Morning coffee ... with chicks

Coffee on the deck, where Saratoga Passage (in the distance) is fogged in. Look how brown the grass is! Luckily it all comes back beginning sometime in September.

I hear one juvenile great horned owl, the one who shrieks. The other, as yet unheard today, makes sounds reminiscent of escaping steam. The rooster, off to the south, crows constantly. Wish he and the owls would get acquainted... Not really. And yet . . .

The chicks are five days old today. Overall fuzziness. Very cute. No parents at the nest, so I snuck out to quickly take a photo. I rushed my shot. Not good. And yet . . .

[Later this afternoon... Oh, man! I just saw my chick picture up close on my desktop computer and it's AWFUL! Am going to revisit it on my phone to see what happened. I softened the area surrounding the nest. Maybe I went too far. A different version now appears below. Better. Not great, but better.]

 ©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh.

Chicks have hatched . . .

I've been watching the eggs in a nest built right outside our front door for some time. Eggs barely larger than jellybeans.

Those tiny eggs hatched two days ago and it's amazing how HUGE the birds have gotten!

What kind of birds are they? I think they are warblers of some sort. The parents are very fast, very skittish, and hide in the shrubbery. I'm the sort who wants to know what they are, but I'm making peace with this little bit of ambiguity for now.

When I saw the adult bird was off the nest yesterday, I quickly moved in, hovered the iPhone above the nest, and took a few shots shooting straight down. I felt guilty doing it, so I shot as fast as I could and then quickly departed the premises. We have resigned ourselves to using the front door as little as possible, entering and exiting from the garage instead.

It's going to be a tough couple of weeks for the adults, feeding three hungry mouths all the time. How lucky we are so close to all this activity!

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh.

More from the missing memory card . . .

Turns out the missing memory card contains a few images that look pretty good. A great blue heron flies in and lands on a piling at twilight, and a couple of sailboats moored offshore add interest to a quiet scene.

Both taken in South Carolina a year and a half ago, with painterly effects added here and there.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. 

Nature isn't always pretty

A lot of birdie commotion outside, sounding as though there was an interloper in the neighborhood, robins zipping around all over the place. I suspected a cat, a coyote, a raccoon. And then I saw it -- a huge barred owl. The birds were dive bombing it. 

The owl just sat there on a branch, casually plucking feathers from a dead robin's body. The owl grabbed the dead bird by the head and flew off. 

I began writing this post and was partway through when I heard more robin agitation going on. I looked, and there was the owl, back in the same tree. I grabbed the iPhone and headed down to get a closer look.

He'd moved and it took me a few minutes to spot him, about 12 feet away and seemingly unperturbed with my presence. I took a few shots with the cellphone and then tried imitating the call of a great horned owl. That got his attention, once. So I went online and played a recording of a GHO on my iPhone. No response. No matter what GHO call I tried playing, no luck. 

I circled around, trying to get closer, trying to get a branch-free look, but he eventually just flew off and everything became peaceful once again. 

This was around 4:30, broad daylight. I shudder to think what happens around here at night! 

We moved in on Friday. To date I've seen lots of rabbits, a coyote, a deer, flickers, juncos, nuthatches, bald eagles, watched hornets build a nest, a woodpecker of some sort climb a tree, various butterflies, and now a predatory owl. I've been here less than a week! What will I see if I actually start paying attention?!

©Carol Leigh

Latest work: "Northwest"

I've lived in a lot of places -- Norfolk, Virginia, San Diego, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Long Beach, California, Palm Springs, San Francisco, Hawaii, Vienna, Virginia, Japan, Nevada City, California, and more. With so many moves under my belt, I have no real concept of "home."

Gotta say, however, that the Pacific Northwest just feels right to me. I'm drawn to Santa Fe (well, who isn't?), but the sights, sounds, smells (fresh air!), and the green, lush environment here in the northwest make me feel more alive somehow. But Carol, isn't it cold? Yes, but those of you who constantly remind me that I wore shorts pre-dawn at the Reno Balloon Festival in 2000, I'm a warm-blooded person, and the temperatures here are perfect for me. Luckily, Chris feels the same way. Luckily, he's not wearing shorts!

Is this our last house? Probably not. There's probably one more move in the future, to a place with a bit less rain, a bit more space for a studio, and a place where Chris can set up power saws and things and have a woodworking shop. But will it be in the Pacific Northwest? Oh, yeah.

About the art . . . a faux poste card that incorporates my photos of a crow, postage stamps, an Oregon cancellation stamp, painted papers, and more. Made it yesterday morning.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

February is National Bird Feeding Month

There are two schools of thought regarding feeding birds . . .

1) You're doing something humane and wonderful for charming little creatures who may have a tough go of it in winter...

or . . .

2) By putting out birdseed you're encouraging birds to flock in and become bait for hungry feline predators and/or various and sundry hawks.

