Today's walk report: 050821

 That's right, you read right, today I went for a walk. My first walk since the Ides of March, March 15, 2020. One week ago today I was fully vaccinated having duly waited two weeks for my immune system to recognize the covid-19's spike protein as an intruder. I gave it an extra week. Did I feel confident going out maskless into the real world? Not entirely and I did have a mask at the ready in the pocket of my hoodie. 

 My plan was to go out at the crack of dawn, sunrise is currently at 5:57, I left about nine minutes before that. Most of the get out early reasoning was to avoid others. I also wanted to take advantage of 53º-54º temperatures, in part because I wanted to wear the hoodie for the convenience of said pocket. Aside from some very light traffic I only saw one person out on the street, a guy on a bicycle walking his dog. The dog was on a very long retractable leash. I didn't know that at first, from a distance it seemed like the dog was going wherever he wished to go. Their presence encouraged me to cross the street. Crossing that street and turning left on the next block took me on a longer journey than where my head was at before seeing them. I was already thinking to round the corner I was approaching and circle back home, only about a quarter of a mile in. I was suffering a little.

My immediate reaction out the door of the house was a big uh-oh with lower back pain and a nagging ache I've been experiencing for several days in my left calf muscle. Specifically, the gastrocnemius, medial head. My back completely mellowed out a 1/3 of a mile into the walk. The calf muscle went from about a 5.5 to a 6.5 on the E.P. pain scale. Nevertheless, I marched forward. It was a short walk by my standards. 3 to 5 miles is kind of normal, not that anything is normal anymore. The total walk door to door was 1.63 miles or 2.63 km. The mood was melancholy. So was the music.

I tried to take a few photos with my iPhone but I still find using that device as a camera to be both annoying and awkward. I think this photo, on a couple of levels, is the most symbolic, perhaps metaphorical of my renewed effort to get out and walk.

Once Upon a Walk Report - Part Seven

Happy birthday to me. It's a big one too, at least in that there was paperwork involved. I'll leave it at that.

Coincidentally, I finished my photo folder clean-up routine for the first folder from 2016 today. So, happy new year, 2016. So to speak. Here are some selected images.

Female Calypte anna hummingbird. I remember this bird well. She was reliably hanging out in this Calothamnus quadrifidus shrub for quite some time.

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Here she is again, one week later.

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25-30 meters north, her handsome male suitor?

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This is the famous male Selasphorus sasin (Allen's hummingbird) who appeared on the last OUaWR. This is the bird I named, "Rusty". I had a long history with Rusty.

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 Male Calypte anna hummingbird.

 

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I posted a few of these images back in 2016. I looked it up this time because I wanted to make sure I hadn't noticed this before.  The smaller bird is a prairie falcon (Falco mexicanus). It's going after a red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis). What I didn't notice back in 2016 is depicted in the first image. The falcon has its talons embedded in some prey. You can see the tail hanging down clearly. I'm guessing it's a mouse or a rat but could it possibly be a rather large fence lizard? The second picture is only about 11 seconds later and the third is about 10 seconds after that. The falcon had left my frame in both instances. I'm not sure it still has its prey in tow. My guess is. no it does not.

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Male Calypte anna hummingbird. He must've exhaled for the second shot.

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Alyogyne huegelii .

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Meanwhile, back at home. This is what we had to look forward to when we returned from walks. Covid-19 put a huge damper on this experience both in 2020 and this year. In 2020 there were workers coming and going at the houses on both sides of me. Parading back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the house. Coughing and spitting, smoking and yelling. The mask thing was almost non-existent and I was reluctant to go out front for picture taking, maintaining the yard and finally to collect seeds as flowers started dying back in April. The lack of seeds collected in 2020 and a serious lack of rain this past season left the front yard virtually bare of wildflowers. The exception was my nemesis plant, common storksbill (Erodium cicutarium). Not entirely unattractive but it makes up for anything pretty with its invasive nature.

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Here's another view from the right side near the garage wall pointing out to the driveway. There are flagstones in there, mostly obscured.

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Dimorphotheca sinuata and Arroyo lupine.

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Back to the botanical garden. Docken Duck and yeah, I thought that plane was flying a bit low. Burbank airport is about 25 km (15.5 miles) away from where I was standing.

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This young male Calypte anna hummingbird was busy preening and I lucked out catching his tail fanned in the process.

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Male Calypte anna hummingbird in, I believe, the same Calothamnus quadrifidus shrub we started out with.

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That's it for now. The next folder takes me into April of 2016 and contains 8,654 photos. See you later.

