December 2008

That’s how fast six months can go by when you’re having fun! Seems like only yesterday that Dickie and I were traipsing around Shollenberger Park in Petaluma in the hot summer sun. Today you need a heavy coat and gloves to fend off the cold. It was down in the 30’s last night here in Windsor. Of course, we’re still thankful we don’t have to put up with the ice and snow and single digit temps they have in many parts of the country.

We skipped our walk through the vineyard today, since it was so chilly. Yesterday, when we walked there, we saw those huge clouds of starlings again. Just like last year. We’ve been noticing the flocks of robins passing through for a week or more,

but this was the first we’d seen of the starling migration this year. Here’s a shot I took with my new Canon XSi that will give you some idea of the sight:



Did you notice the bigger bird in the center of the photo. Below is a crop from the center of the photo above. I’ve circled the hawk in red in this shot:



That was one of our shy red-tailed hawks that usually scream at us and fly off in a huff when we get within a hundred yards or so of them. I’ve been closer to them on earlier occasions. but lately they’ve been flying away almost as soon as they spot me. Anyway, this one was just flying across the vineyard when the starling cloud caught up to him. Quite a few of the starlings settled in a eucalyptus tree on the edge of the vineyard. Here’s look at what that was like:



With Christmas only a week away, we haven’t put up a tree yet. I’m tempted to let it slide this year, but Dickie won’t hold still for that. It wouldn’t be Christmas without a tree. Usually by the time we buy ours, the ones on the lots are about dried out. In fact, one year the tree seller just gave us one (to get rid of it, I feel fairly sure). We’ve had a nice poinsettia sitting in the kitchen for a week or so. They are a beautiful plant. Here’s what ours looks like:



In a day or two we’ll pick up a tree. Hope we can still find a good one. Here’s what ours looked like last year:

Hope you found a good one, too. Dickie and I wish all of you who read this a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

JULY 2008

“Three Cups of Tea”

Ordinarily, the last good book I’ve read is the “best book” I ever read, just like the last good movie I’ve seen is often “the best movie” I’ve ever seen. So maybe this will be a little like the boy who cried "wolf". However, I want all my friends and acquaintances to know that "Three Cups of Tea" by Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin which is still number one on the New York Times non-fiction paperback bestseller list is one of the best books I’ve ever read. In my humble opinion, it should be required reading for every adult in the United States, not to mention all of our Senators and Representatives and the President and his Cabinet. If you can read the book without being moved, I’d seriously suggest that you have someone check your pulse.

"Three Cups of Tea" is the story of “One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time”. Check it out of your local library or buy a copy at your local book store, if you haven’t already done so. You won’t be sorry!

Still Out There with My Camera

Dickie and I still take our morning walks down Jensen Lane whenever we can so that I can make use of my Canon Rebel camera. To some of the locals we are known as the “bird people” since I always have my camera slung around my neck. I had it with me a couple weeks ago when we were out at Mary and Christopher’s and caught this fly on a Shasta daisy:

We made a special trip to Shollenberger Park in Petaluma, too, one day last week. That’s where I caught this egret as he swooped past:

This mama duck was keeping a watchful eye out while her offspring took a nap:





There was a mute swan mama on duty with a couple of her kids, too. As you can see, the youngsters are fairly good-sized now. They’ll be flying around on their own soon.





I can’t honestly say if this stilt is an adult or a youngster. In any case, he looked like he was about to fall on his face. Just fishing, I’m sure:






Closer to Home

There are still plenty of photo ops in our own back yard or the near neighborhood. Here’s a pretty little guy who posed for me recently. Goldfinches are special to me.





They’re friendly with each other, too:





There are still plenty of flowers around here. I’m dedicating these roses to Dickie and my fifty-fifth wedding anniversary which we will celebrate on the coming Friday, July 25.




That’s it for July. Have a good next month!

