I Spy with my Eye

I got a grace period on writing this blog entry since P.J. posted his photo challenge for the month of February a little bit late this month. I'd checked it out and I had taken enough photos last month to get something together, so here goes. Last month's challenge was, I Spy with my Eye, a pretty broad theme, so just about anything goes.

1. Sunset

While I can't control what the power companies hang in the back yard easement, I can enjoy a beautiful sunset. I was standing in the kitchen looking to the east thinking, what the heck is that glow outside? I decided to check out the view to the west and was greeted with this. I called to everyone in the house to get out and check this out and then took a couple of shots. Should have taken the shot first, then called to everyone, but it still turned out nice even though it was already fading by the time I took the shot.

2. Covid Hair

Most of my friends are well aware that I've been growing my hair out since the pandemic started, not because I thought I'd start a different look, but more that I didn't feel like walking into a place with lots of other people while a disease was possibly about. More than likely, I'll get my hair cut once I've received my vaccinations, but until then, my hair continues to grow. This shot was taken on my birthday last month, 4 days after I'd passed one year without getting my haircut. Once I'd started embracing a short hair look, I figured my "long hair" days were gone and never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that the longest my hair would ever be would be after I turned 63.

3. You Make Me Happy

For those of you following along, one of the pleasures I've gotten this past year is viewing some of the artwork of talented people and the randomness of finding painted rocks out and about. I spotted this rock along a loop trail in the wilderness park north of my house while I was out cleaning up the trail. In reality, I probably should have picked this one up, but decided to leave it for others to enjoy. I also knew that eventually, it would disappear and I was correct. The next time I hiked that particular section of trail, the rock was gone, either picked up by rangers who would have considered it trash, or by another collector of painted rocks. 

4. Strengthening mind and body

This shot was taken on one of the many trails in the foothills north of my house. I love to hike on these trails just to clear my thoughts, get in shape and think about possible spots where I could hide a new geocache. Right down that fire road to the right about 200 feet or so is an old geocache, hidden by another person, that I found many moons ago, so I can't hide anything here, but that's not the point. I got out, got some good exercise and had a great view. And for those of you who are curious, the mountain on the right is the taller of the two peaks. Cucamonga Peak tops out at slightly over 8,800 feet above sea level.

5. It's too early

This photo was taken on February 23rd. It's the middle of winter, for crying out loud, and snakes should not be out and about at this time. But as climate change happens, we can expect to see this more and more unless we wake up and realize that there are things we can do to mitigate what could be a global crisis. I guess this is also a public service announcement, especially for people who live in Southern California, that you should always be careful when you're out on a hike or looking for geocaches, since we know these creatures could be active at any time. This gopher snake is pretty harmless, but I've seen rattlesnakes out and about this winter too.

And there you have it, my take on the theme I Spy with my Eye for P.J.'s photo challenge for this month. Click on the link to see his and other people's interpretation of this month's theme.

Change and Hope

It's hard to believe that another month has passed and it's time to start photo blogging about P.J.'s photo blogging challenge for the month of January - Change and Hope. There might be some political commentary in this one, so if you disagree that's fine, but we'll probably have to agree to disagree. The first two photos fall into the change category, in my mind and the last three photos fall into the hope category.

1 & 2. Change

Both of these shots don't seem like there's much change associated with them, except when you consider that both were taken in the middle of January. In years gone by, the thought of seeing sunflowers blooming on January 10th would have been unheard of, with the exception of inside a hothouse, but out in a garden somewhere? The same thing goes for seeing not one, but two different snakes slithering out and about in the middle of January. They should be underground, hibernating the cold months away.

What can we do about it? Lots of things, but we really need to think about this on a long term scale. To blindly say, maybe we are, and maybe we aren't affecting the climate isn't good enough anymore in my opinion. What we need to do is to further invest in alternative energy sources, ones that don't have as big of a carbon footprint as our current energy usage is. Can we get there immediately? Obviously, no, but every little step in that direction will help. 

