Spotted two birds in our yard for the first time this year (they're returning from their wintering over): a male Bullock's Oriole, and a Northern Flicker. The oriole spent about an hour eating from our hummingbird feeders; a gorgeous individual that appeared to be in full breeding plumage. We're hoping he'll nest here this year. The flicker was doing what flickers do best: strutting around our yard eating ants. We could support dozens of flickers on our ant population!
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Chuparosa...
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If you're not familiar with chuparosa, you may not realize that at any given moment you're only likely to find a few individual plants with lots of bloom on them. It's very common to find a good-sized bush with just a couple of blossoms – so it can be quite challenging to find them (since the bush is a non-descript gray color)! On yesterday's trip, I only saw three chuparosa with abundant blooms; one of them is in a photo below. All the rest of these were on plants that had less than a half dozen blossoms…
As always, you can click on any photo for a larger view…
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Labels:
Desert Wildflowers
Desert Visit...
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Despite the windy conditions I was able to take quite a few photos. I don't have time to post them today, so I'll be dribbling them out over the next few days. For starters, though, here are a few photos of a common species of butterfly in the Anza Borrego (though I don't know what it is). At right is one feeding on a blue phacelia in the lower Oriflamme. At right below is one that I noticed because of the noise and motion: it was flappy so energetically that I could hear it from ten feet or so away. I took this picture before I understood what was happening – it was caught in a spider web. I carefully pulled it out of the web, and then pulled off all the strands I could see clinging to its legs and wings. It fluttered away, apparently no worse for the experience.
As always, click on any photo for a larger view...
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Labels:
Desert Wildflowers
Geek Truck...
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Thank you, Mr. Bow! And if you see a big white Tundra pickup with this on the back, you'll know you're behind SlighlyLoony…
Labels:
Local
Is Al Gore in Town?
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And we got a lot of them! Enough to color the yard, cover our roof, and in certain spots form “drifts” a couple of inches deep. Very weird! The photo at right shows the view up the hill in our back yard: mossy rocks, manzanita, and ice pellets. The dogs weren't sure what the heck was going on, until one of them (Miki) figured out that the ground was covered with one of his favorite treats: ice cubes. Then he started to eat our yard…
The photos below show the pellets along the side of our driveway, close up, and around our peach tree (which is in bloom right now). Very odd!
Mr. Gore: please stay in loony land, wherever that might be – and stay away from Jamul!
As always, click on any photo to get a larger view…
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