Hacked

This is not about computer problems, but of things I've seen in my neighborhood park recently. A year ago, we went in to lockdown and this park was pretty much my world for a couple of months. The last photo I took before lockdown was on March 11th and the next photo I took while out on a walk was March 22nd. It was shortly after that date that I started noticing the birds and butterflies in my neighborhood and got out my big camera and started documenting them. This particular park was where a goodly amount of my shots were taken.

In the past week or so, "gardeners" came through and pruned the trees in the park. Please not I put gardeners in quotes, because in my opinion, they did a hack job and I believe the city is just paying them one and done for this job. It's rather obvious that the trees in this park don't get pruned on a regular basis, based upon how they were pruned this time. If you look closely, you can actually see the rubber band that was used when this tree was younger to hold it to the stake. No one was watching and maintaining this tree during the early years and the branch grew around the rubber band. Now that's a week spot on the tree and it's probably a good thing that the branch was cut because it probably would have broken later on. I get it with the trees as the city's tax dollars only stretch so far and this is probably a cheaper fix than to high a full time gardener for each park. So let's just pay someone to trim back the trees every five years or so. What worries me about this is how much is this going to affect the bird habitat that has been established over the past couple of years? 

On my walks recently, I've been able to pick out the calls of the spotted towhees, a bird that I got several good shots of last year, so they're still around. The scrub jays are here as you can always recognize their calls as well. What I haven't noticed yet is the return of the Western bluebird or the Northern Mockingjay. Of course, if my first photo after lockdown was taken until March 22nd, then there's still time for them to come back. This particular shot of a Western bluebird was taken on May 11th. I just hope the habitat they were enjoying this past year wasn't so totally disrupted that they don't come back. I guess time will tell on that one.

Trust me when I write that I will continue to document the birds in the neighborhood as they make their returns from parts unknown.

Keeping busy

It's the end of the month (wow, it almost felt like a normal month) and it's time, once again for P.J.'s monthly photo blogging challenge. This month's theme was keeping busy and the tough part of this month was to narrow down my selections to just five photos and I actually cheated a little bit on one of them since it's a collage, but you'll see why I did it in the story. This is also the 1 year anniversary of my retirement of teaching. May 31st last year was my last day on the job and ironically, I was much busier in the early part of this first year than I am now, but then again, you could say it's a different kind of busy. Here's my five photos interpreting the theme of Keeping Busy.

1. Environmental art

I viewed part of this theme as not necessarily all me keeping busy, but seeing how others are also coping with this. I go on photo walks on a daily basis around my neighborhood and one of the neighbors just up the street from us has been creating some environmental art as a way to keep busy during this strange time we're having. She walks around the neighborhood looking for stones that she can use in her art projects. She told me she has a mental image of what she wants to create and then goes out looking for stones to help her create her image. She glues the stones to a tile and inlays the tile along the sidewalk in front of her house. This is the third of about 7 or 8 she has created over the course of the last month or so. There is a piece depicting a couple canoeing, a child holding a bunch of helium balloons and a couple backpacking. The backpacking piece just showed up this morning and she has room for about 3 or 4 more pieces along this part of her front yard. Since they live on a corner, I'm hoping she continues with this around the other side of their house.

2. Cairns

Another house near us has created cairns using their existing rocks, at least I'm assuming they're only using their existing rocks. But as you can see, they have a lot of rocks in their front yard in which to choose, so I think I'm safe in assuming this. The cairns actually have changed a number of times over the course of the month. I suspect that others in the neighborhood either are attempting to add to the cairns, or are just deliberately toppling them over. Either way, I've noticed that they take different heights and positions, so the owners don't seem to be deterred by their cairns changing shapes. They also have a rather large collection of gnomes and buddhas in the front yard, many of which are also balanced on some of these stones. You can see examples of both of these in the background of my second shot.

3. Angry Bird©

About three weeks ago, I noticed this Angry Bird© plush toy appear in our local park. I figured it would last a day or two before someone would pick it up and take off with it, but it kept showing up every single day in a different part of the park. Eventually, it made its way out to the front of the community center, where I figured, for sure, it will disappear as soon as a worker sees it just lying amongst the shrubbery. Nope, it continued to be busy and move around and I started documenting its movements as it spent each day in a different part of the park. Several times, I thought it was gone, but it showed up again, or I'd just missed it the last time I was out walking in the park. The park is a fairly large park and there's lots of nooks and crannies in which to hide something like this, but someone or several someones are having fun kicking it around. I guess that's why it's probably an Angry Bird©.

