I started to write in rather graphic detail about the fires in Los Angeles and surrounding communities here and just cut the dialogue and pasted it into an email to myself. I decided to tone it down. Suffice it to say there's been a lot of tragedy in the lives of 1,000s of people. Hundreds of thousands of people. I also spent a good portion of this disaster lamenting the loss of animal life, the terror faced by innocent creatures paralyzed by fear, the loss of habitat and resources for those that survived.
Air quality has been a particularly questionable issue for days. The air quality index (AQI) doesn't really tell us how bad the air is. For the most part the AQI for my location has been good to moderate for at least the past few days but it doesn't account for all sorts of particulate matter and chemicals that will continue to be released into the air over weeks following these fires. Friday night I made a decision to walk on Saturday. I needed it on several levels. I walked a little over three miles yesterday. I had Docken's company over the phone which made things much nicer than hoofing it alone. Thank you Docky. Today I walked a little over two miles. For the most part both walks went well, without any respiratory issues. There was some emotional stuff though.
Here are pictures from yesterday and today with some additional stuff thrown in, just because.
December 28th. Docken also joined me for part of this walk. The only decent photos were of this raven. What you don't get to see is he was busy plucking away atop a garbage can. I’ve taken pictures of him and his mate before. He was busy and wasn’t at all concerned about me getting close. I was between 7’ and 8’ away here. When you get this close you can sort of feel how smart they are. His girl was nearby but she didn’t seem to want anything to do with either the garbage or me.
December 30th, my pal Vit the cat in the backyard. Vit has been a little preoccupied with at least one female feline lately so his visits have been somewhat sporadic.
My last picture taking walk and last walk before the fires broke out was on January 1st and it was a lousy day for pictures. Here are a few.
Audubon's warbler (Setophaga auduboni).
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A house finch.
Vit again on January 16th. Vit is Swedish for "white" and is pronounced more like vhoot but I just call him Vit.
Yesterday's walk. Saturday, January, 18th. I finally remembered to bring a wide angle lens (10-18 mm) but I didn't really take advantage of it. Here's a wide shot inside the local botanical garden.
This is an American bushtit (Psaltriparus minimus) and it's a pretty shitty picture. I was shooting blind because of glaring sunlight and I was also having focus issues but I've never caught one in flight before. This is a tiny and very hyper bird.
On Wednesday, January 8th I decided I should drive my car a little just because It had been over a week since I had driven and I guess I chose to freak myself out a bit over the idea of my car not starting as evacuation zones began moving a little closer to my house. The closest I got was about 1.75 miles from an evacuation warning zone. Anyway, better safe than sorry and at times the Palisades fire looked more threatening than it was. This was taken from my front yard on January 10th. While you can distinctly see some flames the incident perimeter zone was still a little over 4 miles away. I'm so glad I had maps available and know how to use the measurement tool on Google Earth.
The day before, taken from about 45 yards east of the previous shot.
The drive on 1/8, I went to the local college campus which has an equestrian unit and they were providing shelter for large animal evacuations. The school was essentially campus closed but there was access due to the evacuation facilities. I had seen online that the equestrian center was already at capacity. I've seen a lot of livestock on that campus growing up but this was the greatest number of horses I've ever seen there and I have a long history. Yesterday I walked to the the equestrian unit. I was in tears imagining some of the hardship these animals and there owners might be going through.
I had seen the pig before. It was out among the horses on 1/8.
The donkey is apparently an American miniature.
In the course of passing by I saw three, two horse capacity trailers come into the parking lot and witnessed two of those trailers each picking up two horses and hopefully taking them home.
Based on signage on a couple of vehicles I went to this website when I got home. I had wanted to make a donation to some organization helping in the efforts dealing with these fires and chose this one. A secure online donation option is also provided on that web page.
Not a favorite tree, not in the least. Especially when the winds blow like they did. It's like a giant tiki torch just waiting for flying embers to ignite.
Royal trumpet vine (Distictis 'Rivers').
There were a bunch of these berry poops along the path.
Best I could figure, much of that appears to be, Myrtus communis (myrtle) berries.
Peace.
