16 February 05
Philosopher Cat
Let us hope Wittgenstein liked the company of cats, for there is not so much he can do to avoid this one.
15 February 05
Harm
I have a memory of having buried a bird alive when I was small. My guess is that I believed it was dead, and I probably only put a handful of dirt on it, but it gave me nightmares years later.
My love of birds now is, I believe, not unconnected to this memory.
Much more recently I harmed a garter snake. I was clearing with an axe the rampant growth of California bay sproutings in the cabin we were staying in during the last big El Nio year.
The axe fell on the snake.
I have never howled so much as this, never felt so much a part of snakedom. I was wretched. I have respected and liked snakes ever since—I can’t claim to love them, not the way I love birds, but I have lost my fear of them. I love what they do to a landscape, curling around it.
We called this snake Speranza. Out of harm comes understanding.
Or so I hope…
14 February 05
Bay Area Historical Maps
The Earth Sciences and Map Library at UC Berkeley, in collaboration with the USGS, has had a project to scan old topographic maps of the San Francisco Bay Area and make them available online. The collection dates back to 1895, and covers many of the editions of both the 15 minute and 7.5 minute quadrangles.
At left is a map of where I grew up as it appeared in 1895.
13 February 05
Twitchers’ Rehab
It was the perfect antidote to racing up and down the Lower Rio Grande Valley: spending an hour or so watching this owl sitting in a mature tamarisk and sketching it. Numenius rigged up the telescope so that, sitting on the ground, we had a good view to sketch from.
I was able to get about fifteen sketches of the bird done when Richard mentioned he wished he had stuff to sketch with. Here, take this, I said. I have my
So I went back to the car for the paper and then worked on this drawing, which I could never have done if I hadn’t done the warm-up sketches. I think it must be like Lorianne’s 113 early-morning bows or something. The result, in any case, was purely meditative.
12 February 05
Day of the Long-eared Owls
Today we headed south with Sami and Richard to Mercey Hot Springs in Little Panoche Valley to look at long-eared owls, a species neither Pica nor myself have seen. For the past several years, this resort has been the site of a winter roost of these birds, who in daytime hours perch halfway up the interiors of the tamarisk and pine trees. 
The birds couldn’t have been more cooperative. The second one we saw was posed nicely for a sketch, so I went back to the car and got my drawing materials and our scope.
After one full sketch and several details of this bird, I went up the hill to do a quick painting of the Panoche Hills on this beautiful partly cloudy day.
11 February 05
Proving You’re Alive
Is what I took my mother to San Francisco today to do.
She could have done this herself, of course: she is, or at least she was at 2:30 this afternoon, alive. But the Spanish government in the person of a woman named Mara Josefa needed to see her, in person, along with a passport and a driver’s license, to put a bureaucratic stamp on the whole thing in person, called a fe de vida. Spanish bureaucracy terrified my mother for 25 years and still does, so I went along too. (It is, admittedly, pretty terrifying.)
When my father died in ‘99 we had to sort through pensions from employers in three countries along with the social security systems of each. It was a long, slow, tedious process. But I’m glad we persevered with the Spanish one, even though it took three years to sort out, because it’s a steady source of income that makes Mum less freaked out about the world in general.
We celebrated our success-and her newly-certified life-by having an early lunch together and then heading our separate ways before the Bay Area Friday exodus could give either one of us ulcers. This evening’s rainbow has reminded me once again how great it is to be alive.
10 February 05
Milestone
The odometer on my bike computer hit 10,000 miles last night when I was coming home from my Spanish class. I’ve had this computer since 1997, when Pica and I moved up to the Trout Club some 1200 feet above Santa Barbara. Commuting half the time by bike, I wanted a bicycle computer with a built-in altimeter, so I got this one. Most of the time it has lived on my red hybrid, but several years ago I started swapping it onto my road bike whenever I would ride it. Living in a place as flat as Davis is, the altimeter function isn’t terribly useful here, but at least it gives some indication of the passage of weather fronts.
As for the mystery of what happens after the odometer turns over from 9999.9, it went to 10000, with no decimal points forevermore.
9 February 05
Almond Blossoms—Retry
After last night’s hijacking of my sprig of blossoms, I went out and got another. Here’s a drawing done on one of my new sheets of Canson Mi-Teintes. I realize using colored pencils on this paper can’t quite work the same way, so I think next time I’ll do the entire drawing in white tempera before I start adding color.
These blossoms smell intensely like honey. It’s a wonderful thing to have them out your back door. (Except in our case it’s our front door, but we’re at the back of the other house.)
8 February 05
Flower Fiend
The almond tree is in blossom. Pica brought in a branch to draw but Charlie sniffed it and started munching on the blossoms! He didn’t let go either, and ran off with the branch, muttering possessive growls along the way.
7 February 05
On Again, Off Again
Readers of Feathers of Hope will notice that Numenius and I take turns posting. This works for us: daily posts would seem like an ordeal, but it’s possible to write or draw something for posting every other day, which may or may not have anything to do with what one of us posted the day before.
So Numenius posted three consecutive days, and people are wondering where I was.
It has to do with birds, and here’s a very partial list:
Plain chachalaca
Crimson-collared grosbeak
Elegant trogon
Golden-crowned warbler
Groove-billed ani
Black-throated green warbler
White-tipped dove
Cactus wren
Muscovy duck
Great-tailed grackle
Blue bunting
Roadside hawk
Rose-throated becard…