would need a precision, optically flat glass filter, which can be a bit pricey. I’ll be looking at it for next year’s total eclipse, but not today.
10:45 – Getting close to the end of the eclipse.
10:54 – These last three images are just a minute apart as the eclipse was ending.
10:55 – Just the tiniest little sliver of the Moon’s edge is still covering 1% of the Sun’s disc in the lower left.
10:56 – Last contact
I hope that you got to see the eclipse today, or at least had (or will have) a chance to see it online. Now it’s time to start planning for next April 8th, the last full solar eclipse in North America this century.
I’ll see y’all in Texas! April 8th! Be there or be square!
Filed under Astronomy, Photography
Tomorrow morning there’s a partial and annular solar eclipse. I would like you to see it if you can, and I would like you to do so safely and not harm your eyes.
QUICK REVIEW & SUMMARY:
Got it? There might be a quiz. Here’s a cheat sheet:
2023 Safe Eclipse Viewing Flyer – Digital Download
If you’re pretty much anywhere in the Americas you’ll have a chance to see at least a partial eclipse tomorrow morning. In Los Angeles, for example, the first contact of the Moon’s limb covering the edge of the Sun is at 08:07:58, the final contact is at 10:50:09, and the greatest partial coverage is at 09:24:33, with about 74% of the Sun covered.
A good site to get timing and coverage information for your location is here, at timeanddate.com.
For the record, if you’re someplace like here where the eclipse is only partial, don’t expect anything spectacular if you’re not actually looking at the Sun. It won’t get noticeably darker or anything unless you’re in the path of the annular eclipse.
If you’re in the path of the annular eclipse, you’ll see the Moon pass in front of the Sun, but at a distance from Earth where it looks slightly smaller than the Sun, so a ring of the Sun will always be visible. Thus the need for eye protection.
News flash – the Sun is really freakin’ bright! Even having the Moon block 99% of the Sun still means you can do serious eye damage to yourself if you’re not protected.
You need real “eclipse glasses,” with film that’s designed to block enough light to make them safe. Hopefully you got them well in advance, they’ll be tough to find (or freakishly expensive) tomorrow. (Yes, of course, I always have a dozen or so pairs around… But that doesn’t help you.)
Do NOT use regular sunglasses. They’re not strong enough.
Do NOT use something like tin foil or some dark filters that you got out of a birthday fruit basket sometime five years ago.
If you’re stuck without eclipse glasses and you still want to see, you CAN make a pinhole projector. Get a large sheet of cardboard or poster board. Poke a teeny, tiny pinhole in the middle. Hold the cardboard a foot or so off of the ground, square to the sun, so that the shadow of the board is visible on the ground. The Sun’s image will show up in the middle of that shadow, projecting through the pinhole. You may have to fiddle with how far off the ground to hold it, but it’s easy, cheap, and really works!
Another safe way to watch it, including the annular phases even if you’re not in the path of the annular eclipse, even if your sky is covered with clouds, is on NASA-TV.
Be safe! Enjoy the partial eclipse, and if you’re lucky enough to be in the path of the annular eclipse, enjoy that even more!
Clear skies!
No fried eyeballs!
Filed under Astronomy
Do you see it? It’s a teeny, tiny little thing. From snout to back legs is maybe an inch – add in the tail and it might be two.
I’ve said it before, but I don’t remember ever having so many lizards hatching so late in the year. I’ve always seen the babies, the little ones, in the spring. Maybe in the early summer at the latest. Not this year.
Dr. Earyn McGee, of the famous “FindThatLizard” weekly Twitter events which I so dearly love, called these tiny guys “popcorn” lizards. Their main function in the universe is to be food for other critters and bigger lizards.
A few make it and get bigger. And I understand they need to be bigger to have the reserves needed to make it through the winter when they become dormant.
They become dormant in the winter because it gets cold and wet. Maybe they know something we don’t?
Filed under Critters, Photography
We’ve seen these dudes (or their relatives) in the past once or twice, but they’re not regulars.
Maybe it’s the grapes that brought them out. Putting a handful out is an experiment and they all disappeared in a day, so they were popular!
The “zebra-stripes” on the head make these guys stand out.
There were two or three flitting in, grabbing a seed or a chunk of grape, and flitting out.
They were fighting the mourning doves for the seeds. They may have been out of their weight class, but they were holding their own.
The Merlin app tells me that there are two similar species in our area. I’ve seen a Golden-crowned Sparrow once or twice, but never when I had a camera with me. They’re similar, but they just have one stripe on their head and it’s bright yellow.
The other is the Lark Sparrow, which has stripes on its head that’s more dark brown and white, and they go all the way around the head and down onto the throat, seven or eight stripes instead of three.
They’re very similar in size and coloration to the house finches. Any given morning we’ll have a couple dozen or more house finches out there when the seed gets scattered, so except for the head markings these guys fit right in.
A decent picture of the markings on the wing and back feathers.
This one finally marched up to the edge of the porch and started barking at me. I think the gist of it was, “We want more grapes! Where’s the good stuff, the fresh ones?”
Filed under Birds, Critters, Photography
What are you passionate about? What really, really makes it all worthwhile?
Sure, romantic passion is likely to be high on the list for most of us, whether we have it or not, but that’s not all. What else?
Can you list five things? Ten? Travel? Music? Books? Sports? Flying?
Do you have those things in your life? A smidgen? A bunch? None at all?
Why not? Are you working on getting more? Are you just going to settle on doing without?
Why?
What are you passionate about?
Filed under Deep Thoughts, Flying, Photography, Weather
More sunset-ish tonight.
A little bit of everything out there.
Layers on layers, row on row, all with a really nice color pallette.
Boy, talk about “air quotes!”
One thing that I consider with every house I’m looking at on Zillow is the view, in particular the number of telephone poles and wires. Trees are one thing, and the wires aren’t a deal killer, but they’re most certainly worth a couple of demerits.
Virga. The wisps dropping away from clouds like these is rain that’s starting to fall. But it’s falling into air that’s very dry so it evaporates before it hits the ground. That’s called “virga.”
Filed under Photography, Sunsets, Weather
When I first saw it, finding recognizeable shapes as the pattern recognizing primate brain wants to do, I thought it looked like Greenland.
Then I was thinking, no, too long and skinny, maybe more like the Sweden/Norway penninsula. Or Florida. Yeah, Florida.
It’s a sure sign of my naive upbringing in Catholic school that it wasn’t until I just looked at it now that I made the connection to what it really looks like. As “Dr. Rick” in one of the current ads for Progressive Insurance ads says, “It may be a fruit emoji 🍆 🍌, but that doesn’t mean they’re talking about fruit!”
I’m going to stick with Florida.
Filed under Photography, Weather
The 2022-2023 season at the Ahmanson is over and the new 2023-2024 season doesn’t start until December.
But in the meantime they have squeezed in a return engagement of one of last year’s hits (and a huge Tony Award winner from 2019 when it was on Broadway.)
We enjoyed it the first time, and we’ll take any excuse to get “oot und aboot” on a Saturday night, so here we are!
Filed under Art, Los Angeles, Photography
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 