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.

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Filed under Birds, Critters, Forever Home, Video

June 8, 2024 · 19:50

The Music Center In Spring

Back at the Ahmanson for “A Strange Loop.” Going into this one cold, no clue what it’s about except for the emailed warnings about “…explicit language, references to internalized racism, homophobia, HIV stigmatization, sexual assault, and scenes of an adult nature. The show uses theatrical haze, strobe and flashing lights, and sudden loud noises.” So, unlikely to be musical comedy.

As the days get longer, we get to see a bit more of the Downtown LA area and Music Center when we get here early.

The iconic LA City Hall, on the far side of the Great Park, with the Hall of Justice on the left (I think).

The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion is at the other end of the Music Center plaza. Despite the dozens and dozens of times I’ve been to the Ahmanson, I don’t think that I’ve ever been to the Chandler. Something to check off the list in the next year!

The Mark Taper Forum is the round building on the left, with the Ahmanson behind it, and the LA Cathedral sunlit on the right across the street.

We ❤️ LA!

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Filed under Art, Los Angeles, Photography

June 7, 2024 · 23:06

Two Day Moon

There was another Falcon 9 Starlink launch out of Florida right around sunset here, which meant I was out looking at the sky about 80 minutes later. (Just shy of the end of the first 90-minute orbit.)

Nada!

Which is not to say that there wasn’t anything pleasant or wonderful to see, I just didn’t spot any second stages passing overhead venting fuel.

There was a very pleasant and beautiful, if somewhat subdued, sunset to watch. None of the flaming golds and oranges and reds that we can occasionally get, and not a cloud in the sky to give it “texture.”

But the Moon is just barely two days past new, so it’s just a silver sliver popping into view and hanging there once it started to get dark.

If your skies are clear, go take a look tomorrow night. It will be just as stunning then. And the night after. And on, and on, and on…

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space, Sunsets

June 6, 2024 · 23:44

Barnacles

Ventura Pier

It’s funny the things you remember five years later about a set of pictures. Well, maybe “funny” isn’t quite the correct word…

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Filed under Critters, Photography, Travel

June 5, 2024 · 23:33

You Can’t Take A Bad Picture Here – Vermont

Just a random picture from a hospital parking lot off into the distance toward Montpelier.

It’s been five years since we were there last, so we’ll be headed back again next week. Time to see old friends and celebrate FIFTY FREAKIN’ YEARS??!!!

How did that happen?

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Filed under Photography, Travel

June 4, 2024 · 22:41

Six Lessons Learned On The Grass

Last Friday, while having my telescope set up at my daughter’s school, we saw what I believe to be a Falcon 9 upper stage venting excess fuel on its first orbit around after a Starlink launch from Florida. Tonight there was a very similar launch at a very similar time on a very similar mission, so about 80 minutes after the launch I sat out on my front yard with a camera for a while just in case it happened again. It didn’t. But there were still six lessons I learned.

  1. With the multiple flood lights set up by the new neighbor across the street, it’s tough to see anything more dim than a 737’s landing lights going into Burbank. DAMN! In the search for the Forever Home in the High Desert, I’ll have to keep that in mind.
  2. When it’s quiet, you can hear the train whistles from the Santa Susanna Pass, about two miles away as the crow flies. Funny, I would have guessed it was closer to ten miles, but Google Earth says otherwise.
  3. The rabbits out on the front lawn freak out when I go and sit down on the grass – that’s their grass and there was a lot of leporine side eye going on. I didn’t know I needed an invitation.
  4. In addition to the trains, there were repeated calls from what I’ve always referred to as a “night hawk” or “screech owl.” Turns out the latter guess was closer – what I’m hearing is the screech of a barn owl. Given the Great Horned Owls we hear almost every night, I guess I’m not surprised to hear another kind of owl around as well. But I’ve never, ever seen one, I just hear them once or twice a night, and several times tonight.
  5. The rabbits would be a lot healthier if they spent less time giving me the stinkeye and more time watching out for those barn owls.
  6. The sprinklers turn on at 8:00. With little or no warning. Good thing I’m wash & wear, even at my advanced age.

The Forever Home definitely needs to have dark skies, trains, owls and hawks, and probably rabbits. Although I suspect in that environment (and sort of here as well) the coyotes will be more of an issue for the rabbits than the owls and hawks.

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Filed under Astronomy, Birds, Forever Home, Space

June 3, 2024 · 23:25

Center Pond

One thought led to a memory and another and down the rabbit hole I went back to July 2015.

Center Pond, Northern Vermont. Kayaks. Loons.

If I had known then what I know now…

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Filed under Photography, Travel

June 2, 2024 · 23:29

Nowhere Near Texas

And yet, here it is!

Must be a different one.

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Filed under Flowers, Photography

June 1, 2024 · 23:23

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.

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Filed under Birds, Critters, Photography, Science Fiction

June 1, 2024 · 00:00

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.

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