Tourist

Pre-dawn

Dawn

Misty, a Mississippi Kite, is staying in Corrales for the summer.

We interrupt this post for a news flash. Søren has Tail Feathers! Yes! You heard it here first. Søren has tail feathers. For those of you who don’t know, Søren is our neurotic African Grey Parrot. Tristan and David got him around 2007. When Tristan and David divorced in 2014, Søren went crazy and pulled out all his feathers. We took Søren so he could live with a couple. He let all his feathers grow back, but he had been pulling out his tail feathers until a few weeks ago. Why he stopped pulling them out all of a sudden I can’t say, but he has figured out that he might be able to fly having all his feathers grown out. He finally looks like a whole African Grey Parrot.

Søren with his red tail feathers

The moon finally broke through the clouds for a bit last night.

Eye

Glenda

We had a doozy of a thunderstorm last night. While I was out photographing the lightning, the lightning took out my gigabit switch. I turned my NAS drives back on after the power came back on and stayed on afterand they couldn’t connect to the network. I finally figured out the switch wasn’t working. I dug out an older switch that solved the connection problem, but at 100MB/s it’s the connection is really slow. I ordered a new switch and a UPS backup to plug the switch and NAS drives into.

The lightning bolt in the fifth photo was so close that the flash and the boom were simultaneous, and then a torrent of rain came pouring down. I got under the cover of the deck, but the rain was blowing into the deck through the wire, so I finally went inside.

Glenda giving me dragon eyes.

Snake In The Grass

Tristan walked out to her car to go to work and discovered a large Diamond Back Rattlesnake beside her car. She when back inside, got her snake stick, and a 5-gallon bucket with a lid, put the snake in the bucket, put the lid on the buck, carried the buck with the snake in it out to the Petroglyph Park, and let the snake go. She said the snake was very calm the whole time.

A dazed Lesser Goldfinch sitting on Tristan’s thumb.

You Beavers Lighting Up Our Lives

Got lighting? There was six beaver in the river at Beaver Point tonight.

Jupiter’s moons were in a formation I had not seen before. When I looked at the image on my camera’s screen at 5:00 am I thought I was moving the camera and getting a double image of the moons, but since Jupiter is round, the moons were really sitting side by side.

The moon through a thin layer of clouds.

Frog Art

Dawn’s pinks and purples
Wait for Sun to show its face
Daybreak colors pale

What happened to eggs
Ditch is dry brutal drought’s woes
We will never know

From flatulent frogs
Bubbles rise ripple water
Laughing in the lake

Bullfrog watches me
From a puddle drying up
Ditch has done gone dry

It is so like men
Breaking wind water bubbles
pulled a frog’s finger

Trees form a green crown
Against the sunset’s orange grays
Another day gone

Early Beaver Shot The Bunny

Dawn

NE view of the Rio Grande on Wednesday evening. NE view of the Rio Grande this morning.

SE view of the Rio Grande on Wednesday evening. SE view of the Rio Grande this morning.

A beaver up and out at dawn.

Bunning through the fence.

Shots of the Bunny

pTerodactyl at dawn.

Spunk is a Cat Tree hugger.

We got a really violent thunderstorm this afternoon. The wind was strong, driving the rain sideways, and the visibility was low. The weather station recorded the event as producing 0.95 inches of rain. The wind-driven rain got almost everything on the deck wet.

The clouds right after the thunderstorm. Views looking east and west.

The clouds at 7:30 pm. Views looking east and west.

8:11 pm (official sunset). Views looking east and west.

The Mystery Bird Identified?

I went out to check on Venus and the moon this morning, but they were blocked by clouds. However, I got a clear view of Jupiter with four of its moons.

No one could I identify this bird I posted on July 5th. The bird is small and around 200 feet from me when I took the photo. Now I think it’s a juvenile Western Bluebird.

Juvenile Western Bluebirds up close and personal.

Buddy finally got de-coned. I was in the field this morning, so by the time I got to see Buddy, he had worn himself out. He may have to wear the cone again when he gets his eyelid fixed. But that’s a month away.