Snake Magnet?

Last week, I took this shot of a 3 foot gopher snake. I also got a nice video of it, plus another smaller gopher snake and a ring-necked snake while out on my hike. All in all, I ended up seeing 4 snakes that day and because I've encountered other snakes in the past couple of weeks, I've been dubbed the snake magnet and several people had indicated that they don't want to hike with me because I attract snakes.

Now a little background is probably in order here. I've always been fascinated by snakes and wanted to have one as a pet when I was younger, but because my mother was deathly afraid of snakes, I never could. While teaching, a teaching friend of mine offered up his daughter's snake to me. She had gone off to college and he didn't want to take care of it, so he gave it to me for my science classroom. It was a beautiful corn snake that I had for about 10 years.

Now I encounter snakes in the wild, probably because during warmer months, I ALWAYS scan 10 to 15 feet ahead on the trail. I don't want to step on one, so I think I'm possibly more observant than the average hiker. And here's something else to think about. If you see lizards on the trail, there are snakes active as well, you just haven't discovered them yet. So the question is, would you rather hike with someone who is observant of snakes and spots them from 10 feet off, or would you rather encounter a snake from 10 inches? The choice is yours, but I'm always willing to hike with you.

And then there were 6

Here's a quick update on our bird situation. Yesterday and today were quite dreary and we got over a tenth of an inch of rain today. I hadn't seen any activity in a couple of days, so I decided to check on the nest. Definitely signs of activity as the nest is more feather-lined, but the most important evidence of activity is the number of eggs. Now, instead of the three that I noted on April 7th, there are 6 individual little eggs. With 14 to 16 day incubation periods, these little guys, if they've been taken care of by their parents correctly should begin hatching in a couple of days.

I will be monitoring, from afar, the progress over the next couple of days. Here's hoping the weather starts to warm up, but we have a 30 to 40% chance of some more rain on Monday, so these little ones are going to be in for a chilly first couple of days of life.

14 months

14 months ago today, I got a haircut, not realizing at the time that it would be the last time I'd gotten a haircut. To say it's starting to bug me is a bit of an understatement. And I know eventually I'll get it cut again, as it's so much easier to deal with when it's short. But for the moment, it grows, and grows, and grows.

To be honest, I never thought that the longest my hair would ever be was in my 60s. I figured my "long-haired hippie" days were far behind me, yet here I am, still embracing the shaggy.

And no, it's not really that lopsided. The wind was blowing making it pouf out on one side and flattening it down on the other. Yeah, that's my story and I'm sticking with it. So anyway, I thought I'd let you see what 14 months look like and since I'm not fully vaccinated until after I reach 15 months without a haircut, it will be a little longer before it eventually gets cut.

Birds in the Breezeway

About two weeks ago I noticed a bird flitting around in the breezeway between our garage and the main part of our house. Now, there's all sorts of stuff in the breezeway, mostly geocaching stuff, but there's also several containers, boxes, buckets and baskets. This bird, or actually these two birds kept flying in and out of the breezeway and eventually I figured out they were building a nest somewhere in the breezeway. By just sitting there, I also eventually figured out they were building the nest in the wicker basket. The lid to the white plastic bucket in the photo had been casually thrown into the wicker basket and it created a void underneath, with an opening about the size of a small bird, but not large enough for most predators. It was really a perfect place for them to set up housekeeping.

And of course, because I'm me, I had to see what the nest looked like and so I carefully lifted the plastic lid. Immediately, the bird that was sitting on the nest flew off leaving behind a perfectly empty nest. So, they were still in the process of building their home and hadn't settled down to family life yet. I carefully put the plastic lid back down and hoped that I hadn't scared them off from their nest. 

Fortunately, I spotted one of them the next day with more nest building materials, so I knew that their home was still being built and I hadn't scared them off. I'm pretty sure, based on everything that I've researched, that I have a pair of Bewick's Wrens nesting in that wicker basket. For a timeline, the first photo was taken March 27th and the second photo was taken on April 7th.

