Category Archives: Wildlife

Strolling in the Park

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Today in the park, I saw some new wildlife at long last. I can’t fathom why the past month or so has seemed so utterly barren of birds out there. But today all seems suddenly better. There was a Great Blue Heron preening as I walked out onto the floating bridge. Then a Cormorant came along.

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Nothing exciting, I carried on to a bridge over the creek that flows out of the lake.

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Then I spied the Hawk in a tree. Haha! It was back. I stepped off the path and took a picture with the long lens, then hurried forward. By the time I reached the tree in question the hawk was up circling.

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Nearby I saw a Cat on the path.

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I carried on, and came to a Spider that had just strung a line of web across the path. It must have just done so as only minutes prior several runners came along from that direction, and the web was at chest height.

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Further walking and I detected a soft squeaking noise Looking up I saw a Woodpecker excavating a deep hole in a dead branch. It went right inside and came out with a beak full of wood fibre.

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Carrying on I saw another Cat in the field, and it seemed to be waiting for a Mouse to come along.

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Not far beyond I came to a man holding a Snake he’d found beside the creek. He was looking down at another Snake in the leaves. He told me that he’d seen a Barred Owl yesterday. So they are here, but I haven’t seen them yet.

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Besides this there were numerous Towhees, Tits, Sparrows, Robins, Gulls and Squirrels black and grey. Also a man taking pictures, and another one shoveling wood chips from a pile into a wheelbarrow.

Now I must to my typewriter to write my daily words for NaNoWriMo. I’ve done it 5 times already, so it’s a habit now. This year I’m trying something different, a memoir… if only I could remember everything.

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Winter Cometh

THE WOOLLY BEAR

THE WOOLLY BEAR

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It has been a lean October for birds. Neither hawk nor owl nor woodpecker to be seen, but banded woolly bears are here. Not real bears, mind you. Circumnavigations of the lake provide numerous encounters with slow moving fuzzy caterpillars. A Google image search turned up only that this picture was of an invertebrate.

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However, a search on the words “fuzzy brown and black caterpillar” turned up exactly what it was:

Pyrrharctia isabella

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Isabella tiger moth
Pyrrharctia isabella – Isabella Tiger Moth (14842796231).jpg
Adult
Pyrrharctia isabella - Caterpillar - Devonian Fossil Gorge - Iowa City - 2014-10-15 - image 1.jpg
Woolly Bear caterpillar
Not evaluated (IUCN 3.1)
Scientific classification e
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Lepidoptera
Superfamily: Noctuoidea
Family: Erebidae
Tribe: Arctiini
Genus: Pyrrharctia
Species: P. isabella
Binomial name
Pyrrharctia isabella
(JE Smith, 1797)
Synonyms
  • Phalaena isabella Smith, 1797
  • Pyrrharctia californica Packard, 1864

Pyrrharctia isabella (Isabella tiger moth) can be found in many cold regions, including the Arctic [needs citation]. The banded woolly bear larva emerges from the egg in the fall and overwinters in its caterpillar form, when it freezes solid. It survives being frozen by producing a cryoprotectant in its tissues. In the spring it thaws out and emerges to pupate. Once it emerges from its pupa as a moth it has only days to find a mate.

In most temperate climates, caterpillars become moths within months of hatching, but in the Arctic the summer period for vegetative growth – and hence feeding – is so short that the Woolly Bear must feed for several summers, freezing again each winter before finally pupating. Some are known to live through as many as 14 winters.[1]

 

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On Tour Sketchbook

We just did the fairly annual week of the Juan de Fuca Festival in Port Angeles, followed by a few days off camping.

Leroy Bell

Leroy Bell

The festival was great this year; we saw many amazing acts, like Leroy Bell here, an amazing songwriter and singer.

wide beaches here

wide beaches

Then we headed off to the wild Pacific coast to camp.

did I mention you can drive on this beach?

did I mention you can drive on this beach?

June is never particularly warm around here, but we lucked out for a few days with lots of sunshine. I swam in Lake Quinault, which was freezing cold, but after a while I just went numb to it and it was wonderful.

Lake Quinalt

Lake Quinault

There weren’t any good typewriters in the few antique shops I found, but there was an interesting old LC Smith on display in Olympic Stationers in P.A.

LC Smith with right hand return lever

LC Smith with right hand return lever

When it isn’t raining the beaches are wonderful.

famous weird tree

famous weird tree at Kalaloch

interesting heap of debris

interesting heap of debris

sandpipers

sandpipers

We always love to see restored vintage camp trailers like this one, an old Shasta.

Shasta trailer

Shasta trailer

Saw a lovely butterfly, too.

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I regret not doing more sketching, but with driving, cooking & eating, sleeping late and general laziness I only had time for a few watercolours.

village scene

village scene

windmills from the beach

windmills from the beach

closed but rumoured to be going to open again this year

closed but rumoured to be going to open again this year

Coho ferry arrives to bring us home

Coho ferry arrives to bring us home

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Filed under Painting, Photography, Sketching, Travel, Typewriters, VW Vans, Wildlife

To Buy or Not to Buy

Not forgetting National Poetry Month

That is the question, or is it?

Oh that people would pay to read this discontented blog and make it a glorious monetizing scheme this summer. Alas poor blog, I don’t know it, whomever.

As we honor William Shakespeare again, and again, and again – I mean there have been countless writers in the world in the last four centuries, have there not? I take this opportunity, or not, to write a sonnet and accompany it with some more pictures of eagles, which are irrelevant to the occasion, and the sonnet, or are they? Feel free, meanwhile, dear gentle readers, to read my words and feeling inspired, buy my book.