3. Hope

As noted above, the last three photos I have are centered around hope in my mind, with the first of the three sort of a bridge between the two different themes. Once again, a changing climate is allowing us to see butterflies out and about more frequently in colder months. Granted, I love seeing butterflies, but not when they're not supposed to be out. However, this Common Buckeye butterfly gives me hope for the resiliency of the species. As you can see, it's pretty battered and bruised, but it obviously hadn't given up on its life mission. It was still flying around, either looking for food, or looking for a mate so it could pass on its genetic material to the next generation.

4. Hope

Those of you who know me, know I've been obsessed with painted rocks. I started seeing them during the spring and summer of this year while I was out on walks. There's a local artist who has been planting a variety of different kinds of painted rocks around the neighborhood. Either they've finally gotten bored with that activity and have moved on to something else, or perhaps they're getting discouraged that many of their pieces of art keep disappearing. This is one of the reasons why I've been photographically documenting them when I see them, so there's some kind of permanent record of them existing. I also thought this new one I spotted this month had a great message that fit in with the hope theme.

5. Hope

Finally, with the vaccine starting to roll out, there's hope for the future again. Hope that I'll be able to get back on the hiking trail with longer hikes and more camping. I've been staying very close to home, not spending any overnighters anywhere since a year ago February and I'm hoping, at least, that that aspect of my life can return to a semblance of normal. I have a couple of backpacking excursions planned over the next couple of years and I hope I can get back on the trail soon. I also want to label my posts more than just with the California tag.

Well, there you have it. My take on the them of Change and Hope. As always, I welcome your comments. Please click on the link above to see how other people interpreted the same theme.

Letters

I seriously thought about not writing a blog for P.J.'s photo blogging challenge for this month. Those of you who follow this blog know that I enjoy photography and I didn't really want to post five photos of exactly the same thing (you'll understand when you get to my last photo here). So then I thought of a different way I could present the theme of Letters, without having to show a letter in each photo, and so you're getting an entry similar in style to how Sesame Street does it's letters, or how kindergarteners learn what kind of things begin with what kinds of letters. So here's my interpretation of the theme Letters for the month of July.

G is for Geocoins and Geocaching

Most of you know I like to geocache, but I haven't been getting out a lot during this pandemic. I like to geocache with others and that isn't really feasible at the moment, so I get out when I can, but I don't like caching nearly as much when I'm caching alone, and so I'm not caching as much.

I do, however, still enjoy talking about geocaching and participating in groups, such as the Facebook group, Worldwide Geocaching. That group  has weekly giveaways and these geocoins were offered as a giveaway about a month ago. I entered and my name was essentially pulled out of a hat and I ended up winning them. Since they have letters on them as well, I decided to use this as my initial photo for this essay.

C is for Comet

This past month, Comet Neowise (C/2020 F3) has been all the rage and I've been seeing some pretty spectacular photos of the comet on the internet. Sadly, because I live in an area (Southern California) that is heavily light polluted, I wasn't able to get really spectacular shots, but we did go out several times while the comet was closest to the Earth and I was able to get a couple of shots that I felt showed it and the tail. 

I'm usually not much in for filters on Instagram, but I decided to see if any of the filters there would enhance the shot enough that you could see the tail a little bit better. As it turned out, a couple of the filters did, so when I posted this shot to my Instagram account, the tail was much more visible than had I just posted the standard image I'd take that night.

Locating the comet was the toughest part of the shot. We used an app entitled Sky Guide, which allows you to search for particular things in the night sky and once we figured out approximately where the comet would be, I aimed the camera on a tripod up and took an initial shot. The comet was difficult to see with the naked eye, but the prolonged exposure of the camera allowed us to see the tail, even if we couldn't see it just standing there. From there on, it was taking different 30 second exposures until I felt I'd gotten a good enough image that I could post somewhere.

