ellarien: Higger Tor (Home)
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.

Lily pond

Jul. 1st, 2011 08:22 pm
ellarien: red waterlily (waterlily)
P1050252

I spent the week in Surrey, which was interesting -- very rural in a densely-populated way, with big old houses and narrow, twisty roads through the woods. The big old house where I was foregathering with other scientists had a little lily pond on the terrace, haunted by enormous dragonflies. It also had a couple of used twenty-foot rockets in the oak-panelled staircase, but I didn't get a really good shot of that.

And now I'm back home, tired, and planning to take next week off.
ellarien: Blue/purple pansy (Default)
IMG_0092

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.
ellarien: rabbit (wildlife)
The bus this morning was keeping pace with a large, grey-and-white bird, flying low through the park between road and railway, for several hundred yards. My initial thought was "That's a big seagull," but when the bird landed I realized it was a heron.
ellarien: rabbit (wildlife)
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!
ellarien: Blue/purple pansy (Default)
There was a cardinal in the oleander hedge as I went out this morning. Female, I think, or juvenile, or in off-season plumage; not bright red all over, anyway.

Someone was using an iPad in our local coffee shop this afternoon -- the first one I've seen in the wild, though I've briefly handled one of the display models in the bookstore (and promptly got lost in the interface. Wrong kind of intuition.)

I haven't used my DVD player for a while, and when I came to it this evening, the remote was dead, dead, dead, and not to be revived with batteries. No point replacing it at this point; I suppose I might try a cheap universal remote. Failing that, I can always watch movies on the computer.
ellarien: Blue/purple pansy (Default)
P1030062

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.
ellarien: rabbit (wildlife)
We spotted a couple of black squirrels on the Stanford campus this lunchtime -- attractive little things; it's funny how the black fur trips the "Ooh, kitty!" circuits. A bit of googling suggests that they are either a separate species called fox squirrels or (maybe less likely) a melanistic version of the common gray squirrel which some web-authorities claim doesn't exist in California. They acted very like regular squirrels, of the people-habituated urban variety; they skittered off up a tree when we approached, but not with any great urgency, and we got the feeling that they might not have been averse to an offer of peanuts or apple-cores.

We also spent a few minutes quietly viewing the inside of the Memorial Church. It's as gaudy on the inside, with lots of gilding and technicolor stained glass, as it is on the outside; I've never seen anything like it, though admittedly my experience with the inside of mainstream churches is not wide, being mostly confined to the rather faded, time-worn interiors of historic British cathedrals, which lost most of their more opulent decoration in the Reformation.
ellarien: rabbit (wildlife)
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.


P1020483
ellarien: rabbit (wildlife)
As I was going out this morning, a good-sized hawk passed me, flying only a few feet above the ground -- probably because it was weighed down by the pigeon clutched in its talons. It crossed the road and disappeared into a clump of trees on the farm on the other side. We get a lot of red-tailed hawks around here in the winter, but it's hardly winter yet; fall is just starting to taunt us with the prospect of cooler weather in a few more weeks, but it was over 100 degrees today.
ellarien: Blue/purple pansy (Default)
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 ...

Bunnies!

Jun. 25th, 2009 10:06 pm
ellarien: rabbit (wildlife)
No, really.

I went out after night-blooming cacti again this morning, and found some. I also happened across this pair, exploring and blending into the gravel around the Old Main building. Considering the location, they may well be relatives of the little guy in the icon, who was seen just across the street from there a few years ago.

Bunnies! )

Update

Aug. 19th, 2007 08:34 pm
ellarien: Blue/purple pansy (Default)
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.

Cicada

Jul. 10th, 2007 09:15 pm
ellarien: Blue/purple pansy (Default)

cicada
Originally uploaded by ellarien.

Here in Arizona, we get cicadas every year; in the hot weather they sizzle away from early morning until late afternoon. Big as they are, they're not easy to spot hiding in the trees, but I managed to track this one down one day last week.

Visitor

Jul. 9th, 2007 07:46 pm
ellarien: black tile dragon (dragon)

Baby Lizard 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.

Encounter

Jun. 29th, 2007 09:55 am
ellarien: Blue/purple pansy (Default)

DSC08450
Originally uploaded by ellarien.

It's amazing who you can meet, early on a summer morning.

This guy was just hanging out, high on the wall a few feet from the building entrance.

ellarien: rabbit (wildlife)
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.

Quail

Jan. 2nd, 2007 09:10 pm
ellarien: rabbit (wildlife)
On my way out this morning, I spotted a sizable gang of quail bobbing around under the oleander bushes -- nine or ten of them, I think.

Other than that, it's been a quiet day. The Mexican place in the student union is open again, which makes life easier.

Mission Statement

Reading, writing, plant photography, and the small details of my life, with digressions into science and computing.

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