JUNE 2008

Photobucket, a site I use to upload many of my pictures for viewing, had me worried there for just a bit. All the links to my online pictures were broken. Turns out somebody hacked into the site and made a mess of things. Not to worry. It was only a temporary problem. Everything is back to normal now. Thank goodness, those huge sites back up their work.

Just to prove that everything’s OK now, I’m posting some of my pictures from the past few weeks. As everybody knows, it was graduation time in May and June. Dickie and I attended graduation ceremonies of three of our grandsons.

The first was back in May when Mary and Christopher’s son, Aron, graduated from UC Berkeley. It was a rainy day, but it couldn’t quench the enthusiasm of the mechanical engineers or their families:


Left to right, that’s Dickie, Gretchen, Aron, Christopher, Nik, and I, with Mary standing in front.



Here in June, Nik graduated from El Molino High School in Forestville. It was a pleasant evening. No rain and, again, spirits were high. Here’s a family shot of those present:


Left to right in the back row, that’s Peter Zweig, Aron, Christopher, and I. In the front row are Heidi, Mary, Nik, Daniel, Jonathan, and Dickie.



The next afternoon Heidi and Peter’s son, Matthew, graduated from UC Davis with an engineering degree in computer science. I didn’t manage to get a shot of everyone together, but here’s the graduate with his mother:






Chalk Artists

Another recent event yours truly enjoyed was a visit to San Rafael where chalk artists were decorating the street with their work. It’s an annual event in that city. Some of the art is spectacular. I’ve called attention to it in past years. I can’t give you much more than a sampling here. Here are a couple of good examples. This first one shows an artist still at work:





Here’s a finished product. You may recognize this fellow. It’s Luther Burbank who spent much of his life here in California. Part of his name is visible at the top of the photo:





My chaperones for this occasion were my daughter, Gretchen, and her man, Jonathan Seutter. Here they are posing for me there in San Rafael:






Animals, Birds and Bees

Of course, I still managed numerous morning trips to photograph animals, birds and bees. Here’s a bumblebee that got in my way:





This butterfly obviously wanted his picture taken, so I obliged him:





Numerous goldfinches asked to have their pictures taken. I couldn’t refuse:





Not to be outdone, the house finches also made themselves available. It was great fun!




That’s it for this time. See you later!

MAY 2008

Here we are in May already and I’ve been neglecting posting to this blog. No excuses. I just wasn’t up to it. Not that this is the best of times to get back to it. We’re expecting 101 degrees in the shade today. It’s 97° right now (2:30 P.M.). However, punching keys on a computer keyboard isn’t all that much physical exercise, so I’m going for it.

Yesterday Dickie and I traveled out to the ocean where it was really cool. We met some older folks from Champaign, Illinois, who were making their first trip to the West Coast and were quite surprised at how cool it was. Maybe to day changed their minds. I hear it’s supposed to reach 90° even out at Bodega Bay.

In any case, I had some good luck with the camera while we were out there at the big waters. I’ve photographed a lot of shore birds – egrets, cormorants, pelicans, herons, gulls, stilts, sandpipers, all kinds of ducks and geese – but never an osprey. We spotted this one eating his lunch atop a power pole. He didn’t seem to mind very much that I was taking his picture. He also looked mean enough to fight me for that lunch:



Whenever we go to the ocean, Dickie and I make a regular stop at a deep pond that is the remains of a false start to the building of a nuclear facility many years ago. The pond is a favorite fishing spot for egrets and herons and there are all kinds of smaller birds around. Yesterday there were a number of red-winged blackbirds strutting their stuff. I got this one in the middle of his call, so I named it “Attention, Please!” because that’s what he seemed to be saying:



Most of the songbirds I’ve managed to capture have been birds Dickie and I have seen on our morning walks down Jensen Lane which runs along a couple of vineyards north of our subdivision. There are almost always sparrows and goldfinches, blackbirds and bluebirds, sometimes titmice or mockingbirds, the occasional flicker, not to mention scrub jays and robins, but the most frequently seen bird there is the acorn woodpecker. I posted a shot of one last December here in my blog, but I’ve gotten several spectacular shots lately, of which I’m quite proud. Here’s the latest one:



If you’d like to see more of my bird shots, I invite you to take a look at those I’ve posted on the Flickr website: My address there is: http://flickr.com/photos/rosebud1929/

Another bird we see a lot of around here in the springtime is the killdeer. They tend to nest on the local school grounds just around the corner from where we live. They also have made a habit of nesting in the graveled front yard of a house across the street from the school. The killdeer’s habit of drawing attention from its nest by pretending to be hurt and fluttering clumsily away is a curious sight. Here’s a recent shot I got of one doing just that:



Enough for now. I’ll be back the next time the spirit moves me! Have a great month!

MARCH

Here we are in the middle of the month of March 2008, the day before Palm Sunday, two days before St. Patrick’s Day, five days before the first day of spring, six days before the next full moon and the Feast of Purim, and eight days before Easter.

As many people know, for anybody younger than 95, this is the earliest Easter in our lifetime. According to the formula, Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the first day of spring. That means Easter can only fall one day earlier in the year than it does this year! and that will happen in another 277 years (2285). We should all live that long, right? So enjoy it while you can – the earliest Easter in your lifetime!



I don’t know about you, but I’ll be glad to see the end of March. The last few weeks have been a real drag. Both Dickie and I have been struggling with the flu. From what I’ve heard, we’re not alone. Seems as if most of our relatives, friends and neighbors have been dealing with the same trouble. We can only hope the advent of spring will see an end to what appears to be a mild epidemic.

The consequences of not feeling so great have included a sharp drop in my photographic forays. I’ve still managed to get out a time or two, but I haven’t come up with quite as many good shots. Here’s one that I did like. If you can’t tell, that’s the head of an ostrich. He walked right up to me at the fence and would have taken a bite out of my camera if I hadn’t pulled back.



One day when Dickie was feeling like she had bested the flu (which she hadn’t unfortunately), we made a trip up to Alexander Valley north of Healdsburg. There are some dramatic views across the fields of mustard there in the vineyards just at this time of the year. This is one of the shots I took. You can hardly see it in the upper right-hand corner, but my real purpose in taking this photo was to include the moon.



The same day we traveled to Alexander Valley we also made a stop at the fish hatchery in Dry Creek Valley where there are always plenty of waterfowl – ducks, egrets, herons, cormorants and Canadian geese. That’s where I got this shot. There were actually two geese swimming together like mates. This one was in the lead:



This was a cormorant also there at the fish hatchery. He was sitting in the tiptop of an oak tree and wasn’t particularly bothered by my presence since I was far below. I probably took a dozen shots of him, including this one:



That’s it for the present. So long until next time!

FEBRUARY

Before I miss Valentine's Day, I'm gonna take another shot at adding to my blog. It's easy to forget about doing this since I have only self-imposed deadlines. Well, actually no deadlines at all. It's just a matter of posting something whenever the spirit moves me.

When I was doing a monthly web page a couple years back, I used to send people a reminder that I had put up another page. I stopped doing that when I started blogging. I figure this is mostly for my own benefit, since not too many other people, besides Dickie and I ever see it. It kind of gives me a running calendar of my photography.

Occasionally, I'm tempted to branch off into other things, like ranting about the war or politics, but that mood usually passes when I remind myself that I don't have any better answers than most people when it comes to things like that. Sticking to posting my photos keeps me on firmer ground.