W is for Wall

A couple of weeks ago, at 4 o'clock in the morning, our wall separating our yard from our neighbor's yard fell over. Now we're in the process of getting a contractor to fix the wall. The wall was 60 years old, built to 1959 building codes and wouldn't have passed code today. Our contractor is going to repair the wall, including upgrading it so that it will meet builder's code for today. Once repaired, we won't have this nice hole between our two properties. At the least the part that was the retaining wall of the wall did was it was supposed to do. Only the part above the retaining wall fell, so that's a good thing.

H is for humor

I started to put this down as S is for Squirrel, but when I posted this on Instagram and Facebook, everyone said it looked exactly like the squirrel was fishing. Believe it or not, I hadn't really seen that aspect of the shot. I was more thrilled that I'd seen a native Gray Squirrel as opposed to the invasive Eastern Fox Squirrel that seems so prevalent in this area right now. Now that I look at the shot, it does look like this little guy is fishing. The only thing that would make this even better would have been if there had been a cobweb on the end of the little branch.

R is for Rocks

Since the pandemic started and we've been on shelter in place, I haven't taken many hikes, but I have done a lot of walking around the neighborhood. There have been several things that I've noticed that are not wildlife related and one of them have been these painted rocks.

Most of the rocks that I've noticed have a certain style to them indicating there's one particular local artist who is enjoying creating them and distributing them around throughout the neighborhood. Some of the rocks have disappeared, but many of them have stayed providing a bit of whimsy to people who walk by or encouragement in these trying times. I felt this one was rather appropriate in which to end this particular essay. Please stay safe dear readers.

And that does it for this month's photo blog. As stated above, I didn't want to post only rocks, so I chose to interpret it a different kind of way. I hope you enjoyed my interpretation of Letters. As always, please feel free to comment. I usually respond within a day and I promise I won't bite.

This is why we can't have nice things

Dear Whoever,

Thank you for wearing a mask at sometime during your trip to the park. But seriously? 

This mask has been lying in the grass for the better part of the last 24 hours. I know, because I walk in this park every single day since I can't go many other places. The photo also shows where it was in relationship to where the trash can is located. You couldn't walk the extra 40 feet or so to deposit your mask there? Apparently not.

OK, so let's now assume that it's one of your children's masks. You didn't notice that your child was missing a mask and go back and try to find it? 

Either way, it's just litter now, well not anymore since I was able to find a small stick, and pick up the mask through the loops with the stick. That added some extra steps to my walk today.

I will give you credit though. At least you were wearing a mask at some time during your visit to the park. It's amazing how many people haven't gotten that simple idea through their thick skulls yet. But, please pay more attention to your mask and your children's masks in the future. This is why we can't have nice things.

Sigh.

And to all of my other friends out there on social media platforms, please wear a mask when you're out in public. I'm getting really tired of this shit.

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.

Bird Watching

As noted in my last post, I don't claim to be a bird expert. I have a book that I rely on for most of my identifications and when I can't figure out what I've seen with my camera, I turn to several people on-line who I know are more well versed than I in identifying birds. What I have noticed during my daily walks is there seems to be a lot more birds out and about. It's either that, or I'm just more aware of them because I'm walking nearly the same route every day now.

Before "shelter in place" I would do more of a hike than a neighborhood walk. I saw things, but because of the areas I would walk I can honestly say I wasn't looking for the subtle beauty of small birds, but more likely the overall beauty of a landscape shot. That's one thing I've been working on since this confinement took hold. I've not been able to hike my normal routes, so I've found other areas that I know have wildlife and go back to those repeatedly in the hopes of getting some good shots, like this shot I took a couple of weeks ago of a lesser goldfinch.

I've actually learned where I can find certain birds. I know where the western bluebirds hang out and can usually get a shot or two every day I go there. A couple of weeks ago, I saw a pair of spotted towhees and a friend of mine told me they are usually heard, not seen, so I guess I was lucky. Except that I now know what their call sounds like and it actually alerted me to their being around. Because I've become more aware of bird calls, I now know what spotted towhees sound like and I've been able to get photos of them more than once.

