Buddy continues his jihad on the rabbit population. Last night, as I was getting ready to turn in, I heard him coming through the portal accompanied with his hunter's call-a specific, high pitched mew repeated 3-4 times. Sho' nuff, he had a baby bunny in his mouth although the poor thing was very much alive. Bud dropped it and it took off. I saw first hand why he has been so successful-he is a lot quicker. I managed to get the rab away from him using a bowl and a dustpan for a cover and set it free outside in the lilies. I went to bed. Luckily, he did not disturb me as he does C, often at 4 am. I was up at 7.30 am and he was peacefully snoozing on the couch.
I researched the reproductive cycle for our rabs: oh, gawd, they have litters March-September with most moms averaging 3-4 litters a season. This year seems unusually productive-I was talking to my neighbors who all were mentioning bunny problems.
Someone, I suspect bunnies, attempted to go bust under or through a seam on the fences around my Rose of Sharon. Oy.
No sign of the chucks for 2 days save one of the younguns. The rest of the family are nowhere to be seen. Is this the missing 6th pup I wondered about in the last post? At least no new attacks on the maters and maris since I fenced them in and sprayed a deer/rabbit deterrent. While not advertised to work on chucks, I thought that it couldn't hurt.
I saw Lil' Woody for the first time since March/April when he and his fellow peckers visited the Diner daily. Perhaps they had fueled up, mated, brought the kids up and now have returned.
6/15: I spotted a rare Pileated woody flitting around next door. I have seen one maybe twice since we have lived here and they have always been on the utility pole by the shed. They are roughly twice the size of a blue jay.
Stock photo
Butterfly weed beginning to bloom.
A Chipper hole that reappears year to year
Mamachuck + one has returned this early evening. No sight of the other 5.
Buddy has a new gambit for attention from C-wherever his OPs are, he is picking up some sort of seed that gets caught in his coat. Now, he is ok with C using the comb to get them out but he really prefers is her fingernails. Ahh, a mum's touch.
6/14-delightful evening, warm enough to eat on the deck. Good sleeping weather.
Glowing lily in West Garden through garage-side door
More lilies opening up on Moll's gravesite-she loved hanging out hidden amongst the lilies and liked to prank C by tapping her ankle with her paw as she walked by on the path
Snow-on-the-mountainland: a denuded forest of stalks thanks to the chuck overgrazing:
At the Diner-Liza, Napoleon Nutkin and Mamachuck:
After supper, we chilled watching a film. Buddy received some premium belly rubs by C, who was wearing an ancient 30+ year old Tiger sweatshirt of mine:
Blissful Bud showing his nibblers (Futurama ref):
How do you handle a hungry Bud? With a Bud Pleaser meal!
His Lordship has established his mealtime regime: lunch is wet food with kibble on the side; for supper, he prefers a starter of treats served on his baby Einstein while his wet food is already in a bowl gently warming. Treats are later served for dessert.
This, btw, is what we call a baby Einstein. It's advertised as a "cat activity 5 in 1 fun board".
As I made my rounds before retiring, I was treated to a Michigan June treat-fireflies.
Stock Photo
Last year I did not see them until 6/27, which I attributed to an extended dry spell. It's heading that way this year-not much rain lately and I notice the grass is beginning to brown in spots.
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Death noted: 6/11-French singer Françoise Hardy aged 80. Famous in the '60s, revived due to one of her songs featured in the 2012 Wes Anderson film "Moonrise Kingdom". From 1962 "Les temps de l'amour".
Fun vids:
Long-wattled Umbrella bird with rockabilly pompadour-hey ladies!
Hooded grebe courtship dance:
Abandoned copper mine in Wales revealing blue azurite ore:
Siphonophore: world's largest animal reaching lengths of 150 feet surpassing that of blue whales who can be 100 feet.
Crown Flash:
Crown Flash is a rarely observed meteorological phenomenon when ice particles get aligned in the same direction from the electrostatic field created during a thunderstorm. It's usually invisible to the naked eye but the way the sun hits, it becomes visible to the naked eye kind of like a rainbow. In this vid, the flash is to the viewer's left of the sun.
The Field of Jars, Laos:
The Plain of Jars is a megalithic archaeological landscape
in Laos. It consists of thousands of stone jars scattered around the
upland valleys and the lower foothills of the central plain of the
Xiangkhoang Plateau.
