This is my friend, Very Noisy and Important Goose, who was working very hard yesterday afternoon to keep eir friends close and eir rivals . . . not so close.
Worth braving the high winds and misty graupel to watch this riot of displays. (Not to mention all the similarly active ducks; see previous post.)
#SheAndHim - Zooey Deschanel and M Ward - met on the film "The Go-Getter", and have sporadically recorded in the years since. They make ethereal folk-pop, the sound of late night lockins in the snug of your local.
Despite its sensationalist pulpy title and #ColdWar premise, Jack Arnold's adaptation of the #RichardMatheson novel is an existentialist treatise.
The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) plays with the understanding of what it means to be acknowledged as a human, and one's place in the world. The story is told through the eyes of the titular Shrinking Man – Scott Carey – who after being exposed to strange fog, finds himself increasingly lost in this world.
For authenticity reasons, Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton's The General (1926) was – for the most part – filmed on location in Oregon. Set during the #AmericanCivilWar, it's a comedic retelling of a popular war memoir about the #GreatLocomotiveChase.
Sadly it was a box office #flop, resulting in Keaton losing his independence and The General entering the #PublicDomain as early as 1954. Luckily for us that means we too can enjoy the views of beautiful 1920s Oregon: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=YWm587wKKVw (note: this version has the appropriate piano score but appears to be a missing few minutes).
Though not perfectly developed in the Mt. Ashland Pluton, the leucocratic granite pegmatites near the summit display a weakly graphic texture.
“Graphic granite is a leucocratic granitic rock consisting of alkali feldspar with exsolved quartz typically forming a distinctive repetitive pattern sometimes resembling cuneiform writing. Experiments have shown that graphic granite texture is derived from large single crystals of quartz and feldspar interleaving to create the cuneiform illusion.”
Wikipedia
In this sample, the development of the texture has been explained as an immiscibility between the two primary crystallizing components (quartz and feldspar) and the remaining magma…while others explain it as the nucleation and growth of quartz, controlled by the host feldspar, which supports the simultaneous growth of quartz and feldspar that results in the graphic granite texture.
Thrilled by this #SaturdaySighting of well over 100 snow geese that just rose out of the marsh where I was walking and then soared about together as though they wanted to get a murmuration going.
View of Mount Jefferson while standing on the Timberline Trail on Mount Hood. I took this photo in September 2022 while backpacking the Timberline Trail.
Usually I go out New Year's morning to a wetland and start my year bird list out right, but this year, between work and getting back to running, it'll be a slower start. My #birdsof2023 list starts with a quick park walk this morning:
Another neighborhood walk, and this time I picked up three rare and elusive Northwest species. And me without my camera! Seriously though, all birds are good. Even starlings. Maybe especially starlings. I'll fight you over starlings.
I had a chance this week to revisit one of my old haunts from before my last move: Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge. What a place for geese, ducks, and songbirds, and very helpful for the year list.
My first #GreatBackyardBirdCount of the weekend wasn't wildly diverse - 11 pretty expected species - but it all counts. One of the really useful functions of GBBC is seeing population trends in the most common birds. And I did get one new one for the year list that had somehow hidden from me until now.
The #GreatBackyardBirdCount continues. This morning, I spent an hour at Baskett Slough National Wildlife Refuge, picking up a decent list of birds, including 5 new for me for the year (Officially anyway. I'd seen kestrels before but not counted them in a list):
Probably my last birding of this year's #GreatBackyardBirdCount, a quick wetlands walk that produced four new species for the year for me. The highlight was a pair of Canvasbacks, which I generally only see a few times a year at most. And finally some butterbutts. Where have you been hiding?
Got out into the winter mix today, not far but enough to see a few birds. I was rewarded for my wet cold walk with a pair of new year birds, one I didn't expect to see or at least to identify in these conditions. I don't think of looking for swallows in snow here, but they do overlap.
I wasn't looking for birds today, but that's not how any of this works. Right down the street, clear as day and posing to be counted, my first sapsucker of the year. Hi, bird. As you were.
In addition to the plum flowers and tiny spood, today was a most auspicious bird day: my first vultures of 2023. No offense to the kinglet or the magnificent wood duck - all birds are good birds - but I'm a vulture fanboy. Vultures are the best.