Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
Just south of Lake Walton on the Dutchess Rail Trail, I encountered a barred owl with wings spread around something yummy in its talons (clicky for more dots):
MAH00389-0548 – Barred Owl on DCRT – 1
The owl acquired weapons lock on me, just in case I might try to steal its fresh-killed meal:
MAH00389-0548 – Barred Owl on DCRT – 2
My neck doesn’t turn nearly that far, so I lost the staring contest:
MAH00389-0548 – Barred Owl on DCRT – 3
Owls being good folks to have around, we wish ’em well: may they raise many owlets!
The pictures were extracted from the Sony HDR-AS30V helmet camera with this incantation:
The -q 1 parameter should produce an image with the same dots as the original, but that really doesn’t mean much in the face of the camera’s relentless video compression.
Here’s a dot-for-dot crop (at 100% JPEG quality = uncompressed) showing the tradeoff between wide field-of-view, detail, and compression:
MAH00389-0548 – Barred Owl on DCRT – 2 – detail
Makes me appreciate my eyesight: I spotted that owl when it covered just a few image pixels. Of course, at first I thought somebody dropped a hoodie on the trail, then maybe it was a chunk of debris, so I eased off the asphalt onto the gravel Just In Case.
We recently watched a gray squirrel drag a completely limp and unresponsive companion across the driveway, stopping every few yards to rest. We often see pairs of squirrels frisking / chasing / tussling in the yard, but this was something new.
After 100 feet of dragging, with pauses every few yards, the squirrel had hauled her companion to the fence at the far side of the yard. I leaped to the conclusion that the limp squirrel was dead:
Mother squirrel and pup – 1
But, after perhaps a minute, the “dead” squirrel gradually awoke and both critters slowly clambered up the fence. The squirrel on the right had been doing the dragging and is unquestionably female, the one on the left is much smaller and likely a new pup:
Mother squirrel and pup – 2
So apparently the mother squirrel had hauled one of her pups away from something. Perhaps it was stunned after falling out of a tree or the sole survivor of a hawk attack? We’ll never know The Rest of The Story.
The effort those little birds put into their nests never ceases to amaze me:
Bird box cleanout – old nests
Last year it was the same story. Of course, if we didn’t clean out the boxes, the birds would do it on their own, so perhaps we help them get started earlier.
The turkey flock that normally lives along the Wappingers Creek valley, downslope from the back yard, has emerged for the ritual spring foraging:
Turkey flock – 0
And posturing:
Turkey flock – 1
And just moseying around:
Turkey flock – 2
You can match the trees and identify some duplicated birds, but the flock seems stable around a dozen. They used to deploy skirmish lines upwards of two dozen bird and we’ve recently counted 19; we think foxes have been encouraging better control of wandering chicks.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 