Today's walk report: Hawk O'clock

 Saturday, October 10th

It was a crazy night for sleep. Among other events, I was awoken at 12:45 a.m. I heard the Los Angeles Police Department over a loudspeaker yelling something. I'm not sure what it was, but I was certain it wasn't instructions for me to come out with my hands up. I picked up my iPad off the side of the bed and checked the front of the house camera. Nothing there. Then I heard the LAPD helicopter circling. I got up, did a shortcut through the bathroom to the front door, looked outside, and nothing again. Junimoon joined me in the front hallway, and we proceeded through the living room, heading for the kitchen. Out the gable clerestory windows looking east from the living room and kitchen, I could see the wide ellipse the helicopter was taking. It was between two blocks and almost one mile south of me. They had the Nightsun spotlight lighting everything below by a couple of blocks. It was mostly the noise that was irritating. I went back to bed. Lucy barely glanced at me with a "what's up?" look, and I decided not to close the window because the room was just starting to cool down, and I didn’t think it would matter a whole lot for the noise. Whatever the story, it fortunately ended at 1:04, and I went into a heavy dream cycle. 

The Lucy alarm went off at 2:30 and again at 4:30. Her snooze button is located somewhere between her stomach and the hypothalamus at the base of her little kitty brain. I was in a disoriented, confused, slow-to-respond state of operation but somehow managed to direct Lucy's attention to a small pile of Blue Buffalo, Chicken and Liver, Bursts--treats on her gray hoodie at her corner of the mattress. A few minutes later, I heard the crunching sound of success. This is not an endorsement of the Blue Buffalo product line, however. General Mills, if you're listening, let's talk. 

"Stock photo" of Lucy on her hoodie, her 19th B-day, April, 2025.

Each step of the way last night, I went deep into my REM Cinematic Universe. I have always had wildly vivid dreams, but lately they have been off the charts. I was up shortly before 6:00, on autopilot, heading through the kitchen and into my office with a mug of Java to take my morning meds. I've learned it's best to navigate the house and take pills in my office as opposed to having them conveniently bedside, where five minutes later the question might arise... did you take your pills? You didn't take the blue one, did you? 

I entered my morning reboot sequence while caffeine and acetaminophen did their thing and started making decisions about preparing for a morning walk. Ultimately, I drove the 1/2 mile to my launch pad and was out of the car walking, camera at my hip, at 8:19. Finally, a day where there was no rush to get out early, with a cruising temperature of 66º.  

Here are a few pictures taken along the way.

One of two weather panos, this one taken at the campus arboretum

 Angel's trumpets (Brugmansia). I thought about rearranging a flower or two but the extreme toxicity of these plants had me deciding otherwise. 

 I know, don't say anything. I keep taking pictures of this Coreopsis verticillata plant but I'm amazed that it ALWAYS has flowers and nobody is deadheading it. 

The second weather pano, taken inside the botanical garden. 

 
 I'm officially calling this red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) my first hawk of autumn. Red-tailed hawks in this Valley split into two distinct groups during the summer. The adults stay exactly where they are as permanent residents, while the juveniles and young adults engage in a "reverse migration," heading hundreds of miles north. The young red-tailed will do this until they are about four years old, when they are mature enough to claim a permanent mate and territory back home. They do this because of fewer summertime resources, and so they don't have to compete with older, more aggressive adults. Once autumn arrives, they return to Southern California. During extreme heat waves here, the permanent adult population practically vanishes from sight because they go into a behavioral "lockdown" to survive the heat, compressing all of their activity into the coolest parts of the day.

I believe that blur of a bird passing nearby is a Cliff Swallow (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota).

 Yes, I spent a few minutes with the hawk. 

 The walk was about 2.6 miles. It was 73º toward the end. The only issue with getting out later on a Saturday was the high number of students choosing to go to school and cramping my style. On Saturday! The nerve! Currently, it's almost 1:30, and there's a 41% chance of showers at 2:00. Early this morning, when I checked hourly weather for tomorrow morning, most of the a.m. was showing showers and scattered showers; that's now "few showers" from 3-5 a.m. So I'll play it by precipitation tomorrow morning on another photo walk. Monday, October 12th, is showing the greatest probability of showers from midnight to past noon. We shall see.

Is it any wonder I'm not crazy?
Is it any wonder I'm sane at all?

Is it any wonder? I've got too much time on my hands
It's tickin' away with my sanity 

 

Today's walk report: Oh no! Not again!!

 To say the weather here has been unpleasant would be a gross understatement, and it's probably going to continue until Friday, October 9th. Yesterday (Saturday, 10/3), the high at home was 106.3 °F. 

