The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning
Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
Other creatures in our world
An unusually late two-day snowstorm laid down half a foot of snow starting in the evening of April 3:
Up until then, the weather had been running a bit warmer than usual, which seems to be the new normal, and this snowfall put more snow on the ground than we’d seen all winter.
The snow took some critters by surprise:
Most of the snow melted during the sunny 40 °F day after the storm, but overnight lows in the teens wiped out most of the spring flowers and buds.
We celebrate the start of Spring by cleaning the previous season’s nest(s) from our bird boxes, so this “improved” design caught our eye on a walk around the neighborhood:
Birds being the way they are, the most recent occupants surely piled more twigs & grass atop their foundation to make the level come out right. An industrious mouse might find a convenient route inside.
A Great Blue Heron kept watch over us from the decaying spillway as we walked along on Old Mill Road:
A mid-stream perch provided a better vantage point:
The concrete slab in the lower right corner came from the dam breast.
The camera never lies, but if you could look upward just a bit, you’d see the unending stream of cars passing by on Red Oaks Mill Road at the Rt 376 intersection …
We often see a hawk perched atop a street lamp along Hooker Avenue, but this is the closest we’ve come:
That first wingbeat must be exhilarating:
There doesn’t seem to be much behind the notion of reincarnation, but one interation as a bird would be edifying…
Henceforth, let it never be said I have neglected my duty with respect to cat pictures:
I left the garage door open while working outside and that critter walked calmly in, examined the offerings, walked out, and made itself comfortable on the patio. We may have a co-owner…
Take the rest of the day off, OK?
Rolling through the back of the Vassar Campus, watching a murder of crows on the lawn, when all of a sudden:
That squirrel passed about three feet in front of Mary’s bike, running flat out and, at 60 frame/s, touched the ground every 200 ms:
Figuring a squirrel body+tail is 1.5 ft long and it covers 3 of those units with every leap, it’s moving at 22 ft/s = 15 mph. That’s about as fast as we travel…
This critter may have a burrow under the stand of decorative grass beside the front door:
Mary lets it eat all the weeds it wants and, oddly, it seems to prefer broad-leaf greenery to what little grass remains in the front lawn.
Taken with the DSC-H5 through two layers of wavy 1955-era glass from the living room.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 