Archive for July, 2009
Thursday, July 30th, 2009
A Dual-Species Exhibit
After Susan got home last night she found the breakfast nook area rug bunched up and when she went to straighten it out she found a lizard’s tail underneath it. Curious and concerned as to whether the rest of the lizard was inside the house either intact or in separate parts, she soon found our [...]
6 Comments » - Posted in animals, backyarchaeology by Will
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
Hawk! Who Goes There?
I was alerted to its presence by a scree’ing mockingbird in the vicinity, but it wasn’t until I looked into the boughs of the camphor laurel across the street that I spotted the predator — a juvenile Cooper’s hawk — clutching in its talons what remained of an unfortunate pigeon:
The heavily photoshopped image gets much [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in animals, nature, neighborhood by Will
Friday, July 24th, 2009
If This Doesn’t Brighten Your Day, You Need Help
Chances are what with the internut being what it is and all, I would have eventually stumbled across the video below. But because of the Blogfather Tony Pierce, who is always there to open a door for his readers and say “look inside and check this shit out now,” I got my day brightened that [...]
7 Comments » - Posted in humor, internet, raves by Will
Friday, July 24th, 2009
Perchance To Dream
On my before-bed check of the flower patch last night I found this bee nestled and entirely still in the center of that newly bloomed lemon queen sunflower. As it was well after 10 p.m. and I’ve rarely — if ever — seen bees out after dark, I thought rather sentimentally that it might have [...]
No Comments » - Posted in backyarchaeology, nature by Will
Thursday, July 23rd, 2009
Flight Of The Tumble Bee
This morning while doing my regular backyard waterings ‘n dogpoop scoops I found not only some early blooms on our neighbor’s San Pedro cactus, but in one of them a busy carpenter bee.
I managed somehow without falling or without to unsteady a hand to cantilever myself across the the tortoise hutch with my cam held [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in backyarchaeology, nature, neighborhood, photography by Will
Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009
A Death To Start The Day
She’s not the first to go. Others in the sunflower patch with petals clamped and far from unfurled have been decapitated before her, but she was the first to go in full and fantastic bloom. When I was confronted with this end result done last night no doubt by the neighborhood raccoon, I was at [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in animals, backyarchaeology, nature by Will
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
Morning Snap: Microcosmos
Suffer yet another sunflower post, won’t you? This time around, it’s not just something amazing about the flora I found, but rather the discovery of an opportunistic hunter making its home on one of the blooms. Behold the goldenrod crab spider (click for the bigger picture):
At first I was blown away considering the odds of [...]
3 Comments » - Posted in backyarchaeology, morning snap, nature by Will
Saturday, July 18th, 2009
Dueling Coyotes
So I did a 67-mile ride this morning that sent me from Silver Lake through downtown across the L.A. River and east across Whittier Boulevard to the San Gabriel River, then downstream to where it empties into the bay. Then I came up through Long Beach along the Shoreline Bikeway to the Los Angeles River [...]
No Comments » - Posted in adventure, animals, biking by Will
Friday, July 17th, 2009
Bee Movie
Yeah, yeah… again with the sunflowers. Susan posted a couple awesome shots of one the first bees to dive into our sunflowers when she got home yesterday. This morning before leaving for work I found one digging in and couldn’t get an in-focus macro image of the critter despite repeated attempts.
So I flipped the cam [...]
No Comments » - Posted in backyarchaeology, nature by Will
Thursday, July 16th, 2009
Coming Saturday: The Gun Butt Ride
In the wake of yesterday’s egregious encounter, I’m feeling the need to cleanse the palate by knocking out a long recreational ride I’ve been wanting to do since last year’s July 4th Washington Boulevard trek.
In a nutshell, it’s about a 67-miler that will start in Silver Lake, head across downtown to the 6th Street Bridge, [...]