Yesterday, the Dodgers played the Braves at Chavez Ravine, just north of downtown Los Angeles. Game time was 1:00, and that's all because of revenue and FAUX Sports coverage for both the Dodgers vs Braves and an evening game between the San Diego Padres and the Milwaukee Brewers. That game was played at American Family Field in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where the temperature at game time was approximately 56° to 58° F. As the afternoon sun beat down on Dodger Stadium, the video board over the left-field pavilion flashed 103° F during the game. On top of that, heat index/field-level heat readings pushed "feels-like" temps up past 104°–105° in direct sunlight on the turf and seats. I think that's nuts, but the Dodgers did win, 5-3. Tonight's game is at 5:00, and I suspect it will be upper 90ºs for the first pitch. Still nuts.

Yesterday I got out late around 9:20. It was about 84° out the door and 87° coming back inside. Way too hot for me. I only walked to the 1 km mark. Yeah, I used to write walks in both kilometers and miles, but I generally don't care anymore. For many of my walks, I have the distances memorized, both metric and non-metric, U.S.. I think it's embarrassing for the most part that we still use United States customary units or "non-metric units" to measure stuff. However, for the most part, if I were to tell someone I walked 2 km, I would hear, “How far is that in miles?” 2 km is approximately 1.24 miles. It was just enough to get my lower lumbar in order, and that was my goal. 

Today, Sunday, October 4th, I got out at 7:40 a.m. and walked 2.47 miles or 3.07 km. See, notating in kilometers even sounds like I was more productive... well, at least it does to most Americans.

Camera walks will start up again next weekend (probably). Today I only took a few snapshots with my phone.

Apparently it was a hit and run. Poor guy just coming home with his no-food from Popeyes.  

  And they nailed his dog too! The horror!

 Looking on almost gleefully... 

 All this dude could manage was to point and yell...

 Currently, it's 11:25 a.m., 99.6º F. That's 37.56º C.

Almost home, there was a pair of ravens in the street next to me, and this song came on my headphones. So... I sang to them.

Cos I've got demons 
Yeah you should know 
You put them in me 
And I will not let them go 
Yeah I've got Demons

 

Today's walk report: 12 Volts of Disappointment

I was able to get some "extra" sleep in this morning after finally finding the snooze button on the 4:00 a.m. Lucy the Cat alarm clock. She got brushed in my lap with my eyes closed until she decided she was okay to go back to her fort in the adjacent nightstand. I got up for coffee at 7:00. The scattered clouds outside of my upper kitchen windows looked spectacular, and I decided to get crankin' with the caffeine, shower, and stuff, and I'd head out in the car for a walk. As mentioned numerous times, I like to get about 1/2 mile out of the neighborhood before I start my walk. A short drive to the Launching Pad, so to speak. This morning, the car thought otherwise. I knew the battery was being temperamental yesterday, making a click, err... err... sound as the engine starts. In fact, I made sure my NOCO jump starter was fully charged once I got home. I'm pretty sure it was 2021 when I last replaced the battery. 

Sure enough, this morning, the car battery was thoroughly depleted, I chose not to mess with the NOCO and decided to hoof it from home instead. The revised game plan was to walk to at least the nearby arboretum, see how much territory I cared to cover, and then call Triple A, battery service, once I got home. It was about 73º to 80º with a relative humidity of 55% to 45% from start to finish. The Canadian Humidex calculator called it “little or no discomfort.” Well, yeah, maybe if you're sitting still. I called it, not awful. The walk was a little longer than yesterday's walk and measured out at 2.61 miles.

I didn't take many pictures.

First stop, heading for the arboretum. This is my weather report shot.

 From there I skipped any formalities in the arboretum and headed for the botanical garden. Photo to photo, for the loop I took, that's 0.44 miles apart.

 I was sitting on a bench there, chatting with the junior garden/arboretum curator. I ended up bringing up the cycad trunk mentioned in yesterday's walk report. He said they think that's the work of rats. If they ate it... They're dead. A possible alternative answer is they aren't eating, they're only shredding and then using the fiber for nesting material. 

After the rest on the bench and the chat I headed back home. This spot is about 300 yards from where I usually park my car. I was shooting above houses here.

 This kitty was approximately 320 yards from me stepping back inside my house. I measure walks on Google Earth with the ruler tool. It calculates the ground distance using geodesic measurement on the WGS 84 ellipsoid model—accounting for the earth’s curvature to give precise, down-to-the-foot mileage (or kilometers, meters, yards, feet, inches, nautical miles and smoots) for every detour.

 An Auto Club (contracted) battery service dude was at my house 10 minutes after I placed the call and within another 20 minutes I had a new battery plus he made sure my tires were properly inflated (they weren't beforehand). 

