Mount Washington, New Hampshire. The cog railroad to the top, 2004.
You can also drive to the top, but unless they’ve upgraded that road in the 50+ years since I last did it, I recommend the train.
Either way, it’s a cool place to visit, especially on a clear day when you can see for hundreds of miles.
Filed under Photography, Travel
Two days in and July is…fiesty. And that’s not even counting the guanopsychotic politics and whatever is happening on Twitter.
For example:
I keep seeing lights up on Castle Peak after dark. Sometimes WELL after dark, so it’s not just someone who misjudged how long the light would last after sunset. Groups of 3 or 4 lights usually, apparently headed back down.
Given that this summer we’ve seen rescue helicopters up there multiple times a week for hikers who have fallen or broken something or gotten trapped during the day, hiking at night doesn’t seem prudent.
(Image from Earthquake.usgs.gov)
Originally reported as a M4.1 shaker, later downgraded to a M3.8 event, it was felt all over the LA Basin and San Fernando Valley at 01:29 last night. Given the location and size I would have bet a lot that it would have jolted me awake, but I slept right through it. It’s not like I was dead to the world asleep, last night was actually a pretty lousy night’s sleep. But the earthquake wasn’t one of the contributing factors.
Of course, given the upcoming holiday, every night there are more and more illegal fireworks being shot off.
We know how much (badly needed!) rain we got this winter, so the hills and mountains were green and covered in new vegetation this spring. While May and June were generally cool and cloudy, now that summer’s here it’s gotten into the 90’s every day. A + B + C = all of that new growth is turning into kindling. One moron with illegal bottle rockets can set off a catastrophe.
Fiesty!
Filed under Los Angeles
The 98% full moon (the 100% full moon is at 04:38 PDT on July 3rd, about 28 hours from now) was rising over the house tonight while I was out for a brief walkabout.
The iPhone sees that everything’s getting dark in the dusk and exposes the image appropriately, which leaves the Moon horribly over exposed.
But you can manually override the iPhone’s automatic settings and see detail on the Moon! But you won’t see much of the house and flag and trees.
There seems to be a LOT of things in life that are like that, which is a real pain in the ass when you really, REALLY want BOTH!
(And if you see a really nice professional photograph that shows both in this particular instance? I’ll about 99.99999999% guarantee that it’s two pictures photoshopped together.)
Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space
Amongst the roses next to the driveway…
They’re fantastic! Obviously.
I see in looking at images online that they come in a multitude of colors. We just have pink.
Which makes me wonder why we just have the one. Why not more?
We have 18 or 20 rose bushes along the driveway in two rows, with this gladiolus in between the rows at some random spot.
Why not have a whole row of multi-colored gladiolus in between the rows of roses?
Not my circus, not my monkeys! I just rent. But when we get our own house…
Filed under Flowers, Photography
There was a knock at the door! I opened it… And was confrounted with a confused, chaotic cloud of frantic, fierce flapping!
When I recovered my wits, and the real estate agent at the door had taken several startled steps back, this little dude was sitting on the floor inside the door.
The agent was pushing an open house on the “white bunker” house at the bottom of the hill. That’s my term for it, of course, their Zillow listing has a ton of much flowery language. But the short version is 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, only 1,940 square feet (!!!), and a look that I find tragically unappealing, and they’re asking for
Even by our local standards, that’s freaking ridiculous by a factor of two or more!!
No, thanks, go away. Now, back to the bird.
I didn’t try to touch it, but I leaned over to get a better picture and the little beastie went into panicked fluttering and flailing mode again, right up into my face and out the door. It tried to land on the flagpole, which was way to slippery to hold onto, but it managed to keep its balance as it slid down to the bottom.
Now clearly seen as a mourning dove fledgeling. The coloration is all wrong for a mourning dove, but normal for a fledgeling who is likely to get out of the nest and get stuck on the ground where it would be an easy meal. Our subject wasn’t too thrilled with the photos, so once again it remembered that it was capable (sort of) of flight, and made it all the way across the street, where it discovered that it didn’t yet know how to land in a tree and perch. After something of a crashy sort of coming to a halt (any landing’s a good one if you can walk away from it!) I left it alone.
Until later, when I heard it in the nest up under the roof by the front door.
Remember how the finches always build their nests on our back porch? The mourning doves have done something similar in the front. But way back behind some tall bushes, and up about two feet higher than I can reach without going to get a stepladder. Which I didn’t want to take the time to do.
Once again, the neighbors are watching as I’m on tip-toes, stretching up as high as I can, trying desperately to not fall face first into the garden, holding onto my phone with one hand, blindly pointing it off in the direction of the nest, shooting pictures at random and hoping for the best..
This was the best I got, at first.
Later when I went out again I could see that the fledgeling was still there, so I tried a different tact and did something equally ill-advised in terms of my personal safety (ER docs & paramedics: “You broke all of those bones doing exactly WHAT??!“) but which let me actually look (just a little) at what I was taking pictures of. Success!
Meanwhile, the bird’s had a rough first day of flying. It’s probably coming down off of one hell of an adrenaline rush (do birds have adrenaline or is that a mammal thing?) and it would have really preferred being left alone.
So I did!
Filed under Birds, Photography
Commonly known as Mexican Feather Grass.
It’s drought resistant, “desert landscaping,” so you see a lot of it around, including in our back yard.
The rabbits love it, they’re always shredding the ends and chewing it down. It’s unusual to see it this long, especially given the number of bunnies seen every night in the yard.
Proof that a plant doesn’t need to have spectacular flowers to thrive.
Nothing flashy, but lots of very subtle shades of green, orange, and brown.
As well as some very nice textures and shapes to ponder. Here it’s chaotic…
…and here it’s structured, an inverted pyramid. Is there some treasure buried down there at the bottom?
Filed under Flowers, Photography
I can see the attraction.
They’re lovely.
I’m sure they would be Barbie’s favorites as well!
And there are a lot of them blooming.
A little bit of variety, a couple have just the tiniest bit of yellow shading as well.
This one’s late to the party, but it will be the last one standing.
Happy Birthday!
Filed under Flowers, Photography
The birds were flitting about as I was stretching my legs, but instead of flying away, a bunch of them stuck around in the tree right above me.
Out in the sun is one of the male house wrens, resplendent in the bright morning rays. Can you spot the hummingbird in the shadows?
Yeah, he’s shiny and bright and bold and he knows it.
Little Bastard can be absolutely iridescent in the sun, but he knows that the hawks are out, so he’ll stay well hidden in the shadows and let the wren sit out in the sun at the top of the tree in the open.
Iridescence has its limits!
Filed under Birds, Critters, Photography
Halfway to Christmas!
No sign of any incoming snow here in SoCal.
But the clouds were very nice for about two hours. It looked like there might be a touch of virga around, but we never saw any rain and it was clear and a million by afternoon.
Nothing in the forecast for precipitation, and the temps will be rising. It won’t be “Texas hot,” but the days in the 70’s might be behind us for a while.
Enjoy the upcoming week! Stay flexible and strong, be prepared to pivot when required. Rigid is brittle – bend, don’t break.
Filed under Photography, Weather
It started with the distinctive cry of a Cooper’s Hawk in the back yard, along with the squawking of several ravens. The hawk was close, somewhere in those big pine trees on the hill behind the house. I quickly pulled up the Cornell Labs Merlin app (you need this app too!) and started an audio recording with the app identifying the birds as it hears them.
You can hear the Cooper’s Hawk at the very beginning, over the sound of the screen door closing, and again (much more clearly) at the 01:06 mark.
I had set the phone down and grabbed my camera, looking for the Cooper’s Hawk, when from behind me (at the 00:57 mark) I heard a Red-tailed Hawk, then a second one. This pair is familiar! They were close and getting closer, flying right over my head into the trees where the ongoing fight was happening.
As a helicopter goes over you can hear chirping and calls from all three hawks, as well as the ravens still harassing them. The ravens finally forced them out of the trees, the Cooper’s Hawk going down into the canyon behind us where its nest is and the Red-tailed Hawks climbing back into the thermals over Valley Circle Boulevard.
Notice the missing feathers on this hawk’s right wing. I would have thought they would have grown back by now, but it’s become an identifying mark on this particular magnificent bird, one that’s easily seen even when it’s several hundred feet in the air and a half mile or more away.
Spectacular!
Filed under Audio, Birds, Photography, Video
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