Today's walk report: 081715

It's so hot...
the cows are giving evaporated milk.

It's so hot...

you realize that asphalt has a liquid state.

It's so hot...

you can make instant sun tea.

It's just freakin' hot is what it is. Yesterday we decided to try and beat the heat by using the clock. We got ourselves up and ready just before dawn and headed out about 6:15 into what was said to become the hottest day of the year and that turned out to be true (so far). Out the door we had a nice, fresh, 67º f (19º c) but nevertheless you could sense the heat coming. The entire journey was only about 2 hours and we made it back to air conditioned living with only a 10 degree increase in temperature outside. That didn't last long. By 11 AM we hit 100º f (37.7 c) and the day topped out at 107º (41.6º c). According to at least one weatherperson, that was a record.

Before I get to the photos from yesterday (081615) here are a few from 080915, a week earlier and a lot cooler with a high of 87º (30.5º c). 

080915...

Two opuntia flowers

Seed pod, Romneya coulteri, Matilija Poppy

Empty seed pods, Penstemon centranthifolius, Scarlet Bugler

Water lily

 081615...

Apache plume, sans plume

Asclepias fascicularis, California Narrowleaf Milkweed

Female rufous hummingbird

Female rufous hummingbird

Female rufous hummingbird, same one as above

I believe this is Kalanchoe luciae

Asclepias fascicularis, California Narrowleaf Milkweed

Close up

Hesperaloe parviflora

A nice surprise turning the corner, Red-tailed hawk in a sad looking Sequoia tree

Note the rufous hummingbird on the left Sequoia tree next image and just over the hawk's head in the 2nd picture below. These were 2 different hummingbirds, both a tad disgruntled over the hawk's presence. They both swooped and circled the hawk some but they seemed to keep more than a safe distance away. As far as I know the hawk remained perched in this spot for at least 15 minutes probably just to spite them. 

 

San-Pedro-cactus, trichocereus-pachanoi

TBD moth. I took the photo just to see what it looked like. Shot at 300 mm with a Canon close-up lens attached. Maybe some sort of forage looper? It's really tiny.

A young mockingbird testing its repertoire

Canada geese, what they are doing here now I don't get

That's all for now. Thanks for coming along for the walks. See you soon and hopefully in cooler climes.

Today's walk report: 081114; Last weekend

Once again a tad tardy on a weekend report. Oh well.

It's been hot and trying to push walks out to early evening means less light and fewer pictures. I'm really looking forward to fall.

080814, Friday...

We were late to the garden and the lighting was pretty dismal. I commented once out load about neglecting to bring a flash and grumbled to myself a few more times.

Bee on narrow-leaved milkweed, Asclepias fascicularis.

This young Selasphorus rufus was the only hummingbird photo op I saw. A lot of the taller sages are starting to fall to the summer heat, making it more difficult to capture hummingbirds as they dart about inside.

This isn't a very good picture but it was the 1st time I've seen a crayfish (aka, crawfish, crawdads, freshwater lobsters, or mudbugs) in the water. I knew they were there but since they are usually much deeper than this I've only seen them before in the mouth of an egret. I used the on board flash for this shot and also needed to crank the shadows way up in Photoshop.

Crayfish amongst mosquito fish.

At this point I decided to simply sit and wait for my girl to finish her photos. On the bench I noticed this ant rather frantically trying to navigate this object which looked especially sizable. I screwed on my Canon 500D close up lens to my zoom at 300mm for a closer look. 'Turns out to be a bee's wing.

080914, Saturday...

Young Selasphorus rufus in a Sequoia tree.

Selasphorus rufus in Silver Sage.

Female Selasphorus rufus. no plant ID.

Selasphorus rufus in red-stemmed dogwood.

Kevin says, "hey!"

Hey!

There's a "supermoon" coming tomorrow. This looked pretty super to us already.

081014, Sunday, yesterday...

We didn't walk much, in fact we pretty much drove all but a mere 1 km or 0.62 miles.  It was hot and getting late but we wanted to take pictures. It was nice to get out.

I was SURROUNDED by Selasphorus rufus for several minutes. For the most part it was too exciting watching to be fighting to track zooming, swooping and darting hummingbirds.

Selasphorus rufus.

2

 Something I said?

3

4

Selasphorus rufus inside summer's collapsing Salvia darcyi.

Selasphorus rufus preening.

Ready for the party.

