The Seven Sisters (The Pleiades) over Resa’s Golden Wolf Tree
The porcupine I almost stepped on when we took Jake out on a walk after dark last night.
The Pleiades rising over the Sandias
Sand dunes in the night sky
Sunrise
Der Hund von Bosqueville
Belafonte checking out the washing machine
Loki: “I thought you washed Belafonte!”
Sunset
Dusk
I did not get the full June Moon because of overcast skies.
The perils of irrigating.
Speaking of the perils of irrigating, I also flushed out a porcupine. When he saw us, he turned around, waded back into the water, and climbed the apple tree.
Silver also had a few things to say to me.
Shelly Snapper
Doves on a gopher mound
Freddy Fly Catcher
Cinnamon Quacker
Harry Headbanger
Shirley Snapper, Shelly’s sister
The other side of Shelly Snapper, Shirley’s sister
Fish
Fish fart
Barney Bullfrog
Bob Bullfrog’s Back
Bethany Bullfrog, Barney’s sister
Peter Porcupine sleeping
Doris and Diesel Duck checking out the ducky looking grass.
Gabby Grebe in hiding
Blondy feeding on an elm tree by the irrigation ditch.
Above is a 48-second video of Blondy feeding on an elm tree. The video is a little shaky because it is handheld at sunset, and Blondy was backlit. I had to push the exposure two stops to get detail in Blondy. The video gives you an idea of how slow and deliberate porcupines are. Blondy is in some ways like a monkey and other ways like a sloth.
Mama Owl
Daddy Owl
Daddy Owl and Mama Owl
We got about an inch of snow last night, and while the sun tried to peek through the clouds, the temperature never got about 25ºF (-3.9ºC). A couple of walks in the bosque and out on the beaches along the Rio Grande resulted in new birds and some exciting owl news.
Sandias and the Rio Grande from North Beach.
Canadian Geese.
Five Thrushes.
These Thrushes looked really iridescent in the snow on the riverbank under the cold, filtered sun.
Red-Tailed Hawk way off in the distance.
Sparrow up north scavaging in the snow and pebbles.
Red-Tailed Hawk in profile.
This poor calf has lost its herd. It’s all alone and has been sadly mooing for someone to keep it company.
Can you spot the northern mama owl sitting on her eggs?
She didn’t use this nest last year because the raccoons had ransacked it. She is in it again this year. The year before, 2018, she had Virginia in this nest: https://wp.me/p1yQyy-4dG
Thrush
Blondy the blonde porcupine sleeping way up in a cottonwood.
Thrush getting a drink.
The acequia madre
Robin
Snowy Bosque
Mama Owl and Daddy Owl in their usual spot with snow all around.
Sunrise. January 1, 2021.
I had a different post planned for tonight, but things got in the way. Happy New Year!
Seagull heading south.
Sandias, Rio Grande, clouds midday. January 1, 2021.
I was buzzed by a Bald Eagle.
Pink Sandias at Sunset. January 1, 2021.
Blonde Porcupine sleeping in the top of a cottonwood.
We got out late last night for a walk under the stars after putting up our third sack of green chiles, making power bars, and doing various other chores that took up all of our daylight hours. A few hundred feet before the bridge that we use to cross the clearwater ditch, I saw what looked like a weed moving ahead of us. I shined my flashlight on it, and, as I suspected, it was Porky, a very large porcupine, waddling along on its way to cross the bridge ahead of us. I pulled out my phone to see if I could get a video, but by the time I got the phone convinced to take a video in the dark, Porky had crossed the bridged and headed down into the cottonwoods between the clearwater ditch and the irrigation ditch. I managed to get a short, 15 second video of Porky waddling into the undergrowth by a large cottonwood. I assembled and arranged a short piece of music for Porky’s promenade.
The photos below are an assortment of critters and fall colors.
After posting Lovelorn Wasp performed by Coughing Cooties last Sunday, there were requests to hear something by Violent Phlegm, another virtual group that collaborated with AWB to form Coughing Cooties. Dead of Night is Violent Phlegm’s first single.
Dead of Night
Words and Music by Timothy Price
Performed by Violent Phlegm
Still standing I’m bleeding in the dead of night
Battling daemons ’til dawn’s early morning light
Reaching for the future, tried shaking off the past
Following ambitions holding dreams were fading fast
Wading against the current, I stood against the wave
Control-alt-delete, I refuse to be a slave
Tumbling through the ether in the cold and dark
Social media’s shadow leaves its ugly mark
Cyberspace warriors fight by fiber’s light
Daemons call me out in the dead of night
Control-alt-delete, I refuse to be a slave
Wading against the current, I stood against the wave
Following ambitions holding dreams were fading fast
Reaching for the future, tried shaking off the past
Battling daemons ’til dawn’s early morning light
Still standing I’m bleeding in the dead of night
Tumbling through the ether in the cold and dark
Social media’s shadow leaves its ugly mark
Cyberspace warriors fight by fiber’s light
Daemons call me out in the dead of night
We were visited by baby turkeys and a baby porcupine: http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2016/6/babies
Today’s blog is Peace and Panoramas at http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/6/peace-and-panoramas. Back in 2011, I got a photo of the porcupine and a baby raccoon in the wee hours of the morning, and a daddy longlegs in my coffee filter.
Originally posted June 13, 2011: I got up at 4:30 am and went outside to play with my porcupine. I found it waddling down the road toward the ditch, but it didn’t want to play. It did stop for moment, gave me menacing look, giving me a chance to photograph it in the beam of my flashlight, before in slipped under a trailer on the other end of the property. I continued out to the ditch, screwed down the main gate to back up the water, then watched the bright eyes of a raccoon cross the ditch as I walked back into the yard.
Just after daybreak, I was building up the borders, when I heard a raccoon screeching and chirping by the trailer the porcupine crawled under earlier. I walked down to investigate, and found a baby coon stranded in the junk in front of the trailer, and the mama coon on the roof growling commands to it. The baby wasn’t really stranded, just confused in among all the junk.
I tried to coax it to come toward me, which would get it out of its quandary, but every time it started coming toward me, mama would growl, and the baby would stop. It was confused between me and its mama, but was finally a good kid, listened to it’s mama, and took refuge in an old milk crate. The baby was whimpering and crying so much the whole time we were talking to it, I was afraid it had tangled with the porcupine — I got close enough to it to see it didn’t have any quills, making mama throw a growling fit. It was just wet and muddy from following its mama around in the irrigation water.
After I shut down the water, I came into make coffee, and discovered a daddy long legs in my coffee filter — I had to photograph it, of course, before I coaxed it out of the filter, before I filled it with freshly ground coffee beans.
A humming bird was dive-bombing something, I couldn’t tell what, but then it took a long rest before it resumed its attack, allowing me to get a fairly decent view of it with a telephoto lens. I couple of bees were so involved in working a yellow daisy that my camera didn’t phase them at all.
Off Center & Not Even 