George found you something great. Go here.
That is one scary-looking bird!
For something a little cuter, go here.
Incidentally, if anyone has some Unidentified Flying Dinosaurs they’d like to see published and identified here at the cantina, please feel free to send them in! I can be reached at dhunterauthor at yahoo dot com. Please put UFD in the subject line, and note where you took the photo.
Forgive me if you’ve already identified these. I am teh suck with Little Brown Birds. And these are too damned adorable not to post. I’ll have more interesting UFDs coming as long as the little buggers decide to cooperate.
These are from Sunday’s walk along North Creek. There were all sorts of birds around, some of which I even recognized, and I shall include them for variety’s sake.
The problem with shooting birds along the North Creek corridor is that there are so very many places for birds to hide. When the trees leaf out, you can’t see much of anything, and the birds pretty much sit within the foliage tittering at you and your wretched efforts to photograph them. Sparrows swoop overhead, too swift to catch an image of. LBBs give you a brief glimpse before popping off into the trees or deep in the tall grass, where your camera will never catch them.
Continue reading “Unidentified Flying Dinosaur: LBBs the Reprise”
I mentioned I took a little ramble up the drumlin and back on Saturday, when the sun decided to pop out and say hello. You know, that doesn’t actually happen in Seattle very often: downpour, then sunshine. That’s more of an Arizona thing. But it happens sometimes, and one seizes the moment and gallops out of the house to enjoy it.
People may ask, “Dana, your day job entails getting screamed at by people, and sexist bullshit is rampant. How do you remain cheerful in the face of this?” Go on, ask, so I can say, “People may ask….”
There’s several answers to that, some involving rocks, some awesome allies leading the charge against dumbfuckery, and some the amazing regulars I have at this cantina. However, one answer is foremost in my mind at the moment: Froggies!
My cat turned orange Friday morning*, so my day got off to a bit of a rocky start. Between that, intensive Mount St. Helens research, and the ongoing shitstorm caused by women asking for something as simple as harassment policies at conferences, I’m in the mood for something light and lovely.
Let’s turn the sky.
One of the first photos I took after moving to Seattle was the sky. People in Arizona didn’t believe me when I told them it didn’t rain all the time. My roommate and I were out in Discovery Park on a cloudless day, and so I shot a photo that was nothing but deep blue sky.
I’ve usually got my eyes on the ground (less so, now that you lot have gotten so excited over birds), but I’ve turned the sky into a backdrop on several occasions. I love shooting up into the sky. Everything looks rather different that way, sometimes dramatic, sometimes just beautiful.
I took this shot at North Creek Park last week. I like it quite a lot, with the seed heads on the grass waving to the clouds.
That’s what the skies typically look like round here. You either learn to love clouds or you go mad. I quite enjoy clouds. They have interesting patterns and textures, and sometimes they frame things just so, or the light hits them just right, and they fascinate.
Of course, blue skies are even more fascinating up here on the coast of the Pacific Northwest, by virtue of their rarity. Chances at observing astronomical phenomena, no matter how ordinary, must be seized.
I love it when the moon appears in the daytime. Even close to sunset, there’s just enough light in the sky for my camera’s sensor to balance everything nicely, so I don’t end up with solid white blobs. One day, perhaps, I’ll have a camera that does all sorts of fancy things like filtering and other things I’m not well versed in. For now, I work with what I’ve got, and I haven’t any complaints.
The moon used to be the main reason why I shot the sky. But one spring, we took a walk in the neighborhood looking at all of the fruit trees abloom, and I shot up into the branches, against a cloudy sky, and discovered I liked that angle.
I figured they’d look magnificent against a blue sky, as well, so I awaited my chance this spring and seized it when the clouds were off doing something else.
I love aiming up. Things look different, framed against the sky. Even ordinary little things look quite wonderful.
Tiny things that would be lost against a busy background stand out brilliantly against the blue.
Colors blaze brighter. It doesn’t take a sunset to turn the sky scarlet and gold. Just a Japanese maple.
And while I prefer natural subjects for my sky shots, there are times when old architecture cries out for the same treatment. When the setting sun sets the seminary bricks aglow, and the sky has barely a wisp of cloud, how can you resist?
You can turn the sky to a canvas, and paint such scenes on it.
*The cat’s fine, incidentally. The orange streak she’d left behind washing her little white chest wasn’t caused by some horrible medical condition. She’d gotten in to a bowl I’d left the night before, lapped up the remaining sauce, and then attempted a bath. This was a silly thing to do, as her tongue was coated with a paprika-spiced red wine and olive oil sauce. She looked ridiculous. I’d have shot a picture, but I didn’t have time before work, and now she’s back to ordinary tuxedo colors. Silly beast.
You lot are going to hate me for calling this beauty “schmo with stick,” so let me begin by explaining why. It involves a cruise through Memory Lane with the top down, and my friend Neil sitting in the passenger seat. What can I say about Neil? He was utterly awesome. He and I had many deep conversations about life, the universe and everything. We were geeks. We beat each other with sticks. No, seriously. One of my fondest memories is when we were in our living room whaling on each other with sticks, my one against his two. This was a legitimate thing. He was helping me act out a fight scene so I could write it properly. In the middle of the melee, someone called. So there Neil is, phone tucked on his shoulder, still wielding a stick in each hand, and we continue our battle. At some point, the person on the other end must have asked what he was doing, because he said, “Oh, beating my roommate with a stick.”
