Intersection Logs

My mother and I went for a walk today: from Grindleford station up through Padley Gorge (where we met an adorable black lab puppy trying to wrangle a dead branch rather longer than the path was wide), then up through the Longshaw Estate. Instead of turning left up to Fox House at that point, we turned right and went in quest of the tall wooden pole on the skyline (which has its own car park). We almost got there one day last summer, but had to turn back to catch the bus, so it was nice to succeed in our Expotition this time. There's quite a nice view of the Hope Valley from up there, from a perspective that was new to us. Along the way there were coots both adult and juvenile, ducks and moorhens, a giant wooden ant with small live ones crawling all over it, nuthatches and great tits dodging in and out of the bark on a dead tree, foxgloves, and of course sheep -- the lambs quite large by now but still sticking close to their mothers and suckling when they got the chance. From there we went on along the uphill side of the estate, then across Totley Moss, passing the chimney and barrow-like spoil heap for the Totley rail tunnel that runs under the moor, and down a rough, bike-damaged track to rejoin our usual route back to the Totley bus stop.

It was quite warm, but not mostly overcast, not too unpleasant for walking.

Moments later, the heron took a couple of very slow, cautious steps, as if playing Grandmother's Footsteps, and then pounced out of view. When we saw him again, he had a beakful of wriggling fish, which he proceeded to gulp down.

I went out early this morning, and as I crossed the courtyard I saw a family of Gambel quail -- parents and a handful of chicks maybe the size of house sparrows. That made me smile, but the real surprise came when something startled them and the whole family took wing -- one of the little ones ended up on a beam under an overhead walkway, and cheeped anxiously. I had no idea they could fly that young!

I went for a nice walk in the sunshine this lunchtime. I saw a cardinal in passing, a flash of scarlet disappearing into the bushes, and a rose or two in bloom, and a family of European sparrows came for the crumbs from my sandwich, darting in to snatch a bit and then jumping back to what they thought was a safe distance.

I spent my lunchtime stroll chasing a roadrunner in the middle of campus. This is not something I get to do every day; it's pretty unusual for these to be seen this far into Tucson, and prior to the encounter outside my office a couple of weeks ago I think the only one I'd seen was up at the Kitt Peak Observatory. But there it was, perfectly at home and attracting a fair bit of attention from the passers-by.

It had a rather jerky, freeze-and-dash way of moving, and several times it was perfectly posed only to move before I could get the camera lined up. Eventually it pounced off into the shrubbery, possibly on the track of one of the little lizards or maybe just looking for some privacy.

My workstation at work had been making more annoying noise than usual lately: I thought it was just dust in the fan, but the computer guy thought hard drive bearings. He was right; in fact, when he broke it down it turned out that the internal RAID had lost or was in the process of losing two out of six segments. Fortunately one of them was the empty hot spare, so I haven't lost any data, but that was a closer call than I like.

There was a roadrunner scurrying around in the bushes outside the office window this afternoon, which was unexpected; the university corridor is usually thought to be too urban for them, and this isn't exactly a quiet week on campus. I didn't manage to get the camera out in time, sadly.

My application for the free upgrade to Windows 7 for the new laptop has been approved. I ordered the cheap upgrade for the desktop when it was offered, too, so by November I should be a Vista-free household again.


Edit: AAARGH!

New laptop downloaded updates, wanted to reboot. Fell over. Fell over again. In safe mode now -- and me without a clue what to do next, if CHKDSK doesn't help. Not what I wanted to do this evening ...

I think I may be over the jet lag; I woke naturally at 7 this morning; there was a dream before that in which I was impossibly weak and exhausted, but in real life I feel more or less normal. Normal for the aftermath of a Phoenix run, anyway, so I don't think I'll be staying up terribly late tonight.

A storm must have just brushed by Tucson this afternoon; no rain, but when I got back around 4.30 the sky was gray and the temperature was in the 80s instead of the 100s, which made the slog across campus rather more bearable.

Wildlife spotted between the office and home, not counting mourning doves: one half-inch green beetle, with shiny legs and a duller carapace; four Gambel quail trotting along the boundary of the apartment complex; a cactus wren lighting briefly on a windowsill and flying off again. Wildlife spotted in Tolleson: several burrowing owls, a nighthawk, a distant flight of cormorants; a humming bird at the feeder.

Baby Lizard Not a gecko, I think -- he has claws rather than toe pads. Found on my living room wall, July 2007. The picture at this scale is about life size.

I popped out for some emergency groceries before breakfast; it's a bright, cold morning, with frost clinging to shady slopes here and there. Arriving home again, I happened to glance up and see a small hawk perched atop a utility pole, sharp against the sky. I don't think it was a redtail, which is what we usually get around here in the winter; it was too small and too grey, but it was definitely a raptor and not a pigeon.