OCTOBER 2009

October 2009

Encouraged by my daughter, Heidi, I’m back again with an addition to my blog this month. Heidi maintains that she enjoys looking at my pics. Hopefully, if you’re looking at this, so do you.

In any case, we’re coming up on Halloween again so I think it appropriate to begin this time with a shot of one of our neighbor, Ross’s, pumpkins. He has a whole patch of them coming right along. They should be ready for the big day (or night, however you see it). This one looks pretty good to me. Dickie and I have watched it grow as we pass it on our morning walks:




WINDSOR AIR SHOW

It was a couple months back now, but I have to post a shot or two that I took at this year’s air show. It wasn’t quite as large as in recent years, but there were some good things to see. One of them was a woman dare-devil who stood out on the wing of the plane below as it dipped and dived and performed a variety of maneuvers in the sky above us. Dickie and I didn’t actually notice her at first. In fact, I don’t think Dickie ever did notice that she was there until the performance was over, but, as you can see, the telephoto lens I was using tells the story:



One of the biggest attractions was a monstrous Air Force cargo plane that lumbered slowly through the sky. It flew so low and so slow that one wondered how it could stay aloft, but it did. When it made a turn as it flew by where we were standing, I got this shot that almost makes it look as if it were taken from a plane flying above the cargo plane. I assure you, however, that I was standing on the ground:



KITES AND OTHER BIRDS

This next pic is a photo shop production. Several years ago I took some photos of a kite that was being flown near the beach at San Francisco Bay. A few weeks ago a kite (bird) flew by us as we walked along the vineyard north of our subdivision. Just for the fun of it, I put those two shots together, since they’re both a kind of kite. This was the result:



We’ve had plenty of other birds flying over us lately. The Canadian geese are on the move. You can hear them as they call to each other and gather into larger flocks. I suppose they’re heading south now, although this bunch was flying in a northerly direction when they flew past us:



There are still plenty of birds on the ground for me to practice my hobby. A bird I haven’t seen that often lately is the flicker. This one was sitting on the very top of a power pole, so he’s only partially visible, but I thought I’d preserve the occasion:



The bird we see most frequently right now is the lesser goldfinch. I’ve managed to get some fairly decent shots of them on occasion. This one is from a couple weeks ago:



Just now the finches are feeding on the weed seeds that are plentiful along the ditches by the vineyard. Here’s another shot of a finch lunch-time:



DOGS WE HAVE KNOWN

I have thousands of photos of all kinds of birds now, since I’ve been enjoying this hobby for seven or eight years, but it dawned on me the other day that I also have accumulated quite a few photos of various dogs we have met in our morning walks and our trips around the area. Let me show you a few.

Since the newest dog in our life is the puppy our daughter, Gretchen, and her husband, Jonathan, have adopted. let me begin with Lulu. She’s a mixed breed, part labrador retriever, and looks to be a real sweetheart. I took this picture the other night at a concert in Armstrong Woods while Jonathan was holding her. The flash made her blink, but she’s a beauty, isn’t she?:



Dickie and I often joke that we know more dogs than people here in Windsor. That may be a slight exaggeration, but we do know a few canines. Two of our favorites are a pair of German shepherds. The older one is named “Bandit”. He’s a male and marvelously trained. He is remarkably obedient. We meet him and his owners regularly on our morning walks:



His mate is a younger female named “Tasha”. Tasha is one-quarter red wolf, playful, but equally well-trained and obedient. She’s also very beautiful:



Another pair of canines we’ve come to know are a couple of tiny poodles. Oscar is the older and larger of the two. He’s as friendly and gentle as they come:



Lucy is younger and much smaller than Oscar, but equally friendly and you can’t help but want to cuddle her:



Another dog we’ve come to know and enjoy meeting on our morning walks is Jenna, a terrier with a very decent disposition:



Honey is a golden retriever we also meet now and then on our morning walks. She’s beginning to age, according to her owner, but still makes the trip. We’ve known her for many years now:



Still another dog we see most every day is Lucas. I call him “Budweiser” because he reminds me of the dog in the Budweiser commercials. Lucas sometimes barks at us from within the horse corral which he patrols, but he’s obviously a pussycat, just doing his job:




Still another barker is a dog I call “Chudleigh”. We don’t know his real name, but, when we pass by, he regularly calls to us from behind the iron gate in the driveway he calls “home”. That’s what the white bars are in this photo, the iron gate:




OK, so now you know more about the dogs in my life than you ever cared to know. But, wait! I’m not finished yet. Dickie and I regularly travel to the ocean and we’ve met some great dogs out there, too. Here’s three that crossed our path. Boomer was owned by a couple from Oklahoma. His photo was good enough to win me a “Picture of the Day” sometime ago. The other two were simply striking in my opinion, so here they are:



There’s more. We visit parks now and then and the dogs below are some we found there. April and Gracie were pals who scampered around with each other in a dog run at our Pleasant Oak Park here in the neighborhood. The Bouvier des Flandres is a dog I met one day at Shollenberger in Petaluma. I’d never seen a dog like him. I had to include “Carl, the Labrador” for obvious reasons. I’m happy to say he was a great dog. Chloe patrols the same horse corral that Lucas above runs. Being as small as she is she can easily slip under the fence and does. That’s how we know she’s really very gentle, too. The golden retriever is a spectacular Frisbee catcher. I’ve seen his master throw a Frisbee a hundred feet or more and the dog always catches it before it hits the ground.



I’ve discovered over the years that a guy with a camera is almost like a guy with a dog. Most everyone is willing to be friendly, if asked. That’s how I got the owners of the dogs in the photos below to let me take their dogs’ photos. I think there are some beautiful dogs here:



Dickie and I have lived here in Windsor as long as we’ve lived in any one place. We’ve lived here long enough to outlive some dogs, too. Here are several that meet that criterion. Chandler and Vanna were Dalmatians. Snickers belonged to our daughter, Mary, and her husband, Christopher. Bandit belonged to a neighbor we have come to know. They were all fine dogs in their day:



If you’ve stayed with me this long, I guess I can push the envelope a little farther. I just have to get in this guy below. He’s a friendly bulldog that has greeted me occasionally when I stop in at the veterinary clinic. Isn’t he something?:



Last, but not least, there’s our neighbor’s sweet little cairn terrier, Zoe, the cream of the crop:



That’s it for October. Arf!!!!

AUGUST 2009

SOME MORE BIRD SHOTS

As anyone knows who’s familiar with my blog, I spend most of my time with the camera looking for birds. Lately, the bird that has gotten most of my attention is the lesser goldfinch which is in plentiful supply around here just now. The lesser goldfinch is not as colorful as the American goldfinch, but it can be very pretty. Here’s a shot I got last week:



I haven’t seen any American goldfinches around here lately. They used to frequent a yard Dickie and I pass every day on our morning walk, but the people who were feeding them there had to quit doing that because the birds were always flying into the windows of their home and killing themselves.

This morning I got another shot of a lesser goldfinch having his breakfast. Take a close look at the photo below and you will see that the bird is holding two weed stalks with his left foot. He needs both those stalks to bear his weight. One of the stalks by itself would bend down to the ground, but two enable him to sit where he is and nibble on the seeds in front of him.



(Now go back to the first photo and you’ll notice that the stalk the bird is sitting on is resting against a second stalk. Yes, it takes two of these stalks to bear their weight or they’ll bend them nearly all the way down to the ground.)



OTHER ANIMALS

Occasionally, some other animal crosses my path while I’m holding my camera. Here’s a squirrel I got the other day across the street from the local Catholic church. He was climbing a power pole (not the best place for a squirrel to climb):




The cat below was merely sitting on the fence as I walked by. She stayed there as I walked right up to her and petted her. In fact, she liked that petting so much she didn’t want me to go away. Many of the neighborhood cats aren’t quite that friendly. Most of them run when I get too close:





SUNFLOWERS

Of course, some of the best pictures are flower shots and one of the prettiest flowers this time of year is the sunflower. They’re beginning to fade now, but I got this shot about a month ago as we took our morning walk. Isn’t she a beauty?:



Hope you’re having a good summer. Thanks for looking in on my blog!

