I am sitting outside working and a female Anna’s Hummingbird came along. She did not appear to notice me. She buzzed around my head and eventually went over to the Honeysuckle and delicately checked out every little flower petal. For a few moments there was some jousting with a bee (bombus perplexus) and then she sat for a minute on a tiny stem with some blossoms on the end.
She was a very good looking hummingbird with not a feather out of place. What a nice visit.
I was doing a little yard work today. I know, it’s Father’s Day and my orders were to relax and take it easy, but I wasn’t exactly slaving away.
Within a couple of minutes of starting work, I found the biggest frog I had ever seen. Some water accumulated in the tarp I was using and the frog apparently was attracted to the bugs in the dirt along with the water.
Even all scrunched up, the bullfrog was bigger than my fist. I caught him and put him in a bucket so that I could take his picture. Once we had that out of the way, I put him back and there he stayed until I tried to move the tarp back over the soil.
That move spooked him and away he hopped.
Based on the same sort of triangulation that is used to pinpoint the source of gunfire in some cities, I think I could, using three microphones, build a 3-D model of the soundscape.
Each microphone records continuously. Downstream, the computer matches peaks and troughs and tries to determine the position of the sound source relative to the three mics.
I feel confident that I could place the loudest sound, but other ones might be trickier 😉
I had a tough time engaging today. I got some administrivia done, but not a lot of meaty work.
I did have a nice chat with my neighbor who will be working with me on a project, but I want to start knocking some projects off the plate here.
Maybe tomorrow. More then.
I upgraded my ESXi server today. What an ordeal. Next time, it will be much more efficient, but this time was a learning experience. I intended to install 16GB of memory, but I only got 8. Because of the machine’s internal architecture, I’ll need either 8 more, or to return the extra that I can’t install yet. Definitely a case of RTFM. At least I read it before I started inserting devices… The server was down already, but…
Wow, it took a few hours.
I have to say, working from home does have its advantages. I tend to handle phone calls and business development during the day and push a lot of the work requiring lots of concentration into the evening hours. I end up working a lot, but I also have time to take care of a few things around the house while I am at it.
Sunny days can be very inspiring. I am currently in the process of rebuilding the front yard and replacing much of the foliage that is in place today. I have tried to find homes for the big Rhododendrons, but the first one weighed about 150 lbs with it’s root ball in tact and was too big to fit into my car’s trunk. It’s been out of the ground for about a day now and it is showing signs of stress. I feel like I should chop it into pieces before it breaks my heart. I am reminded of the movie “Into the Wild” where McCandless kills a moose… now what?
The other rhodie is still in place. It looks smaller and more manageable. I am hoping I can find a place to transfer it to so that it will be out of the ground for the shortest possible time.
My other patient is the Dogwood that I moved from its current location. It is too tall and lanky for where it was and so I am putting it on the corner of the house. It actually seems to be doing ok for now, but still less than happy. I have to test some underground pipes before I finalize where to put it.
In all, I am still excited about the project. My wife thinks we are going to need more plants and she may be right. We’ll have to see how it all looks once I get everything together.
This song haunted me in earlier days. The lyrics seems so incomplete despite there being a lot of words here. They are oblique and mysterious. I'll never know to my satisfaction what she and Billy Joe were throwing off the Tallahatchie bridge. I'll never know why she never said a word at the dinner table when the subject came up. I can only speculate, and I think that's really the brilliance of the song. You get this feeling that the clues are all there, and so you listen... but the clues are not there, they are only in your own head.
So I had an extra photo of this Wilson’s warbler that I printed and thought it would be fun to make a little shadow box out of it.
I still have a ton of real work to do, but maybe that’s what inspires me to do little things like this on the side.
At my last place of employment, there was an enormous amount of time spent on training. One thing I noticed was that getting actual work done generally seemed more fun than doing the training… maybe that was the business being smart. 😉
Yesterday began with the usual unexpectedness that I have enjoyed here at the refuge. We decided to walk along part of the closed central patrol road over to Benson Pond. This was a productive birding spot last year and we were looking forward to what might be waiting for us this time.
As soon as we pulled out of the cabin area, I caught a glimpse of a weasel not much bigger than my fist carrying some furry gray ball. We stopped and got some pictures. To my surprise, the weasel’s prey was still alive and needed to be subdued a couple more times while the pair posed for photos.
