What would you say?
Is the day pretty much sure to get better from here?
Photo Memory of the Week
Posted: 2025 Aug 20
Ready, Set, Go
You go left, I’ll go right.
Every once in a while, my camera’s multiple-shot feature comes in handy. It’s delightful that I get shots I didn’t see — couldn’t have seen — with the naked eye.
Maybe these guys are training/auditioning for a spot with Cirque du Soleil or America’s Got Talent.
Bees
About two years ago, I headed out to Veterans Oasis Park in Chandler for a last-chance-for-the-season effort at bird photos. Sadly, the birds had mostly flown.
By my standards it was a hot afternoon and I almost gave up to head back to air-conditioned comfort. But at the last minute I saw some bees on a bush at about camera level. Since I didn’t need to crouch down and then get back up, and since I couldn’t be near the ones I love, I decided to see whether I could get good close-ups of the ones I was near. As usual, the answer was yes and no. Yes, occasionally; no, frequently. Continue reading
Three Inches of Rain
I’d have thought that the desert, being, you know, sorta dry, could absorb all kinds of water without any problem. That when the rains came, the water would disappear without a trace, sucked up by the parched land.
I was wrong. Continue reading
Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Photos of Built Stuff, Photos of Flora
Tagged Desert, Water
2 Comments
Long-billed Dowitcher, Gilbert AZ
On the ground — well, in the pond — dowitchers never stop moving. They are the polar opposite of herons and cranes, which stand stock-still for minutes or even tens of minutes at a time, making it easy to get a boring shot. By contrast, dowitchers feed incessantly, head bobbing up and down in a ceaseless sewing-machine motion as they walk.
Then, for no apparent reason, they spook and fly off in a gaggle. As they reach some stretch of water deemed safe (for no apparent reason), they brake suddenly, flare too fast for the naked eye, and set down and resume feeding without even a pause. Not that I’m, you know, complaining, but it makes them the very bugger to photograph. That’s a technical term. Continue reading
All Judgement, All the Time
Last week, tentatively tackling a long-avoided because long-winded book, I hit a passage where the author (a native speaker of English) talks about using a wrong word in Italian. In tracing how this horror happened, he deduces it’s because he subconsciously transformed the French word for “mosquito” to a soundalike in Italian that, sadly, means “cow.” Continue reading
Posted in Feeling Clearly, Language and Communication, Thinking Broadly
Tagged Attitudes, Community, Critical Thinking
8 Comments
More Bad News
Last week, Jane Philpott gave an interview that raised at least as many questions as it answered.
She believes, as she put it, that “there’s much more to the story that needs to be told” but that it can’t come out because “there’s been an attempt to shut down the story” — an attempt she attributed to the Prime Minister and his close advisors. – Macleans
A Day in the Life, Again
Returning to the Gilbert Water Ranch for what might be my last chance this season at birds-in-flight photos, I found slim pickings. The pelicans, black-crowned night herons, green herons, great blue herons, avocets, stilts, and great and snowy egrets have largely moved on, it seems. Indicating warming temperatures north of here, that augurs well for my own imminent travel but it reduced my photo ops, for sure. Continue reading
Avocets, Gilbert AZ
I fell in love with black-necked stilts for two reasons: They were drop-dead gorgeous and they were one of the first birds I identified after I took up birdwatching. Several years on, they still delight me.
I fell in love with avocets because I first saw them in Arizona, where I had the advantage of seeing the males in their breeding plumage. Oh. My. God. It never gets old. Continue reading