October 11, 2023 · 23:33

Fine Feathered Friends – October 11th

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?”

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October 10, 2023 · 23:10

Random Old Photos – October 10th

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?

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Filed under Deep Thoughts, Flying, Photography, Weather

October 9, 2023 · 23:36

Skyscapes – October 09th

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.”

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Filed under Photography, Sunsets, Weather

October 8, 2023 · 23:20

Skyscapes – October 08th

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.

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Filed under Photography, Weather

October 7, 2023 · 19:55

Going Back To Hell

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!

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Filed under Art, Los Angeles, Photography

October 6, 2023 · 23:13

Change Of Seasons – LA Backyard Version

First of all, a note on yesterday’s post. I apologize to my tiny lizard friend for assuming that he was “lousy at hide and seek.” In fact, I’m apparently not one of the cool kids in the backyard (big surprise!) and didn’t know that the game being played was actually peek-a-boo, and I was being skunked by a grand master. The editorial management of this site regrets the error and we’re looking into sacking the offending staff. Or at least flogging them.

While SoCal does have some trees (all imported from places far more temperate and moist, I assure you) which turn fall colors, they’re pretty much non-existent in our yard.

We have one fruit tree (peach, maybe?) which has never borne fruit in the 5+ years we’ve been here, but the leaves do turn yellow and fall off in the fall.

Compared to seeing whole valleys and mountain sides in New England covered in flaming red maple leaves, or miles upon miles of sunburst yellow aspens in the Rockies, this is a little short on the spectacular.

But you take what you can get. It’s not this tree’s fault, it’s doing its best. It would be nice if it could produce an actual fruit someday so that we could know what kind of tree it is, but that’s beyond my job description.

Happy Autumn from the land of pine trees, palm trees, and cactus!

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Filed under Flowers, Photography

October 5, 2023 · 23:33

Lousy At Hide & Seek

Do you see it? Can you “find that lizard”?

I don’t know for sure (the little dudes don’t wear name tags) but I think it’s the same one from a couple days ago.

I saw him and froze, moving only enough to get my phone out of my pocket. He was really well hidden – at first.

However, the longer I waited, the more emboldened he got. I don’t know if it was curiosity or a territorial display. Either way, it makes for a lousy game of hide & seek.

Finally he was way up above the edge, fully exposed. I didn’t move, but another, bigger lizard ran by from left to right along the top of the rail tie and freaked him out. He vanished back over the side in a flash.

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October 4, 2023 · 23:20

Detritus

The winds are back, and they were howling last night and this morning.

On the far (upwind) side of the driveway you can see some of the rose bushes planted there. Yesterday I noticed that several were starting to bloom again, including the spectacular pink & white one.

On the near (downwind) side you can see hundreds of rose petals. Red, pink & white, yellow, that amazing favorite shade of orange/red, all covering the grass. The rose bushes have all been stripped of every petal.

The lawn looks like there was a wedding here and some precocious (and cute) four-year-old had scattered a bushel basket full of rose petals everywhere. Which is actually what happened, if your cute four-year-old angel was actually a 40 knot wind coming through like the Avenging Angel of Death.

Po-TAY-toe, po-TAH-toe?

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Filed under Castle Willett, Flowers, Photography

October 3, 2023 · 22:37

Pictureless

There was a truly spectacular ISS pass tonight, the station rising in the northwest just as it got truly dark and sailing about 80%+ across the sky before fading into darkness in the west. It was amazingly bright, something like Magnitude -3.9. I noticed the time just a minute before it was set to rise, so I didn’t have time to grab my camera and tripod and gear and get it set up in time. So I went out into the front yard and simply watched. It was wonderful.

The red-shouldered hawks were at it again, something like the 7th or 8th day in a row that they’ve been in the pine trees below us on the hill. I wonder if they might be building a nest nearby. For much of the time they were being raucous outside I was on a Zoom meeting and couldn’t go out to take pictures, but I listened to them from inside. They were loud enough so that the rest of the staff could have heard them if I hadn’t been on mute. I enjoyed listening to them, even if I didn’t see them or get any pictures.

I saw several lizards in the back yard, but never when I had my camera with me. I had my phone, but they weren’t that close, so I just let it go. We had a nice conversation about how warm it was getting again, nearly 90ºF today and getting even warmer for the week ahead. They enjoyed that news quite a bit, but I had to remind them to watch out for the birds. I’m not sure the hawks would bother with something as small as them, but the scrub jays and mockingbirds most certainly would.

The hummingbirds were out, starting to complain that the feeders are getting low. I was too busy today to clean and refill them, but I promised to look at it tomorrow. They’re fine for today, but they do get nervous. No pictures were taken.

The rose bush that had given me the one fantastic pink and white bloom a few weeks ago has decided to cough up a handful more. For some reason when I went out to get the mail I didn’t have my phone with me to take pictures. Huh! That almost never happens. But it did today. The blooms will wait for their closeups another day.

I happened to be out just before 17:00 when I caught the UPS 757 banked over right over our house to turn to final approach for Burbank Runway 08. It’s a regular flight, but sometimes they turn inside of us to the east, sometimes swing in more from the Porter Ranch area. It’s a honkin’ big plane (that’s an official aviation term) and when they cross overhead they’re just extending their flaps so it looks even honkin’er bigger. I just watched, enjoyed the way it floated through the air, listened as those two big engines spooled down as the power was pulled back.

All of these things happened without any photos to share or other proof that I experienced them. I simply experienced them and held onto the memories.

Which brings me to one of the two or three best scenes ever filmed:

Today, no rain. There might still be tears.

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Filed under Birds, Critters, Flowers, Space

October 2, 2023 · 23:11

Fearless Lizard

This dude’s new and it’s unusual to see one this small this late in the year. Maybe six inches long, it sure was a pretty one. And utterly fearless!

Normally when they’re smaller-ish they’re skittish and will bail into the bushes at the slightest movement. It was outside the doors from the kitchen and I figured it would bail the second I turned back inside to grab the camera. Nope, it’s still there when I came back out and it never twitched, even when I got within maybe three feet of it and walked all the way around to get a good view of all sides.

I’m no expert, but my observation has been that we get a ton of the teeny tiny hatchlings in the spring, some that survive and get to this size in the summer, and by fall only the bigger survivors are still around. But I’e got some hatchlings in the front yard in the last couple of weeks, so it seems that cycle has been messed up.

The markings on its back are great. This is almost certainly a “blue belly,” but it was keeping that part of its anatomy hidden.

Another sign that it’s younger is the fact that it has all of its pieces. No missing toes or tail that I can see.

I thought it was being fearless in never moving, but it could have just been terrified and hoping that I didn’t see it. Not the best strategy. He’s brownish, on a brownish sidewalk, but he’s not that stealthy.

The other option was that he was toasty warm (it’s been cool and cloudy) and decided if he was going to die, he was going to do it warm. I can really respect that, not that I was going to harm him in any way to begin with.

Go! Reproduce! Stay warm! Eat ants! Get bigger!

You have nothing to fear from me! Now, those crows, ravens, hawks, mockingbirds, and scrub jays – they’re not taking pictures, they want to invite you to lunch!

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Filed under Critters, Photography