Category Archives: Video

July 13, 2024 · 23:11

In Need Of Calm

Time to step back, take a breath, and let some of the adrenaline burn off. Let’s go to a happy place.

Mount Ascutney in Vermont, of course. Maybe a third of the way up the trail from the parking lot to the summit, still on a reasonably flat stretch, there’s a spot where the tree canopy opens up and it’s sunny and the ground is covered in ferns.

I always make a point to stop there for a while. It’s quiet and beautiful and very, very green.

There are insects and bugs flitting about and I could hear birds (cardinals), but other than that it was dead quiet. I was lucky – while I was there, no one else was hiking along the trail to interrupt my reverie.

Behind me to the left the hillside climbs very steeply and there are some “small boulders the size of large boulders,” and through the trees you can see the mountains off in the distance (looking toward New Hampshire and the Connecticut River to the east, I think, maybe?).

Even if we can’t go to the “Ascutney Sea of Ferns” in person tonight, perhaps we can go there in our heads for a while and leave CNN, NYT, WSJ, and Twitter behind. They’ll be there when we come back, but in the meantime, our blood pressure and anxiety levels can drop back down to safe levels.

I’ll see you on the trail!

Leave a comment

Filed under Death Of Common Sense, Photography, Travel, Video

June 22, 2024 · 23:07

Two Hawks

We have hawks all the time overhead, ususally red-tail hawks soaring overhead and sometimes getting closer, plus red-shouldered hawks in the pine trees on the hill below us, and the occasional Cooper’s hawk. Plus both great horned owls and barn owls.

The red-shouldered hawks seem to have taken over for the moment. There’s the one that can be seen or heard pretty much daily for the last several months. But since we got back home from our Vermont trip, the screeching of the red-shoulder hawks has been almost constant from before sunrise until after sunset. I do love the hawks, but it would be nice if they would shut up for a while every now and then.

There also seem to be more than just the one. Every day this week I’ve been able to hear at least two of them screeching from different directions, and once I could hear two while watching a third. I suspect there’s at least one nest being constructed somewhere in the neighborhood.

Tonight I saw one of them sitting in a tree just off of the edge of the hill, so I went to take pictures.

It was sitting in the shade (not stupid – it was HOT out there today) and about the time I started zooming in, I was surprised to see a second hawk sitting with it. Do you see it?

After making more racket, the one on the left, in the deep shadows near the tree trunk, flew off to perch on the other side of the canyon. This one stayed here as sunset progressed and its perch spot moved into the sunlight.

I don’t know if there are distinguishing features or patterns that might tell me if one is male and another female.

Given that there are at least three in the area, there may be some competition for a single female and that could explain some of the noise levels.

We also have our annual infestation of gophers or moles chewing the crap out of the hillside and lawn. All of the hawks are cordially invited to keep well fed on that particular food source!

Leave a comment

Filed under Birds, Critters, Photography, Video

June 9, 2024 · 23:23

Frantic Hummers

A new reader, Victoria, stumbled on an old post which had the audio from the hummingbirds “clicking” as they flew around. She was wondering what they looked like.

Funny you should ask.

It turns out that this weekend, while I was trying to get some peace and quiet sitting in the shade in the back yard and reading, a rough and rowdy band of three hummingbirds decided that I was an idiot who didn’t know that their feeder (which I was sitting near) was empty. They buzzed me repeatedly, and would hover right in front of my face within an arm’s length, then zoom up to hover next to the empty feeder, then zoom back down into my face, and repeat two or three more times before zooming off into the trees. The message seemed pretty obvious.

“Look, stupid human who’s supposed to keep the feeders filled! This one’s empty! See! Hey, look at us! Hey, look at the empty feeder!”

After they did this two or three times and I was too surprised and stunned to get my phone out, two of them came back for one more pass.

I haven’t played with the audio to clean it up and the YouTube compression algorithm butchers the sound a lot, but you can still hear them zooming.

For having a brain that’s smaller than a walnut, they sure can fly, and apparently make the connection between me (or at least, people in general) and their feeder being refilled. They’ve watched me do it enough times. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible or likely, but I’ve been wrong before.

Or I’m wrong now, anthropomorphizing the crap out of the situation, and just feeling guilty about letting the feeder get empty. (There are other feeders, the trees are in bloom and covered in pollen, and the place is lousy with flowers in bloom. None of them are starving to death.)

It also reminds me that the Forever Home, wherever it might be, needs to have lots of birds in general, hummingbirds specifically. I live for this particular style of abuse.

2 Comments

Filed under Birds, Critters, Forever Home, Video

May 7, 2024 · 22:20

Two Hundred Years

Two hundred years ago today (apparently) Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was played in public for the first time.

You’re probably most familiar with the final movement, the Ode to Joy, which is one of the most stunning, brilliant, and beautiful pieces ever created anywhere, any time, by anyone.

If the alien overlords land and point at Trump and Gaza and ask why we as a species should be allowed to live, I’ll point to this.

Leave a comment

Filed under Music, Video

March 18, 2024 · 23:08

Sunset SpaceX Launch From Vandenberg

When a rocket launches it leaves behind it a trail of exhaust. From the rocket itself there’s a V-shaped plume of exhaust that grows bigger and wider as the rocket ascends and the air pressure drops. This can sometimes be tough to see during daylight unless you’re close to the launch site. At night it’s much easier to see the rocket and V-shaped plume since the rocket is so bright, but you often can’t see the long plume behind it because there’s nothing illuminating it.

But there’s a sweet spot, for a little while after sunset (or before sunrise, but getting up that early? who needs that sort of negativity in their lives?!) when it’s dark enough overhead to see the rocket, but the Sun’s still shining over the horizon to illuminate the plume…

I didn’t figure it would matter at all. We again had several pop-up thunderstorms that weren’t in the forecast at all (what IS up with that?) and late this afternoon we were getting light showers and we weren’t watching anything in the sky except the bottoms of some thick, black clouds.

But I checked again just before the SpaceX launch, and it was surprisingly clear. I kicked the “LIVE!” button in Facebook.

It was AMAZING!!

The plume had gone from horizon to (almost) horizon (there’s a tree there to the southeast) and the lighting and timing were perfect.

In the video you can see the first stage come up from behind the mountains (0:56), shut down and separate from the upper stage (1:42), the second stage light (1:49), the first stage falling behind with occasional white flashes from the cold nitrogen gas thrusters it uses for maneurvering (2:37 & 2:39), and the two fairing halves separating and falling away (2:46). If you listen carefully (or are using headphones) you can hear neighbors from a couple of spots through the neighborhood hooting & hollering.

Even fifteen minutes after the launch, the plume was still illuminated as the upper level winds twisted and dissapated the exahust, still lit from the Sun far over the western horizon.

Online on social media you’ll see videos and pictures from all up and down the California coast, from Pismo Beach to San Diego, down into Baja, and inland in as far as Palm Springs, Phoenix, Tucson, and Las Vegas. There’s even one picture from a guy somewhere over the Rockies at 34,000 feet, hundreds and hundreds of miles away.

It was quite the show!

Leave a comment

Filed under Photography, Space, Sunsets, Video

March 6, 2024 · 23:24

Fine Feathered Friends – March 06th

What a pleasant surprise today! I was taking a quick break and grabbing a soda in the kitchen when I saw something large-ish going through the pine trees on the slope beyond the back yard. It wasn’t any mourning dove, much larger, some sort of raptor. I grabbed a camera and headed out into the rain.

I figured that it had just been passing through and I might see it circling over the canyon someplace. It was rainy and starting to close in so I didn’t see anything in the sky. Suddenly my pattern recognition kicked in and I realized that this guy was sitting right there, staring at me.

After I got a couple of pictures from the back yard, I decided to see if the hawk would sit still while I went down the stairs to the “lower level.” To my surprise and delight, it did! Although it was giving me some serious stink eye.

I was still maybe 20-25 feet away and about even with it, although if I had tried to go over to the tree it was in I would have been 30 feet below it. That hill is steep. I guess it decided that I was mostly harmless. (I am! Mostly…)

By this point the rain was coming down steadily and while the hawk was looking all over, it didn’t seem too happy about the meteorological conditions.

