And yet, here it is!
Must be a different one.
Category Archives: Photography
There Are THREE Squirrels!
And a handful of birds. It was later in the day and most of the food had been eaten – when the day’s bounty is first cast out onto the lawn we can get the squirrel(s) plus 20-25 or more mourning doves, a dozen or two house finches, as many as 15 juncos if they’ve migrated in, plus towhees, mockingbirds, and whoever else happens to be in the area and wondering what the crowd’s all about.
For some reason my brain hears this phrase in Patrick Stewart’s voice as Jean Luc Picard in the “Chain Of Command” episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” where at the end he’s screaming at the Cardassian, Madred, who has been torturing and drugging him, trying to break him and get him to admit to seeing five lights when there are actually only four.
IYKYK.
Filed under Birds, Critters, Photography, Science Fiction
A Night Under The Stars
The Younger Daughter is a teacher at a private school here in LA and tonight as part of their end-of-the-year activities they had a sleepover night at the school. She asked if I would be interested in bringing some telescope gear to the school so her students could look through them.
Of course I will do that! (See that hill in the distance on the right side? That’s where Kobey Bryant’s helicopter crashed a few years back.)
While we were waiting for it to get fully dark, we saw the strangest thing pass overhead. It rose due west at about 21:05 and passed almost straight overhead, maybe a little bit to the south of us. It had this butterfly pattern to it and when I first saw it I thought the coastal fog was starting to roll in and this was a 737 going into Burbank with its landing lights illuminating the fog. It was BRIGHT!
I soon realized that it couldn’t be a jet, it was moving much too fast. I grabbed the binoculars and could clearly see a bright pinpoint at the center, with twin “jets” of some sort coming out both sides. Give its speed and path from due west to due east, it was clear that it had to be in orbit, not in the atmosphere. Given the “jets,” I think that this was probably an upper stage from a rocket, venting excess fuel.
This was it almost to the eastern horizon, just before the “jets” stopped and it faded from view.
I checked when I got home. There was a SpaceX Falcon9 launch out of Florida at 19:37, launching Starlink satellites into the “6-64” shell. Given the launch about 98 minutes earlier, the timing is close enough for government work. I’ve heard of folks over Texas seeing SpaceX upper stages venting after launch, and this would have been over them just a few minutes after it went over us, so while I’ve never seen this phenomenon before, I’ll keep an eye out for it in the future!!
The stargazing, on the other hand, sort of sucked. ALL of the planets are in the morning sky, the Moon doesn’t rise until midnight, the bright winter constellations have all set, the bright fall constellations of the southern sky haven’t risen yet, there was haze, we were in the middle of the city, and there were way too many lights all around. We ended up looking at Vega a lot, which is easy to see but boring.
Filed under Astronomy, Photography
Papa Bird
The male house finch that built Mama Finch’s nest has quite the bright plumage, even if he is a bit on the scruffy side.
More importantly, he’s taken to perching on the Really Excellent Stick that I have propped up nearby.
From here he can keep an eye on the nest up above and behind me to the left from this view, as well as the hummingbird feeder above his head. This is also a favorite perch of Little Bastard, from which he can guard “his” feeder and ignore the finches.
It’s a Really Excellent Stick!
Filed under Birds, Photography
The Trouble Twins
Any disturbance, noise, or movement at all and these two idiots are sprinting for the tree and then stopping to see if that was the proper course of action:
Dumb as a sack of hammers, but so far they’ve managed to avoid becoming Purina Hawk Chowder, so I guess it’s working!
Filed under Critters, Photography
Random Old Photos – May 26th
“Old” is relative here – on the one hand, this wasn’t from today or this week or even this month. On the other hand, it wasn’t from years and years ago either.
Taken from the beach at Boca Chica in early April when I was there a couple days before the total solar eclipse in Texas. I do love the formation flying of a flock of brown pelicans, just cruising down the beach on the sea breeze, about 50 feet AGL.
Filed under Birds, Photography, Travel
All Night Long
Here it is, your standard issue, dimestore model male Northern Mockingbird, found year-around almost anywhere in North America except for the very most northern tier of states, Washington to Minnesota.
That jaunty tail, the grey stripes, the flash of white under the wings when it’s in flight… Common and unmistakable.
But most recognizeable of all is its song(s). They have a standard repertoire which is easily recognizeable, but they’re also incredible mimics and can learn to imitate everything from the local stray cats to car alarms.
And the males almost never shut up.
I’ve almost always loved hearing them and they’ve never before bothered me at night, even though they drove my first wife crazy. But now, there’s one in particular that sits outside of our bedroom all freakin’ night long EVERY NIGHT and goes on and on and on and on… This means it’s probably a young male trying to find a mate, and I can understand the desire. But at this point I wonder what I can do to help move the process along.
Can I hire a mockingbird matchmaker? Can I hire a mockingbird prostitute? I’m open to options!
Filed under Birds, Critters, Photography
Baby Squirrels
With all of those trees you see in the back yard and down the hill in the neighborhood, it shouldn’t be any surprise that we have squirrels in the yard. Especially since we’re feeding the birds every day and the squirrels can mooch off of that bounty.
Normally we see one squirrel, sometimes two. But in the spring, like now, we often can see three or four, with two of them being noticeably smaller than the others.
I have a theory…
Filed under Critters, Photography
Trying To Impose Order From Chaos
Chaos is winning by four touchdowns in the middle of the third quarter, but I’m hoping to finish strong.
Does this look right to you? I thought not…
Filed under Paul, Photography, Random Blatherationings
The Roses Groweth & The Roses Flyeth Away
There are houses we looked at this weekend who had large lots (up to 2.22 acres) and were 99% dirt (zoned for raising horses usually) and those with more reasonably sized lots (about 1/2 acre). Some of the smaller lots were also “desert landscaping” (i.e. dirt & rock & cactus) but most had lots of landscaping (or astroturf – water’s rationed and expensive in the desert) and almost all had lots of roses.
This is a good thing! But no matter how much you grow roses, it doesn’t take much wind to start scattering petals, and there’s a LOT of wind up there in the desert. So there will be a lot of this going on. And probably no gardener to take care of them, so there’s another challenge and learning curve for me!
Do they have “Raising Roses 101” classes at the community college?
Filed under Flowers, Forever Home, Photography
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 