Nature and Small Observations

Turkey vultures are not pretty creatures to look at up close and personal, but I think they are seriously cool birds.

Today I was walking back from the other office and a turkey vulture soared overhead, perhaps sixty or seventy feet above ground. A beautiful, graceful sweep of wings and then a long glide in a slow serpentine line. Just wonderful to watch. I tried to find a video of one soaring so I could post it here, but the vulture is far more graceful than the camera work that I found so I settled for a picture.

As I was watching the vulture I saw a redtail hawk sweeping across the road with a mouse in its beak. It landed in an oak tree in an open field where, I guess, it was going to enjoy its lunch.

A wonderful day for bird watching, and I am not even a bird watching fan because, around here, it seems that most of what we have are crows.

Now crows have their points but they're not pretty or graceful. They're big and rather clumsy (have you ever watched a crow land?). They're loud-mouthed and a bit boorish. If they're annoyed, they make a big fuss. They gather in gangs called 'murders' and make a bunch of noise about it. Boorish behavior in my opinion.

Back to the vultures. Sometimes I see them in the early morning when I'm driving to work. If it's cold they'll perch on the top of telephone poles or on fence posts and hang out in vulture-like fashion. It's something I always find interesting to see. And I hesitated there. Is it beautiful? No, not really. After all they're just doing this:

Catchin' some rays because, after all, this is California.

The other day I saw a pretty robin checking out the olives that have fallen off the tree we have outside our back door. He saw me through the window and took off. Most of the robins we see around here are dull in color, a burnished, faded orange, like this guy:

 instead of the bright orange I usually think of when I think 'robin'. This guy had a beautiful color, darker brown on top and a vibrant orange underneath, like this:

Perhaps he's a juvenile? Maybe it was the angle of the sun and quality of the light? I don't know, but he sure was pretty.

Even though I don't get out in the country, much, I am lucky to have the chance to go outside and walk around and see these guys doing their thing. In fact, thinking of that, I think I'm going to take another walk.

See ya!

Best~
Philippa

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I Am So Lucky, and I Know It

Sometimes how lucky I am just reaches over and smacks me upside the head.

That happened yesterday. I was running around the office, getting ready for our operations meeting in which all the Big Wigs participate. It's our CEO, all of the Directors, EVPs - the big kids.

I don't directly participate in the meeting, but I feel like I'm the hostess. I order lunch for everyone and I go out, pick it up, set it out, make sure everyone has what they might want. Beforehand, I make sure the fridge in the conference room is stocked. That the room is neat and orderly. That the bathroom is presentable and so on. So I'm running around and I look up and... this was what I saw outside my office window:

Now I have to say that beats the heck out of the dead five-foot gopher snake that's lying along the sidewalk across the street (not pictured here). I heard about that from one of our IT guys who was down here on Thursday helping me beat my new workstation into submission.

He said he was walking back from lunch on this side of the street the other day, and one of our co-workers was walking up the other side of the street. They waved, called hello, and then, according to the story, "Jane" shrieked, leapt about five feet into the air and landed two or so feet behind where she'd been. Of course, being a gentleman, he raced to her rescue and discovered the dead snake.

Honestly? I feel sorrier for the snake than I do for Jane but that's because Jane walked away from the encounter but the snake didn't.

I like snakes. I don't think there's anything significantly scary about them, and it's the fault of people that he's lying where he is in his current condition.

See, there's construction along the backside of the vacant lot. He's lying along the front side of the vacant lot. I suspect that he was injured by the construction activities and crawled over to where he is now before giving up the ghost so he could scare the crap out of Jane. That, however, was not his desire, I'm sure. It just was.

Honestly, I don't know that the critter is really five-feet. That could be a fisherman's tale, the big one that got away. For all I know, it's a baby - six-inches or so but I'm not interested enough to walk over and check so enough about the dead snake and back to how lucky I am.

Every morning when I drive to work I just drink in the beauty along my road. It's two lane and winding - like this, only not because this is my drive home:

The next picture is, however, on my drive to work - but this is not what it normally is for me because this was taken by Google Earth and one of its Magical Mobiles. Given the angle of the sun and so on, this was taken around midday when the light is harsh and washes everything of its color:

In the morning, that valley usually has varying degrees of fog - sometimes hanging around the ridges like floating tulle, sometimes blanketing the bottom like cotton wool. Then, the hills are washed with shadows of receding night and the warm glow of early morning.

Before the above, though, is something to which I look forward every day. It's the stroke of light across the leaves on the trees here:

The juxtaposition of shadow and light earlier in the day makes it better than it looks. Again, because this was taken around midday, it's harsh and washed out. In the morning, with the sun lower in the sky, the difference in light and shadow is marked. The leaves appear to glow white with green trim. It's something of which I never tire, and something that changes with every day.

Yes, I am lucky and I know it, although the occasional reminder is nice, too.

I hope you have a lovely day, too, and that you'll stop and appreciate the beauty of where you live.

Best~
Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories