Spotted Towhee

I spotted this Spotted Towhee (pipilo maculatus) early this morning, as I was searching for orioles. He was perched up near the top of a flowering plum that is being taken over by our Chinese wisteria, just catching the rays. He even looks like he needs some coffee to get him started!

When we first moved out to the chapparal, these were one of my favorite birds to try to spot — I thought they were very elusive (and reclusive!). Now we've got scads of them right in our yard, attracted by both the cracked corn (they scratch feed just like chickens) and the waterer. And when we go for a walk, away from the yard, for some reason I no longer find them difficult to spot. The logical explanation is that I've gained some towhee-spotting skill, but what it feels like to me is that the towhee community decided that I was an okay guy, and they all decided (simultaneously) to refrain from hiding from me.

I like this photo mostly because it is showing off that distinctive red eye very clearly. Once I espied that eye (and how could I miss it?), there was no doubt that this was a Spotted Towhee.

Click on the photo for a larger view.

California Quail

California Quail (callipepla californica) are one of the delights of living out in the chapparal. We encourage these beautiful birds with cracked corn; rather large quantities of it, as a matter of fact. As a direct consequence of the corn (and a nearby waterer), we have dozens — maybe hundreds — of quail who include our yard as part of their daily routine. They've grown quite accustomed to us, usually ignoring us when we're at the window as little as 10 feet away, even when we open the window to see them more clearly. And sometimes, when we walk outside, they don't flee until we're a few short feet away from them.

In the picture is an adult male, caught in very early morning light. He was standing about 15 feet from me as I shot this, using a stabliized 1280mm lens, handheld, with ASA 800 and 1/60th second. The picture on the right caught him with his eye closed purely accidentally; I just thought it gave him a cute expression (if you'll forgive the anthropomorphism).

Click on the photos for a larger view.

Oriole

This is a male Hooded Oriole (icterus cucullatus), a breeding adult of the Western variant. For the past week or so, we've had two (and possibly three) pairs of Hooded Orioles feeding from the blossoms of our two Liquid Amber trees. They seem to favor these over all other food sources when they're in bloom, which makes spotting them a much easier problem. Their behavior, generally, is to stay in the Liquid Amber tree (which has broad leaves, densely packed, offering great cover), coming out just once in a while (perhaps three or four times per hour).

At left above, he's perched in an aleppo pine about 20 feet from the Liquid Amber tree; this was his most frequent maneuver. Just once in the early morning, I saw him drop to the ground, right under the Liquid Amber tree (right photo above). I've never seen them on the ground before, so this has to be a fairly unusual behavior. I speculate that he dropped a blossom or two and was retrieving it, but I never did see him pick up anything in his 90 seconds or so on the ground. Just toward the camera from the Hooded Oriole you can see a California Towhee — who got into a dust-up with the oriole, causing him to fly away...

That right photo above, by the way, was taken with a 1280mm stabilized telephoto, handheld, at 1/30th second, at 1600 ASA (the morning light was very dim). This modern equipment is amazing!

As usual, click on the photos for a larger view...

Rabbit

I caught this young rabbit in the early morning light, looking over the offerings in our back yard.

Actually, it's most likely a hare — specifically a Black-Tailed Hare or Black-Tailed Jackrabbit (lepus californicus). According to our books on local natural history, that's the most likely candidate for these things.

Since we started putting out cracked corn for the quail a few years ago, we've become the home for an ever-expanding colony of these hares — so many that we're probably going to have to do something to control the population someday soon, as they're eating everything in sight (including the majority of our cracked corn!).

I keep thinking of a nice rabbit stew, but Debbie can't bear the thought of eating the "cute little bunnies". As usual, click on the picture for a larger view...

Western Scrub-Jay

The Western Scrub-Jay (aphelocoma californica) is a common chapparal denizen. We have dozens of them on our property, which is mostly covered with the manzanita-chemise chapparal that is so characteristic of San Diego County's foothills. Almost any direction you might choose to look, and at almost any time of day, you're sure to see one of these fellows perched, sentry-fashion, in the top of a manzanita or other good lookout spot. You're also quite likely to hear him, as he scolds you for having the unmitigated gall to occupy his territory!

There's actually no simple way to know the gender of these birds, as they are not sexually dimorphic. There are two variants, according to Sibley: a "Pacific" and a "Interior"; ours match the "Interior" variant best in appearance, but in behavior (bold and conspicuous) they more closely match the "Pacific" variant. We suspect ours are just all mixed up.

