31 December 06
J Street Venture
The Yolo Bypass is an imposing barrier. It’s about 15 miles from our house to Sacramento, but taking the trek over the causeway is not something we do very often, and we don’t know our way around that city very well. But we do have a beat — we head over to Midtown and J Street.
Yesterday it turned wasn’t a very good day to head over there — two of the stores we wanted to go to were closed on account of the holidays. That would Art Ellis, a small family-run art store, and Metro Electronics, something of a rarity, an actual electronics parts store. All was not lost, as there is another art store a couple blocks up, and Pica was able to get her printmaking paper.
After that, we tried the Thai restaurant across the street from Art Ellis, Thai Basil — it was very good. So we have the basis of a good Saturday outing, followed by lunch, and maybe a trip to the Crocker Art Museum near the river. Sundays don’t work though — neither Metro Electronics or Art Ellis are open.
27 December 06
Dark
I write this by candlelight and a failing laptop battery, owing to a strong north wind… we did get to go out today and see the northern shrike, however:
19 December 06
Vertical Garden
Patrick Blanc’s work literally takes landscape architecture to a new dimension. There are more than a few buildings I wouldn’t mind seeing thus adorned.
(Via Urban Cartography)
18 December 06
On Not Getting Soaked
Our Bird Count yesterday was cold, but sunny sunny sunny, and we were able to bike the ridge. It felt good to move, felt good to climb the few hills along the ridgeline, to be startled by the purple finch’s raspberry hue.
One of our area 8 crew got bitten by a gopher snake, however. She was trying to usher it off the road. (It was her second attempt: the snake just resumed its suicidal position.)
I’ll post a photo of said snake tomorrow, but Ron’s doing fine, I’m sure you’ll all be glad to hear.
Next year: shall we cycle up Mix? That’s a steep gradient and goes on for almost five miles. I’m not in any shape to do it any time soon, but would like to get that way…
List of Birds Seen in Area 8:
Great Egret 1
Canada Goose 8
Turkey Vulture 38
White-tailed Kite 1
Golden Eagle 3
Sharp-shinned Hawk 3
Red-shouldered Hawk 6
Red-tailed Hawk 18
American Kestrel 7
Prairie Falcon 1 (Count Week)
Wild Turkey 13
California Quail 47
Mountain Quail 1
Killdeer 21
Rock Pigeon 15
Mourning Dove 18
Great Horned Owl 9
Western Screech-owl 1
Northern Pygmy-owl 1 (Count Week)
Anna’s Hummingbird 7
Belted Kingfisher 1
Acorn Woodpecker 32
Northern Flicker 33
Red-breasted Sapsucker 2
Nuttall’s Woodpecker 14
Pileated Woodpecker 1
Black Phoebe 10
Say’s Phoebe 3
Loggerhead Shrike 1
Hutton’s Vireo 3
Steller’s Jay 17
Western Scrub-jay 48
Yellow-billed Magpie 22
American Crow 3
Common Raven 14
Wrentit 31
Oak Titmouse 25
Bushtit 59
Brown Creeper 2
White-breasted Nuthatch 8
Bewick’s Wren 6
Golden-crowned Kinglet 3
Ruby-crowned Kinglet 54
Western Bluebird 11
Hermit Thrush 14
Varied Thrush 21
American Robin 377
Northern Mockingbird 9
European Starling 24
Cedar Waxwing 30
Phainopepla 6
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Audubon’s) 17
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle) 1
Warbler species 1
California Towhee 9
Spotted Towhee 9
Lark Sparrow 4
Fox Sparrow 10
Savannah Sparrow 3
Lincoln’s Sparrow 3
Song Sparrow 1
White-throated Sparrow 1
White-crowned Sparrow 33
Golden-crowned Sparrow 75
Sparrow species 3
Dark-eyed Junco (Oregon) 121
Western Meadowlark 13
Red-winged Blackbird 215
Brewer’s Blackbird 8
Purple Finch 10
House Finch 63
American Goldfinch 7
Lesser Goldfinch 8
Goldfinch species 2
13 December 06
Everydot
Everydot shows one person’s quest to photograph all the dots on the map in his neck of the woods around Minnesota and North Dakota, even sleepy crossroads like Henderson Station, Minnesota.
