New Tricks

Alex brought her phone to me one day recently to show me some art someone had posted on some social media site. (Note the use of the word "some" -- that means I didn't bother to remember the names.)

The worthy experimental artist had put a stem of gypsophilia (baby's breath) on a scanner, and scanned it with the lid of the scanner open. DUH!!

There was a faint illumination from the room the scanner was in, but the ethereal image of the tiny flowers was stunning. Naturally I had to give it a try myself, in my garage studio, which is devoid of light.

I put a stem of my white geraniums on the scanner, turned off all the lights, and from my indoor workspace, fired up the scanner remotely and got this delicious result.

I tried the project with snapdragons, nasturtiums, and sweet peas.

Next I think I'll snitch a few of Bernie's dianthus blooms, which should come out looking like mutated stars in a midnight sky.

Also I should do a good job of cleaning those pesky specks off my scanner's bed.

Predation

I was standing at the kitchen door that leads out onto the patio. A grey piece of fuzziness drifted down from the hopseed tree. And then another, more obviously a fluffy feather.

And then another!

And more, a veritable shower of feathers, not just downy chest fluff, but primary feathers as well. We stepped out the door to see who was plucking what up in the tree, and a small hawk flew away, leaving an avalanche of feathers hung up on the twigs and leaves.

An inspection of the feathers:

I knew immediately what the species of lunch was. And if that wasn't clear enough, there was this:

Delicious, crunchy fresh cedar wax-wing.

Why couldn't it have been one of those noisy, pesty mockingbirds?

If That Mockingbird Don't Sing ...

... it would be because of this guy.

A few evenings ago, a family (?) of six Cooper's Hawks came sailing through the neighborhood. Amazing sight to see, loud and plaintive sound to hear. The juveniles obviously didn't want Mom and Pop to leave them all on their own, screeching their pleas to the world.

You can hear a recording of their calls here: Just scroll down the page to "Begging Calls of Chicks."

At least one of the young birds has been hanging around, doing a low fly-by each day, perching on the street-light out front or in the neighbor's sequoia trees.

In June of 1997, we woke to our first morning in this house, hearing the beautiful sound of singing birds, so different from the previous home, where the predominant morning noise was the traffic from Highway 99, one of the main arteries of traffic running north-south in Central California.

Since Young Cooper's Hawk moved into the area, we hear NO birds singing. No crows, no jays, no finches, no sparrows ... because what Cooper's Hawks eat is other birds. How awful, you might think, and indeed, some birding sites on the web advise people to take down their bird feeders until a hawk moves on to a different locale.

We're ambivalent about this. It's true that we miss the song of house finches and the company of scrub jays on the back patio, but none of us misses that blasted mockingbird who used to proclaim himself Ruler of the Block incessantly all day long, and in the middle of the night, too.

The other possible benefit of the hawk is that the jays and mockingbirds aren't gobbling up our ripening grapes for the first summer in a long, long time.

Eventually, the hawk will fly off to the river a few blocks away and hunt more fruitfully in the canopy of the trees. In the meantime, silence is golden.

Transformations

On the Fourth of July, I staggered out of the bedroom with one thought only: hot tea.

However, before I reached the kitchen, Alex and Lillian waylaid me, enthusiastically telling me I MUST see the wonder of the age NOW!

And when I saw it, I forgot about tea for a while and instead grabbed my camera and was privileged to have a photoshoot of a dragonfly that had just emerged from the shell of its nymph stage.

Dragonfly nymphs live underwater for over a year, dodging fish, growing, and shedding their skin from time to time. Then when the time is right, they respond to some biological signal, and climb out of the water.

This one climbed up the wall beside our front door and clung there, safe from predators, but not from paparazzi. Poor patient creature, it gripped its old shell, its abdomen slowly stretching from a lumpy blunt mass to a long, graceful body.

My camera has a low-light setting, fortunately, because the porch is in full shade in the mornings, but so that we could assure ourselves of some good pictures, we brought out a flashlight, and on macro setting, got some spectacular views.

One of the most dramatic of these is the Peek of the Week over at the Piker Press.

