Today's walk report: 030423

 54ºF and mostly cloudy, it was a fine morning for a walk. Docken joined in on the phone, thanks Dockie.

Male Calypte anna hummingbird, "Dusty" was a lot more reliable than he was last week and I don't know, I might be making this up but I think he was happy to see me.

I left the garden to get some walking in and suddenly heard bird chatter that I thought was going to be feral parrots but it turned out to be three acorn woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus). I've never seen, or at least I've never taken pictures of an acorn woodpecker before and I was pretty excited about it. However a family was rapidly approaching from my rear and their little girl felt some compulsion to scream her infantile head off. Kids screaming. presumably for fun, is a phenomena that I've seen (heard) on the rise since the late 1990s. I'm talking blood-curdling shrieks. I've gone so far as to look for case studies on this and have come up with nothing. It's both boys and girls by the way. Anyway, besides it being obvious I was taking pictures, I put my right index finger up to my lips for the mother unit of the child. To no avail. The kid screamed some more and I never got to the other side of the palm tree in hopes of better light and sharper images before the birds were frightened away.

I looped back around to the garden and visited Dusty again.

Then I decided to take my car up the hill since I saw red-tailed hawks and common ravens off in the distance.

This red-tailed hawk greeted me from this lamppost on my way to park the car.

Across the road I noticed a pair of common ravens that seemed pretty intent on watching where the hawk might decide to take off to.

When the hawk took off so did the ravens.

Once across the parking lot and into this eucalyptus tree the ravens went their own way.

I did a lap in the parking lot (1/4 mile) and as I headed back to my car I noticed the Los Angeles Fire Department had a training session down below. This is a frequent occurrence on this campus. I would not do well up on that ladder.

 Then there was the flight of the psychedelic owl.

Moments ago I created my own AI psychedelic owl.

 Where the raven flies there's jeopardy.