It's still dipping down into the upper 30ºs in the early morning and today it was 54º out the door. It was a little later than I had planned on leaving but I nevertheless decided on a t-shirt and jeans for my walking attire. I'm glad too, even though it was just 65.5º when I got home I was perspiring. Not only was it cool and crisp but it was also a quiet and beautiful morning to be out walking. Doc and I were on the phone again. She was out walking 45 miles north of me. We both saw some beautiful stuff to talk about and take pictures of. Here are a few of the pictures I took.
Okay, not beautiful. Actually a small blight on our beautiful planet--Mylar balloons. This one has almost certainly been traveling for close to a week. Escaped or released from a Rams fan Super Bowl party last Sunday no doubt. The lower brown balloon was a football. I moved all to a trash bin after some camera clicks.
Female Calypte anna hummingbird. I was shooting into low sun glare, I couldn't see much of anything in the viewfinder. Thank goodness for autofocus.
Only about 45 meters down the path I was on there was the extremely reliable male Calypte anna hummingbird affectionately known as Dusty.
I was "talking" to Dusty during that second shot and to my surprise he took off from his perch and hovered right in front of me, less than an arm's length away. He dazzled me with the iridescent reddish-pink feathers on his head and throat.
Birds of prey have been rare sightings for the past two weeks. I only saw one last week and one again today. In fact, it's not improbable it was this same bird. I was a long way away when I first spotted this red-tailed hawk. In fact, I probably walked well over a 100 meters before I was certain it was a hawk. From another angle, and off in the distance, it appeared it might have been a clump of something, perhaps a nest.
On the way to the hawk, I once again got a brief but pleasant interruption from a flock of Canada geese.
That's all I've got. Tomorrow morning at the time of my regular daily constitutional (seriously early), there's up to a 40% chance of rain. Once upon a time I would go out for a walk even in torrential rain, those days are gone perhaps forever.
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