There's also the potential for luring unwelcome rodents into your yard, but I'll say no more about that...

Lately we've had a sharp-shinned hawk lurking about, and based on seeing a couple piles of feathers, he's been randomly successful in snagging a meal. I've watched him a couple of times and (perhaps like lions) he misses way more often than he's successful.

And cats? Well, we've had a mountain lion walk through our yard at least twice this past year (I've not seen it -- my next-door neighbor has found prints), thus cats are not as numerous as they've been in the past.

So yes, we put out seed. Not only in feeders, but scattered on the ground, well within scurrying distance of protective cover.

How about you? Are you a bird feeder? Then February is a particularly opportune time to celebrate this activity, and how wonderful that it's a national celebration and people from coast to coast are feeding and admiring our feathery friends.

Oh, and the picture? I have a rubber stamp of a chickadee, so I made an impression and then hand-painted it, then photographed it. The background is a combination of a book cover and a piece of hand-painted paper. The Japanese stamps are Japanese stamps . . .

©Carol Leigh

If you're a birder and you care, birds we generally see in our yard are: Oregon juncos, Steller jays, chestnut-backed chickadees, red-shafted flickers, hermit thrushes, varied thrushes, robins, turtledoves, mourning doves, band-tailed pigeons, black-headed grosbeaks, evening grosbeaks, Anna's and rufous hummingbirds, spotted towhees, crows, occasional starlings, mountain quail, occasional cedar waxwings, and (grrr) occasional sharp-shinned hawks.

It's a good day to . . .

. . . go birdwatching in Norway! ©Carol Leigh

Latest work: "Sense of Direction"

This photomontage resulted from combining my photos of handpainted papers, rubber stamps on envelopes, a compass etched into a newspaper tube, antique engravings, and more. The color palette is a departure for me, which was my intent when I began creating this piece this morning. As usual, click the photo to enlarge it. And now to OFFICIALLY begin my day! ©Carol Leigh

Uh-oh . . .

Methinks Gull #2 has no idea what's going to happen when Gull #1 goes #2! Have they learned nothing from pigeons?! ©Carol Leigh

Peeps on the beach

Kind of gimmicky, but I like it! ©Carol Leigh

Pelicans!

Yesterday we drove up the coast and, passing Seal Rock, noticed all the pelicans on the rocks. But what really caught my eye were the pelicans down on the beach, something we don't see all that often. Pelicans and gulls were clustered around the mouth of a little creek, preening, resting, seeing what they could find to eat.

Two people climbed down to the beach and began walking south, keeping their distance from the birds (yay), but the pelicans were especially wary, and slowly began taking off. A shutter speed of 1/25 second enabled me to capture the motion of their wings.

Driving back home, late in the day, all the pelicans were gone, and a big storm was coming in. Wonder where they went to ride out the storm? ©Carol Leigh

I surrender!

Elena and I have been having a friendly little "bird war" going on, with her most current salvo looking really, really good. I figure I can outdo her in sheer quantity, but not necessarily quality, so I'm posting these three and then am retreating, waving a white flag!

But it's probably not quite over ... She'll be here in a few weeks, attending our Oregon Coast workshop, and since there are a LOT of crows around here, well, you know what's going to happen . . . ©Carol Leigh

Birds on the beach

A couple of crows on the beach the other afternoon, taking advantage of the low tide, finding tasty little morsels to eat. And walking completely out of step. Click to enlarge. ©Carol Leigh

Two Ravens

I was hoping to find ravens in Santa Fe and I wasn't disappointed. ©Carol Leigh

Three Crows

©Carol Leigh

Morning has broken

©Carol Leigh

Florida palm

©Carol Leigh

Return Flight

©Carol Leigh

Egrets on Sanibel Island

It's rare that I previsualize an image (and yes, it's a flaw — I probably won't feel like a "real" photographer until I can), but when I saw these egrets all hunkered down against the wind at water's edge, I knew that I wanted a desaturated, sort of high-key look to accentuate the stark "sticks" formed by their beaks and legs. I therefore turned the image into black and white, softened it, and then let some of the yellow at the base of their beaks and on their legs come through a little bit — just what I was hoping to do when I originally took the photo. The beauty of photographing on Sanibel Island is the opportunity to be close to birds like this, birds who are aware of you, but you don't seem to matter much to them. ©Carol Leigh

A few from Florida

Misty morning our first day on Sanibel Island -- just gorgeous. And then snowy egrets wade in the surf while pelicans roost in the trees, catching the morning sun. The trees were FULL of pelicans! Sometimes as many as 24 in one tree. Cabby, was thinking of you while seeing all this. More to follow -- Internet access has been spotty and my photo processing extremely rudimentary. Have experienced no-see-ums for the first time. Ha! Having a swell time. Wish you were here. --Carol Leigh