White tailed eagle in Rausu, Hokkaido Japan. Really pleased with how this came out - I usually don't make prints, but I think I'll print and frame this one.

Eurasian tree sparrow in Rausu, Hokkaido Japan. These fluff balls are tough little creatures - they remind me of our own black-capped chickadees that survive winters in the boreal forest in North America. It was 8F (-13C) that morning in Rausu when I took the photo. Click on photo for full size.

Just got back from Japan and managed to sneak off to Hokkaido for a couple of days to see Steller's sea eagles. Still processing all my images but here is a quick view of the two eagle species on the ice - white tailed in the foreground and Steller's. Amazing how much bigger the Steller's are! 🦉🦅

My son is a senior at Harvard. This week, he finished his finals and left campus with his friends on a short vacation trip. 50 miles to the south, Brown students were sitting for their exams too, except the outcome couldn’t have been more different. As a country, we have totally lost the plot. 😭

My younger son submitted his first grad school application today. Seems like it was yesterday when he graduated high school. Soon he will be his own man, making his way in the world. Kids grow up fast… 🥲

WTF…. what is your major malfunction, America? 🤬 www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

Wow, the Bears are 7-3 and in first place in the NFC North! However, they are -6 on points scored/conceded differential and they’ll get exposed pretty soon. As a long-suffering Bears fan, I’ll enjoy it while it lasts, I guess!

Calling the police on a person having a mental health crisis is a death sentence. When will people learn this? 🙁 www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/...

Looking for good references (books or papers) on negative externalities of both fossil fuel technologies and electrical alternatives for transportation. For example, how do we objectively weigh EV-related mining against the obvious negative externalities of fossil fuels. Pointers welcome! 🙏🏾

I swear, Blake Treinen is going to take a decade off my life. Roki didn’t help either.

On Sept 30, I retired from the only company I have worked for, after 35 years of employment. It’s a new experience waking up every morning without a clear schedule of things to do, but I think I’ll get used to it! 😉

Just started listening to the audio book of Braiding Sweetgrass. Achingly beautiful. The story of Sky Woman and Turtle Island brought me to tears. The narrator was an excellent choice - her voice is perfectly suited for the book!

Some nice dashcam footage in 4K of my drive through Shasta Trinity NF and over the Siskiyous last weekend. I love this section -done it dozens of times. Background music is my Tidal playlist on the car audio. Hope you enjoy it! Remember to view in 4K! youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Nightshift by the Commodores is the finest, smoothest song ever written and performed. That’s a hill I’m willing to die on. 😎 youtu.be/FrkEDe6Ljqs?...

Is there anything more disrespectful than walking away from the squat rack without putting away your plates? Put me in a foul mood this fine Sunday morning. Rerack your damn weights, yo! Don’t make others clean up after you! 🤬

Why does the Dodgers-Braves game have a 715 pm ET start on a freaking Saturday?

The final words of “The Velvet Queen,” the amazing documentary on the snow leopard: Revere what is in front of us. Hope for nothing. Delight in what crops up. Have faith in poetry. Be content with the world. Fight for it to remain. Quite possibly the finest documentary I have ever seen. 🐆🌿🌎

The end of the seminal Watson & Crick DNA paper in Nature : "It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.” Is there a more profoundly understated sentence anywhere in the scientific literature?

My son just informed me that his first-author paper submission was accepted for publication. This will his 2nd first-author peer-reviewed paper to be published. He has at least one other manuscript in prep for submission. Not bad for a junior in college. I hope it helps his grad school applications!

Powerful.

Pied-billed grebe in the UC Santa Barbara campus lagoon. The area around Campus Point and the lagoon is an extremely productive birding location. Easy to get 50+ species on a 2-hour birding walk around there. #birds 🦉 Canon R7 + RF100-500L.

It is spring time and the red winged blackbird males are on full display with their epaulets and their song. Here is a magnificent specimen, photographed in Goleta, California. Click on photo for larger image. Canon R7 + RF100-500L. #birds 🦉

Post a warning.