Storm clouds patrolled the whole valley as we made our way up to the point where we would start our hike. They could be seen with wispy tentacles of rain falling on the sage below. We knew we were taking a risk, but we had enough rain gear and warm clothes to get through a pretty mean squall. When we arrived at the closed gate, we could see one of the larger storm clouds headed right for us and so we waited it out. I remember commenting that if I weren’t such a lazy ass, we’d have been half way to Benson Pond when it hit us.
There were no other humans, but mosquitoes and fly catchers, two other levels of the food chain were abundant along the way. There were so many mosquitoes that I started to doubt my place in the natural order. If we were bitten enough times, would they find our dessicated, bones in the summer after the road reopened?
We survived, and we enjoyed the hike. We even saw a Great Horned Owl and a couple of owlets in a lofty nest.
In the evening, we took another hike up the river trail that started near the P Ranch. Along the way, there were Bobolinks, which I’ve never seen anywhere but here. Their call has kind of a metallic tinkling quality that I love. I also saw a pair of Red Winged Blackbirds antagonizing a pair of Sandhill Cranes. At one point, one of the large Cranes Lashed out in frustration at his tormentors. I almost felt sorry for it even though he was likely threatening a nearby nest.
We’re driving towards Burns now and will be leaving the area after we get some breakfast. I have really enjoyed myself here and it was good to let go of work for a bit. I’ll be back to the grind tomorrow, for now, I’m taking in the amazing scenery and looking for wildlife darting in and out of the sagebrush that lines the highway.
This is where I have started each day this week. My wife and I have a cup of coffee or two, or three (the cups are small) and a little breakfast. I sleep later than she does and so she’s typically ready to head out much earlier than I am. I haven’t shaved since Saturday and I’m beginning to look a little grizzly. She took this picture of the cabin. The notebook computer on the ancient sofa-bed is the one I am typing at right now.
Apart from the computer, we brought a little connectivity technology with us. It’s a Samsung wireless hotspot that works on the Verizon network. I do get an AT&T wireless signal here (which is better than what I get at home), but I have found the Verizon network to be much more complete. We don’t get into many patches where we can’t post an e-mail or check Google for the answer to a question, or get directions, etc, etc. Is that a good thing? Well, I think it’s kind of a security blanket.
I was under the illusion that I would be getting a little work done while on vacation. Well, I must say that this hasn’t exactly panned out. We are out watching birds all day and then at night we are going through maybe 300 photos and picking the ones we like the best. Then I have tried to make at least a short blog post before going to bed… and I am tired here much earlier thanks to all the activity.
Today, I thought about Pete French. He was a successful rancher who founded Frenchglen. I wondered aloud whether I would have been the kind of rancher that he was. He had a lot of innovative ideas inspired by the challenges of the job. I imagine he was easily distracted from the traditional work of ranching as his attention went to irrigation and designing barns that allowed horses to be exercised indoors during bad weather.
I didn’t take many pictures today. One thing I did capture, was a shot of this American Avocet who decided to land near our car. We were parked beside Pete French’s round barn near a small inland sea which wasn’t there last year (the sea, not the barn). Did I mention that there has been quite a bit of flooding this year?
I also got a shot of a hail storm approaching us as we walked around a huge volcanic crater. Can you see our vehicle outside the crater rim at its lowest point?
I wanted to mention, that my wife is getting a lot more comfortable with the camera now and I think she is starting to have a lot more fun. She’ll probably tell the story of the frustrating Horned Lark that nearly broke up our marriage, but I have to say, she has taken some impressive shots over the past few days including birds in flight.
Capturing a bird on the wing is extremely difficult unless it is hovering right in front of you like a hummingbird. If it’s a raptor or a tern, for example, you need the long lens or you won’t get the detail you want. This just makes it really difficult to aim, focus and hold it all steady so that is isn’t just a blurry smudge when the shutter opens.
While she is focusing her attention on one of the glamorous, winged creatures fluttering around us, I still use my point-and-shoot camera to take in a few close-ups or some scenery shots. The little Panasonic still takes brilliant pictures. It imparts some character to the pictures it takes that make it special to me. The way it handles light sources, for example is really compelling. It gives them a soft, warm glow. The short focal length is also well suited for shots like this one.
I should get ready for bed. Tomorrow is our last full day here and I know we are going to try to make the most of the time we have.