2 December 06
Our morning was spent once again in Cold Canyon. This time we met up with about forty people, at least ten of them under ten (go Girl Scout Troop 1952) to plant native grasses at the homestead, a nice hike in to the canyon of about 1-1/2 miles.
There were 600 grass seedlings to plant as well as quite a few native shrubs and trees (toyon, lotus, gray pine). With 40 people, though, the time passed quickly. Numenius has so far avoided messing about too much in the garden but he was well into it today. We were joined by about 5,000 hatching ladybugs. It was an excellent party.
One of the great pleasures of the day was running into three separate friends. Andrea, in the middle here at left, had some wonderful news to share with us. She’s a lurker on this blog so I won’t embarrass her but hey, gal, congratulations to you and Steve. It was great to see you.
19 November 06
Home Ground
I haven’t seen this new book yet but it’s on my to read list: Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape, edited by Barry Lopez and Debra Gwartney.
From the publisher’s blurb for it on the book’s website:
Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape brings together forty-five poets and writers to create more than 850 original definitions for words that describe our lands and waters—terms like flatiron, bayou, monadnock, kiss tank, meander bar, and everglade. The writers, including Barbara Kingsolver, Luis Alberto Urrea, Jon Krakauer, Charles Frazier, Antonya Nelson, and Samantha Chang, draw from careful research as well as on their own distinctive stylistic, personal, and regional diversity to portray in bright, precise prose the striking complexity of the landscapes we inhabit, from Missouri’s woody draws to Virginia’s runs, from the desire paths of cities to the rondes of Midwestern farmlands, from California’s bajadas to Alaska’s pingos and Hawai`i’s shield volcanoes. An advisory board has ensured the scientific accuracy of the prose. Included are one hundred black-and-white drawings by Molly O’Halloran and an introductory essay by Barry Lopez.
Not that I ever listen to All Things Considered but they did a piece on the book a couple of days ago — on that page there are also some excerpted definitions from the book.
16 November 06
Cloud Appreciation
I recently read The Cloudspotter’s Guide, by Gavin Pretor-Pinney, who is the founder of The Cloud Appreciation Society. The book is a humble exhortation to look up every now and then.
The cloud phenomenon of this month for the Society is anti-crepuscular rays. If crepuscular rays are described as “God’s fingers”, perhaps these are Satan’s shadows. They are much rarer, and I don’t recall ever seeing them.
John Ruskin is an honorary member of the Society, having once written —
It is a strange thing how little in general people know about the sky. It is the part of all creation in which nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more, for the sole and evident purpose of talking to him and teaching him, than in any other of her works, and it is just the part in which we least attend to her…The sky is for all; bright as it is, it is not “too bright, nor good, for human nature’s daily food,” it is fitted in all its functions for the perpetual comfort and exalting of the heart, for the soothing it and purifying it from its dross and dust.
11 November 06
Astronomy Break
Usually there is not much reason to take a break in the middle of the workday for an astronomical observation. It is, after all, daytime. This past Wednesday was different because in the afternoon there was a transit of Mercury, which is when the innermost planet crosses the disk of the sun. This is a fairly rare event, only occurring 13 or 14 times a century. The next one is on 9 May 2016.
The weather cooperated for us in Davis, and despite the unsettled conditions this week, it was sunny throughout the event. Elsewhere in North America, observers weren’t so fortunate. After lunch, I went to the roof of the physics building where the UC Davis Astronomy Club had set up a telescope with a solar filter. Thanks to them, I saw the speck of a planet, sunspot-sized but perfectly round, against the face of the sun.
In 6 more years (5 June 2012) is a transit of Venus. This is a much rarer event, not to be missed — the next one occurs in 2117.
2 November 06
First Rain
The first rain of the season was today. We got nearly an inch—0.88” over the day, plus a little bit last night. I didn’t dig out the slot in the ground where we place the rain gauge until this morning, so I don’t know the total from last night.
Rain of course means getting wet in ways you don’t quite want. I dressed lightly for the way into work, just my yellow windbreaker and jeans—only to find out that it was drizzling quite handily once I started cycling in. I also have to find some dry nook to store my outdoors clogs. Ploosh!—stepping with my socks on into the cold, wet linings of these when I went out this evening to the garden to fetch vegetables for the pasta sauce wasn’t that much fun.
But it was wonderful to see the drips and drops forming up on the concrete overhang outside my window at work. Yes! A window. From which I can watch the rain.