Once again, helping me with this report was the lovely Junimoon.

 My car is actually silver. Man in a Silver Car.
 

 

Today's walk report: Can I?

 Out walking at 66.2º F and back in my car coming home at 76.6º, the excursion duration was 70 minutes and it was quite a pleasant little walk.

Last week I mentioned a short conversation I had with a gentleman walking his three dogs and we bumped into each other again shortly before I got to the local college campus. My guess is he's a few years older than I am. He didn't remember me at first. I think the dogs did. I asked if I could take a picture of the dogs but discovered I still had my camera set for some macro tripod shots I took indoors, manual mode, with the shutter set for "self timer, 2 seconds."  For the life of me, in the bright sun and with distance glasses on, I fumbled resetting the camera and gave up. Here's the picture I ended up taking.

 I actually like the photo. I think it captured the experience perfectly.

Pink evening primrose (Oenothera speciosa, also called pink ladies or Mexican evening primrose). I was kind of surprised to see them blooming again so late in September.

Hentz Orbweaver (Neoscona crucifera), which is also widely known as the Spotted Orbweaver or Barn Spider. This. Was. Difficult. Not for the spider but for the ground I was walking on. This was in the arboretum but campus wide they use large to sometimes very large hard wood arborist mulch and it's often piled on very thick. Stepping over to the spider on uneven ground to begin with, looking up with a close-up lens on top of a 70-300 mm lens, arms outstretched (focus is at 500 mm, 19.68"), the mulch was very unpredictable. Plus, I don't have the greatest sense for balance, never have.

Belly shot. It's a grumpy face.

 This is a cycad trunk. This had to be the work of a human. Why? I have no idea. This is not how you remove pups from a cycad. Cycads contain powerful natural toxins—primarily cycasin and BMAA (β-methylamino-L-alanine)—that cause severe liver damage, neurological decline, and gastrointestinal failure in humans and animals. While cycad toxins are dangerous in nature, scientists use them in medical research to study neurodegenerative diseases, map biological pathways, and explore anticancer treatments. In science, highly specific toxins are frequently repurposed as "molecular scalpels" to intentionally disrupt cells in controlled environments. Honestly? I don't want to know. 

 
Here's an unmolested example.

 Muskogee Crape Myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica x fauriei 'Muskogee').

 Here's a pile of the arborist mulch, just waiting for an opportunity to get under my feet.

 The mulch up close.

 This was my first warning sign. Within 10-minites of my leaving campus the race began. This was a family event, hosted by the Kidneys Quest Foundation.

 I was informed many years ago that this really isn't actually accurate in the job market. It's apparently no longer true about what you know but rather who you know.  Just look at the current Republican administration if you want proof of this. 

Onto the botanical garden. I'm finally seeing male Calypte anna hummingbirds again. Anna’s hummingbirds don’t migrate but rather practice altitudinal and microclimate shifting, plus they've been molting. Maybe it's an ego thing. A few days ago I did a search in this very blog on the word, "autumn" and found that I was also complaining about the summer lacking in hummingbirds, late summer of 2013. 

This little dude is still looking scruffy from his molt.

  Just one open flower again, Cereus peruvianus.

 Moments later a female Calypte anna showed up in the same spot.

 Kind of mysterious.

 They were still putting up balloons very close to start time. 

On my way back to my car. Posted at the only crosswalk I need to wait for a walk signal. Does this come across as creepy to anyone other than me? 

"I've got troubles of my own, " I said 
"And you can't help me out, so 
Take your meditations and your preparations 
And ram it up your snout"

 Frank Zappa, Cosmik Debris

Meanwhile...

Can I? 

Dabadabado Do-da Mde-de (Hep Do-eh)
Kapatapada Do-vah Do Deh (Hep Do-ah)
Pakatebedoh Umm-be Peh Be-eh Be-eh Be-eh (Hep Do-ah, Hep Do-eh)
We have heaven (Hep Do-ah, Hep Do-eh, Hep Do-ah, Hep Do-eh)

 

Today's walk report: Keep calm and wait for fall

 Autumn, it's right around the corner, and I couldn't be more pleased. This morning, with the bedroom window open, I was awoken by an almost forgotten visitor around 4:30 a.m.: the local great horned owl. It was making a deep, rhythmic series of hoots that sounds like the phrase, "Who's awake? Me, too!" Their vocal activity ebbs and flows with the season. During late spring and summer, when young fledglings are dispersing and food is abundant, adults become relatively quiet to avoid drawing unwanted attention to themselves or their juveniles. As autumn approaches, their calling picks up dramatically as they re-establish boundaries, pair-bond, and prepare for their winter breeding season. 

