For #ThickTrunkTuesday, the champion western redcedar known as the Duncan Cedar. Location is near Kalaloch on Washington's Olympic Peninsula. The tree was clinging to life in 2011 when I took these pics, and apparently it's still alive. See alt text. #forestry #trees #OlympicPeninsula

OK, nobody will care about this, but here we are. I'm a giant fruit tree nerd. I'd love to grow quince, but where I am we have a lot of a disease called cedar-quince rust that'd kill them without an extreme spray regime I want to do. Quince is the only member of the genus Cydonia.

Satisfying weekend exploring around Moab and the Colorado River. I drove Chicken Corners for the first time and hiked around past where the road ends. Temperatures were concerningly wonderful.

Did this paper need to be written? Unfortunately yes, it did. Trees don't collectively anticipate solar eclipses. Occam had something to say about this kind of problem. 🧪🌲🌳

Shiprock is made up of of the eroded igneous remains of a volcanic neck. This feature has both religious and historical significance to the Navajo people. Navajo Nation near the town of Shiprock, New Mexico, 10 May 2018.

Cypress trees in a floodplain forest. The vertical knee roots that surround them may help with stabilization in the loose soil as well as gas exchange. Congaree National Park, South Carolina, 04 Jun 2013. #NationalParks

Google Photos brought up that I saved this meme five years ago. This one goes out to all the park rangers.

And on a related note...

"The fires were inside a cave, which means they almost certainly weren’t natural. Someone, either Homo erectus or Homo heidelbergensis, was tending them."

Sound up! Did this video a few weeks back when there were around 30,000 snow geese at a wildlife refuge in NW MO. Here in a few weeks that number will be significantly higher #Birds #NatureLovers #Wildlife #BlueSkyPhotography

Working my way through the first season of Andor. It feels like the writers watched The Expanse.

Hadn't looked at this before. Visualization of the lower end of Lake Powell at the historic minimum on April 13, 2023 (light blue), and at dead pool (dark blue). Glen Canyon Dam in lower left. grandcanyon.usgs.gov/apps/LakePow...

In 1977 NASA launched the Voyager spacecraft, including a CD with the song Johnny B. Goode, on a mission to study the solar system & beyond. The extraterrestrials who open it will get another CD every month from Columbia House at full price and be hounded for life by intergalactic debt collectors.

Train Dreams managed to break my heart. The low wages and loss of life to tree falls and wildfire are still as much a peril of working in the woods today as they were a century ago. Claire's article on the movie is moving and honest.

Carrick should put them in a back three for pure humor value.

Plants are on my mind today. I bought squash, lettuce, and basil seeds at the local garden center.

Crazy.

Happy sandhill crane Saturday.

My first reaction was "has to be ponderosa pine." It was not ponderosa pine (yet?).

Walking Paintbrush tonight when someone, looking out at the ice-covered river, turns to me and says "stories and songs everywhere" Y'all, I was not prepared for such a poetic response.

This is the road from Cortez, Colorado, up into the mountains to Rico and eventually to Telluride, and I have a bunch of memories of it involving snow and high school kids drinking and a first backpacking trip, but no boulders, from when we lived in Cortez in 1970.

People buy radio equipment to talk to other people.....about radio equipment.

A Belted Kingfisher flying over one of the few spots of open water. It's been cold enough lately here in Michigan that most of the water spots have frozen over.

I love sandhill cranes in flight.

A Red-tailed Hawk launches from her perch to head out across the marsh.

I saw the Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid post below and had to hunt for when I made it out to Robbers Roost, used by Robert LeRoy Parker and the Wild Bunch gang. The movie isn't bad either.

A female Pileated Woodpecker kicks up some snow while looking for something tasty to eat.

Stumbling my way around listening to amateur radio. It is a strange and kinda wonderful world full of 87s, QRZeds, CQs, and waves.

I managed to capture sandhill crane breathe in the cold morning air at Bernardo State Wildlife Area. 🪶

Flashback on this January 24 to a June 24 2023: Sandhill Cranes. A colt is walking in a pond with his mother and then testing his wings for the very first time in his life. It's bitter cold here right now, good to see summer photos. Good to be off on-call duties and back on BlueSky. #birds #Summer

The end of this game was insane. The reason I watch the sport. That said, no I do not want to talk about the end of the Liverpool game today.

Watching the northern pintails dip their heads and paddle, with tails raised in the air, was a delight. It seemed like their tails were imitating the sticks around them.

I first saw sandhill cranes as they took off from the North Platte River in Nebraska. The sound. The sheer number of cranes. The force of nature that comes with their synchronized rise into the sky. I was hooked. Since then, I have tried to see them every chance I get.

This trip to Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, more than anything else, I wanted to get a picture of sandhills taking off from the water. I was kinda successful?

Slight correction, 9k pictures. I'm on the second pass through 757 of those. At this point, I just see sandhills as sock puppets.

So many snow geese this morning. They're more fun if you turn the volume up AND imagine that all their honking is "where are you?" "I am here!"

I'm through the fun part of the weekend, which was taking photos of sandhill cranes. I'm now to the less fun part, which is sifting through 5,000 photos of sandhill cranes.

Boxelder trees (Sapindaceae: Acer negundo), like other maples, produce seeds with papery wings known as samaras. Unlike other maples, boxelder samaras tend to persist on the trees through much of the winter. Blissfield Michigan, 22 Jan 2011.

Sandhill Crane #photography #naturephotography #wildlifephotography #thelittlethings

Finally, justification for these photos for #Feathers&Form, the #BirdoftheDay prompt - with a focus on textures and patterns in #feathers. #Birds #Photography #Nature #Wildlife

Dating from around 1865, this hooded parka from the Aleutian Islands in southern Alaska is made from seal intestines, a naturally waterproof & windproof material. Both robust & decorative, these seal gut parkas would have been used daily to keep warm & dry in this harsh environment. bit.ly/4oRZuCC

I received my first issue of New York Review of Architecture @nyreviewofarch.bsky.social. Excited and subscribed.

I don't usually do silhouettes, but it's hard to pass up a good power line.

A pair of mallards and ravens from over the weekend.

I watched a red-tailed hawk take off from the top of the barn this evening, as the sun cast a long shadow.

I spent some quality time with scrub jays today. This particular one was flying around with an acorn in its mouth.

Watching this gadwall shake itself was the highlight of my day.

I was today years old when I found out Woods' rose (Rosa woodsii) wasn't named that because it grows in the woods.

"We know that forests aren’t static... The ones we have now won’t be there forever. We should have others coming up with the right age, and structured demographics, so that we always have that type of habitat in place.”

I probably take too many nuthatch photos, but can you blame me?