This morning, I spotted this California scrub jay as it was searching the area for food. I'm not sure if that's a peanut that someone left, or if it's just a large seed from a nearby plant, but I learned today that these kinds of jays can still vocalize quite well, even with food in their bills. It gives an entirely different meaning to "don't talk with your mouth full." 

The jays tend to hangout in a certain spot in the neighborhood. Multiple times I've gone back to a certain spot and found several scrub jays hanging out looking for food. The mockingbirds and sparrows, on the other hand, seem to be just about anywhere and my wanderings have also alerted me to where a nest of acorn woodpeckers are. I have seen the mother and father coming to and fro from the hole in the top of this particular tree and I've heard the babies every time either parent shows up with a mouthful of food, but I have not been able to get a shot of them yet. They are pretty quick and the hole in the top of the tree is difficult to spot. I think I need to bring a ladder out sometime to get me closer to the action, but I think the neighbors might find that a little strange, especially since the tree is a couple of blocks away from where I live.

Suffice to say, you might expect to see more bird photos in the next couple of posts, mainly because I'm getting a lot of birds at the moment.

Where did April go?

A couple of days ago, or perhaps weeks, since everything seems to be blending together at the moment, my son came up to me and said, "The year 2020 is rather unique.  February has 29 days, March lasted 5 years and April lasted 5 days." That pretty much sums up this "shelter in place" that many of us have been experiencing due to the COVID-19 virus.

I suspect that it feels like his sentiment because when the shelter in place first started, it felt like it would last forever, but now it's become rather routine and so the days are moving much more quickly. Whatever the reason, I felt like this photo was rather comical. 

Most of the trails are closed and much of the parks are also closed, only allowing passive recreation. In other words, walk, don't run, unless you can run by yourself. I get that, but if the city doesn't want people playing soccer on the fields because of social distancing, then wouldn't it be smart to remove the soccer nets? Just asking.

What to do in my spare time?

All of us, if we're practicing social distancing and following the leads of our governors, have a lot of spare time on our hands these days. I even have more spare time, because last week, I re-injured my knee that I sprained late last summer. So for the past five days, I been resting it and not overdoing it to aid in the healing process. That has given me more time to explore things that have gotten away from me, one being computer games, particularly Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 (RCT2).

RCT2 is a simulation game where you manage and develop an amusement park. The second version, hence the 2, is probably the best version of the game. More than just creating rides, it also allowed for enhanced scenery building to create an all immersive experience. The old game doesn't work on newer computers, but there's a new version of it called OpenRCT2 which is a reconfigure of the old game with new enhancements. Last week I downloaded the game and have started to play it. My particular interest is in the Sandbox mode, which allows you to just develop your own park without having to win any particular scenario.

The screenshot above is from one of my old parks using the old RCT2 game. From time to time, I'll post screenshots of my new park creations. With the OpenRCT2 format, there appears to even be a way to link up via the Internet to create collaborative park efforts. I'll have to explore that later on.

Sidewalk Art

Most everyone is practicing shelter in place and keeping their distance from each other. That doesn't rule out walks, as long as we keep our distance. It's about the only thing we really can do at the moment, until we develop a good herd immunity to this disease.

Yesterday, while out on a walk, I encountered in front of several houses, some sidewalk chalk art. Most of the artwork was in the form of inspirational messages, hellos to the neighbors who walk by and other cute photos. 

At this particular spot, however, there was some serious talent residing within the house. I hope, whoever created this piece of art, continues to be inspired and continues to hone their craft. The sad part about this is that it rained last night, heavily. I actually walked by the spot again this morning in the hopes of getting a before and after photo of the artwork, but it was not to be since there literally wasn't even any streaks of chalk on the sidewalk.

But looking at it another way, the rain gave the artist a blank canvas to work with in the near future.