Friday, January 14, 2012
Today's Photos:
Once again, I stayed primarily on the dirt trails that wind through this beautiful, wooded landscape. While I was walking across and through the numerous shallow washes in the park, a quote from Joy Harjo's preface to the book, Secrets from the Center of the World, kept coming to mind:
"All landscapes have a history, much the same as people exist within cultures, even tribes. There are distinct voices, languages that belong to particular areas. There are voices inside rocks, shallow washes, shifting skies; they are not silent. And there is movement, not always the violent motion of earthquakes associated with the earth's motion or the steady unseen swirl through the heavens, but other motion, subtle unseen, like breathing. A motion, a sound, that if you allow your inner workings to stop long enough, moves into the place inside you that mirrors a similar landscape; you too can see it, feel it, hear it, know it."
As a side note, this entry is being posted on Saturday afternoon due to a glitch in the internet system upgrade. The glitch has now been resolved. The walks and posting should be back to normal on Monday, at least as normal as life can be at this point.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
The Loggerhead Shrike can easily be confused with the more prevalent Northern mockingbird, especially when seen from a distance. When I first saw this bird perched at the top of a tall snag at the beginning of my walk on the Salado Creek Greenway on Wednesday, November 23, I thought it was a mockingbird. With a closer look through the telephoto lens, I realized it was, in fact, a loggerhead shrike. The shrike has a prominent black mask across its eyes:
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Today's photos:
Today was a beautiful day for a walk and the upgraded internet system is working well. Unfortunately, my schedule today didn't work well at all and I wasn't able to squeeze in even a short walk.
At one point, late in the afternoon about the time I realized I wasn't going to be able to work in a walk, I was standing, looking out the window of my back door. It is an amazing experience and a true blessing to live in the Olmos Basin. The mockingbirds, woodpeckers and white-winged doves pictured above are among the permanent residents of the Basin and frequent the pecan tree in the backyard.
Then, late in the evening as I was pulling into the driveway after running a few errands, I saw the moon, two days past full, rising in the sky just to the east above the Quarry Market. The first two moon photos were taken looking at it through the neighbor's red oak tree. The final photo shows how amazing my camera system is as it was taken handholding the camera with the lens set at 300 mm. The moon appears much closer than I was obviously standing to it.
So, even without making it out for a walk, all was not lost for the day. I have found myself recently relying heavily on the motto: "Adapt, Improvise, Overcome."
