Today's walk report: 120114, rainy days and Mondays

Monday, December 1, 2014.

It looks like rain, fact is, it's been raining on and off for a couple of nights and a day now and we've got a pretty decent storm coming in tomorrow--but it looks like the fringes are already here and it's already dark outside. So... no walk today and instead I bring you these images from the last couple of weeks. These photos were taken from 112114 to 113014 and are, for the most part, randomly ordered.

A hoverfly enjoys an early bloom, Eschscholzia californica (California poppy).

Yarrow, died back.

A black-chinned hummingbird on Aloe maculata.

An empty Alyogyne huegelii seedpod.

This black phoebe (Sayornis nigricans) was fluttering between this desert willow and the pond, taking a bath below.

Don't be fooled the spines are in there.

Female green lynx spider.

A graveyard for palo verde flowers.

Some cotyledons.

Vanessa cardui, near the front door.

Vanessa cardui on lantana.

Vanessa cardui on lantana.

This was a great macro find, well, it was for the photo aspect... not so much for setting up the shot.

This is what you see when you approach this wormy cactus. I was both surprised  and excited to see just how much beauty was up close.

The unfortunate side of getting down on the ground to take pictures of the tiny pink flowers was this... It was buried unseen in the gravel on your left. I put most of my weight onto this with my right palm. I then hollered for the lovely nurse Docken to assist. Both going in and pulling them out, these spines were shockingly painful.

Senna bicapsularis.

Senna bicapsularis.

More tiny spines.

Water flower.

Yellow rumped warbler in a desert willow.

Hairlike spines.

This was another delightful surprised once view with a Canon 60mm macro lens. One could barely tell there were flowers here with the naked eye and it was certainly a pleasant surprise to see how pretty they were. I believe the plant is some type of sedum.

Throw in a tiny black ant (Monomorium minimum) for measure. These worker black ants measure 1-2mm.

We ended up walking in the rain in Sunday, 113014 with cameras, primarily to get the above photo of the wormy cactus. The forecast for the day had called for light to no rain, we ended up with .66" which was .16" more than we had so far for the season.

Meanwhile, it's now noon, 120214 and it has been raining since about 6 am, already adding an additional .5" of rain and this is supposed to continue into tomorrow. We need it badly, unfortunately, we don't really have the resources to harvest the rainwater.

Today's walk report: 010514

For the birds.*


Yesterday I bitched a little about my left ankle hurting toward the end of my walk. I want to thank everyone for the cards, letters and kind messages you left, it's very heartening to know so many people care.

I realized later what happened. It was much earlier in the day, I merely misstepped on a flagstone in my front yard and came down on the outside of my foot thus tweaking my ankle. I felt that, it hurt a little but I didn't imagine it resulted in a slight sprain. Why it didn't manifest as a problem until the end of my walk is puzzling but that's the only thing I could imagine having caused this and I saw my ankle was indeed slightly swollen when I went to take a shower last night. Anyway, I put a FUTURO™ Wrap Around Ankle Support on it and was fine for my walk today.

I didn't push it though.

It was warm and windy, there was nothing exciting happening. The walk was great though and so was the music.

I kept going without much hesitation and popped off a few mediocre pics of birds.

 Dark-Eyed Junco.

Common Starling (Sturnus vulgaris) and I'll assume the rest in the row are variations on that basic theme.

That's about it.

*

Today's walk report: 121513

Nooner.

Yesterday I got out late and reported today I was going to make up for that with a much earlier than normal walk time so I could get some decent photos. I accomplished 1/2 of that goal having left the house at 12:33 PM. On the photos I didn't fair so well. I also decided to lug a tripod. I don't have the lightest tripod and at 5 lb strapped across my back it was feeling a lot heavier in no time. The point of the tripod was to shoot a little video just as a test (testing too lugging around a tripod for over 7 km) and the best candidate for that was green lynx spider #1 and her babies. However... it was way too windy. If I had spent a lot more time than the 6 minutes I ended up spending I probably could have put something decent together. Realize too that about the only time the spiders move is when they are provoked. Most of the spider activity in this short sloppy edit is caused by me blowing on the spiders. They knew the difference between me blowing and the wind blowing. The audio track was intentionally removed.

Here's the link on YouTube, blogger refuses to recognize the URL. It's hardly worth watching but if you do go fullscreen. At least it's only 36 seconds

Before I got to the spiders, as I was approaching the garden, I saw these two red-tailed hawk circling above but unfortunately I was on a walkway between buildings and wasn't able to follow them for a closer shot.

I believe this is a Dark-eyed Junco.

Somebody with too much money making an offbeat approach toward Burbank airport.

Another failed effort following an American Kestrel from street lamp to street lamp never getting quite close enough before the final flyaway.

Music-wise I listened to King Crimson, Live in Mexico City recorded in 1996. It was so much fun I'm going to watch KC on DVD, Eyes Wide Open, 2003 for my evening's entertainment. The link isn't meant to be an advertisement for Amazon, I'm merely referencing the media.

Thanks for joining me on my walk today.