Tag: Cross-Posted on Blog

This hawk had killed a pigeon(?) and brought it to this tree on the corner of a suburban block to eat it

It turns out the crows *had* been trying to scare off a hawk that had killed a pigeon and settled into the tree to eat it. At first I could only see the occasional feather raining down, until I moved to where I could see through a gap in the branches.

The hawk was huge. It’s probably one of the hawks that I see around regularly, but most of the time they’re up in the sky or perched high enough I don’t have any sense of their scale.

#photo #birds #hawk #nature #BirdOfPrey

A hawk with light brown underside and darker brown wings, perched on a thick tree limb with branches and pine needles behind it, holding the remains of a smaller (dead) bird to the trunk with its claws, leaning over with its hooked beak.

The same hawk from another angle, looking up from its meal in the direction of the camera. Two cables run across the frame, not quite blocking the view.

On Photog.Social

This was just on the corner of a block in the suburbs. People were still out watching (and the crows hadn’t returned) when I decided to continue on my walk.

Usually I see the red-tailed hawks out by the nearest school field or the greenbelt by the power transmission lines, and I only see the smaller cooper’s hawks along the residential streets.

On Photog.Social
Cross-posted on K2R

This hawk had killed a pigeon(?) and brought it to this tree on the corner of a suburban block to eat it. People were standing out in their front yards watching it. Feathers were dropping as it ate.

It’s probably one of the same hawks I see in the area from time to time, but it looked huge. Though that could just be from it being a lot closer to the ground than I usually see them!

On iNaturalist

These crows were making a huge racket

As soon as I stepped out the door for a walk this morning, I heard a lot of crows making a lot of noise down the street. They were perched on a telephone pole, flying up and swooping around like they were trying to scare off a hawk.

Of course I walked toward them to see what was going on.

By the time I reached the end of the block, the crows had given up and flown off. But I noticed people were out in their front yards looking up at a tree…

#photo #crow #TelephonePole #birds #BlackAndWhite

A telephone pole with at least 15 crows perched on the cross piece and wires, seen from below with the wires and crosspiece forming diagonals.

On Photog.Social
Cross-posted on K2R

These crows were making a huge racket, some of them taking off, swooping and perching again, trying to scare off a hawk that had caught a pigeon and was eating it in a nearby tree. The hawk didn’t leave. The crows did.

On iNaturalist

A hummingbird at a local park. Most of the time they don’t stay in one place…

A #hummingbird at a local park. Most of the time they don’t stay in one place long enough for me to even focus on them, even when they perch like this one.

#bird #photo

A tiny green-white-and-back hummingbird perched on a twig, blue sky and other twigs in the background.

On Photog.Social

Of course, the reason that it was staying in one spot was that it was grooming, so I had quite a few shots that looked…less impressive.

#fotofails #birb

On Photog.Social
Cross-posted on K2R
Link on Twitter

Seriously, though, it’s encouraging to know that, decades after the ban on hunting went into …

Seriously, though, it’s encouraging to know that, decades after the ban on hunting went into effect, the humpback whale population has rebounded so successfully that most populations are no longer threatened by extinction. The world population is an order or magnitude greater than it was in the mid-1980s.

The Plan to Save the Humpback Whales—and How It Succeeded

On Wandering.shop

Star Trek IV, imagining the whales’ reaction at the end

Wow! We’re in the open sea! And we talked to aliens! And the humans have stopped hunting us! And they’ve stopped polluting the oceans! This is AWESOME!

Well, except for the whole thing with us being the only humpback whales on the planet. But it’s not like we were really able to talk to much of anyone from the aquarium to begin with.

On Wandering.shop

Star Trek IV, imagining the whales’ conversation with the probe

— Hey! We’re still here! Or, we’re back, anyway!
— Oh, good! What happened to you? We’ve been trying to reach you for ages.
— Apparently the humans killed us all.
— Wait, they did WHAT?
— Well, some of them did. But some of them brought us through time to make up for it. They won’t kill us now.
— They’d BETTER NOT!
— I think we’re OK now.
— *sigh* OK, good to know. We’ll go report back. Keep in touch.
— Thanks!

On Wandering.shop

L.A. Comic-Con is officially re-cancelled for the year

Whew! L.A. Comic-Con is officially re-cancelled for the year, with some of the guests already scheduled for 2021. Tickets can optionally be refunded or saved for next year. The more I think about it, the more I think they were hoping to get at least some revenue in this year, even if it ends up being just a super-early pre-sale for next fall.

On Wandering.shop
Original Thread

covid, reptiles, funny

Manchester man boards bus wearing a snake wrapped around his neck and mouth.

Officials’ comments on what constitutes a suitable face covering: “While there is a small degree of interpretation that can be applied to this, we do not believe it extends to the use of snakeskin – especially when still attached to the snake.”

BBC: Snake used as face mask on bus

On Wandering.shop

Smoky sun, late afternoon.…

Smoky sun, late afternoon.

We’ve had some ashfall over the past week, but for the most part, the air quality at ground level has only been awful, not unbearable. Especially since the heat wave subsided.

But the light has just been *wrong*. Normal clouds in the morning breaking up to reveal a layer of smoke behind them, letting through yellow-orange, almost but not quite late afternoon light at midday. I went out for a walk after work, once it had cooled down and saw this.

#photo #smoke #sun

kelsonv: “Smoky sun, late afternoon.…”

On Photog.Social