On Joy’s tomato cage in the front yard.
Blog
Sporadic dispatches from the hinterlands.
Early morning at the arboretum
The UCSC arboretum was closed for a while, but now it’s open and they offer occasional early morning openings for members (like us!). We got up at five this morning to take our binoculars, camera, and coffee up there to greet the morning.
I’ve been using the Sony A7RIV with 200-600 mm lens, but for today I added a new 1.4x converter, which seems to help. It was a gloomy marine-layer morning, but the sun burned through just enough to allow a few photos with the new setup.
Sheltering in place
We’ve been staying close to home for quite a while now, due to Covid-19. Luckily, our home area is pretty nice. Yesterday we got out to the Wilder Ranch coast for a morning walk.
The last couple of times I’ve been out there I’ve seen a Peregrine Falcon and a long-tailed weasel. I was hoping to give Joy a chance to see them, and to get some photos. We got lucky with the peregrine; it turned out to be two adults feeding a juvenile, and we got some good looks. They’re very loud birds, and weren’t hard to find. Although we stayed far away, one of the adults made a couple of threatening passes toward us.
We also saw a few other birds out there, including some sparrows that puzzled us a little. We’re not too sure about the three little birds in the triptych. We’ll try to get some expert advice on those.
We didn’t see the weasel.
Opossum
We’ve been stuck at home for a while, waiting out the pandemic. We haven’t had much chance to get out and see wildlife, so this morning some wildlife came to see us.
We don’t normally see opossums out in the daytime but this one seemed to be enjoying the sunshine. Perhaps he’s adapting to the new level of quiet as we humans all shelter in place.