Archiving my Twitter, Facebook and other social network activity
Some #butterflies from an exhibit, including a banded orange, a postman, an two morphos (they had SO many morphos)…
one of which decided to land on my leg and stay there. They had made it clear that we were not to touch the butterflies so as not to damage the wings with skin oils, so when it still hadn’t left after a couple of minutes, I asked a staff member to remove it, and they coaxed it away with a sponge brush soaked in gatorade.
A #MonarchButterfly spotted while walking around the neighborhood the other day.
#nature #photo #butterfly #flowers
We have a flock – or more likely several flocks – of feral parakeets in town. I saw these two going after the sunflowers in someone's front yard. #birds
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On iNaturalist (1)
This is the second bird I tried to catch drinking from this fountain. But they kept flying away.
Some #florespondence from last weekend’s walk at the botanic gardens.
I didn’t write down what the yellow flower is, but iNat suggests it’s Senna didymobotrya, a cassia native to Africa.
The magnolia was a popular nectar spot: every single flower that I could see had multiple bees crawling around in it.
#flowers #plants #nature #photo
The kids' event at the South Coast Botanic Garden this month(?) is a search for #gnomes that have been scattered around the grounds.
Sculpture at the garden. There are a half dozen pieces scattered around the grounds of this botanical garden. Pictured here are Fuller (as in Buckminster) by Doris Sung and Trace by Nancy Graves.
Fuller is near the entrance, so I see it most times I go walking there, but Trace is waaaaay on the other side.
#sphere #photo #art #buckyball #outdoor #sculpture
Some birds spotted on a hike yesterday morning: a California Towhee (the mature one perched on top of a bush) and a bushtit (looking very birb-like). A whole lot of the latter were flying back and forth between the trees on either side of the path, barely stopping long enough for me to point the camera in the right direction.
Pelican Cove, just past the point with the lighthouse. Unlike other parts of the preserve, there’s a trail here that lets you hike down to the (rocky) beach. Of course then you have to hike back up again.
I don’t know what kind of rock this is or why it looks like layers of thin pastry (or maybe a sponge), but it certainly looked interesting!
#cove #ocean #nature #california #rocks #photo #gloomy
Coastal hike at Vicente Bluffs Reserve, on the peninsula southwest of Los Angeles.
#nature #ocean #california #hiking #flowers #cove #coast #florespondence #photo
I saw this #squirrel a few lots down the street while I was out walking. It paused. I paused. I got my camera out. It stood up to look around. I kept my camera out. Then it slowly ran down the street almost but not quite in my direction until it passed about 4 feet away, then paused in the shade before continuing on its way. I think it started trying to determine whether I was a threat or not, and then whether I was likely to give it food or leave it alone. #nature
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Scenes from a seasonal marsh. Low areas collect water and form ponds during winter and spring, then it dries out over the summer. All the ground in these photos except on the near side of the logs in the last picture usually spends part of the year underwater.
The lowest part of the preseve is also where the most trees are (presumably because water has more time to soak into the ground there).
Two birds spotted while hiking the trails on top of the coastal bluffs southwest of Los Angeles. First a lesser goldfinch, which took me forever to actually catch on camera (there were 3 or 4 of them flitting around and not stopping for very long anywhere!) and a black phoebe that was perched a few yards from the trail.
#birds #photo #nature #finch #phoebe
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
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!
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
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.
