Hodgepodge

 A hodgepodge is a disorganized or messy collection of different things, often describing a jumble of objects or ideas. For me it's a good title for a post that lacks a certain level of direction. I'm going to look through pictures I've taken since my last post, Monday, June 2nd, and we'll see what I've got.

This image was taken on June 2nd at 7:53 PM, after I posted. I've been calling Kalika's kitten, Kalika Kitten, mostly because I'm not sure of its gender. I've also called it Little Kalika, Little K and Kk. At 7:53 PM on June 2nd outdoor lighting was dimming. This shot was taken from indoors, through a dirty window at 1/50 of a second shutter speed with a focal length of 300mm. I'm surprised I got a picture. 

 On Friday I downloaded 1,668 video captures from a trail camera (thank you, Docken) that's on my patio. I'm S L O W L Y going through them in an attempt to figure out when Little Kalika may have been born. Kalika (the mom) was only showing up on the camera at night until recently. My feeding cats at night is very problematic, I can't simply leave food out or I will attract a bunch of undesirable critters. They show up anyway, I don't need intermittent reinforcement to play a part. Anyway, so far, I haven't drawn any conclusions. 

This picture was taken about 45 minutes earlier on 6/2. This was Kk waiting for some sort of "all clear" from mom while mom was eating on the patio. Taken through an even dirtier window in my office. 

  June 3rd. 

Little Kalika was showing off for mom by climbing a plumbago bush I'm trying to save in the backyard.

 
From the first day watching Little Kalika I was leaning, male cat. This was based on large paws, a wider head and some overall behavioral stuff that simply made me think, boy kitty. After capturing this image I wasn't quite so sure. Let's figure that Kk is about 8 weeks old in these images. Here's a PDF fact sheet from humanepro.org. From this I'm now leaning female. What do you think?

 
Mom always seems to know where I am. I'm behind dirty windows and I'm approximately 6 yards or 5.5 meters away. Perhaps she hears me? Click, click... click.

 
June 4th.

 Thursday, June 5th.

No pictures but both mom and kitten showed up on the patio a few times for food, water and play. These next three images are size enhanced, cropped frame grabs off of trail camera videos.

 
 Friday, June 6th. 

No cats. No video from the night because the SD card in the camera was full. I usually clear unwanted recordings from the card via the camera's app on my iPad before bed but I neglected to do so. I knew the card was almost full too so I should've known better. Not that it would have made anything any different. Kalika has learned that when I call Kalika it has something to do with her and while she's still very skittish around me she will show up to see if I'm bringing her food. I called several times morning into afternoon and no Kalika. I ultimately went and asked the neighbor in the house behind me if he had seen the cats. He ended up asking a family member and was told that Kalika was in their yard around 10 PM. He didn't know anything about her having a kitten. I remained concerned.

Saturday, June 7th.

Kalika finally showed up a little after 1:00 PM. Food stayed out until past sunset, no sign of Little Kalika.

 Sunday, June 9th (today).

7:25 AM. Yay!

Vit was there too, sort of supervising. Vit is completely calm around both Kalika (Vit LOVES Kalika) and Kalika Kitten. Kalika Kitten is modestly apprehensive around Vit. The "K" kitties ate while Vit hung out in the backyard. He got fed right after they left and both Kalika and her lovely little kitten came back later to finish Vit's breakfast. Meanwhile, I went for a walk.

And for the most part, I didn't take any pictures. I did get a decent walk and a nice talk in with Docken though. Thank you, Docken.

I felt obligated to take a shot or two because this male Calypte anna hummingbird sat in this spot under a grape arbor for quite awhile. Dusty offspring? Highly probable.

 I took this picture because I wanted to ID it. Of course I did the same thing in June of last year, although I might have been slightly off on the ID back then. This is Catalpa bignonioides. I kind of remembered photographing it before but I didn't have the slightest recollection of the botanical name. I think I will call it, the tree with white trumpet flowers with yellow and purple spots inside. It just seems to make more sense. Next year when I see it I'll say, oh yeah!

 Other stuff. In this post from May 22nd I alluded to the hatching of the second round of mourning dove squabs that I was about to experience outside my bedroom windows. Everything was on the schedule I predicted without my being at all noisy about Sally and Twigs procreation behaviors. Meaning I basically left them alone.

May 31st. Twigs and Sally have some time together once again. 

 They also spent enough time away from the nest for me to take a few blind shots, my arms dangling over the wall at the front walkway and to finally confirm two squabs.

 June 1st was the first attempt to fledge for both squabs even though they were a day apart in hatching. I found some of this rather chaotic, mom and dad seemed just fine with it all.

 There was an upper level squab on the wall and a lower level squab down below the nest.

It appeared as though Sally was on duty to watch the lower level squab while Twigs was dealing with the upper level bird. Twigs didn't seem nearly as attentive as did Sally. I won't elaborate.

 
June 2nd, both squabs hung out in this spot on the wall for a good portion of the day. This photo was taken from outside my front door while I picked up my mail.

 June 4th, Twigs is back at remodeling the nest while he and Sally prepared for brood number 3.
 

 

To keep with the hodgepodge theme here are some final images from a walk that took place on May 25th. I have to confess that on several recent picture taking walks the walk aspect has taken precedence over the photographic side of things. 

I love when the palo verde trees are in full bloom. 

 Female tree squirrel, AKA, the western gray squirrel (Sciurus griseus).

 I believe this was a female monarch butterfly.
 

This is a male mourning dove. It was in the process of making a "coo-ah, coo-coo-coo" call typically used to attract a mate.

 Ancient car worshipers on the wrong day. It was a "vintage fair" day in this campus parking lot. This is a '62 or '63 Chevrolet Corvair. This is the car that was the focus of Ralph Nader's 1965 book, "Unsafe at Any Speed," He argued that the Corvair's rear-engine design, particularly its suspension, made it prone to rollovers, calling it a "one-car accident." Where are all of the dogs learning to drive?

 That's it! Thanks for taking a look. 
 

Double take

 This happened yesterday. In dealing with my home becoming a Sweat Lodge of Solitude as outdoor temperatures are rising and being without central air conditioning, I've been keeping drapes closed for the most part during the day. Yesterday evening around 6:30 I wanted to peek out onto the patio to see if the outdoor feral cats, Kalika and Vit still had food available. Vit is accustomed to my presence Kalika is not (although it's getting better) so I tend to approach the patio with a certain amount of stealth. While this event wasn't a total surprise (I've had some clues and suspicions) the similarity had me do a double take. Oh, my Glob, somebody shrunk Kalika!

All taken through dirty patio door windows. This is especially amplified on the long shots.

 Today is day two and after watching trail camera video recorded from last night into early morning, it seems confirmed, there is just the one kitten. This is as cute as a kitten bouncing on a sunbeam but it's also a dilemma I need to think hard and long about. I've already done a bunch of that. A local TNR person would be a lovely find.

 

Today's butterfly

 Post my AM walk and talk with Doc (thank you, Docken). Back home looking at pictures and gazing out onto the backyard another mad dash almost missing the butterfly.

Male monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus). Foreground flowers are Buddleja davidii also called butterfly-bush and background flowers are Bougainvillea.

 

Miscellaneous walks and stuff

 I got wrapped up in dealing with and mostly observing a pair of mourning doves (Zenaida macroura) nesting outside of my bedroom windows of late and they became the focus of my last few posts. Despite that, I've been walking and had intended to post some pictures. SoCal has very definitely moved into summertime weather. Several walks have been designed around my skipping the "scenic route" and adjusting departure times to avoid heat exhaustion, or at least the general discomfort I find at this point in life, trekking about in temperatures above 80ºF. Yep, that's pretty much my limit these days.

The last walk report was April 1st so I'm gonna dig through images taken since that date. This might be somewhat random but here we go...

Saturday, April 5th.

Pink orchid tree (Bauhinia Blakeana).

 I don't know what the deal was but this male mallard duck was really excited to see me.

 I told him he didn't need to salute me but he did anyway.

 This is my old Allen's hummingbird acquaintance going back to posts in late February.

 Mourning dove in Eucalyptus 'Moon Lagoon'.

 Same hawk, one shot with a  big ol' jet airliner behind and the other a faint contrail.

This is a random cucumber. Sometimes they simply show up, no rhyme or reason.

 I believe this is a Gulfstream Aerospace G650. Besides flying annoyingly low over my head, I was on the phone with Docken (thank you, Doc) and I commented on the plane's unusual path into Van Nuys airport. It is my understanding that Gulfstream has a maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) facility at the airport specifically for G650 and G650ER jets. Upon viewing the photo there's something else I found especially disturbing about the plane. Any guesses?

April 12th.

 Lime scooters can be rented through the Uber app in certain areas. This particular unit had been pretty well stripped apart and sat on this sidewalk or was hung on the fence of the school on the other side of the sidewalk for weeks. My opinion, ban these things.

 As you can maybe tell already, I wasn't finding any photo ops on 4/12.

April 18th, which just so happens to have been my birthday.

I was telling Docken about this over the phone but ya gotta see it to believe it. These ropes are part of a trail in the local arboretum. It's a "Braille Trail", designed first in the early 70's for blind people to connect to nature with descriptive signs written in braille along the way. This is one turn along the trail... I'm sorry but what is the idea here? Watch out for that tree!

 I see a dog's face in this bearded iris, can you see it?

 So much for pictures on my birthday. It was a nice walk though and I was glad to have company over the phone. April 19th was basically the same walk and the same void in the photo department.

April 20th, Easter Sunday.

This is the only picture I took. the flower, Solandra maxima, also known as Cup of Gold Vine, is poisonous to humans, pets, and children. All parts of the plant, including the flowers, leaves, and stems, are toxic. Ingestion can cause symptoms like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headache, dilated pupils, and even delirium. Is this a good choice for a braille trail?