Then I checked the temperature outside, 57º F... sweet! Even with the window open evenings and two fans blowing, this house has been like a terrarium, and during the day, the constant roar of a portable A/C unit in a small bedroom acts as a perfect amplifier, ensuring every rattle and vibration bounces directly off the walls and into my brain. 

Thursday's walk was two miles but only because I had no idea I would feel as good as I did and really hadn't allowed the time for a longer trek. Friday, I didn't walk at all because I felt like absolute crap. It was post-walk yard work catching up to me on Friday. This was mostly my scraping away 100s, (!!) of common storksbill seedlings with too short of a shovel. Storkbill is my plant nemesis, it is the primary invasive that has interrupted my wildflower propagation on the property. Here's what things looked like in the spring of 2016. Most of what you see is Dimorphotheca sinuata flowers. Many of those palm trees in the background are gone now, while too many still remain. I really miss this...

 
Today, Saturday, September 19th, I felt mostly amazing. The temperature for the 64 minutes I was out and about went from 65º to 67º. I found it a little humid with a relative humidity as high as 76%, but that's kind of just me. I was also a tad overdressed, but I'm finding myself covering up more than I used to. I've said for over 40 years now, the sun is not our friend. Thinking long-sleeves and digging through a closet, I had almost forgotten about another in my collection of Larks' Tongues in Aspic shirts. While that title might sound a little disgusting, the album, single handedly, changed how I listen to music. I can still picture exactly where and when I first listened to LTiA in 1973. 

There wasn't much on the photo front. Once again, I mostly walked. I did have a pleasant but brief conversation with a gentleman walking his three dogs in the arboretum. We talked about aging pets and recent kittens. Heading back to my car and at campus central (this is a Jr. College), I ended up helping an elderly woman (hey, she was older than I am) find her classroom. A Persian lady, she hardly spoke a word of English. Turns out she was looking for her ESL (English as a Second Language) class. I ended up flagging down a campus sheriff deputy, gave him the room number, and asked which building it was. I know the names of the buildings, but I'm not too keen on building and room numbers. All of the buildings surrounding the botanical garden, and that's where we were, are named after trees. She was looking for the Birch building, so I took her there and along the way pointed to the names, Elm and Birch, etc., explaining that these are types of trees. She had no idea what I was babbling about. I opened the door, and introduced her to the instructor. So to speak. My good deed for the day.

Here are some pictures from today...

Jacaranda. I took a quick shot only because I was surprised to see blooms. I thought Jacaranda trees typically bloom from late April to mid-June in SoCal.

  This Coreopsis verticillata plant again. I mentioned I wanted to swipe some seeds from it but apparently it's a hybrid specialized cultivar (Moonbeam). 'Moonbeam' is a sterile cultivar that does not produce viable seeds. Online pricing seems a bit steep for 3" pots.

 Salvia 'Amistad' (Friendship Sage).

 Verbena bonariensis.

Last week I wrote about Washingtonia robusta, AKA, Mexican fan palm seedlings growing everywhere. The taller trees are Washingtonia robusta and you can see why 1,000s of these popping up randomly might be a problem, The lower palms are Syagrus romanzoffiana. I haven't looked into those on the invasive species lists. 

More importantly, I took these images to show what the lovely fall-like morning I was enjoying looked like.
 

I keep telling them... It's gonna be a lot more difficult to get out than it was to get in.

 Drimia maritima. Taken in haste.

 Tecomaria capensis.

 Google says this is a Melaleuca. I was attracted to the dead below being superseded by new growth above.

 This arbor has, for most of my 15+ years of witnessing it, been at least partly covered by Passiflora. For the last couple of years it hasn't been maintained. Google is telling me this is now Hardenbergia violacea, which I find unfortunate since Passiflora is most notably the primary larval host plant for the Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae). That's a favorite butterfly. Hardenbergia violacea is apparently the host to the common grass blue butterfly (Zizina labradus), native to Australia.

 

The Library and Learning Center clock has been about 7 minutes slow for well over a year. This picture was taken about three minutes before the woman asked me for directions to room 1109. Her class started at 9:00. Oops. You're tardy.
 

That's all I've got. Later in the day all of those pretty clouds disappeared and we hit a high of 89.5º F. The walk was 2.37 miles. This walk report was finished today, Sunday, September 20th because it was interrupted by Dodgers' baseball last night. Outside of my office windows, sunrise is creeping in, mostly cloudy, the sky was a soft purple. 

"October - Autumn Song" from Tchaikovsky's "The Seasons"

And I took the picture of myself when this song came through my headphones...