Driving an 800-mile loop that traverses a patchwork of California counties: Alameda –> Contra Costa –> Sacramento –> El Dorado –> Placer –> Nevada –> Sierra –> Plumas –> Lassen –> Shasta –> Tehama –> Glenn –> Colusa –> Yolo –> Solano. Time to sleep. Photo: Mt. Shasta, taken from Highway 299 just before McArthur…
Archives for June 2010
Plenty to Squawk About
Pictured: Captive Macaw – ©ingridtaylar I was just turned on to this article through our local dove-and-pigeon rescue group, Mickacoo. Mickacoo’s dedicated and superhuman founder, Elizabeth, helped mentor me in the ways of understanding domestic birds. Although I’ve worked with animals most of my life, I’d never been involved with domestically-bred birds: parrots, doves, racing…
Parenting, Avocet Style
American Avocet = Recurvirostra americana These images of American Avocets were shot over the past two nesting seasons. I’m particularly careful when photographing nesting birds or young, and will not intrude if my presence causes any disturbance or danger. Most of these photos were captured at Palo Alto Baylands, from a public pathway. The burnt…
Hula Flames
My brain’s a little high on Fat Freddy’s Drop, so the best title I can cough up for this photo series is Fire Walkers, Meet My TZ5. They’re fire dancers, actually — painting on the opaque of night at Sierra Nevada World Music Festival. This post is a plug for fire arts . . ….
Beach Fleas . . . Again
My late dad and I share a gene that — due to a missed deadline with the Humane Genome Project — hasn’t been mapped for posterity. He dreamed (and I dream) in preposterous anachronisms and juxtapositions. One of Dad’s recurring dreams was about a horse in a penthouse apartment who would fling himself off the…
Up On the Roof
Hugh and I traded lenses for this casual shoot several months ago. He took the E-520 and the 70-300, and I went wide with the 14-54mm on the E-3. I thought I’d capture scenery against a mackerel sky. I wasn’t expecting to get this perspective on pelicans. In fact, I admit handing over the 70-300…
Graphic Video: Heavily Oiled Birds
I truncated this post to give you the option to view or not view the graphic images in this video. Although I hope everyone sees and is moved to action by these nightmarish depictions of oiled birds, I understand how a sensitive soul might be affected by the suffering here. There’s a reason I’m up…
Sex and the Single Cowbird
It’s an unlikely title, I realize, for a girl born and raised during the Second Wave of feminism . . . in the hashish-a-plenty streets of Amsterdam . . . with an insomniac artist for a mom who developed algae foods for astronauts and read her babies chemistry homework as bedtime stories. Helen Gurley Brown…
Silks
A noiseless, patient spider,
I mark’d, where on a little promontory it stood isolated;
Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament out of itself;
Fast Food [Gull] Nation
Part of what makes gulls both amusing and exasperating to humans is their cleverness and opportunism when it comes to food. Across the gull universe, the diet is omnivorous. They’ll eat crustaceans, fish, insects and other marine organisms. They will also prey on the nests of other bird species for food. A number of researchers…