Today's walk report: 072113

Yo, look behind you, look behind you... the weather, look at the weather.*

Gray, drab, muggly weather. At least it was a little more in proportion with heat and humidity today.

This was the sky...

Once again not much activity going on. I saw two bees and two dragonflies but I never saw one land. There were the Green fruit beetles (Cotinis mutabilis) once more and they were at this again.

 
I also caught one in flight this time.

One Rufous Hummingbird (Selasphorus rufus) was somewhat cooperative, however it was so dismal out this shot with ISO set on auto went at 4,000... pretty grainy to say the least. I was trying to get close enough to shoot with flash. Every time the bird would look forward and away from me I took a step. Unfortunately I still got busted.

I did get a score out of the garden. The strawflowers were producing seed and I nabbed a bunch. I'm adding this to my collection for fall/spring germination--if I can find out the right method. I have envelopes with seeds I've gathered. So far there are these strawflowers, Red yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora), Desert willow (Chilopsis linearis) and Narrow-leaved milkweed seeds (Asclepias fascicularis.) The milkweed seeds, for example, need to be refrigerated for 6-weeks prior to planting. I'm trying to learn some of this stuff so I don't kill shit before I even get started. I also like the idea of free seeds.

The bottom-most flower is all seed.

 * That line is from the stage announcements on the Woodstock (1969) soundtrack when the rain was coming in, some guy yelling in the background. It oddly came to mind as I started typing.

Today's walk report: 051813

For the most part I played with trying to successfully hand hold my camera in an effort to focus stack images on my walk today. These were all shot with a Canon 60mm Macro on a breezy day. There's no image stabilization with this lens and I've only tried this a couple of times before. Much of what your see are manual "tweaks" in Photoshop re-aligning images and pretty much hoping for the best with Photoshop's automated processes to do this. While it's not very complicated, it could be. If I were to really dedicate myself to perfecting some of the inconsistencies and make up for subject and camera movement, etc., this whole exercise would have become a lot more tedious. In a way I welcome the fact that my images weren't exceptional enough to warrant the extra work and I will also welcome a time in which they are. For now I had some fun and learned some of the pitfalls and idiosyncrasies of this process. Aside from the post work aspect I ended up coming home with 1,408 images. A new walk time record.

For those of you who don't know what I mean by focus stacking here's the description Wikipedia provides. If you want to know more then Google it or click the links which are coming along for the ride on my copy/paste below.

Focus stacking (also known as focal plane merging and z-stacking^[1] or focus blending) is a digital image processing technique which combines multiple images taken at different focus distances to give a resulting image with a greater depth of field (DOF) than any of the individual source images.^[2][3] Focus stacking can be used in any situation where individual images have a very shallow depth of field; macro photography and optical microscopy are two typical examples.
Focus stacking offers flexibility: as focus stacking is a computational technique, images with several different depths of field can be generated in post-processing and compared for best artistic merit or scientific clarity. Focus stacking also allows generation of images physically impossible with normal imaging equipment; images with nonplanar focus regions can be generated. Alternative techniques for generating images with increased or flexible depth of field include wavefront coding and plenoptic cameras.

Before all that got started I saw this tiny wasp dragging what appears to be a two-armed spider carcass on the sidewalk. I don't know if the darn thing was trying to fly or what but it's frenzied little dance made getting a picture pretty difficult besides this wasp not being much larger than an ant. That's not gravel, that's concrete sidewalk.

Kangaroo paws, 7 images merged and aligned.

This was 12 blended images. I liked the way those background colors came together.
The main composition could use some work. For the most part I'm going to try
and not point shit out. So....

6 blended images.

Apache Plume (Fallugia paradoxa) it's both a plume and a flower... well you can see that can't you?
This was 8 blended images.

Some succulent, 4 image stack.

Cabbage White (Pieris rapae). I would have liked a few more shots here
but overall I'm pretty happy for this butterfly's patience with me. 4 images.

Cropped, close-up, Cabbage White (Pieris rapae). This was a 4 image stack.

Aphids on Narrow-leaved milkweed (Asclepias fascicularis). 4 images blended.

Ladybug (Coccinellidae family of beetles) on yarrow. 3 images blended.

Conejo Buckwheat or Saffron Buckwheat (Eriogonum crocatum). 9 images blended.

Paper wasp on Narrow-leaved milkweed (Asclepias fascicularis). 6 images blended.

Rainbow Lantana, 5 images.

Bush Sunflower, 4 images.

Desert Willow (Chilopsis linearis), 5 images.