A couple of days went by and I stopped seeing the birds, so I was worried that they may have abandoned the nest, so I gingerly checked it again. No birds were in the nest, however, as the photo indicates, there were three little eggs now residing there, which meant that momma and papa were probably close by. As you can see by the first photo, they really did pick a choice location, as the spot gets a lot of warmth from the afternoon sun, which means they don't have to spend all their time sitting on the nest. I'm not sure of this particular bird's nesting habits, but I know other birds routinely leave their nests, so it's kind of nice that they're going to be naturally heated while the parents are away.

Last night, April 8th, I was sitting out in the breezeway talking with a friend of mine on the phone and I heard animal rustlings. This, in itself is not surprising, because we have quite a number of different kinds of animals that have come through our back yard from time to time, from squirrels and lizards, to possums, skunks and raccoons, not to mention a flurry of different kinds of birds. So naturally, I looked to my right to see what was making the noise and one of the wrens was sitting on the edge of a plastic bucket about two feet from where its mate was probably sitting on the nest, so I definitely know they're actively taking care of the eggs now too. 

For scale in your own mind, the cup of the nest is about 2.5 inches in diameter with an overall diameter of the nest on the order of about 5 to 6 inches. Although the photo doesn't show it very well, there are three eggs in there and who knows if they've laid some more after that photo was taken a couple of days ago. Incubation for the eggs is roughly 14-16 days, which means they could begin hatching as early as this upcoming Tuesday or as late as the 21st of April. Needless to say, I'll be keeping you posted as we await the chirping of little ones coming from the interior of that wicker basket.

Now I need to dig out the large bird feeder and fill it with some appropriate seed for the parents to use. And I also think that if everything had been put away correctly, they'd be nesting someplace else, so I guess it sometimes pays to be a little bit messy or disorganized.

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.

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.

Mingo

This entry is another trip back in time to the road trip I took with my youngest in 2017. It's a continuation of the journey that took us to Beloit, Wisconsin and back again. When last I wrote about this trip here, we were in Abilene, Kansas touring the Eisenhower Presidential Library.

After the tour, we had some lunch and then took off to drive west across Kansas geocaching every so often along the way. It gives me an excuse every now and then to stop and stretch our legs as well, so the drivers don't get too tired along the way. Yeah, that's my story and I'm sticking with it.

Actually, the purpose of this leg of the trip was to get to Colby, Kansas and find Mingo, which is the oldest, active geocache in the world. Mingo was hidden on May 11th, 2000, just days after President Clinton signed an executive order descrambling GPS signals so they could be used for civilian purposes. That order basically was the birth of geocaching. One of the challenge caches I've been working on for quite awhile is the Jasmer challenge - to find a cache that was hidden in every month since geocaching started. Mingo helped me get a little bit closer to that goal, getting me May 2000. On a road trip two years later I found a cache in Utah that was hidden in August 2000 giving me that month. As of this moment, I just need June and July of 2000, which is why sometime after I'm vaccinated, I want to go on a road trip to Oregon, since the two nearest caches that fill those two months are hidden up there.

Mingo is sort of a Mecca in the geocaching world. Everyone seemingly wants to find it and it's quite famous in the geocaching world. It's literally located off of an on ramp to the freeway that passes by. As we approached Mingo, I said, "There's supposedly a geo-trail leading to the cache and it's not that difficult to locate." My youngest quipped back, "That's not a geo-trail, that's a freeway."

As noted above, lots of people come and find this cache. One of my good caching friends was visiting her sister in Colorado just days earlier and had taken a road trip out to Mingo. In most cases, if you knew that another cache from your area had been to a particular cache that you were going to find, you'd make a note of it and try to find their signature on the logbook. We arrived only two days after my friend, yet a dozen signatures separated our two signatures. Like I said, it's a popular destination for geocachers.

It also changes form from time to tie. As you can see from the photo, the cache, when we found it, was a very large PVC pipe. Two weeks later it was a black container. I have no idea why people keep taking the container, mainly because it's not the original container, but it's constantly changing. Sigh.

We spent the night in Colby, Kansas and then took off for New Mexico in the morning, traveling through 5 states in a day. It was probably not the most efficient driving day, but from a geocaching standpoint, it was a lot of fun. Stay tuned to find out.