I went out to the river late this afternoon to see what birds were out — the crows were swarming, the cranes were coming in for the night, and the geese were standing around watching the action. There was a hawk flying along the east side of the river when the crows flew in and several of the crows started chasing it, and a crows vs. hawk dog fight ensued. I attempted to photograph the battle, but they were too high and too far away to get clear shots of it.
2012 ended with a beautiful sunset. Laurie walked by the window and said “Oh! The base of the Sandias are on fire!” I grabbed my camera and made the 1/4 mile dash to the river bank just in time to get the red as it faded with the last sunlight of 2012. As I walked out of the bosque, the last sunset of 2012 was quite dramatic, as was the morning light offering beauty and promise for 2013.
I start the new year with my 600th consecutive post on WordPress, and 908th consecutive post since I started on CaringBridge in July of 2010. According to WordPress’s annual report, I had over 10,000 views in 2012 from people in 83 countries, — the US, the Netherlands, the UK, Canada and Russia were the top five. Thank you all for a great 2012 and I look forward to an even better 2013.
One of the first things you can put on your calendars for 2013 is the musical comedy, The Wedding Singer, presented by Devon Frieder and Warehouse 21 Productions. It starts this Friday, January 4th, and will run for two consecutive weekends. The show is directed and choreographed by Devon Frieder, with musical direction by Erik Joshua Clack. The Wedding Singer is based on the book by Chad Beguelin and Tim Herlihy with music and lyrics by Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin.
The shows will be presented at the Musical Theatre Southwest Black Box Performance Space, 6320 Domingo Rd. NE Ste. B, Albuquerque, NM 87108 (Central & San Pedro by the Fairgrounds). Show dates and times are:
Friday, January 4 at 7pm
Saturday, January 5 at 2pm & 7pm
Sunday, January 6 at 4pm
Friday, January 11 at 7pm
Saturday, January 12 at 2pm & 7pm Sunday,
January 13 at 4pm
Admission: $15 Adults, $12 Students. Special Front Row VIP Seats for $25.
To Reserve Tickets in Advance, Call (505)-216-6014
The last five photos are from a promotional photo shoot I did for the show last week, and Three Guys and a Guitar I posted on December 28, 2012 was one of the photos from the session. From the 10 minutes of rehearsal I saw before the shoot, and my interactions with Devon and the cast, The Wedding Singer looks like it will be a fun-filled production with lots of music and dance, and a friendly cast of whacky, colorful characters.
As we were driving home this afternoon at about 3:30 pm, I noticed a very large bird sitting in the top of a tree in the middle of a field. I made the left onto the ditch bank and drove back to where I got a clear view of the hawk about 500 yards away. I had my camera with the 70-200mm zoom lens in my bag in the back of the car, so I quietly opened the rear hatch, got out my camera, and got one shot of the bird looking at me before it took off. It flew off quickly and the sequence of shots was as fast as the camera would focus and shoot on the flying hawk in overcast light. The last photo is a panorama of all seven frames I got of the hawk before my autofocus couldn’t distinguish the bird any longer. I added an effect to the 4th photo in the series which is supposed to mimic a gum bromine print. The photo ended up with a softer focus than the other images and the effect brought the most detail out of the softness, and it ended up looking somewhat like a pastel drawing.
Tristan adopted an Eclectus Parrot named Joey which turned out to be a rescue. Joey, who is probably around 9 years old, had been left in a house that one of Tristan’s friends moved into. The bird apparently had not ever had its beak trimmed and there was nothing in its cage for it to chew on to keep its beak trimmed back, so its beak had grown out so long that it was rubbing the feathers off Joey’s chest. Joey’s beak would have punctured his sternum and killed him if it had been left untrimmed much longer. The feathers on his head look good, but the rest of his feathers are scraggly and rough because he couldn’t groom himself with his long beak. He also hadn’t bathed himself or been bathed in who knows how long, so he smelled bad as well. Tristan called the vet on our way back to her house with Joey, and fortunately they had an opening within an hour, so we drove straight over to PetsMart and got Joey a new cage and lots of chew toys before taking him to the vet.
Joey was very well-behaved in the carrier as we drove around. He imitated noises from video games and gave us an occasional squawk. It didn’t take long after we got into PetsMart for people to start noticing him making cute noises. He squawked loudly at the sight of dogs, which really got the attention of the other shoppers. Once we got to the vet, Tristan turned the carrier around so the door was against the back of the bench so Joey wouldn’t react to the dogs in the waiting area. He would peek at me through the holes in the carrier, but when I first tried to photograph him peeking at me, he would back away to the other end of the carrier and then come back up and peak at me again with on eye, back off and peak at me again with the other eye. I finally got some photos of him peeking at me, but it was like a game to him.
His next adventure was his absolute refusal to get in the basket so the Vet-tech could weigh him in the exam room. He got on Tristan’s shoulder, then I got him on my arm, but when we got the basket near him, he ran upon my shoulder, then ran back and forth from one shoulder to the other ducking the Vet-tech. Then he got onto Tristan’s arm and climbed up and took refuse on her shoulder until the Vet came in. The Vet stood there in shock for an instance and then said she had never seen a beak that had grown out that long before. As we gave the Vet as many details as we had learned about Joey in the hour we had him, he sat on Tristan’s shoulder and groomed her until he tore off her pesky glasses that were getting in his way. The Vet got him wrapped in a towel and took him back to trim his beak and draw blood so they could test him for communicable diseases. When the Vet-tech brought him back in to us with his newly trimmed beak, Joey was happily chewing on the towel, something he hadn’t been able to do for most of his life.
He was pretty traumatized, and rode home in total silence, looking tired and worn out from his big adventure. When we got him home, he sat on a roost and posed proudly for me showing off his newly trimmed beak, then he watched me put his new cage together. As he watched Tristan and I fill his new cage up with things to climb on and lots of toys to play with and chew on, he started making cute noises again. When we put him in the cage he first checked out the water dish, and then started messing with the food. At first he turned his head sideways to compensate for a long beak, then he discovered he could pick up the food without cocking his head and started happily rooting around in the mixture of seeds, nuts and bird crackers able to eat normally for the first time in many years.
I went out about 30 minutes before sunset to photograph the Sandias when they turned pink, and ended up getting bird photos along the way. The Sandhill Cranes and Snow Geese where still hanging out in the apple orchard with light streaking across them from the low sun. When I got out to the river, a Great Blue Heron was wading around feeding, until it noticed me and flew off. I figured I wouldn’t see it again, but when I focused on the large bird coming toward me (figuring it would be a Sandhill Crane) it turned out to be the heron. The Heron noticed me about the time I got it in focus and it banked left and started hightailing it south, offering me a shot of it in profile, then it turned eastward to circle back out of range of my lens.
A group of ducks where floating down the Rio Grande, diving under the water and popping their heads up several yards down current from where they dived. When they came up from their third dive, they saw me on the bank and took off, leaving little splashes behind them. Just before the sun went down, a hawk flew over at high speed, but I managed to get a fairly clear shot of it. I got my photos of the dark pink Sandias, and as I was walking back to the house, a large group of geese took flight from the apple orchard, heading to the river — they reminded of bats flying out of a cave at sunset.
We had cloud cover most of the day, but no precipitation. I went out on the river an hour before sunset and got the cranes flying in for the night. They often dance around after they land. I don’t know if the duck was stretching, dancing or saw something threatening, but he was putting on a show, also.
Out of our six cats I got four of them to pose for me tonight. Puck, who is usually a great poser, made me chase him all over the house and catio before he decided to go into “light switch Viper” mode and attacked Laurie before he let me get a few shots of him. Between the cooler weather and the daily waterboarding, Stretch is looking so much better. I read Tintin in French to Stretch while giving him his fluids a couple of times this while Laurie was getting ready. I think my French on top of the waterboarding was double torture for poor stretch as he growled even louder as I read to him. Diné and Mama Manx headed for the hills when they saw the flashes. I usually don’t use a flash, but now that it gets dark so early, I’ve pulled out the flash. Beaker, our Gold Cap Conure, didn’t seem to be at all bothered by the flash.
Wagner plowed the corn field under. The cranes are sparse so far, and there were a few geese, but the crows are really taking advantage of the corn scattered by the plowing.
Here we are in the middle of November, which is the month of “Movember” where some men grow mustaches to raise money for prostate cancer research and men’s health. Last year I grew a mustache for Movember, and put up weekly, often creative, self portraits of my mustache’s progress (see above); however, besides the donations that Laurie and I made to Movember, only two other people, one a fellow cancer survivor, made a donation on my MoBro page — all that work and creativity turned out to be a bust. Which I suppose was because everyone had given all their money to breast cancer research with all those walks, runs, and trots for Tatas that thousands of people turn out for. It seems to me that everyone places their bets on boobs and let those poor, pathetic prostates be damned.
Nevertheless, I signed on to Movember again, but I’m not doing anything more than giving a donation. Besides, I still have a mustache — I certainly wasn’t going to shave it off and grow it again for nothing. But if you have a few dollars to spare, my MoBro page is at http://mobro.co/Elcheo.
The main Movember site is at http://us.movember.com/.
Finally, if you want a good laugh, I helped Ben Lolli film a trailer called “Mustache Empire” back in the fall of 2011. That was my first venture into cinematography.
Mustache Empire:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KhvMOkTwx8
Crows swarming over the Rio Grande and bosque this afternoon reminded me of Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “The Birds.” A pair of Sandhill Cranes were trying to land on the river, but they were having a hard time making their way through the swarm of crows. They tried flying through the crows two or three times before the crows thinned out enough for them to land. Each attempt they would start down, zig zag a few times, pull back up and circle around before making another attempt. On one of their circles they got close enough for me to get a clear shot of them above the crows. A flotilla of geese were leisurely floating down the Rio Grand to where they spend the night about a quarter mile from where I was standing. When they saw me on the bank they turned into the current and started treading water, staying in the same spot for some time while they discussed among themselves whether or not is was safe to float on by me. They finally decided to stay in the water and continued on their way, hugging the far bank as they floated past me. A couple of ducks floated down after the geese, but they decided it wasn’t safe to float on by me and took flight.
Off Center & Not Even 