I was YT surfing when I dipped into this: "12 Most Ancient Archaeological Discoveries Scientists Still Can't Explain" that begins with this statement:
"We should know more about our past than we do about the future but in many ways, we don't". Oy.
Buddy was weaving figure eights around C's ankles as she went into the kitchen to feed him. She gave him our standard warning: don't trip the hand that feeds you! He continued as she made mention of his infinity patterns. I chirped from the couch: "He's saying 'I love you forever and ever, Mum' !"
Mr. Chill
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I spotted Mamachuck make a beeline to the raised beds and watched her rise up on her haunches to view my tomatoes. Oh dear, I hope I don't have to fence them off.
The next day, Mama had returned with 5 of her chuckettes. For a time they stayed to the West of the shed, wandering around in my neighbor's yard and the berm. The Diner complex was filled with 4 very active squirrels so Mama thought it prudent to keep away.
When the squirrelies went home for the evening, the chucks moved on over.
I wonder what happened to the 6th chuckette?
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Busy afternoon at the Diner:
Mrs. Red Bird and M/M Purple Finch on the feeder, Mamachuck, Liza, Eli, Stubbs at the buffet
Big Blue enjoying the waters
Liza, recognizes my voice now and will turn and bound towards me when I am tossing peanuts.
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6/10-this morning I discovered that all the tomatoes had been badly nipped by the chucks. The maters are now fenced in.
A learned a couple of things about the chucks: they are part of the family Sciuridae, belonging to the group of large ground squirrels known as marmots. Hmm, so they are relatives to our squirrel gang-no wonder they seem at ease hanging out at the Diner! According to the blurb, the chuckettes should be around only for another month at most. Let's cross our fingers that they aren't too clingy to their Mum!
When they aren't attacking the maters, they are following in their Mum's paw prints and enjoying the snow-on-the-mountain.
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A nice example of OS European graphic design-sharp and playful:
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Mid-'80's pop! Katrina and the Waves "Walking on Sunshine".
I remember this was a big hit on Christian radio stations.
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The mysterious Rongorongo tablets of Easter Island:
The glyphs:
From Wiki: Rongorongo is a system of glyphs discovered in the 19th century on Easter Island that has the appearance of writing or proto-writing. Numerous attempts at decipherment have been made, but none have been successful. Although some
calendrical and what might prove to be genealogical information has been
identified, none of the glyphs can actually be read. If rongorongo does
prove to be writing and to be an independent invention, it would be one
of very few inventions of writing in human history. Authentic rongorongo texts are written in alternating directions, a system called reverse boustrophedon.This is a style of writing in which alternate lines of writing are reversed,
with letters also written in reverse, mirror-style. This is in contrast
to modern European languages, where lines always begin on the same side,
usually the left.
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Australian researchers have made a breakthrough in the technology of "water batteries":
Chinese researchers have been working on their own version as well as calcium based batteries.
Let's see how this progresses and whether or not those powerful interests heavily vested in rare metals such as lithium move to squash this new technology.
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Red Shift, blueshift and the Doppler effect-wonky.
View of the deep universe from the James Webb Space Telescope
From Space.com: Redshift and blueshift are used by astronomers to work out how far an object is from Earth, the concept is key to charing the universe's expansion. Redshift and blueshift describe how light
shifts toward shorter or longer wavelengths as objects in space (such as
stars or galaxies) move closer or farther away from us.
When an object is
moving away from us, the light from the object is known as redshift, and
when an object is moving towards us, the light from the object is known
as blueshift.
To understand redshift and blueshift, first, you need
to remember that visible light is a spectrum of color each with a
different wavelength. According to NASA, violet has the shortest wavelength at around 380 nanometers, and red
has the longest at around 700 nanometers. When an object (e.g. a galaxy)
moves away from us it is 'red-shifted' as the wavelength of light is
'stretched' so the light is seen as 'shifted' towards to red end of the
spectrum.
The
concept of redshift and blueshift is closely related to the Doppler
effect — which is an apparent shift in soundwave frequency for observers
depending on whether the source is approaching or moving away from
them. The Doppler Effect was first described by Austrian physicist Christian Doppler in 1842 and many of us
experience the Doppler effect firsthand almost every day without even
realizing it.
