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
Word got around quickly after I set up the bird feeder at the corner of the patio, one week before Mary’s Project Feederwatch data collection started up:
You can tell this chipmunk wasn’t at all bothered by my presence:
We call them fur birds, but they don’t count for Feederwatch:
A few days later, I put a casserole of fresh-cooked brown rice on a patio table to cool, only to have a raccoon drag it off. Of course, the Pyrex bowl shattered on the concrete: neither of us got much of the rice…
Late in the fall, Brown Marmorated Stink Bugs move indoors to spend the winter; they can infiltrate through the smallest of cracks and seem to show up unannounced in the strangest locations. This one magically appeared on my M2 printer while I was starting it up:
I unceremoniously flushed its contribution to the gene pool…
Mary managed to outcompete the local squirrels to the tune of 10 pounds of Shagbark Hickory nuts, which we’ve been enjoying after supper. The thickly armored nuts shrug off ordinary nutcrackers, so we deploy heavy weaponry: good old 10WR Vise-Grip pliers:
She describes the process better than I; for what it’s worth, I work on one nut at a time. We both celebrate when a shell releases its nut with minimal damage; most often, we extract fragments into a pile like the one shown. I can process half a dozen nuts before deciding I’ve had enough.
I’d be in favor of a genetic modification producing a fluorescent green shell, because overlooking a minute piece of shell in that pile of nutmeat is a Very Bad Thing…
Some Vise-Grip history may be of interest.
Back in August, the squash vines were in full flower:
Here’s a closer look:
Pop quiz: how many bees do you count?
With the benefit of watching them move, I counted nine bees in that blossom!
Winter squash vines bear large flowers (that blossom is the size of my outstretched hand) that attract large bees: bumblebees and their cousins, carpenter bees. Quite often, bumblebees spend the night huddled inside the blossom and emerge early the next day when they reach flying temperature. Honeybees, being more social, return to their hives overnight; we’re pleased to see that there’s at least one feral hive in the neighborhood.
Our Larval Engineer has a bug report that blows away anything I’ve ever seen:
Check out her post for the rest of the story…
Forgot to mention this when she first told me about it; the discussion of LED and CFL lifetime brings it to mind.
High atop that tree again:
The bird on the right seems larger and may be the female of a mated pair, but it’s hard to tell at this distance. They could be siblings from the most recent nest in the area, but hawks aren’t chummy birds.
Search for hawk and you’ll find many more pix; I think they’re photogenic.
Go, hawks, go!
It’s taken at the usual 12x zoom with the 1.7 teleadapter on the Sony DSC-H5. I can’t justify the kilobucks required for a large-sensor SLR with nice long glass, but it’d definitely improve the picture quality around here. [sigh]
This pair of Double-crested Cormorants took up residence for a few weeks on the pond at Vassar Farm:
The rubbery blue feet should be diagnostic, but don’t appear in any of our references. They’re definitely not Blue-footed Boobies, that much we know.
They’re XORed with turtles on the same snags.
Hand-held with the Canon SX230HS at full zoom across the pond.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 