Not only is the transformation from nymph to adult an amazing thing to see happen right outside one's front door, but also a stunning validation of the success of our water habitat in the fish pond off the front porch.

We have often watched dragonflies skimming over the little pond, marveled at the one year the wasps had an population explosion and frequented the pool for water, and caught a great egret stalking the remaining fish (the dastardly villain ate all but one of the named fish), but this year has been a triumph, as we discovered five baby fish swimming with the big guys ... and now this creature, grown in the waters of a front yard fish pond.

In this second side shot, you can see how much longer the abdomen of the bug has become. And still the creature hung there, unmoving. After a while, I saw two water droplets fall from the abdomen, dropping ballast, I suppose, getting ready for the aerodynamics of flight.

I can't remember a time when I wasn't fascinated by dragonflies (and damselflies, too). There was a small lake about twenty minutes from where I lived called Zook's Dam; I loved visiting there in the summer, seeing the bluegills beneath the water lilies, the dragonflies lighting on top of the flowers.

Over the course of the morning of the Fourth of July, we went to the porch again and again to see how "our" dragonfly was getting along. I took dozens of photos, most of which were blurred in the dim light, and the awkward way I had to position the camera.


I didn't want to risk touching the insect with the close-focus lens -- emergence from the husk (called an "exuvia", by the way) leaves the bug very soft and vulnerable. If it tried to fly away too soon, one of our scrub jays would find it and eat it in seconds.

At last, on one of our visits, we saw that the dragonfly had unfolded its wings and held them out to the side. The abdomen was thinner, the color of the body darker. The time was at hand.

And then the bug was gone, and I was able to get very close in with my lens and take a picture of the exuvia.


Little filaments were visible, but I was not able to find a single reference on the web to tell me what they were.

The husk is still on the wall outside the door, a reminder of the fantastic "birth" we were allowed to witness, and a testament to the peculiarity and complexity of Life.

A Morning Walk

This morning Bernie and I took the dogs for a walk down on the levee road by the river.

Elderberries are blossoming, and when I saw this cluster peeking into the sunshine from the shade, I couldn't resist snapping a few pictures of it. It's not the most colorful plant in the world, but perfection of this bloom serves to accent the surprising lights and shadows of the morning sun.

The riparian habitat is loaded with elderberries along with the blackberry thickets and cottonwood trees. I know that elderberry extract is supposed to be good for boosting the immune system, but I don't know how to process the berries. Maybe this year I'll figure that out.



Howie and Sebastian enjoyed the outing, although Sebastian still thinks it's all about chasing Howie and trying to herd him. Still, he's starting to follow Howie and sniff what Howie thinks is interesting, though he plainly does not understand why Howie feels compelled to mark every tree and grass clump.

Speaking of marking, some hog left a plastic soft drink cup (one of those quart-sized abominations) lying on the dirt road. Either a coyote or a raccoon took the time to take a big shit on it. I was truly impressed.


A bird was chirping alarms and hopping from branch to branch, but we couldn't see what it was. I started snapping pictures up into the branches of a cottonwood tree, in hopes of being able to pick out the bird in the photos later. The sky was bright with high haze, and the photos looked like black silhouettes on white until I used Photoshop and lightened the whole picture.

Presto, a rufous-sided towhee was revealed. Later on, I had a clear shot of a towhee in full sun, out in the open, but do you think I could get my camera out of the belt pouch in time? Hell, no. Bernie helpfully told me that REAL photographers NEVER put their cameras down.

I missed a great shot of a hummingbird later on, the same stupid way. @!!##!!

Along with the box elder trees, the water willows, and the nettles, there are stands of wild roses. They're plain little flowers, but the huge rose hips they set keep the riparian animals munching all winter and spring until the wild grapes (the larger leaves in the photo) ripen.

Babe used to love to poke around in the hedges along the levee for ripe grapes. I have heard that grapes are dangerous for dogs, but Babe didn't care, and neither do the coyotes.

Our walk was about two hours long, and it really was wonderful. We even found the local kids' favorite river spot, and spent some time there watching the Stanislaus River flow by.

Life can be good.