I adored Neil. He was one of the most fun people I’ve ever had in my life. And he had the greatest business cards in the universe.
So, you see, “schmo with stick” is a title of honor round here. I’m happy to bestow it upon this UFD, which is one of the most awesome I’ve ever had the pleasure to photograph.
Continue reading “Unidentified Flying Dinosaur: Schmo With Stick”
So, yesterday, I threw you a challenge: identify a flower from a mere bud.
And the winner is: aspidoscelis, who was the first to realize this is the genus Mimulus. I knew you guys could do it!
These are the flowers that started us on the road to mystery flora, actually. Remember when you guys corrected my misidentification and begged for more flowers? Yep. And we’ve enjoyed the hell out of it, haven’t we? I’m glad you all enjoy these posts, because it gives me an excuse for my floral photography.
I’m having no luck tracking down the exact species, and I haven’t got time to pursue it. Hopefully, someone here will recognize which these are, and then we can entertain ourselves with trivia. I did, however, find several species that like basalt flows, so it looks like a trip to eastern Washington in search of monkeyflowers is in order. I also wish to track down our rare native species, Mimulus washingtonensis.
Monkeyflower hunters might want to peruse this site for our current suspect.
Yes, I went a bit nuts photographing these. I love them. Love love love. I love their shape, and their strange leaves, and their red spots, and their little hairs. I love how different they are from the usual types of flora. I love how macro mode loves them.
They’re slightly exotic, yet quite friendly. And they certainly add interest to a place filled with green everything.
And they seem rather sociable. Well, I suppose most wetland plants have to be. Everything’s crowded in, ten thousand things trying to grow in one spot, so you don’t tend to get loners. And sometimes, three sorts of flowers at once budge in petal-by-sepal, like friends crowding into a photo booth.
Okay, yes, they’ve kinda squashed our Ranunculus down towards the bottom, there, but still, everybody’s in the frame. And moments like this, when you find a tangled bank of endless forms most beautiful, you really have one of those sublime moments where hanging out with the results of billions of years of evolution make you delighted to be alive.
Unless, of course, you suffer from allergies, in which case, you might want to admire from afar.
You know, until I started writing this post and decided I wanted to do Spanish rather than English, I never know that “amarillo” means “yellow.” Yellow, Texas. Doesn’t have quite the same ring.
Interesting. Here’s some beautiful yellow flowers for you to identify.
I know, no fair. But these will probably be easy, so try your hand from this shot first. You’re looking across the wetlands at North Creek Park, so think stuff that grows in marshes in the northwestern United States. While you’re at it, admire the drumlin in the background. It’s pretty much the only topographic relief available.
Continue reading “Mystery Flora: Las Flores Amarillas Encantadoras”
After sixteen hours of research yesterday, it was time to play. Good thing it was such a beautiful day today (hence the delay in posting). This is the perfect anthem for a lovely day. Also, there is some wild weathering at the beginning that looks a bit like tafoni. Some other gorgeous rocks throughout. Shame about the flowy dress thingy in the way.
I took my intrepid companion out to see the maclargehuge erratic, and he got a shot with the proper perspective for us. Yay, no more camera on the ground!
Yep, still huge. We did some field breakage (i.e., threw one rock down on another) with some of the loose bits, and got some nice fresh surfaces, and I found a nice-sized chunk with what looks to be good crystalline structure, so I may be doing another post with samples so we can figure out if it’s definitely dunite (or gabbro) or not. Stay tuned.
Then we headed over to North Creek Park, which has changed rather dramatically since two months ago. I’ll be doing a compare-and-contrast post, but for now, some outtakes. Forget-me-nots were out in force and absolutely lovely:
I was hoping for frogs, but had to settle for a water-skipper instead.
And, last but not least, got a wonderful snap of a red-winged blackbird.
And now I’m home with the cat, who’s out on the porch in the nice sunshine, and birds are still singing, and I’ve got a fabulous UFD coming up for you. It truly is a beautiful day.
Here’s hoping yours was a little something wonderful, too, my darlings!
I want you all to know that I carry you round in a little bundle in the back of my head, pretty much all the time. I spend an inordinate amount of time at work bragging about you (and my supervisor, btw, is totally in love with you all after you identified her little baby cedar waxwing). I pounce upon things I think you might like, and if those things happen to belong to other people, I beg them to share (just you wait until you see the rock I’ve got for ye!). And, of course, I’m always on the lookout for UFDs. I think my friends are flummoxed by the sudden bird obsession, but I don’t care. It doesn’t matter where we go now, I’m all I MUST GET A UFD FOR MY READERS!!! while also collecting mystery flora and delicious geology and pretty much anything else I think may delight you.
So when I saw this lovely UFD sitting on a transmission tower whilst walking around Brier, WA, I would have jumped up and down and screamed if I hadn’t been so afraid of scaring it away before getting the camera aimed.
Continue reading “Unidentified Flying Dinosaur: Transmitting”