MAY 2009

BIRTHDAY MONTH

May is birthday month for the boys in our nuclear family. Our son, Carl, was born on May 8, our son, Peter, was born on May 21, and I was born on May 19. This year I finally reached the ripe old age of 80 and my wonderful wife arranged for a celebration of this birthday with all the family out in Riverfront Park west of town. My brothers and their wives came out from Chicago and our son, Carl, made the trip from New Jersey. It was a real blast! Riverfront Park has a lovely picnic grove studded with huge redwoods that keep the area cool and pleasant, so we spent the afternoon there on Sunday May 17. Here’s the group picture we made:


And here for the sake of identification and posterity is a key to the people in the photo above:


1. Joel Schmidt (My brother) 2. Nikolas Szecsey (Mary & Christopher’s son) 3. Jonathan Seutter (Gretchen’s fiancé) 4. Gretchen 5. Peter 6. Kate Loveall (Peter’s fiancée) 7. Kyle Crosson (Gretchen’s son) 8. Dickie 9. Carli Morgenstern (Kyle’s friend) 10. Our son, Carl 11. Christopher Szecsey 12. Ilse Schmidt (Ralph’s wife) 13. Mary 14. Evan Schmidt (Peter’s son) 15. Heidi 16. Daniel Zweig (Heidi & Peter’s son) 17. Mary Schmidt (Joel’s wife) 18. Jonathan Zweig (Heidi & Peter’s son) 19. Peter Zweig 20. Matthew Zweig (Heidi & Peter’s son) 21. Aron Szecsey (Mary & Christopher’s son) 22. Jesse Schmidt (Peter’s son) 23. Me 24. Ralph Schmidt (My brother) 25. Dustin Gerson (Becky’s fiancé) 26. Becky Crosson (Gretchen’s daughter)





THE CHARLES M. SCHULZ MUSEUM

One day while my brothers from Chicago were visiting, we went to see the Charles Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa. Schulz’s comic strip still holds great interest for young and hold and the museum offers all kinds of special attractions. Any number of artists have contributed to the works seen there. One especially intriguing exhibit is the mural covering one whole wall in a large room of the building. The mural is made up of hundreds of Peanuts comic strips fitted together in such a way that when one looks at the mural from a distance what you see is the picture below:



Of course, up close this is what you find (the large mural is made up of hundreds of these individual comic strips):




One is only permitted to take photos in selected areas within the building, but there are also some works of art outside the building. One funny sight is a statue of Charlie Brown holding the string to a kite lodged in a real tree above. Look carefully here and you’ll see the kite in the upper middle portion of the photo:




There are a number of Peanuts character statues in and around the building. This one stands on the edge of the parking lot:





FLORA AND FAUNA

In case you’re wondering, I’m still taking my share of bird shots. Recently, I thought I saw a kestrel sitting on a power or cable line while Dickie and I were on our morning walk. I couldn’t be certain of its identity, since I’d never seen one in that area before and it was quite a distance away, but I took a quick shot with my 400mm lens and found this when I got home. I love the coloring of kestrels. This one was small compared to others that I’ve seen elsewhere, but it’s just as pretty:




I’ll shoot anything that moves. This lizard made a nice target recently. I think it’s not hard to see a resemblance here to an alligator or even a dinosaur:




The prettiest photos usually have flowers in them. We have some great-looking flowers at the moment. Our roses have been gorgeous:



And these cosmos aren’t bad either:



Thanks for looking. See you later!

