Another drive, walk and talk with Doc (thank you, Docken!). I was out the door at an AM 77ºF but that's already outside of my comfort zone at this stage of life. By the end of the walk it was 86º. I'm pretty sure I started bitching about the temperature straight away. Right now, about 3.5 hours later, it's 104º and my office is 89º. I'm going to post a few pictures from today's walk and then I am going to make a hot fudge sundae. For real.
First, here is little Kalika from shortly before the walk and a temperature of 71º. She scooted from the patio to the fence as I was bringing her and her mom, Kalika, some breakfast. Though she is getting used to me now and mom comes as close as arm's length. Little Kalika is officially named Junior per Docken’s request. Yes, females can be Juniors, as the term "junior" is not gender-specific. The word "junior" simply means "younger" and can be used to describe anyone, cat or otherwise, younger than another with the same name.
Here's mom, Kalika, giving me those I would like some breakfast please eyes.
For today's walk I drove onto the campus since the campus police aren't being all hard-ass about parking permits this week while students get set up for summer sessions. Driving onto campus allows me to break up my walk into multiple locations across the 426 acre grounds. Despite that, there wasn't much picture taking.
A mourning dove.
A stately raven. There were three of them which makes me think teenagers. This one perched up high and two more in a parking lot down below. When they saw me they all started in yakking about my presence.
Another mourning dove. It's a sign I tell ya!
I drove around a little more, visited with some cows (the cow pictures were really subpar) and then drove home.
Back at the house and looking out my office windows there was Junior again.
Okay, there's a window A/C unit on in here, making a bunch of noise and the temperature has only dropped to 88º. The rest of the house is mostly cooler so I'll bid you farewell and get that sundae made.
Another fabulous drive and park nearby a local college campus to walk mostly around its arboretum and botanical garden. I only take the car slightly over a half mile that I could add to the walk each way if I decided to skip the drive but for a couple of reasons it's better to go for a spin. For one, I hardly drive anywhere and the car needs to get out once in a while and get some exercise. Most significantly for battery charging and conditioning and fluid circulation. I extend the drive home a little for this purpose. Also, the walk to that campus is pretty dull so it's better for me to decide to extend walks inside the campus since it's generally more peaceful and there's more to see than what goes on via surface street sidewalks.
The campus entrance is 1/4 mile from where I usually park the car and the closest path in the arboretum is only 125 yards from the front gate. There has been a lot of work done inside the arboretum over the past few years. Before that, at least for a couple of years, it was fenced off. The story is some dude had decided it was his place to plant trees and the powers that be decided, let's just keep everyone out. This is not the only portion of the campus that has succumbed to restricted access. The campus is 426 acres. This makes it larger than many university campuses, including that of UCLA. For the most part the landscaping is nice and there are over over 2,200 trees. Outside of this is typical Los Angles County rather overcrowded suburbs and quite a bit of smelly stuff.
Most of what went on for me today was talking with Docken over the phone (thank you, Docken). Once again not much jumped out on the picture taking front. Exiting the arboretum there is an abundance of narrow leaf milkweed (Asclepias fascicularis) which is a native plant to Southern California. This particular male monarch butterfly remained flying next to or in front of me for about 80 yards. There was milkweed all along the way.
Onto the botanical garden (a little over a 1/4 mile from the arboretum). I went sort of garden central, sat on a bench and chatted over the phone. Rather suddenly what turned out to be a red-tailed hawk flew just in front of my face. It was too startling to catch my bearings with my camera. I told Docken where I was exactly so she could visualize (we've spent a lot of time together in this garden) and she said, Wow! I measured this on Google Earth when I got home. Sitting on the bench my eye level is about 4 feet above ground. The hawk was flying at an altitude of about 8 feet and was approximately 9 feet in front of the bench. This is a very large bird. I'm pretty sure that was as close as I've ever gotten to a red-tailed. It flew into the olive trees just 10 yards west of me and I couldn't find it, then suddenly, it flew out into a pine tree about 45 yards southeast of my bench. I followed.
By my estimations this is a young bird but I'm gonna throw out a wingspan of about 50". It's a big freaking bird.
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?
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.