I've had some good luck lately when it comes to taking pictures of birds. Dickie and I were down to Shollenberger Park a couple times since the last time I posted anything in this blog. Here's a shot I got of a young red-shouldered hawk in our last trip down that way:



A couple days ago I was out by myself in our local Foothills County Park when I noticed some small birds picking the new buds off some oak trees. There wasn't much sun so I didn't think I had too much of a chance to get a good shot, but it turned out that I was wrong. Of course, I had to take about twenty shots to get this one, but it's a dandy. I thought the bird was a flycatcher, but I learned from some experts that it's a bushtit. Bushtits travel in groups and flit about quite quickly so it's hard to focus on them. I'm proud of this one:



I was out by myself again this morning, since Dickie's struggling with a cold, and ran into this bluebird in the small park a block away from our house. He flew away before I could get very close, but I was carrying my 400mm lens so I could crop and still get a fairly clear photo:




An even happier moment came for me when I discovered that our Killdeer have returned to the local school grounds. Every year they make a nest in a gravelly area adjacent to the parking lot. Last year they skipped out. I think they chose a spot farther down the road because we did see that they had young ones they were shepherding in a horse corral down that way. In any case, here's one of the birds I saw this morning:




That's about it for this time. Happy Valentine's Day to everyone who reads this.

Merganser

Taken the day after Christmas near Lake Sonoma.

JANUARY 2008

ANOTHER RED-SHOULDERED HAWK

This New Year is starting out the way the old one ended with Dickie and me visiting our favorite wetlands area in Petaluma. We managed to get down there on January 3rd before the weather took a turn for the worse and all this rain started.

Sometimes you get lucky. On a day when nothing special seems in store, just the right situation develops and you get a shot that you weren’t expecting. That’s how I got the picture below. As Dickie and I were walking around the perimeter of the artificial lake area, a young woman approached us. She noticed my camera and mentioned that a hawk was sitting on one of the swallow boxes that we were headed toward. Alerted to its presence, we walked up more carefully so as not to frighten him off. He waited while I took a dozen or more shots of him, then flew off to the next box, so we followed and I took more pictures of him. All in all, I probably took 40 or fifty different shots to come up with this one that eventually won me a “Picture of the Day” on Azcolt (http://www.azcolt.com/january032008.asp) .

We had the added benefit of bumping into Bob Dyer, a veteran docent at the park, who informed us that this was apparently a young juvenile red-shoulder who seemed to be trying to take a nap. I later found that in quite a few of the shots I took, this hawk’s eyes were closed. Fortunately, there were also many like this one where his keen eyes were definitely focused on me:



The hawk was only one of many interesting birds that we saw that day. There was the mandatory turkey buzzard:



There were a flock of green-winged teal on the small pond in the adjacent meadow:



There was a kestrel in the meadow, too. He was so far away that I had no idea it was a kestrel until I got home and put the enlarged picture up on my computer screen. I had taken for granted that he was the same red-shoulder that we had seen earlier. Kestrels are a prettier bird in my opinion. I love their markings:



Of course, there were coots. This particular wetlands area is almost always full of them. They’re fairly tame and don’t usually scatter like most other birds when you get close to them. Coots aren’t very pretty in my estimation, except that they have a rather neat red eye. These birds were feeding just next to where we parked our car:



At one point I heard a sweet sounding bird. Then I saw it. It was this song sparrow. He was relatively close to me and before he flew away I managed to get this shot of him which turned out well, I thought:



A few minutes later a flock of Canadian geese arrived. As they zoomed over me, I picked off these three:



There is a small canal bordering the wetlands area. The canal is a feeding place and a nesting area for many different birds. I didn’t know what this bird was until I asked some birders who were also interested in him and his mate. They informed me that it was a pied-bill grebe. My Audubon guide book appears to confirm that, so I’m taking their word for it:



Still walking along the canal, I spotted this bird soaring overhead. I think it’s a northern harrier. They’re famous for their owl-like face:



Back on the lake side, there were a couple of wild swans mingling with some coots. This swan gave me the best pose:



There were a number of other birds around. One of the flashiest was this stilt. I love their coloring:



AND NOW IT’S RAINING!

The winter rains have arrived with a vengeance here in Northern California. Heavy winds have made for considerable difficulty. In fact, the wind broke down a wooden fence on the west side of our house today. It’s still raining as I write this. This was the scene out the front door of our house this morning. You can see the water running down the street:



What you might not notice is that our Julia Child yellow rose is drowning in the water. Here’s what it looks like up closer: