Vultures on their break
Skeptics no concern
Spirits dissolved in daylight
The dead can wait their turn
Nighthawks played in streaming sunlight
Teasing out blue moon
Thunder sounded unseen strikes
Branches broken fell asunder
Fractured limbs will never heal
Distant sirens temptress sighs
Coyotes mournful cries
Hummers feed on orange blossoms
Hairstreaks purple feed on yellow
Rubbing flanges one up one down
Attached to shades of blue
A Predator took the bait
Tag: coyotes
The Wilds
Wild moon
Saturn & Jupiter in the Tangle Heart Tree. I had to get way back into the wilds of the dark bosque with coyotes and chupacabras nipping at my heels to get the shot.
I made my way back onto the levy at the same time as the coyotes.
There were two of them and they paid little attention to me even though we were close to each other. After I lightened up the photo, I could see the coyote on the left had a bad case of mange.
I started walking towards the coyotes. They took one last look before they scurried into the bosque.
Crow flying under the quarter moon.
Saturn and Jupiter through the trees. They are supposed to conjoin in three days.
Walk On Water
If you didn’t know coyotes walk on water, now you do.
The Twelfth Day of Bosque Christmas
Tomorrow is Epiphany, the 12th day of Christmas. I wrote a version of the Twelve Days of Christmas using the bosque animals that starts with the 12th day of bosque Christmas. Special guest Suzette Presti was gracious enough to do the vocals. Enjoy.
The Twelfth Day of Bosque Christmas
Lyrics by Timothy Price
Vocals: Suzette Presti
Arrangement: Timothy Price
Guitar, bass, percussion: Timothy Price
On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Twelve coyotes crooning
Eleven flickers flitting
Ten finches feeding
Nine seagulls sailing
Eight badgers burrowing
Seven cats a purring
Six crows a cawing
Five beaver slaps
Four geese honking
Three cranes in flight
Two owls to hoot and
A pterodactyl in the Tangle-Heart Tree.
Coyotes
Coyote (Canis latrans)
I recorded coyotes yipping and howling in the bosque and wrote a song to go with the canine chorale. It was dark when they went off on their bosque flashmob; however, whenever the coyotes start yipping and howling right at sundown we never see them as they are hidden in the brush and undergrowth in the bosque. The coyotes do flashmob howling quite often, and they sound close and often howl from all sides. I don’t have videos of coyotes; therefore, I used photos I’ve done of coyotes, plus videos of me and the guitars I played on the song.
About the guitars. I finished building the Black Tele last week. I built it with standard Tele pickups, so it has a nice twangy sound to it. The blonde jazz guitar is a Guild A-150B with a DeArmond Rhythm Chief 1000 floating pickup.
COYOTES
Lyrics and Music by Timothy Price
Coyotes
howling in the night
Canine chorus
Offers up a fright
Binomial chorale
Reverbs through the trees
Like a bosque flashmob
Surround sound and for free
Dusk falls
Latrans he rejoices
Yipping, screeching, howls
A cacophony of voices
Coyotes on the Run
I was walking back from Beaver Point, when I almost got sideswiped by a coyote that came flying out of the bushes, and ran across the trail about a foot in front of me, before it quickly disappeared in the bushes on the other side of the trail. It came by too fast and too close for me to photograph it. However, another coyote soon followed at break neck speed, but it was farther away, so I was able to get one shot of it as it crossed the trail and leaped into the brush leaving a puff of dust behind on take off. A third coyote ran out of the brush onto the edge of the levee on its way across the trail into the weeds. I was able to get three shots of the third coyote before it got swallowed up by the brush. I don’t know what they were running from, but they were running at full speed.
Virginia & Two Coyotes
I went for a walk in the bosque at sunset, and caught the pink on the Sandias — there was not a cloud in the sky. I headed north after sunset and ran into two coyotes on the trail. They perked up when they saw me, then high-tailed it in the opposite direction. Then I saw Virginia perched on a branch. It was nice to see Virginia, I hadn’t seen her in months.
Owl Season’s Underway
A couple we often see in the bosque, told me they had just discovered the nesting place of a pair of owls last night. When I got to the nesting area a few minutes later, there were two owls to be seen — a larger owl in a cottonwood, and another, smaller owl, in an elm tree next to the cottonwood. The larger female was out taking a break, I presumed. She was hooting up a storm on her perch in the cottonwood. The smaller owl was perched on a limb, a silent sentry, very alert, guarding the area. The sun had been down for fifteen minutes or so, forcing me to bump up my ISO to 3200 to get a somewhat sensible shutter speed. As I was photographing the owls, a chorus of coyotes started howling from the undergrowth all around where I was standing beneath the owls. The scene became surreal as I was standing in a small clearing, darkness falling all around, the owl hooting from above, and coyotes yipping and howling in surround sound.
Kitties, Coyotes and Cranes Oh My
The Cine Experiment
I bought some Cine Film re-engineered for 35mm to be developed by standard C41 process. This is a high speed tungsten film normally used for cinematography. I had put the roll of film in my Canon F1 intending to shoot film along with digital of the fashion show at Gears & Glamour. However, since the fashion show was in the dark, and I hadn’t worked with the film before, I didn’t want to push it beyond its recommended ISO 800 until I had used it. Since this film is best used indoors or at night under tungsten street lighting, I only took a few shots in the well lighted prep area at Gears & Glamour, a few more at the West Side Chorale’s winter concert, and then decided to use it outdoors with a 600 mm lens. I knew the color would be off in daylight, but I wanted to see how well I could hand hold a 600 mm lens with high speed film.
I got a surprise when I got to the end of the roll of film. I noticed the advance didn’t stop, and when I tried rewinding the film, the knob turned freely. I advanced the film a couple more times to see it would stop — it didn’t, so I took the camera into the darkroom, opened it in the dark and carefully felt by the take-up spool, and discovered the film had not been secured to the spool in the canister. I took out the canister, and as carefully as I could opened it up with a can opener. I carefully pulled the film out of the camera, but when the last of it popped off the take-up spool, the coiled mess of film slipped from my hands and fell to the floor. Remember, I’m in total darkness, so I bent down, felt around at my feet, found the pile of film, gently picked it up, found an end to the film, found the spool from the canister and rewound the film back onto the spool. I put the spool back in the canister and forced the end cap back onto the canister. When I got the negatives back, the canister didn’t seal back up tightly around the edges after opening it (I had suspected as much), so the last frames on the roll had light leaks. This was a mystery, because the last frames should be on the inside of the spool and the first frames on the outside where they would be affected by light leaks in the seal around the outer edge of the end cap. Then I remembered dropping the film, so I must have rolled it back on the spool reverse of how the photos were taken.
The lead photo is frame 24, the last image taken, and the effect of the light leaks from being on the outer edge in the canister are pretty interesting. The rest of the images, shown in order taken, were not affected by the leaks on the edge of the canister.
Off Center & Not Even 