I thought about taking it myself and making a photo journey of it as I wandered about the park, but my wife convinced me that the spirit of the Angry Bird© was that it needed to just move naturally, by others, not manipulated by me, so I left it for others to move around. The only manipulation I did with the bird was to place it upright before taking its photo.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to spot it for the last four days and I'm worried that it might have flown the coop. It's gone MIA previously since I first noticed it in the park, but this has been the longest period of time that I haven't been able to see it somewhere in the park. Ironically, the last time I did see it was back in the far reaches of the park, that very few people go to, so I don't think it was regular foot traffic doing it in. There is a day care on the other side of the fence from where I last saw it so perhaps someone thought it was from there and tossed it over the fence. I went and looked over the fence this morning to see if I see it, but it didn't appear to be there. Hopefully, it'll show up shortly in another part of the park, but if it doesn't, I hope whoever took it will give it a good home.

4. Birds

In this post, I talked about the different kinds of birds I've been noticing in the neighborhood. I've been keeping myself busy rediscovering my DSLR and the main subject over the past couple of months have been birds. The same park where the plush toy had been found is also a great area to go bird watching. I discovered why one day while I wasn't in the park, but the day that I took this shot of a western bluebird. This shot was taken in the front yard of a house that abuts to the rear end of the park. On the park side is a nice fifth of a mile trail that winds in and out of some citrus and juniper trees. Five times around and you've walked a mile and probably seen a lot of nature.

Still, I kept thinking there seemed to be an inordinate amount of birds back in this area. Then I started noticing a peacock call. Hmmmm. So as I was out walking, I spotted the bluebird and got several good shots of it and the owner of the house came out and we had a nice conversation about birds in general. And yeah, he has a peacock in his back yard and so spreads seed around quite generously, which attracts other birds including the western bluebird pair.

So because of the neighbor keeping busy taking care of his own flock, I've been kept busy taking wildlife photos. We sort of have a symbiotic relationship, although he's not really getting much from me, but I seem to benefitting greatly. As noted in my other post, my overall knowledge of birds has increased in the last couple of months and I've been able to up my photography game as well. It's keeping me busy and I'll take that. Walking around outside is much better that sitting home inside on your butt all day long.

5. Speaking of butts

This particular nesting site is in the opposite direction of the park where I take most of my bird shots, but the acorn woodpeckers holing up here some to like this particular tree. There are a couple of different nests inside this tree, not all of which are acorn woodpeckers. 

Over the course of my many daily walks, I'd see the woodpeckers  flying to and fro from other trees back over to this one, but could never spot where their nest was until one day a week ago, when I came upon the tree from a different angle than what I'd normally been approaching the tree. That made all the difference in the world. I watched one of the two parents swoop down from a neighboring palm tree, alight on the trunk of the tree and then quickly disappear inside the hole. I feel fortunate that I was actually able to get this shot, but those two parental birds were busy flying here and there taking care of their young. I guess it's a concentrated burst of parenting as opposed to a longer period that we do over the childhood of our own offspring.

And there you have it, my five photos interpreting the theme Keeping Busy. Please stop by P.J.'s blog and check out some of the other photographer's interpretation of the same theme.

My World

I don't participate every month is P.J.'s Monthly photo blog, but this month's theme (Your World) made for a fairly easy set of photos. I know I really should attempt them every month, so I'll try to do better in the coming months. I've picked up my DSLR again since I've been in "shelter and place" and I have a lot of photos to choose from this month. I think I could probably come up with at least 10 different shots, just from my walks around the neighborhood over the past month, but here's my 5 that captures my world this month.

1. Weathervane

I'm a sucker for cool things like sundials and weathervanes. This particular weathervane is located on top of a house north of me, but in the same general neighborhood. Since I don't take the same route, I don't see this every day, but I noticed it early in the month and thought I really should take a photo of it, since it represents some interesting architecture, especially for Southern California. You don't see too many of these and I like that it gives off a New England kind of vibe. The only give away is the palm tree in the lower left hand corner of the shot. I could have edited that out, but that would have meant cropping some of the cupola out and I wanted that to be the main focus of the shot, and so the palm tree remains.

I remembered the next time I was out to take a photo of it, but the quality of the iPhone shot wasn't what I considered good enough, so I ended up throwing those shots away. I don't take the DSLR out every day, so the next time I walked around the neighborhood with the DSLR, I made sure to walk up that particular street. Because the weather had changed, we had some clouds in the sky which made for a more pleasing background to the shot.

2. Amusement Park

Twenty years ago, I was really into Roller Coaster Tycoon and particularly, Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 (RCT2). The game is one of many out on the market that allows you to play amusement park scenarios, while creating an amusement park, maintaining a budget, building roller coasters of various kinds and making sure your peeps are happy. The thing about Tycoon 2 that made it so good as you could also create buildings into your park and really make your park look like the real deal, with interesting architecture and themed areas.

There are other programs out on the market now, but there's also OpenRCT2 which emulates RCT2 perfectly as long as you have the original disks, however it also comes with enhancements that allow you to play in Sandbox mode. In other words, instead of playing scenarios, you can just create your own landscape and build your own park. Needless to say, I've been playing a lot of OpenRCT2 the last couple of months and this is a screen shot of a flying roller coaster (one where the peeps lay down and it makes it feel like they're flying) that I built in one of my sandbox mode games.

3. Family FaceTime

Our immediate family is spread out with some in the Bay Area of California and the rest of us down here in Southern California. Under normal circumstances, I probably would have visited my daughter when she had her birthday at the end of last month, but couldn't due to shelter in place, so we FaceTimed. That has grown into a weekly event so that everyone can touch bases with each other and enjoy each others' company. My daughter suggested that we have weekly themes. Last week, it was crazy hats, this week, it was Toga. It's amazing what a couple of actual olive branches from the tree in the back yard and a sheet will do to help you win the theme for the week. 

This image got posted on Facebook earlier this week and everyone has had a good laugh at my expense, but it was worth it. I got my wife to smile/laugh in the background of the photo as well, so it's all good.

4. Ornithology

I don't claim to be an expert on birds, but I do have an interest in them and with spring here, there are lots of birds out and about, probably more due to the lack of people out and about. If the theme for the month had been birds, I would have been able to have five different kinds of birds with ease. I have a book that was published by the National Geographic Society entitled Field Guide to the Birds of North America and it has been quite helpful in letting me identify most of the birds I've seen while out on walks around the neighborhood. This spring, I've seen California Towhees, Spotted Towhees, a Cooper's hawk, hummingbirds, scrub jays, two different kinds of sparrows, two different kinds of finches, and several Western Bluebirds, such as this one who posed ever so nicely on a branch in the park just north of my house. 

I'm pretty sure the Spotted Towhees and the Bluebirds are both nesting in some trees in the park. A friend of mine says that I've been lucky with the Spotted Towhees as they are usually heard and not seen, but I've been able to spot them on two different occasions. There are more than just a couple of bluebirds in the park. I've seen at least three different ones, which is why I'm fairly certain they're nesting somewhere in the park as well.

5. Earth Day

This year was the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day. I was in 6th grade at the time, so yeah, I know I'm old. Once again, under ordinary circumstances, I probably would have celebrated in some other way than sheltering in place, but there's not much I could do at this particular time. And so I take photos.

Besides birds, the insects are also out in force, particularly, the ladybugs. Insects and creepy crawlies give me different sorts of challenges, as unlike birds, you can usually get quite close to insects. I've been using a variety of lenses to take photos of ladybugs, honeybees, bumblebees, butterflies and other assorted insects and arachnids. This particular shot I used my 250 zoom macro lens to get up close and personal with a couple of bugs doing what nature intended them to do. I'm very pleased with the focus on this particular shot.

And that, my friends, is my interpretation of the theme, "Your World" for P.J.'s Monthly Photo Blogging challenge. Please click on the link and see how other people interpreted the theme of their world. As always, please feel free to comment. I won't bite.

Bluebirds

We have several kinds of blue colored birds here in Southern California. The most common one that I've seen where we live is the California Scrub Jay, a brilliantly blue colored bird with a raucous screech. They inhabit the foothills of our local mountains and are found in abundance. As you move upslope in the mountains, you'll start to encounter the Stellar's Jay, which is similar to the Scrub Jay, except that the Stellar's Jay has a crest on its head and its head is colored all black.

A couple of days ago, I was wandering around in the park just north of my house, keeping my social distance from others enjoying the nice spring weather. I heard first, then saw this pair of Western Bluebirds. There were actually two pairs of them and I ended up getting shots of both females and one of the males. There are three types of bluebirds in the United States, Eastern, Western, and Mountain bluebirds. Eastern and Western are similar looking, but the Mountain bluebirds are almost totally blue, which is how I knew these were Western bluebirds because of their orange tinged belly feathers. I was able to get several really good shots of the females, but this is the best one I could get of the male as he was playing hard to get with my camera. Sometimes that happens when you're dealing with the natural world.