Category: Nature

It’s September, which means we will soon learn which new products Apple will introduce. It’s time to upgrade my phone.
Here’s a cute cartoon from the Seattle Times Sunday.

It’s getting late in summer, but I still find pretty flowers here in my neighborhood.

Is the woodpecker (it’s a northern flicker) eating ants? I wondered.
Yes, woodpeckers eat ants and are known to eat more ants than most other birds. 
Some woodpeckers, like the pileated woodpecker and northern flicker, can eat hundreds or even thousands of ants at once. 
– Natural Audubon Society

Happy Friday.
I am on Kitsap Peninsula with my amigos.
Here’s a Douglas squirrel (Tamiasciurus douglasii) that looked down at us from its perch in a western hemlock (fir tree). These little brown squirrels are different from the Western gray squirrels we have in the city. 

Later on it sat on a tree down on the embankment, and we could see it from above (thanks to Bryan for the picture).

I thought Mr Jay (Stellar’s jay, Cyanocitta stelleri) might be looking for earthworms on my lawn, but he caught one of the big black flies sitting on the lower leaves of my camelia bush (third photo).

You’ll be swell! You’ll be great!
Gonna have the whole world on a plate!
Starting here, starting now,
honey, everything’s coming up roses!
– From Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics for Everything’s Coming Up Roses, written for the 1959 Broadway musical Gypsy.

Happy Friday.
It’s Memorial Day weekend here in the US.
It’s been a while, but the little rose bush in my front yard has roses again.

From today’s Seattle Times
Photographer: Robert Denney
Photo taken: March 30, 2024, at the Center for Urban Horticulture wetlands, near Husky Stadium.
Photographer’s description: “Herons are great. I came upon this heron at the Center for Urban Horticulture. He/she let me get pretty close, and we bonded. It fished while I photographed. In the span of about an hour, it got a pretty good meal of three or four little fish. The center is a lovely place to roam and see birdlife.”

I saw these beautiful rhododendron flowers on my walk tonight just as the daylight was starting to fade.

The flaming colors of these tulip flowers are gorgeous.
There has been a little rain every day since Thursday— offering me a  respite from watering my lawn-in-the-making three times a day.

It was a warm spring day topping out at 69 °F (21°C), but high temperatures will drop down to a more seasonal 58°F (14°C) tomorrow.

The National Weather Service is predicting a toasty last half of summer, due to an expected La Niña climate pattern.
We will get more upper-level ridges of high pressure (heat domes) than usual. These are common in summer but tend to be most persistent during La Niña.

Happy Earth Day.

There is reason for a little optimism that we can save our planet.
Experts say that global carbon dioxide emissions will probably peak next year and certainly by 2030, using a scenario based on current policy settings.
The transition to clean energy is happening worldwide and it’s unstoppable.
The reason is that using renewable resources (such as solar, wind) are now the cheapest ways to capture or generate energy.

Sometimes when I water my lawn, there is a robin nearby.
They must be looking for earthworms crawling out of the wet soil.

Check out this amazing picture taken last Monday during the solar eclipse (seen as a partial eclipse from Montreal).
Chloe Rose Stuart-Ulin explains in the New York Times:
The plane passing over Montreal during the partial phase of the eclipse left a typical contrail in its wake. When this happens in full sunlight, the shadows cast by contrails on clouds are usually too diffuse to see. In this case, the sharpness of the shadows was explained by the eclipse.
Though the shadows of the contrails appeared to be on a layer of clouds above the aircraft, as though cast from reflected light from the Earth, this was an illusion. The shadows were made by the light of the sun, cast downward onto clouds below it.

There are still blossoms on the trees here in the city.
Here’s one on a young magnolia tree.