More Packing

Got back from the coast this afternoon having delivered another carload of things from my mother’s house to various points. We had a good time: managed to watch some video in the “toss” pile of Northanger Abbey, which was a good silly gothic thing to do among the rubble. I managed not to forget the iPod this time so I sang all the way there and all the way home. I’m tired but singing is good for the soul and it reminds me I should do this more.

In Davis we were able to catch up with Ron of Toad in the Hole and Joe and a friend of theirs who had come up for the UC Davis Arboretum plant sale. Some good Swainson’s hawk sightings with them, including two copulations. Ron is encouraging me to plant in half-barrels… out of the reach of gophers, and easy to tent against spraying.

Isn't There Supposed To Be A La Niña?

Or that’s what NOAA tells us. You’d never know it from the weather these past few days. I paddled my way to work this morning, and we’ve had 0.80 inches of rain in the past day. It all evens out though—we’re not that much over normal for the season (as of yesterday, 0.40 inches over the normal to date of 17.47 inches).

Cold Canyon Watercoloring

We got a quick trip in before the rain arrived this afternoon. I find I’m a very impatient person and will never manage this fiendishly difficult medium, but it was a good time…

Moving On

I’m at my mother’s on the Northern California coast. There are boxes everywhere. This afternoon I went through twelve photo albums cataloging my youth. And my brother’s and sister’s. Choose what you want, she said. The rest’s going in the trash.

She’s moving to Maine to be near my sister and the grandkids. It’s the right time to move, while she can still make friends, start a new life.

I’m thinking not having her around’s going to leave a little hole in mine, though…

Our Solano County Bird Square

The Napa-Solano Audubon Society recently put out a call for volunteers for their project to develop a breeding bird atlas for Solano County. In these atlases, the study region is broken up into grid cells that are searched for bird species that breed therein. I have been interested in participating in such a survey for some time now, and since we live in Solano County (though the extreme northeastern corner of the county), this is a good chance.

We have been assigned a 5 km by 5 km grid block directly south of us, in easy bicycling range of here. This block is a uniformly flat stretch of farmland. Today was our first real outing into the grid block (I took a look yesterday, but it was too windy and starting to sprinkle). It’s not sufficient just to record the presence of a bird species: instead we need to find actual evidence that the species is breeding, such as sighting them at or around a nest. We had no confirmed breeding species today, but did have three probable species, the best sighting being a pair of white-tailed kites displaying near a farmhouse. The season is just beginning, and we’ll have many more forays to come.

Gobblers in our Field

They don’t belong here. They have been introduced by Fish & Game for hunters. They are wreaking havoc on oak woodland ecosystems. But I do love to see them…

Walking On The River

While reading World Changing, I learned there’s a neat art installation at the Sacramento Airport, entitled Flying Carpet. On the second floor bridge that goes from the parking garage to the terminal, artist Seyed Alavi has carpeted the floor with a woven aerial image of a 50-mile stretch of the Sacramento River, running from Colusa to Chico. I’ll have to check it out on my next trip to the airport!

In The Long Run

I’ve been reading up on global warming lately, having just finished Thin Ice, by Mark Bowen, and The Discovery of Global Warming, by Spencer Weart (the latter author has an excellent website covering the same ground as the book, but with three times the content). For those of you who encounter climate change denialists, Coby Beck has been blogging a series on how to talk to a global warming skeptic.

Tracking Sea Critters

The OBIS-SEAMAP site is a repository for observation and tracking data for marine mammals, sea turtles, and seabirds. What is neat is that the site lets anyone go in and look at maps of the observation data, so if you want to see where a short-tailed albatross can cruise to, you can.

Looking Up

Another winter storm is coming through—Putah Creek is flooded east of the bridge, and should slosh up again to the levee soon. And far above, Jupiter has a new red spot. It’s a storm that’s been around since 2000, is now half the size of the Great Red Spot, and has just started turning red itself.