Once Upon a Walk Report - Part Six

Easter Sunday, 2021 and I don't have a single bunny picture to share from the latest round of photo folder cleanup. Oh well. Last post I mentioned this was a relatively small folder and might not produce enough images for another OUaWR but I also stated "I don't suppose it matters much how many images are in a post." So, I'm going with that.

This folder went from 11/12/2015 up to 01/03/2016 and contained 3,300 images. I deleted 2,556 images. Also, I'll mention something... Some of what I keep has nothing to do with the quality of the photographs, sometimes I keep images which I would consider crappy pictures but the moment meant something to me. You probably won't see any of those because then I would have to explain. Anyway, here are some of the 744 pictures that survived round six.

This male Calypte anna hummingbird was poising by this banksia flower as though it were a trophy.

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He sure spent a lot of time with it.

 Male Calypte anna, chillin' on an agave.

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 Here's an immature male Calypte anna resting on a Calliandra californica shrub.

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Look at me... I'm a big boy!

 Lucy the cat resting peacefully on the bed, catching a few rays.

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 Another male Calypte anna hummingbird. These two shots were taken less than 1/2 a minute apart. I took a half step, turned slightly counter-clockwise and voila, very different lighting.

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Yes, there were a lot of hummingbird pictures in this folder. I'm pretty sure this is the male Selasphorus sasin (Allen's hummingbird) that I named Rusty, perhaps a short while before I named him (10 days?).

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More of the same bird. These shots were all taken with me inside the canopy of a coral gum tree (Eucalyptus torquata).

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Okay, Easter... Easter Bunny... let me look... This is one of my personal favorite pictures of all time. We happened upon this bunny just at the right moment, He. Looks. So. Busted.

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See you later, see you in 2016 actually for Part Seven.

Once Upon a Walk Report - Part Five

I finished cleaning out another photo folder and decided that's a good enough reason to post selected images. It was a slow process relative to the project as a whole. I deleted almost 8,000 additional images out of 9,534. Anyway, here are some survivors...

This is a white belted ringtail dragonfly (Erpetogomphus compositus). The images from this series of photographs appear to be my only photographic experience with this brand of dragonfly. I know this in part because I had to look the little fellow up. I kept 23 images, mostly because of some rather dramatic changes in the depth of field. This particular image was shot at f16, 1/160 sec.

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 Matilija poppy, or Romneya coulteri.

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Female Allen's hummingbird (Selasphorus sasin). The first three images are the same bird.
 

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Male Calypte anna hummingbird.

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Eriogonum fasciculatum, AKA, California buckwheat.

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 A somewhat evasive Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus).

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 Flame skimmer (Libellula saturata).

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The gopher known as, "Tim". Tim was a lot of fun for awhile. On more than a few occasions he would pop out of one of his holes just as we approached along the sidewalk, seemingly aware it was us. Docken contributed the almonds. Tim liked almonds.

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It might be, Crassula perforata.

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Male Calypte anna hummingbird. As you can see he's at that awkward age where his iridescent feathering is just starting to come in.

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Flame skimmer (Libellula saturata).

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Northern mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos). This is the first scientific name of a bird I remember learning. When I was in the 6th grade I spent a rather inordinate amount of time studying a Peterson, Field Guide to Birds of Western North America (I believe). I was mostly fascinated with the drawings. For whatever reason, the scientific name stuck with me. The genus, Mimus : mimic : imitator and polyglottos : polyglot : multilingual. 

I can't tell male or female from the photo. Typically the male is slightly larger than the female but the most telling distinctions are in their behavior. For one, the males are more prolific in their singing behavior. You know... it's a sin to kill a mockingbird. 

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Here's Eric Duck once again. He's watching me. Docken Duck is lying in a similar fashion right in front of him. He's protecting her.

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Female Selasphorus sasin.

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The current photo folder being scoured only contains 3,300 images, which is relatively low volume. I'm not sure why that is. If it doesn't yield enough suitable images for a post I might choose to carry into the following folder which contains 9,473 images. If so, it's probably going to be awhile before I post again. I don't suppose it matters much how many images are in a post but there's also a sense of accomplishment going on here. I'd like to have this little project completed. Part of the point is to back up images I care to keep onto a drive that I'm not getting warnings about. So far I've backed up about 11,000 images. Once finished I'm estimating I'll have thrown away somewhere around 155,000 images and will have kept about 25,000. Give or take. Here's a little photography tip: if you want to take good photographs start by taking a lot of pictures.