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| Cottontail on the Lawn |
We've been swamping in the middle of a nearly unbroken wave of heat and humidity here in the Chicago area for about a month now, with my wife and her dad and brother caring for my mother-in-law who needs round-the-clock care for her ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease. We drove out here along I-80, and contrary to what I remember from a few cross-country road trips I did a long time ago, the scenery was surprisingly interesting. I suppose my outlook has changed more than the scenery has, and looking for nature in the confines of San Francisco has probably sharpened my appreciation for even the most humble landscapes.
I'm currently limited to a landscape that includes my in-laws' back yard and neighborhood, including a small rectangular park of about 675 by 950 feet, but there are cardinals here, and monarch butterflies on purple coneflowers, cottontail rabbits, and even a few semi-feral neighborhood cats.
I've also been introduced to a new bird that my Merlin app was unable to identify. It chose "peregrine falcon" for the first picture, and I knew that was wrong. It had no guesses for a second picture, and it guessed "kestrel" for a third picture. I gave up on the app and found an Illinois birding group to post the pictures to. The answer was beautiful: the bird was the app's namesake, i.e., a merlin!
Every now and then a merlin shows up in San Francisco, but I've never definitively seen one there. Here, there is a pair of merlins that I see (but mostly hear) quite often.
My camera has been a lifeline to normalcy in this difficult time, and I feel lucky to have some critters to observe. My brother-in-law shoots with a 4x5 film camera and has also has been making the most out of his much stricter time limitations by shooting a series of self-portraits at home and around the block.
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| We took a break at a rest stop next to the Bonneville Salt Flats, and this ended up being just about the only picture I snapped during the whole 2,000-mile trip. Someday we'll make the trip under more joyful circumstances. I guess the biggest surprise for me was the beauty of Iowa as we crossed the Nebraska state line. With all those rolling green hills and beautiful farm houses bathed in golden-hour light, I wanted to get off the freeway and explore. |
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| We drove into such a heavy storm that day turned into night and the windshield wipers couldn't keep up with the deluge. No mere cloudburst to quickly drive through, the rain just kept pouring down, and when a couple of cars in front of me pulled off the highway, I joined them. More than half an hour later we finally got going again and pulled into a rest stop where I snapped this photo. |
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| My in-laws have a bird bath on the edge of the back deck (heated in the winter), here being visited by a house sparrow (a familiar San Francisco denizen as well). |
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| Much of the Chicago area is in drought, but when it rains it pours. |
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| I've only heard flickers a couple of times, and I was lucky to catch a picture of this one the first time. |
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| The mourning doves are usually very skittish, so I was surprised this one stood for a photo. |
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| Birds don't sweat, so when it's hot out, they pant. There's an active robin's nest within view of our back deck, and I feel like I can recognize two individual robins that are often around (one has a white patch on its breast, and they often perch in the same places on the same fences). One day as I was walking to the local YMCA to go for a morning swim I saw a fledgling robin that was too soon out of its nest. It could only fly a few inches off the ground for maybe two or three feet in distance. Two adult robins, one of which was carrying food in its beak, looked on from high perches as the fledgling skittered this way and that, once banging into the side of a parked white SUV, trying to find safety. No sign of them on the way back. |
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| View from the Back Deck: Clouds & Brick Chimney |
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| This was one of the shots I uploaded to the Merlin app without getting a proper ID. This merlin is banded. |
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| White-breasted Nuthatch |
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| Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) |
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| The cardinals are year-round residents, and they are quite wary of humans. They rarely land close by, and they don't stay long when they do. They have a few different songs, all of which are beautifully melodious. They also have a single-note companion call which they use more forcefully as a scolding call when a merlin is hunting nearby. |
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| We walked over to a nearby 5-story parking garage to watch the local fireworks on July 3. |
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| This house finch is probably the bravest of the birds who visit the bath. |
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| This neighborhood cat actually appears to have a GPS collar. I loved watching it make its way through people's yards like it owned the whole neighborhood. |
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| This was the big cat I'd been told about. I first glimpsed it through blinds from our second-floor bedroom and thought it was a dog walking in the street. When I realized it was Orangey the cat, I grabbed my camera and went looking for it. Apparently the owner of this house has been known to feed the cat from time to time. |
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| There are lots of these fox squirrels around, and they look just like the ones in Golden Gate Park. This one was drinking nectar from the honeysuckle flowers vining up a telephone pole. |
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| The female cardinals are usually out hunting for food instead of just looking flashy like the males. I've seen them eating large black ants and cicadas, and I'm going to buy some wild bird seed one of these days to try to see more of them. |
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| With those big eyes, rabbits can see front, sideways, and even behind them. |
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| House Finch |
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| Hairy Woodpecker |
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| Bunny Eating Hosta Flowers |
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| Cloudscape |
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| Bunny & Day Lilies |
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| I'm always trying to get a little bit better shot of the cardinals. When they land within range, I find it impossible not to raise my camera, even though they usually fly away before I can lock focus on them. |
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| The merlins often make a racket as they swoop through the air (unless they're hunting), so it's easy enough to follow them. Also, they like to land in the tops of trees with lots of bare limbs. This particular tree is completely dead and almost nothing but bare limbs. |
Perched Merlin Making A Racket
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| It seems to be a meeting place as well. I can see this tree from the back deck, but it's a couple of blocks away to the east. |
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| Coprinus in the wood chips at the local park. They came up a day after the first rain in a while. |
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| I was surprised to see this squirrel biting off the caps and eating them. It even dug into the wood chips to find mycelium to eat. |
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| I was watching a great blue heron in a little park pond when a small flock of Canada geese flew over. I couldn't get my camera focused in time to get a shot, but I was ready when they surprised me by circling back to land very nearby. |
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| Great Blue Heron in Funky Park Pond |
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| Female House Sparrow |
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| This guy was as close as I've come to seeing a bobcat. |
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| Monarch Butterfly |
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| I looked up from the back deck and thought I saw a turkey vulture soaring in the distance. Nope! It was a bald eagle heading toward Lake Michigan. |
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| Clean-looking Lepiota button in someone's front yard. |
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| Milkweed Bugs on Milkweed Seedpods |
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| Monarch on Purple Coneflower |
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| This monarch appeared to be ovipositing on a milkweed seedpod. |
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| A monarch and a red admiral feed together on Echinacea nectar. |
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| Ichneumon wasp on purple coneflower. |
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| I thought this monarch was feeding on joe-pye weed (named for Mohican herbalist Joseph Shauquethqueat), but on closer examination it appears to be swamp milkweed. |
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| Black swallowtail butterfly on purple coneflower. |
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| Red admiral butterfly on purple coneflower. |
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| Side view of black swallowtail butterfly. |
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| We finally got a real storm, and I couldn't resist checking it out as it rolled in. I figured I'd feel a few early-warning raindrops and have time to run back to the house, but I wasn't prepared for the powerful winds that swooped in. As I started running, small tree branches began to fall around me and I wondered if there was going to be a tornado. Thankfully I did get back indoors before the deluge. Thunder and lightning: good fun if it doesn't get too crazy! |
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| Cardinal-on-the-Lawn |
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| Amanita Entrance |
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| The park's butterfly garden really works. |
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| What joy we can find under the circumstances begins with bunnies and ends with bunnies.... |
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