We've all heard how a siren changes as a police car
rushes past, with a high pitch siren upon approach, shifting to a lower
pitch as the vehicle speeds away. This apparent change in pitch to the
observer is due to sound waves effectively bunching together or
spreading out. It is all relative as the siren's frequency doesn't
change. As the police car travels towards you the number of waves is
compressed into a decreasing distance, this increase in the frequency of
sound waves that you hear causes the pitch to seem higher. Whereas then
the ambulance goes past you and moves away, the sound waves are spread
across an increasing distance thus reducing the frequency you hear so
the pitch seems lower.
This principle of the Doppler effect applies to light as well as sound.
American astronomer Edwin Hubble was the first to describe the redshift phenomenon and
tie it to an expanding universe. His observations, revealed in 1929,
showed that nearly all galaxies he observed are moving away.
"This
phenomenon was observed as a redshift of a galaxy's spectrum," NASA
wrote. "This redshift appeared to be larger for faint, presumably
further, galaxies. Hence, the farther a galaxy, the faster it is
receding from Earth."
The galaxies are moving away from Earth
because the fabric of space itself is expanding. While galaxies
themselves are on the move, there is an overall phenomenon of redshift happening as the universe gets bigger.
The terms redshift and blueshift apply to any part of the electromagnetic spectrum,
including radio waves, infrared, ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays.
So, if radio waves are shifted into the ultraviolet part of the
spectrum, they are said to be blueshifted or shifted toward the higher
frequencies. Gamma rays shifted to radio waves would mean a shift to a
lower frequency or a redshift.
The redshift of an object is
measured by examining the absorption or emission lines in its spectrum.
These lines are unique for each element and always have the same
spacing. When an object in space moves toward or away from us, the lines
can be found at different wavelengths than where they would be if the
object were not moving (relative to us).
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Concordia Station
Researchers studying the physiological and psychological effects of isolation in preparation for future trips to Mars are working in the most remote bases on Earth in Antarctica.
Something they are investigating is that point in the journey when Earth, other than being a
pinprick of light, is out of sight. It is said that this will have a
profound psychological impact on the spacefarers. This seems akin to
when land is no longer seen by sailors and all there is is water and sky.
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Death has been crossing into our orbit lately: a cousin, a next door neighbor, 2 of C's friends/family. We had begun watching the 2001 HBO series "Six Feet Under" and it brought up a memory from Michele's funeral.
I arrived early at the funeral home for the visitation. She was laid out in a side room, dressed in her favorite blue-grey dress and pearl necklace. I touched her cheek and felt the morticians wax underneath. A man came in, I believe one of the funeral home managers. He quietly greeted me as we gazed at her. "She doesn't quite look like herself, poor woman" he said. He patted me on the back and left.
Only later did I consider this comment-it seemed odd. Then I thought perhaps this was a funeral home aphorism-to compliment a grieving man on how beautiful his wife was in life (they had worked from a recent photograph). I don't think it was a comment disparaging the funeral home's job, it was more of a guy thing.
The other morning as I drowsed, I thought about the tragedy that befell one of C's friends mentioned in the 6/6 post. They lost their young (early 20's) daughter who battled a bi-polar condition. The funeral featured peonies from their garden. In her memory, a fable:
Once upon a time there was a beautiful girl child born, alas stricken with a spell cast upon her by an unknown sorcerer. She was named Luna, reflecting her mercurial temperament. She could be bright and loving one moment then shift to dark and sullen the next. This was hard on those who loved her and as she grew older, the family sought potions from magicians to counter the spell but they rarely worked. Luna grew weary of her uncontrollable changes and yearned to be like others, normal.
Life as such had become unbearable so one day in late May, she decided to leave. It seemed a fitting time she thought. Her family had a great garden with many peonies whose bloom lasted for only a few days. Those days and nights were magical, as the sweet scent of the flower filled the house and garden. I am like these flowers-remember me at this time, she wrote in her journal.
And so it was every May, for all those who knew and loved her, remember with bittersweetness, her life both bright and dark, with the fleeting scent of peony.
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Fun vids:
Frozen bubbles under Chinese lake-they are formed in rivers and lakes when bacteria decompose organic matters in the water and expel methane gas.
Breaking a wine glass using your voice:
A smooth knob tailed gecko-a lizard crossed with a fawn with big, Disneyesque eyes:
