May 26, 2021 · 22:51

The Clouds Won Last Night

The odds were in their favor, as we saw all day yesterday. I did not have my hopes up and I wasn’t disappointed.

I got up at 02:30, about the time the partial phases were supposed to be starting.

I sort of remember wandering around to look out the window about 04:00-ish – there as a dim reddish spot in the clouds over in the west, but nothing that prevented a quick retreat to a warm bed.

A few hours later, of course:

That’s a stunning shade of blue – where was it ten hours earlier?

Even toward the west, where the coast and the haze and the “coastal eddy,” “May gray,” “June gloom” always lurk, it was unlimited visibility.

The next total lunar eclipse for the US West Coast is November 8, 2022, seventeen and a half months away. I’m sure the weather forecast is for clouds. (Yes, there’s an earlier total lunar eclipse on May 16, 2022, just under a year away, but it’s occurring just as the moon is rising in Los Angeles, so we might not see much of it at all.)

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May 25, 2021 · 23:32

Stupid, Stupid, Pretty Sunset!

I’ve been watching all day.

It hasn’t looked that great.

It did give us a very pretty sunset, but that’s sorta counterproductive for tonight’s particular goal.

Now, at 23:05 local, with totality beginning at 04:11 local, a little over five hours from now, it’s… complicated.

On the one hand, it looks spectacular.

On the other hand, it’s about 80% cloud covered – and getting worse.

I’ve got the cameras all ready to go and the alarms set – we’ll see if I can drag my sorry butt out of bed in the middle of the night to at least check to see how cloudy it is.

Let the games begin.

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Sunsets, Weather

May 24, 2021 · 22:40

Twenty-Seven Hours & Counting

Tomorrow night there’s a total eclipse of the moon, visible from all over the Pacific hemisphere. If you’re in Europe or eastern North or South America, better luck next time. If you’re in Hawaii, you’re golden. In eastern Australia or New Zealand, you’ll see it in the east not too long after moonrise. If you’re in Los Angeles or on the US West Coast, you’ll see it just before sunrise.

Unlike solar eclipses (*NEVER* look at a solar eclipse with the naked eye or any kind of magnification), lunar eclipses are 100% safe to look at with the naked eye, or with binoculars, or a telescope. In this case, if you’re in LA or San Diego or San Francisco or Phoenix or Seattle (you get the idea) your biggest issues will be possible clouds and getting up at 03:00. (I plan on being ready, getting up, checking for clouds, and if they’re there, I’m back in bed!)

Here’s a great site for information on when the different phases of the eclipse start, including detailed information for major cities. This is a short eclipse by lunar eclipse standards. The full phase of the eclipse is only fourteen minutes long, 04:11 to 04:25 in Los Angeles.

After being “clear and a bazillion” for the whole day, I rolled the telescope out late this afternoon and within second it was starting to cloud up.

By the time the moon rose and cleared those trees, it was downright “yucky.” (That’s an official, technical, internationally recognized astronomy term by the way.) I was testing out my equipment for attaching my good DSLR cameras directly to the telescope, using it as a humongous telephoto lens.

The moon was there – the focus wasn’t.

I’m going to blame the clouds. Which is not unreasonable at all, they were an issue.

In addition, right around full moon (we’re 27 hours away, since lunar eclipse = full moon, by definition = do the geometry) most of the moon’s surface looks flat and featureless.

The “good” pictures are always along the terminator, the division between night and day on the lunar surface, where the shadows are sharp.

You can see a tiny bit of that along the top side, where some of the craters on the limb (edge of the visible disk) are highlighted. But not much.

For example, this picture showing the center of the moon with no portion of the limb? Lots of rays and some bright spots, but no shadows with the Sun almost straight overhead.

We’ll see what tomorrow night / Wednesday pre-dawn brings for the eclipse. Keep your fingers crossed!

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May 23, 2021 · 18:04

Fine Feathered Friends – May 23rd

Another bird that’s common around here (like the mockingbirds) is the mourning dove.

Being “common” isn’t a slam, just a fact. The finches are common, and they got a ton of press here when they had a nest right outside the kitchen window last year.

I’ve tended to focus on the “new” species (the hummingbirds, the juncos, the wrens, the woodpeckers, and so on) and have some more coming up, but I don’t want to let the “common” species get shortchanged.

So, many of you have probably seen mourning doves, or heard them.

They have that stereotypical dove body and head, gray-ish brown with darker spots.

Also look for the weird, brighter than average red feet. (Well, *I* think they’re weird.)

Lots of folks will hear that call and think it’s an owl, particularly since mourning doves will continue to call past sunset and will start before sunrise. It’s not an owl, although the sounds are a bit similar.

They’re not the fastest birds in the race, and when they take off (slowly…) there’s a a lot of noise and wing flapping and some rapid, high-pitched “coo! coo! coo!” sounds with each flap as they grunt sort of like a tennis player with a monstrous serve.

In this neighborhood, a couple of times of year we’ll find a patch of mourning dove feathers spread out over a few square yards of lawn. That’s what a slow takeoff will get you in a neighborhood full of real owls and hawks.

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May 22, 2021 · 22:46

No Context For You – May 22nd

That’s actually a really nice collection of lens flares.

Very JJ Abrams of me, intentionally or not.

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May 21, 2021 · 23:36

How Are The Roses Doing?

We’ve seen a couple of them, but almost all of them are blooming at some point or the other. Maybe I’ll get back to this year’s crop, but for now we’re hip deep in new birds and various critters…

So I played a bit with focus and depth of field.

Best compromise for an elongated, vertical field.

Foreground…

Middle of the depth of field…

Distant field of view…

Next thing you know, folks will think that I know what I’m doing!

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May 20, 2021 · 23:53

Fine Feathered Friends – May 20th

Another “common” bird that I love seeing around the yard is the mockingbird.

They hide in the bushes and can be very, very hard to see. Trust me, he’s there!

They’re primarily a noisy, raucous, troublemaking breed with a bad attitude.

Get four or five together and they will take on a crow, raven, hawk, owl, or any other predator or raptor that tries to take their eggs. They’re fearless.

They’ll come down to the grass to feed on worms and bugs, which is when that tail starts flipping and dancing around.

They’ll hop more than fly on the ground – dinosaur descendants indeed.

With attitude. They descended from T-Rex and they haven’t forgotten.

Also marvelous is their song, which can trill and soar all over the place or start imitating other bird songs and items from the human world – like car alarms.

If you stay their friend, they’ll be endlessly amusing and fun to watch and listen to.

Don’t stay their friend, they’ll look at you like this and then try to annoy the crap out of you every time you go out in your yard. (Pro tip: Stay their friend!)

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Filed under Birds, Photography

May 19, 2021 · 23:07

Finch Architect Failure

While last year we had a pair of finches that built a great nest underneath the porch awning right outside our kitchen window, this year we had at least three and possibly four or five nests being built. It was just never clear it was three (or four, or five) pairs or just one or two pairs building a couple of nests each to see which one they liked. A couple of the nest locations are up behind outdoor speakers, so it’s not clear if there are nests in there or just birds getting together for a quickie.

One of the pairs had built a pretty respectable looking nest, and for at least a week or two I was seeing “MomBird” sitting on the nest for hours a day. From this I started to think that there might be eggs and chicks coming.

Nope. This morning that nest was down on the ground.

There were definitely signs of occupancy (i.e., bird shit on the walls and beam) and some of it stayed up there, but most of it ended up on the ground.

No sign of any eggs in it, and I hadn’t seen MomBird in a few days, so this might have been a swing and a miss.

Maybe they’re off on the other side of the porch, up near the house where the speakers are. Or maybe they’re up in the gutters somewhere, or a tree of some sort.

Better luck next time!

On the other hand, the house finches are a long way from endangered around here. There was one point this afternoon when I counted over fifteen of them out there feeding at once, and I can’t even start to count how many are flitting around in the trees and shrubs at the same time.

 

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Filed under Birds, Critters, Photography

May 18, 2021 · 23:45

Doctor Lizardo Returns For The Summer?

You remember Doctor Lizardo, who always hung out underneath the van in the driveway? At the end of last fall she had apparently lost her tail but had gotten some very nice green scaly highlights. Then it looked like she had pretty much grown her tail back out and was seen a few times in the spring. Now I think she’s back, although there may have been another small bit of color change.

This was taken a week ago, while the van was still here.

There’s another lizard that’s been showing up here from time to time, much darker, almost black, and with a missing tail.

I thought that The Doctor was gone and a different color, but looking back through the photos and posts, I think this might be her.

The green shading is gone, and it was quite distinctive in November, but that might be seasonal or temporary.

I notice that the rest of the coloring is very similar to the previous photos.

But what I really notice is the re-grown tail on this lizard. I know that the Good Doctor had lost her tail just before going into hibernation in the fall.

Now this critter has the full tail, but it’s very prominent where it grew back. The scaling is completely different from that point back. In addition, this lizard didn’t get spooked at all by me, even though I was within five feet or so, and that was always a trait of Doctor Lizardo.

Is she back? Is this her? Maybe some of you can compare scale patterns and colors to the pictures from November and earlier last year and see what you think!

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May 17, 2021 · 23:34

Eating The Sweet Grass

I caught this Leporidiaeic friend chomping away on the tall, sweet grass at the side of the yard. We see them in both the front and the back yard daily, but they’re usually eating the regular green, lawn grass.

It was funny watching that long stem of grass disappearing as he nibbled it in, like a string of spaghetti being slurped up.

But then he went for the next mouthful.

It was too cute. And this was not a particularly small rabbit.

It looked like the top parts were the tastiest and he was stretching to get them.

Nibble, nibble, chomp, chomp! There goes another one!

Wait! Are you looking at me?

He must have been convinced quickly that either I didn’t exist on the inside of the kitchen window or that I was (mostly) harmless.

Back to lunch! (Given the hawk activity around here he was enjoying himself way more than I would have recommended, but I’ll have to assume that he know what he was doing.

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