Today's walk report: 120914

The final leg of the 2014 tour, the year really seemed to fly by. I'm extremely grateful for the companionship I've had since February and am looking forward to each and every future day with my girl, Docken.

Here are photos from last weekend's walks...

I've been trying to get a really nice picture of this black-chinned hummingbird for some time now. These aren't those. Considering this behavior and the current condition of the local botanical garden (flowers are few, moving into winter) it might be awhile before I catch him at plant level again. Anyway, the fly catching thing shown here is something I suspect most people don't really see. Camera data says I'm 28.5 meters (31 yards) away, a lot of that being up, and even at 300 mm the flies aren't too visible until cropping in. Notice the bird's darting tongue in the 2nd image.

Eschscholzia californica (California poppy)

Green lynx spider (Peucetia viridans)

I spent an inordinate amount of time following around this clouded sulphur (Colias philodice) and barely got this shot off before he took off again.

The 2nd landing was much longer, having parked himself in the leaf of a western redbud (Cercis occidentalis) tree.

Buds beginning on the ever popular chandelier plant (Kalanchoe delagoensis).

Unknown succulent.

Unknown succulent.

Yes, we had rain, quite a bit considering the SoCal drought situation. We clocked in at just over 2" from 11/30-12/04 with more on the way. The rain brought mushrooms everywhere.

This is a blue marine (Leptotes marina) it's one of my favorite butterflies to photograph. They fly in such a frenzied manner and are quite small (wing Span: 7/8 - 1 1/8 inches (2.2 - 2.9 cm) so it's difficult to see how pretty they are until they land and that's not often or typically for very long. I discovered in this report that open wings is pretty much just a mating thing and a glimpse of their iridescent wings is rare. The plant is Westringia, 'Blue Gem.'

New flowers from the Tagetes lemmonii bushes, perhaps this will lure the hummingbird back.

I'll probably have a report or two before the close of 2014 but just in case, happy holidays whoever you are!

Today's walk report: 092713

Friday, 5:30 P.M., out the door and you know what that means?

It means people are insane. At 5:30 the people who are still on surface streets are either desperately trying to get on the freeway, they recently got off the freeway or, by whatever route they needed to take, are in close proximity to home and that first beverage they are so desperate to have after a long and trying work week. Am I exaggerating? A little but according to a 2012 Gallup poll, Americans' drinking habits held steady in the past year, with 66% saying they consume alcohol and drinkers consuming just over four alcoholic drinks per week, on average. Beer continues to be Americans' preferred drink, although wine remains a close second, with liquor favored by 22%.

By the way, alcoholics are chronic liars so if they were polled that skews the results immensely.

But aside from that people just want to get home and do whatever they do on weekends and that makes walking amongst them seriously challenging at times. Just take my word for it, everyone operating a motor vehicle on Friday evening between the hours of 5:00 and 7:00 P.M. is driving whacked out of their skull.

Even old ladies, so just watch it, ok?

Anyway, aside from second guessing drivers and dodging vehicles it was a nice walk onto the local college campus with not much going on in the garden or elsewhere.

More of the same old on hummingbirds but I have a confession to make about some of my hummingbird pictures and my probably mis-identifying several Rufous hummingbirds (Selasphorus rufus)  as Allen's hummingbirds (Selasphorus sasin) from time to time. So I'm going to try and get that right. My "best of" the hummingbirds w.r. is here in case you missed it.  Most of the hummingbirds there which have tan feathering are Rufous, not Allen's.

For now on these I'm going to say both are Selasphorus rufus. A few problems I'm having are, doing this shit on the fly, not really caring that much and also other people mis-ID all the time so I can't always trust reference images. I do ultimately like to be accurate so I'll try to figure this out more precisely soon.

Then there was another one of these guys. Much more robust than the last one. This is another creature I was unsure of but now I'm positive it's a green lynx spider (Peucetia viridans). The plant might be Butterfly bush (Buddleja davidii). I checked with my expert plant advisor on this one before and came up empty. I get really accurate on this stuff when there's a sign posted in front of the plant. The guy that maintains the garden told me someone stole the sign making machine some years back and they apparently couldn't budget for a new one.

It was windy by the way, getting this close with stuff swaying isn't the easiest.

That's all folks. Thanks, as always, for joining me on my walk. If you have a positive ID on something I screwed up on, or for any other reason, please feel free to comment.

Today's walk report: 082413

Eric and the arachnid.

There was a young couple acting sort of lovey-dovey in the garden today and it kind of cramped my style. Not much happening on the photo front either except for this spider find. I unfortunately lost it after I moved the bog sage (Salvia uliginosa) spire around a little too much.

My guess on this would be a green lynx spider (Peucetia viridans) but I'm open to alternate suggestions. It seems to have most of the qualifications except... it's not very green, at least not as green as those I'm seeing online. 'Could be another type of lynx spider though. Also, it appears as though it might have been carrying some eggs, at least in the 1st shot. I dunno... you decide, I'm tired.

EF-S60mm f/2.8 Macro on all of these.

A little chromatic aberration, yeah I see it.

This one is a 6 image focus stack. The image was vertical. It was too goofy to look at like that.

Lastly, a red-eared slider turtle I thought was going to continue on right up my pants leg. While very accustomed to people (maybe too much so), they don't usually do that.