FRIDAY NIGHT

Down the gutters water runs in torrents
Springtime wind and rain returned today
Early heat had lulled us into torpor
When cold wet breezes blew as if to say
Sun or rain, who knows what blows tomorrow
The wild wind is this and here to stay
As rain washed down with sweet cold drafts of ale
Friday night’s the time for pizza treat
Listening to cool jazz tunes on the hi-fi
Sip sauvignon blanc with chocolate sweets
Rapid fire guitar notes set the tempo
Fading sky from blue turns into black
Flying fingers dance upon piano
Resting on the couch, we settle back

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Day Shift

Hobbled to the park to check on Bushtits
Left camera’s memory card plugged into computer
Returned to get it
Weather warm
Changed into lightweight shirt
Pollen everywhere
How long does a sprain last
My aching foot wants to know
I swallow some medicine
To ease my paltry suffering
But still I revel in being alive
Considering the alternative
What have I to whine about?

Endings Beginnings

And today on my shift:

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Song of the Bushtit

From Wikipedia: The American bushtit (Psaltriparus minimus) is the only species in the family Aegithalidae found in the New World, and the only member of the genus Psaltriparus. In North America, it is referred to simply as “bushtit”.

the bushtit

If I Was a Bushtit

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Be Careful on the Stairs

Three weeks ago I missed a step going downstairs. There was a terrifying crunch from my left foot and within no time I was lying on the basement floor in shock, spewing curses and hoping the pain wouldn’t get worse. I can walk now, but my foot still aches. I stubbornly refused to get an X-ray, confident that my bones don’t break that easily. I’ve only ever broken one bone, a cracked finger due to a hockey mishap. Don’t ask. But a sprained foot is bad enough. It is amazingly difficult to get around with the use of one leg, I have learned.

I blame the poor design of the stairs in my house for the accident. Of course it wasn’t MY fault! It was the ARCHITECT’S fault. These stairs are built thus: the rise is 7 1/2″, the run is 10″, with a 1″ nosing in addition. The nosing is fine for going up, as it allows for an effective tread of 11″. Going down however, which I am 110% certain is the operating direction of most stair accidents, the tread is still 10″ long. Now look at your feet. How long are they? Mine are longer than that. This means that when descending stairs my toes generally hang out beyond the tread nosing. If you overstep a little too much, as I did, it’s very easy to miss the step entirely, and then WHAM!

In architecture we had manuals giving standards for things, like chairs, tables, closets, doors,ramps, stairs and a thousand others. The old rule for stairs was 2R+T=25″. That meant 2 times the rise plus the tread length should equal 25″. The stairs here conform to that old saw, i.e. 2 (7.5) + 10 = 25. I am living proof that rule is not good enough! I always thought it wasn’t, to which end in my working life I have endeavored to make stairs less steep than that formula allows. I have measured and observed lots of stairs, and here’s my conclusion: ideal stairs should have a 12″ tread, with 6″ rise. Per the formula: 2(6) + 12 = 24. I have measured and tested many stairs as I said, and I can confirm that 6 x 12 is both comfortable and very safe. You can practically run down stairs of that slope, but don’t try it. Note the slope difference here: 6×12 is 50%, while 7.5×10 is 75%. Both conform to the old rule but within that rule you have the possibility of slope variance factor of 1-1/2. When descending stairs you should: 1. hold onto the handrail, and 2. watch your step. I was doing neither when I fell, as I was carrying a ladder using both arms, and couldn’t see my feet. It will be a long time before I make that mistake again.

Lesson over, here are some photos from my walk/limp around the lake the other day. The bushes were teeming with birds, and many more were deep inside brush, chirping, hopping, flitting, pecking, eating and doing what birds do. They do seem to be very active these days, full of spring fever.

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Photo Fun for $5

The other day I picked up a cheap old tele-converter for Pentax, for five dollars. I thought I’d test it out with my 500mm Tamron mirror lens, just for fun, expecting nothing. This is close to a 28x power telescope on the APS-C size sensor of my K100 DSLR. There are two problems with doing this; first thing is it reduces the aperture another f stop from f8 to f11, thereby slowing down the shutter and forcing the ISO higher. Both those factors effect image quality negatively. But second; the thing is really hard to hold steady! However, in the sunshine today I was able to get a few shots, which proved not bad. Remarkable in a way, when you consider these were hand held. The hawk probably would have been acceptable if I’d used a tripod, as the shutter speed was 1/45th of a second. That’s absurdly slow for a 1000mm lens. I applied some post processing to that image to try to make it look more artsy, since it was rather fuzzy to begin with. The heron was about 200 feet away however, and it turned out not too badly. If I wanted to get better results than this I’d have to buy a lens that costs over a thousand bucks, which isn’t going to happen soon.

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Filed under Birds, Cameras, Photography, Thrift shop finds, Wildlife

Surely, Slowly, Springly

There has been a noticeable shift in the weather lately – despite almost constant rain for days, the sun’s warmth can be felt when it deigns to shine. Spring means migration, and the appearance of birds which either left town or went into hiding over the winter. I also got a very close look at the heretofore very shy muskrat, which inexplicably one day last week stood its ground despite the loud attention of numerous enthusiastic kids, and me with my camera almost in it’s face. Only the attack of an irate duck sent it on it’s way. Green buds abound in the brush, and in the field I saw new flowers poking up suddenly.

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