Our feeders attract the jays, most especially the cracked corn and the oil sunflower seed. In fact, we had to get some special feeders to keep the jays out in order to give any other birds a shot at the oil sunflower seeds!

Click on the picture for a larger view...

APOD

APOD brings us...

Venus, Mercury, and Saturn wandered close together in western evening skies last week. On Saturnday, June 25, astronomer R. Jay GaBany recorded this snapshot of their eye-catching planetary conjunction, from historic Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton, California, USA. The view looks toward the Pacific shortly after sunset with the lights of San Jose and the southern San Francisco Bay area in the foreground. Of course, Venus is the brightest of the trio. Mercury is nearby on the right and Saturn is below and left, closest to the horizon. Farther to the right of the planetary triangle are Pollux and Castor, twin stars of Gemini, with Regulus, bright star of the constellation Leo, at the very upper left corner of the picture. In the coming days, Venus and Mercury remain close, while Saturn continues to drop below them, toward the horizon.

Click on the picture for a larger view.

Four dead in Jamul: update

A van full of illegal aliens crashed head-on with a local's pickup truck, on Route 94 not far from the Bravo Cafe and the feed store. At least four people in the van died; the driver of the pickup (a 79 year old — and apparently very tough — woman) survived the crash with moderate injuries.

The Union-Tribune picked up the story; an excerpt:

At least eight people were injured, six of them critically. One was still trapped in a vehicle a half-hour after the wreck and Heartland Fire personnel were trying to rescue him, a dispatcher said.

The Chrysler minivan had 11 undocumented immigrants in it, said California Highway Patrol Officer Brian Pennings. He said the driver avoided a Border Patrol checkpoint near Otay Lakes Road, southeast of the crash, by swerving into opposite lanes.

The Border Patrol was not pursuing the van when the collision occurred, Pennings said.

This accident plays right into one of the things that really scares me — the idea that my life might be ended (or drastically changed through some awful injury) by the actions of someone else, over which I have absolutely no control. What happened to the illegal aliens is horrible enough, but the fact is that they go into that situation through their own actions. Think of that tough 79 year old woman — through no fault of her own, and probably without any option on her part, she became a victim of this situation. I hope she's going to be ok; I'm not really sure what "moderate injuries" means. Yikes!

Update: Since the early reports, apparently another one of the injured has died, making a total of five deaths. The injured woman was 69 years old, not 79 as reported earlier. Her name is Floella Jones, but I've not been able to find any information to contact her, including the hospital.

Update 2 (and bump): A reader (thanks, Lissa) emailed to tell me about Floella:

I am a friend of Floella Jones; and I have recently visited her. She is doing fine. She's still in some pain but is recovering remarkably quickly. At the time of the accident, she was overwhelmed with grief for those who were not as fortunate as she was and is praying for the full recovery of those who were injured and survived. She is also praying for the comfort of the families and friends of those who perished. And she apparently holds no grudge towards the driver who caused the accident. In fact, she laments that he has ruined his life so much at such a young age. And she is praying for his complete physical, emotional and spiritual healing. Mrs. Jones is also recovering remarkably from the emotional pain that the accident caused her, even though those wounds are likely to take her the rest of her life to fully recover from.

Floella sounds like a remarkable lady, blessed with grace and strength.

Slimy Mollusc

Well, it's happened again — my blog has jumped up another couple of notches in the TTLB (The Truth Laid Bear) Ecosystem. In a couple of earlier posts (here and here) on the same subject, I noted the blog's rise from "Insignificant Microbe" to "Crunchy Crustacean". Well, now it has advanced to "Slimy Mollusc", ranked at #18,255 out of 32,207.

According to TTLB's FAQ, the way the ecosystem works is that it counts all the links from other blogs to the blog being ranked. It can't be quite that simple, though, as my blog's ranking changes even when the number of links doesn't. And...the number of links is very small. I suspect that both traffic and longevity enter into the rankings in some manner as well. But that's just my suspicion!

Anyway, for now I'm just enjoying my blog's rapid climbing of the TTLB Ecosystem's evolutionary ladder. From "Insignificant Microbe" to "Slimy Mollusc" in two weeks! Hooray!

Hmmm... Now if we could just get politicians and their institutions to evolve at a similar rate, maybe we'd make some progress in this world...