 April 22nd, the bearded dragon fiasco.

 I've been really hesitant about sharing this story and how to approach it. I'm gonna try to make it brief. Like the doves, this too was right outside my bedroom windows. At first I heard a thrashing sound and was immediately concerned about the doves. Then I saw this. I must've froze. I'm sure my mouth was hanging open. I took a photo with my phone so I could Google image search and get some sort of idea what I should do. My research was brief. My rather urgent response was this was an abandoned (or lost, but doubted that) pet and I needed to deal with it. The first thing I read was the high potential for the reptile to carry the bacteria Salmonella. I pretty much already know this from my dealings with frequent in house visits from sometimes very large alligator lizards. This giant was a good 24" long and I would guess after getting it inside a container, it weighed over a pound. I estimated at the time, 1.25 pounds or 0.567 kilograms. Post my haste in moving it to an environment better suited to its survival I did an enormous amount of research and ultimately decided I did the best thing considering the circumstances. This situation reinforces my long held belief that most people should not own pets and certainly not exotic ones.

For whatever reason as I was escorting it into a suitable container, I called it Gus. I have no idea as to its actual gender.

These pictures were all taken through the same dirty windows where I frequently take pictures of the doves. 

A beautiful animal in the wrong place at the wrong time. I hope Gus has a reasonably peaceful life.

Gus was released relatively deep inside of this area. It's approximately 14 acres, reasonably not unlike their native territory, with plenty of irrigation for a source of water and no shortage of food. Also, I'm very familiar with this parcel of land, I have never seen people milling about out here. 

 Sunday, April 27th.

I miscalculated the weather. Docken was on the phone giving me Doppler advice while I sat on a bench during a brief rain shower, creating these images to later stitch for this panorama. Thank you to weather coordinator Docken for her guidance before moving on.

 
Yes, here he is again. The ruler of his domain.

 

 

Mourning dove.

 

  I managed to stay behind southwesternly drifting cumulus activity.

California ground squirrel (Otospermophilus beecheyi) not to be confused with a chipmunk or a prairie dog, or a groundhog or a marmot which is a type of groundhog, all ground dwellers in the squirrel family. California ground squirrels and desert cottontails (Sylvilagus audubonii) are two animals I somewhat fear entering my neighborhood and they're close. Hopefully the number of dogs in the hood will preclude their induction.

 Another weather conditions shot, the Santa Susana Mountains just above Porter Ranch.

In other news...

Feral friend Vit the cat has been under my medical supervision and has healed nicely.

Vit has a girlfriend, her name is Kalika. I pronounce that, KA-LEE-KA but it's actually Swedish for calico and the Swedes spell that like so, kalikå and pronounce that like... kalikå.

Here's Kalika, she's still sort of warming up to me so photos have been a tad problematic. 

 She's a small cat. I've never seen a cat eat as much as she does. Granted if she's not eating elsewhere she generally only eats here once a day. I will feed her if I see her although I'm not inclined to feed her when it's dark out. I have done so but I have to monitor the event, there are too many "outsiders" visiting the patio and I am especially wary of raccoons. Vit will gladly sacrifice his breakfast for Kalika. Yes, sometimes Vit's tail is very dirty. He also tends to get a small grease mark near his upper shoulders. I suspect that Vit often sleeps in someone's carport under their car.

Vit is very affectionate toward Kalika. He was licking her head while she ate here. These last two shots were taken through dirty windows.

 You might ask, okay but what's going on with the doves? My calculations, if correct, point to there being two new squabs in the nest. I do as much as possible not to disturb Sally and Twigs. If you've read any of the other posts about Sally and Twigs Zenaida, you're aware that mourning doves are prolific breeders, capable of raising up to six broods per year. 

It appears that both Baby Dove and Mystery left the area near May 6th. This is among the last pictures I took of Baby Dove, taken on May 5th.

 Based on my limited experience studying these birds I suspect an egg was laid on May 6th and a second one on May 7th, which would coincide with this event taking place yesterday morning at 9:45 AM right after nest sitting duties were exchanged with Sally going out from the nest and Twigs coming in for the day. This is Twigs a few seconds after the departure of Sally doing some nest clean-up. I didn't have my camera ready when he removed the first piece of eggshell but I caught him removing this larger second piece. It appeared from his short hop off the wall that he flew under the Eremophila bignoniiflora bush in the background to discard the eggshell. He was back on nest duty just moments later.

That's it. I filled in some gaps. Currently it's 2:35 on May 22nd. It's 91ºF and that is something I've started to contend with. Summer, especially in this hole where I live in SoCal, is an extended season compared to the rest of them. It typically starts early and just hangs on. While the astronomical start of summer is late June, the dry, warm weather often kicks in by May and can persist through much of October, sometimes as late as November. It's a valley, sometimes referred to as a hellhole. Lucy and I will do our best to circumnavigate the situation. Thanks for tagging along. Think blue, think cool and clearly, there are evil forces in our midst. Engage in critical thinking. Peace.