Redtail Hawk

Downtown Canal Water Plants

We Are Led By Fools and Cowards

“Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be lied to. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.” 

— Octavia Butler, Parable of the Talents

Debbie Harry Is 80

Reader’s Digest Says Frederick Is Tops

Lucy Too and Willow at Play

The #1 Killer Dog

The hot dog.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, over 70 children each year choke to death eating hot dogs.

Happy Fourth of July

RESIST. SABOTAGE. SPEAK OUT.

The Smell of MAGA

SHIT SHOW INFUSED WITH CHAOS, the official scent of the Trump Administration. From Amazon

Coyote On the Way to Coffee

I was rolling to town for coffee this morning, casually scoping fields as I do, and there it was — a large coyote feeding on something in the shallow swale of a cut-over wheat field.

I whipped the car around, rolled onto the shoulder, and very slowly rolled in the right direction.  And there he was — a dark grizzle coyote looking straight at me.  I reached over for the camera and fumbled with the lens cap while the coyote turned and slowly walked into the forested hedge between the field and the river.  It was past 9 o’clock in the morning, and this fellow was still out and looking. A big adult, probably still supplying food for kits.  I reminded myself to set out my game cameras on the knoll. 

Disappointed at missing the coyote, I rolled up the road a quarter mile and spotted one of the juvenile Bald Eagles preening itself on top of a dead tree near the nest where he or she had fledged a few weeks before. The throw was considerable, and I was standing on a slope without anything to brace against, so the pictures are crap, but they prove I got dressed this morning, which counts as an activity when you’re retired.

Goldfinches in the Thistle

Young Groundhogs

Church Street Deer

You Ain’t Gotta Die to be Dead to Me

Goldfinches

Know What Curtilage Means

Curtilage is the area of land attached to a house that is considered part of the home for legal purposes, particularly regarding the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. 

It encompasses the yard, garden, driveway, and other areas immediately surrounding the dwelling that are used for activities associated with the home. 

The Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures extends to the curtilage, meaning law enforcement generally needs a warrant SIGNED BY A JUDGE to search this area.

Screaming Juveniles

This is one of the three juvenile Red-shouldered Hawks screaming at each other from both sides of the driveway.  

They’re all high up in pretty dense foliage, and this was the only one I could actually see.

These three are nine or 10 days out of the nest, and I think they would have disbursed farther if we had more normal weather.

Have You Considered Dictatorship?

Hot and Cold on Threads

 

▪️Sharnbryn asks:  A question for people who know stuff about Fahrenheit:  

- Why is 0°F around -18°C? What happens at that temperature to make it notable enough to be 0°?

- 0°C is where water freezes, what happens at 0°F?

▪️jcgbigler responds:  Gabriel Fahrenheit invented the thermometer and was in the business of selling them to scientists for lab use. 0° was the coldest temperature he could create in his lab using salt & ice. 96° was body temperature, chosen as the other calibration point because he could divide it into increments of 1,2,3,4,6,8 or 12. Later, when he switched to water for calibration, 32° & 212° were chosen because they were backward compatible, and 212-32 = 180, which is divisible by 1,2,3,4,5,6,9,10,15 & 20. The calibration points don’t matter. What we (and scientists) care about is comparing one temperature with another. If it’s 40°F or 5°C (or 278 K) outside, I need a coat.  If it’s 90°F or 32°C (or 305 K) outside, I need to stop reading social media so I can spare myself the complaining.

▪️scottedson1 responds: The Fahrenheit scale is indefensible as a pure scientific matter but quite intuitive to humans. It is a good rough proxy for “percent hot” and the 0-100 do a good job of covering the overwhelming range of circumstances most people experience.  Temperatures outside of 0-100 F are, in fact, extreme for humans. So, it’s a bad scale for scientific discovery, but wonderful for describing the weather or temperature in a room to humans.

▪️sarevok8675309 responds with a graphic:

▪️gatomcwitchdesigns responds: 

- Fahrenheit is how humans feel. 

- Celsius is how water feels. 

- Kelvin is how the universe feels.

▪️davemtitle responds: 

Gabriel Fahrenheit used salt water and ice to get the coldest possible temp in his lab and marked his mercury column at that pint as zero. (It happens to be -18° C.). Then he  marked human body temp on the column as his 100° (he later recalibrated his scale to make body temp 96°)Spaces between were equally divided.  Anders Celsius chose freezing point of water as his zero and the boiling point as his 100.  It’s just a matter of reference points. 0° F just gets you very cold ice.

▪️Sclayworth responds: 

Easy guide to Celsius:

- 30 is warm

- 20 is nice

- 10 is cool 

- 0 is ice

▪️alfreedovara responds with a graphic:

Buyer's Remorse

If you spend away your humanity 

in order to buy your safety, 

you may one day be surprised to discover that

 

safety is not a currency 

that can buy back your humanity.

Working Class Pretenders

A Wee Nest

A very small and delicate bird nest I found on the path down to my very small orchard. I’m not sure where it blew out from, but it’s a tiny gem.

War (What Is it Good For?)

Blue Heron Catching a Crayfish

Good News on California Condors

Congrats to the team at the Los Angeles Zoo on the hatching of TEN CALIFORNIA CONDORS!

There were only 22 California Condors on Earth when the California Condor Recovery Program started 40 years ago.  

As of 2024, there were 561 California Condors, with 344 living in the wild.

Back in 2016, a male California condor that was one of the last 23 condors in the world in the 1980s, was released back into the wild after 30 years in a domestic breeding program. 

The bird, once named AC-4, and now re-tagged #20, soared out of his open pen at a canyon rim inside the Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge, in central California’s Kern County, near where he was first captured. It was the bird’s first free flight since 1985, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service -- in opposition to the National Audubon Society -- captured him near this same spot in a last-ditch attempt to stop the extinction of his species.

In 2022, an untagged California Condor was trapped to determine its parentage.  It turned out his father was AC-4 (#20) and more amazingly AC-4 had hatched the chick alone after its mother #654 had died two weeks before its hatch date. AC-4 (#20) then went on to solo feed and care for the  chick until it fledged out of the nest.  Amazing!

AC-4, now tagged as Condor #20, is still  is still flying free and, hopefully, producing more young.

Redwing Blackbird