What kind of hawk is it? It’s a mystery, sort of. I ran four different pictures through the Merlin Bird ID app (from Cornell Lap, get it!) and all four said it might be a Cooper’s Hawk or a Red-shouldered Hawk. In either case it’s probably a juvenile, but that’s more likely if it’s a Red-shouldered Hawk. That’s my bet, simply because the Cooper’s Hawks that I’ve seen up close have solid brown or tan chests, where these patterns are more like the Red-shouldered Hawks. I could have positively ID it if it had sounded off, their calls are much different. But not a peep was heard.

I expected it to fly off any second, but it just sat there. After about fifteen minutes I was more wet than I really liked, and I had the option of going inside. I came back out an hour later and it was still sitting there, which I found really surprising. But it was gone a half-hour after that.

I shot a couple minutes of video while waiting and hoping it would either sound off, fly away, or both. No joy on all counts, but it’s a gorgeous creature!

Leave a comment

Filed under Birds, Critters, Photography, Video, Weather

February 20, 2024 · 23:47

I’m Lichen It! Day Four

As I was hoping, with today’s ongoing rain, the green lichen on the ash tree just exploded with color again.

It also spread to the west side of the tree, where there had been only a dusting before.

On the east side it was much more prominent and thicker, also spreading up higher on the trunk.

On the south side – still no sign of any.

There’s one spot that has a large mat of material, unlike everywhere else where it’s broken up to match the cracks and breaks in the tree bark.

Here it’s filled in all of those cracks and become a solid mass. There’s also that orange-ish section off on the left.

Where the rest of it seems to be a couple of millimeters thick on the bark, here it looks like it’s double or triple that.

The wide view, showing how bright it’s gotten.

And the video view. You’ll also notice how hard it is to zoom in while not dropping the umbrella…

Leave a comment

Filed under Flowers, Photography, Video, Weather

February 15, 2024 · 23:09

Coyotes In The Night

I walked out into the back yard about 22:15 tonight, to a chaotic cacophony. I hear coyotes around once or twice a week, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard them this close. They were in the street and yards on the road just below ours, where it loops around and heads back down. So, maybe a hundred yards as the crows fly.

(As usual with cell phone video uploaded to YouTube, the sound quality sucks, so turn it up a bit…)

I walked over to the edge of the hill and could see four or five of them running around, but from the volume and yipping and yapping and howling, there might have been twice that. I don’t know what they were carrying on about (i.e., trying to kill and eat) but I’m glad it wasn’t a pet of mine.

Or a skunk.

Life in the urban jungle!

Leave a comment

Filed under Audio, Critters, Video

December 6, 2023 · 22:46

Christmas Lights & Coyotes

I went out to check out the Christmas lights (we’ve had a couple of the ground sets taken out by rabbits chewing on the wires again!) and was surprised to find a whole pack of coyotes sounding off like banshees in the canyon between us and Valley Circle!

Turn it up!

By the time I had gone back inside for my phone and got it turned on they had actually quieted down a bit. What you hear here is about a third as loud as they had been a minute earlier.

I have no idea how many there are in this pack, but it’s got to be at least 15 to 20 just by the number of different voices I heard when I first went out.

The bunnies who are chewing on those wires had better be on their toes or I’m going to be the least of their worries!

Leave a comment

Filed under Christmas Lights, Critters, Video

November 14, 2023 · 22:16

Not NaNoWriMo, 11/14/2023

While there was writing done, it was only a couple hundred words, so I’ll just include it with tomorrow’s post…

Never mind! Belay my last!

I will post it. It’s important to show that this marathon is accomplished with the days where I write 2,000 words and the ones when I write 200 words.

…and now I’m writing the things in THIS post that need to go in THAT post…

Focus. I hear it’s a wonderful thing to have.

Meanwhile, with our first big storm coming in (yeah! need the rain!) I went out to turn off the sprinklers for the next week and was standing next to all of the flowering plants that grow up through the chainlink fence between the yards. They’re COVERED in bees, who are totally harmless as long as you leave them alone (gee, mom was right!). You can also hear, in the background, the two ravens that hang out in our yard, clacking and chatting with one another.

Leave a comment

Filed under Birds, Critters, Video