Today's walk report: 110813

Sometimes it's good to alternate shoes when walking or running...

Other times it's not. Today it was not. Oh well.

This could come in handy for someone? I'll tell you one thing, squirrels love to get a hold of t-paper for their nests.

Not much to write about. I mentioned this once before, for anyone tuned into the continuing saga of Green Lynx Spider #1 and her nest, I'll show you something.

Here she is just above and slightly behind her nest...

and here's her reaction when I blow slightly on her and the nest.

Quite the good mom protecting her future babies. Hopefully she's not one of those insects that eats a bunch of them after they hatch.

Leucadendron. It looked nice and I knew I wasn't getting a lot of pictures today.

Tagetes lemmonii, aka Copper Canyon daisy.

Sunset and a little sunsetting story. I was walking around the hill shortly before this. I went down to the teacher's parking lot doing a big circle, top of the hill and wound up getting a soda from a vending machine. A Mountain Dew if you must know. Anyway, as I was coming down an art teacher was driving up past me and waved. I thought, look at this, is she flirting with me? So I waved back and smiled. As I rounded the parking area pointing in the direction she was headed I suddenly realized she wasn't waving at all but was merely blocking the blinding setting sun from her view. My ego--shattered.

The glow? There was a fire somewhere. Last thing I'd ever watch on TV would be local news but I smelled smoke earlier and the air looking north was pretty darn brown.

Today's walk report: 110113

I spent most of my day waiting for the next round of watering the grounds here. I put 2 lb of wildflower seed down on Monday and today we hit a high of 87.4º, yes that's right on November 1. So I was out about every 1.4 hours with a hose front, back and side yards. You don't want to saturate but you need to keep the soil moist and I'm hoping I did OK because when I got back from my walk not long after sunset the ground closet to the street seemed pretty dry.

Onto the walk. I got to this house about .5 km in and everybody here was gathered together along side where you see the the camper, only the camper wasn't there. This is a shot from Google Earth. The woman who owns the house stopped me, she was also on the phone, she asked me if I had seen anything. Unbelievable as it sounds someone stole that camper in broad daylight today. The thing is about 20' long. It's frightening really. I hope they catch the culprits.

The egret was fishing for crawdads again when I got to the garden.

I was a little amused at this catch because she (that's my assumption) got this one and immediately threw it back. Maybe it was too big?

In other news, green lynx spider # 2 appears to have completed her mission with no signs of her or her babies, just an empty nest.

and green lynx spider # 1 continues to protect her nest and coddle her unhatched eggs. I thought it was really interesting how she has tied up those four leaf fingers to protect the eggs and her from the wind. Nature is brilliant.

Thanks again for coming along!

Today's walk report: 102013

Creepy, crawly things.

Yesterday I posted this image of a new green lynx spider I found in the garden and I mentioned her nest behind (assuming it was the female and not a stay at home dad).  Today on the way in I started thinking... you didn't really take a very good look at the nest yesterday.

Wow... This is shooting 115mm with a Canon 500D close up attachment. Those spiders are pretty tiny.

These girls were way too big to be doing this... not too old, just too big. That's a busy street too.

Sunset crew, always here.

This red-tailed too, we've seen before.

Back to creepy, crawly.

Today's walk report: 101913

Another ridiculously un-fall like October day.

Topping out at 93.2º. This is simply not right. Nevertheless, I got outside and did some yard work well before it got hot. My sister came by this morning and among other things brought me a hula hoe so I had to try it out and do some weeding.

I'm not exactly sure where the rest of the day went however. By 4:30 PM I was trying to get out the door to walk and from camera data it looks like I was on my way about 4:50.

There was this guy 300 or so meters in. Right over my head and not really giving me time to get the camera ready. Turkey vultures... huge, ugly birds, still impressive.

There is a marked increase in litter as I approach the college campus but some of it is happy litter.

Onto the campus and at the baseball field.

Just last weekend I thought about this egret and that it seemed about time for its return and what do you know... I'm sure this is the same bird I've photographed the last two years. However this time it didn't seem as bothered by my presence as it was in the past. It was also quite busy hunting and enjoying crawdads from the pond.

I spent a total of about 7 minutes watching and taking pictures. I think I saw it consume at least 6 crawdads in that amount of time.

Meanwhile a White Crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys) also looks on.

This is not the same Green Lynx Spider I've been taking pictures of the last several weeks. This is a different one about 50 meters from my regular subject. Notice the "nest" behind it. Had I not noticed that I don't think I would have ever seen the spider.

A giant shadow for a scrawny fence lizard.

Close up...

It was a really nice 8.79 km walk. It felt wonderful. Thanks for coming along.