Mockingbird males have started their courtship singing. Bachelors will sing through the night. Goodbye to sleep for me! May need to go the store to buy a fan just to drown out the sound! 🥱🦉#birds

Spring is here. The weather is gorgeous in my little corner of paradise and the California poppies are in riotous bloom! 🌿 #Nativeplants

Reading Emperor of all Maladies. Wow, great book. Honestly, I don’t know how oncologists do it and what their burnout rate is. Surrounded by grief with the occasional miracle seven days a week.

We could have had this man in 2016. 😢 youtube.com/shorts/3F3ay...

Brilliant article on the rise and fall of American football (and as a metaphor for America itself) in Granta magazine. @grantamag.bsky.social granta.com/mucker-play/...

Hope nobody is interested in knowing any details of incoming hurricanes, storms, etc. Maybe the power of prayer will save the true believers. The rest are doomed. www.axios.com/2025/03/03/d...

What a loss. RIP.

Semipalmated plover (Charadrius semipalmatus) at Devereux Beach, Goleta, California. Canon R7 + RF 100-500L. #birds 🪶🦉

Long billed curlew at Devereux Beach, Goleta California. I love watching these birds use their amazing bills with the skill and precision of a surgeon wielding a scalpel. Canon R7 + RF 100-500L. 🪶#birds

I couldn’t believe how wyt the newKennedy Center board is. It’s a freaking outrage, given that much of American popular music and dance has become originated from the black experience.

I spent the last few weeks walking around the @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social campus on a photographic project - to shoot all the outdoor art on campus. It has been hugely satisfying. I made a thread on the photo forum I help run: focus-on-photography-forum.net/threads/the-... Please take a look!

Reposting!

I switched from sunflower seeds to safflower seeds for my backyard feeders last season. They are just as nutritious from what I have read but considerably less expensive but the birds seem to love them just the same. A male house finch partaking of the bounty. Canon R7 + RF100-500L #birds 🪶🦉

If you see this post, post or quote post a Bridge from your photography or artwork. Hawthorne Bridge and downtown Portland, Oregon from the Eastbank Esplanade.

Such a thrill…seeing a book you spent 2 years writing and over three decades living in print for the first time. ENDS OF THE EARTH. Onsale 2/4. 🧪 Hope to see you while I’m on tour!

Modern camera sensors are amazing! It was a pretty hazy day on the beach in Santa Barbara. I just dialed in exposure for the sunset and let the foreground be dark. Here are the straight-out-of-camera shot and the final version with shadow recovery. Lemons and lemonade! Canon R5 + EF 11-24 F/4

The @ucsb.bsky.social campus labyrinth, on a bluff above the ocean, is "a place of calm that encourages meditation, reflection, and rejuvenation." "Unlike a maze, it has a single path in full view that lead to the center and back out the same way." With the Canon R5 + Samyang 12/2.8 Fisheye lens.

I always seem to struggle photographing birds with black plumage. I can never seem to get the depth of their glossy feathers to come out. My feeble attempt at a red-winged blackbird in Portland. Canon 7D + EF 100-400L #birds 🦉🪶 Join me and other photographers at focus-on-photography-forum.net

Tough day for all baseball fans…🥲 www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/...

Black-capped chickadee in Portland. I love these little birds. Feisty, smart, and tough as nails, over-wintering in the boreal forest. Their furnaces must burn hotter than most to deal with that. Canon R7 + RF100-500L #birds 🦉🪶 Join me and other photographers at focus-on-photography-forum.net

Female downy woodpecker (Dryobates pubescens) with a great view of its zygodactyl foot. Photographed in Portland Oregon with the Canon R7 + RF 100-500L. #birds 🪶🦉 Join me and other photographers at focus-on-photography-forum.net

Thread.

Inspired by all the Wolf Moon photos people have been posting, so got the urge to set up the tripod and capture my version as well. Fairly decent atmospheric conditions and managed to capture a fair bit of crater detail. Canon R5 + EF 600/4 III + 1.4X. Click on image for 1600px resolution image.

Orange enough for ya? 😀 Goleta sunset…..

Interested in photography? Want to discuss photography, share your images, get inspired by others in various genres? A few of us started a new photography forum called Focus on Photography & we would love to see more members join! We are at focus-on-photography-forum.net. It’s totally free and fun!🙏🏾