“It looks like the wind is blowing in a nice afterglow tonight.” Wise words Daddy Owl.
Crows on the crow highway.
Ducks basking in the afterglow.
Cranes, ducks, and geese enjoying the glow.
More crows heading south.
Sandias catching the afterglow long after sundown.
Clouds from the bosque view.
Mama Owl. January 11, 2021
Sandhill Crane. January 11, 2021.
Surprise! I’ll bet you thought my new Ax was going to be a new guitar? As you can see below it’s a real Ax for chopping down trees. Laurie asked me why I got a chopping ax instead of a splitting ax? It’s pretty simple: like a Lumberjack, I chop down trees.
My new ax is made by Husqvarna, and it’s a solid, heavy-duty ax.
Mama Owl and Daddy Owl are still hanging in the tree across the irrigation ditch from where they have nested for the past four years.
Like a Lumberjack, I felled two elm trees in a matter of minutes with my new ax.
Crane looking for a morsel before going to bed.
Remember Monty Python’s The Lumberjack Song?
Crows peppered the sky
Jets few by
Cranes fly by
Landing gears down
Mama Owl & Daddy Owl
Jupiter & Saturn
Mama Owl and Daddy Owl in a lacy cottonwood tree. January 3, 2021.
Lovers in Lace
Lyrics & Music by Timothy Price
Guitars, Bass, and Percussion: Timothy Price
Lovers in Lace is another new, original song that is very different from Memories that I posted yesterday. Imagine yourself in the low light of a smokey bar gazing into your lover’s eyes with Lovers in Lace playing in the background.
Jupiter peeping through a tree. Saturn is barely peeking through where the lower branches meet the lacy edge of the Elm trees. January 3, 2021.
Spunk
I’m a Bald Eagle and I approve this post.
I took a break from putting this post together to go out a see what was going on in the bosque and river. A Bald Eagle flew over in approval of this post. The clouds approved also, forming a pterodactyl being chased by a chimera.
My photographer of the day is Lukas Kondraciuk with Through Open Lens at https://throughopenlens.com/. Lukas does wonderful bird photographs, tells really bad jokes, and always has interesting facts about whatever he posts.
Pterodactyl and Chimera in the clouds.
Jupiter with 3 clear moons and maybe one faint moon, and a moon peeking out from behind Jupiter on the top right. Saturn is slowly diverging, moving further away each night.
For Day 5 of the Travel Photo Challenge, I present you with a whole bunch of photos of a Gray Hawk, a Barn Owl, and a group of Harris Hawks. In October 2017, we drove to Tucson for a Linguistics conference. On the way home, we stopped by the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. The museum has a raptor free-flight exhibit, which we happened to be just in time for.
Gray Hawk, also known as the Mexican goshawk. 
When Barney the Barn Owl flew out of the aviary, all the crowd went “Aaahhh! How cute!” He is certainly adorable. He flew silently between perches entertaining his adoring crowd. 
The stars of the show we experienced were the Harris Hawks. Four Harris Hawks performed for the finale of the free-flight show. Harris Hawks have made a regional adaptation to the harsh conditions in the Sonoran Desert by hunting in groups. The Sonoran Desert is the only place that Harris Hawks have been observed hunting and working together in groups. Their distribution in the US is limited to southern Arizona, southeastern New Mexico, and southwest Texas. Their larger distribution is throughout most of Mexico, the west coast of Central America, and the lower elevations of South America. Free flight shows are great for photographing these raptors because they are close enough to get a lot of detail and action shots.
Crows over cranes at dusk.
Crows, crane, Sliver Moon over Mia’s Tree.
Intermission: Daddy owl hooted at me in the dark and got my attention. +2 stops made for an interesting exposure.
Crows and Sliver Moon.
An alignment of Jupiter, Bringer of Jollity, a plane, and the Sliver Moon under the Tangle Heart Tree. Saturn is trying to shine through the clouds above Jupiter.
Daddy Owl was in the bosque.
The owls were out hooting back and forth to each other at twilight.
He flew onto the trunk of a cottonwood before flying over to cottonwoods by the clearwater ditch
Mama Owl was on the tip-top of Mia’s Tree.
Getting a good hoot in. I pushed this photo 2 stops to get a little bit of detail.
Otherwise, Mama Owl was a silhouette.
Cranes and Canadian Geese flew by Mama Owl on their way to roost.
A coyote sauntering along the levee looks back to check out the paparazzo.
The Neowise comet from 7/20. That was the only clear sky we had last week.
Hummer holding an iron cross over the Rio Grande.
Oh! We’ve been seeing daddy owl, but not mama owl or the owlets.
Daddy Owl silhouetted at dusk
Last night there was not much of a sunset, but daddy owl flew up on a tree well after sundown so we could see him in silhouette. He stayed on the tree until I was able to walk around where I could get him in profile in the afterglow. An Osprey flew overhead and then a beaver was out basking in the twilight on the east bank of the river.
Daddy Owl in profile at twilight
Osprey overhead
Beaver basking in the twilight
Beaver on the east bank grooming at twilight
Off Center & Not Even 