Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
This little critter was chugging across the Dutchess Rail Trail near the ponds north of Page Industrial Park, so I stopped to lend a hand:
Tiny Turtle Dorsal – Rail Trail – 2018-05-23
The plastron looked like a brightly colored jewel:
Tiny Turtle Ventral – Rail Trail – 2018-05-23
Perhaps plastrons start out with all the pigment they’ll ever have, then fade from bright orange to yellow-brown as they spread out.
If you’re not paying attention, you’d think “pebble” or “dog turd”. Neither of which you should ride over, of course, but … teleporting a tiny turtle to the drainage ditch on the far side seemed to increase the world’s net happiness.
The pix are tight crops from the AS30V’s 170° FOV images, which means they’re way grittier than you’d expect from a “full HD” image.
As always, we knew this wouldn’t end well for the small lump just in front of the car’s rear wheel (clicky for more, albeit fuzzy, dots):
Turtle 0134 – Vassar Rd – 2018-05-20
So I stopped to lend a hand:
Turtle 1280 – Vassar Rd – 2018-05-20
A fumbling hand, as it turned out, on the turtle’s slippery shell:
Turtle 1364 – Vassar Rd – 2018-05-20
A belly-up turtle in the middle of the road knows the solution to the Halting Problem.
I hoped a secluded spot under a pine tree was closer to its destination:
Turtle 1724 – Vassar Rd – 2018-05-20
However, if the turtle is a female in search of an egg-laying site, then she and all her progeny must cross Vassar Road in the other direction to reach the Mighty Wappinger Creek.
This cheerful assortment came from a friend with an assortment of happy chickens:
Multicolored chicken eggs
The lonely Medium white egg, obviously strictly from commercial, serves as a size and color reference. Most of the others weighed in the Large to Extra-Large range.
Even though none of the chickens had the digital upgrade, the morning omelet tasted just fine!
That’s what all dog owners say when their dog lunges at you:
Dog Lunge – DCRT 2017-05-13
We sounded our usual bike bell dings while approaching and moved as far to the left as we could. The group compressed to the right, which was unusually courteous, we said nothing, and they said nothing while their dog barked and lunged at both of us.
Perhaps we are easily startled, but we do not regard lunging and barking as friendly or sociable gestures. Even as pedestrians, we do not want our crotches explored, our hands licked, or our chests pawed.
AFAICT the only reason Mary didn’t get knocked over and gnawed was a good grip on a thin leash. Maybe the dog would just lick her to death, but it’s still unwanted aggression.
From what I’ve read, dog shoulders operate as front-to-back rotating pivots, rather than all-direction ball joints. Disabling an attacking dog thus requires grabbing its front legs and spreading them as far apart as possible, which is feasible because human arms are much stronger laterally than dog legs. While the process brings one’s head entirely too close to the dog’s jaws, it apparently breaks most of the dog’s ribs, collapses its lungs, and instantly puts it out of action.
I devoutly hope I need never test that maneuver under field conditions, as I can see serious repercussions. If it’s in Mary’s face, however, I will not err on the side of generosity.
Protip: if your dog isn’t well-trained enough to completely ignore strangers, don’t bring it near strangers who may not be dog people.
A pair of barred owls have been doing call-response “Who cooks for you” chants during the late afternoon, we finally spotted one, and I have a Pixel XL in my pocket:
Barred owl – overview
That’s with the camera zoomed all the way, so it’s blowing up the raw pixels by a factor of four. Cropping out the middle and resizing by 300% shows the result doesn’t have much detail:
Barred owl – zoomed 3x cropped
We snagged the binoculars on the way out the door, so we got a better look than you do. The camera you have is much better than the camera you don’t, but big glass always wins over tiny optics!
All of the local turkeys come together during snow storms, often lingering in the circle of pine trees in our back yard to get some protection from the wind. Mary spotted a Cooper’s Hawk in the midst of the turkey flock, with its wings spread around a recently captured meal:
Hawk with squirrel – wings spread
When she first saw it, the hawk had its back to us and looked like a cluster of dead pine branches; the recent back-to-back storms have cleared out quite a bit of deadwood.
When I quietly opened the back door for a better view, the hawk noticed and gave me the stinkeye from 100 feet away:
Hawk with squirrel – 2
The flock had moved out of the pine circle to surround the hawk and examine the situation, although they weren’t harassing it:
Hawk with squirrel – 3
We’ve counted 27 turkeys, more or less, on some days, well and truly outnumbering the hawk:
Hawk with squirrel – overview
Fortunately, turkeys feed mainly on insects and seeds, rather than tearing into carrion, so they’re not competing for the prize:
Hawk with squirrel – detail
Shortly after I gave up and went back inside, the hawk sank her (?) talons into the squirrel, lifted heavily into the air, circled around the pines, and flew off toward the Mighty Wappinger Creek out back.
A casual search suggests both the hawk and the squirrel weigh about 1 lb = 500 g: I’ll never complain about heavy grocery bags again!
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 