February 2009

Finally, we’re getting some rain here in our part of the world. Wouldn’t you know, it would come when you’d rather it didn’t. I’m talking about the Amgen Tour of California Bicycle Race, the first leg of which was run yesterday from Sacramento to Santa Rosa. Dickie and I and our daughter, Mary, were waiting on the finishing stretch in downtown Santa Rosa. We stood in a mild drizzle for about two hours. Of course, the drizzle turned into a full shower just when the riders arrived. In any case, I still managed to get a few half-decent shots. Here’s one of the winner, Francisco Mancebo of Spain, as he was making one of the last laps:




I had a fairly good week with the camera last week. Dickie and I went out to the ocean one sunny day when the surf was up. Bodega Head is always beautiful when that happens. Here’s a shot of the shore line looking north from the parking lot area:




Actually, I got one of my best shots lately on the way out to the ocean. Dickie spotted a hawk on the side of the road, so I stopped about a hundred yards away and walked back to find two hawks sitting in a tree. One of them flew to a higher perch in another tree, but this one refused to move, even when I walked right up to and under the tree to get a shot from the other side of the tree. This was the closest I have ever been to a hawk and this is a crop, but it indicates just how close I really was:





Here’s the original shot. I was perhaps fifteen or twenty feet away with a 400mm lens:

I love this 400mm lens. It gets the photographer up close and personal. Here’s a Brewer’s blackbird I found bathing in a puddle at the beach:

I didn’t post on Valentine’s Day, but I did make a card for all my Flickr friends. This is a photo of the bouquet I gave to Dickie on the occasion. Here's a belated "Happy Valentine's Day" wish for you, too:

See you next time!

JANUARY 2009

Here we are – well into the New Year and this is my first attempt at blogging. Guess that says something about me, although I’m not sure just what it is. I certainly haven’t been too busy, or, worse yet, too ill. Maybe it’s the fact that life has been fairly routine for me lately. There just hasn’t been that much to talk about. True, the economy may be in trouble, but that hasn’t made a big difference in my life, at least not yet! Of course, a new President is about to take over. I could have said something about that, but I’ve tried to steer clear of politics in this blog.

Maybe that’s a mistake. I do have something to say in that regard. I’m really happy about the change at the top here in our country. For the past eight years I’ve felt like a political outcast. Somehow, because I didn’t support the war in Iraq, some people implied that people like me weren’t really patriotic. I always knew in my gut that that was so much baloney. My disappointment politically has always been with the direction our country was going – not with the country itself. We do have a great country when it lives up to its ideals. In most respects, there’s no better place on earth than right here in the U.S. of A., but when we become proud and arrogant as a people, when we push others around as if we were the only people that mattered, when we act as if we here in the United States were God’s chosen people, that stinks! Either all the people in the world are “God’s people” or none of them are. You can take that to the bank! Cut this silly talk about the “evil” people. It’s propaganda. It goes with warring, whether it be between families or nations! It’s a tactic. Hitler used it against the Jews. Our own country used it against the Germans and the Japanese a few decades ago. Then it was the Russians. Now it’s the Arabs. Come on, folks! Get smart! It’s time to quit the name calling and focus on doing positive things to make this world a better place! I think our new President knows that. I only hope he gets the cooperation of the general populace! And, you know what? I think he just might!

ON TO OTHER THINGS

As I mentioned last month, I did get myself a new camera recently, the latest edition of the Canon Rebel, an XSi that boasts 12.2 megapixels in its sensor and takes such awesome detail that even yours truly comes up with some great shots from time to time.

Unless it’s a very gray day with no good sunlight, I always carry my camera on our daily walks. Lately, Dickie and I have been stalking a red-tailed hawk in the vineyard on the edge of our subdivision. I’m fairly sure he recognizes us now as the same people who pestered him in the past. I believe he even knows our car as we drive into the area (although Dickie doubts that!). In any case, he often sits in the top of a tall pine tree that appears to be dying. We find him there quite regularly. He has taken to screaming before he flies off in what I take to be a huff, sometimes before I can even get out of the car. I suppose I’d be irked, too, if somebody was regularly interfering with my hunting or my desire to take a nap, which I think is what we’re doing. Anyway, here’s a couple shots I got of him the other day. You can see why he’s known as a red-tail:

Birds are so much fun to photograph, especially the ones with rich color like the goldfinch or the bluebird. I snapped this bluebird on the roof of someone’s domicile just the other day:







Shortly the killdeer will be making their nests in graveled areas around the neighborhood. Here’s one that was inspecting a likely area for his/her nest the other day:

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Well, thanks for stopping by. See you next time!

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!