Better Beamer first try

I stuck the Better Beamer on the zoom last evening to give it a short workout. I was shooting ttl and the maximum shutter speed was 1/250th of a second. I am usually shooting these guys at 1/1600th to 1/4000th of a second.

Not bad, gave me good fill illumination and an interesting wing blur. I do need to figure out how to set the Godox tt685n speedlight up for high speed synch. Tonight I look for owls.

A Day In The Life (Take 2)

blast reader masks

TJ

Alex

Shirley Timberman

Is there a bank around?I need to make a....withdrawal. 
Warmboe

Victoria Roberts

Wilbur Norman

Jon Harwood

Julie H.

I serve on the Board of Directors for the Friends of Sabino Canyon, 
an organization which helps raise money for the US Forest Service
 to preserve, enhance, and protect this beautiful canyon in Tucson. 
 Here are the masks that the USFS have distributed which 
immediately turn you into Smokey The Bear  .
I’ve already put out three fires inside our local grocery store with this on.

Terry DeWald

I took public transport yesterday to Port Chester, long story…..
from Metro North station at 125th St…..
pretty rare for me to take a self portrait……
part of the reason I took up photography was to ensure
I remained on the other side of the camera…

Same for playing the bass
so I didn’t have to get on to the dance floor…NYStan

Brigitte

Doug Garn

Leslie

Brett Stokes

Jeff Myers

Tracy

Bob and Carilyn

Don and Kim

Jeff O

Michelle

Joseph

Linda

Warren G.

Wild Bill Olson - I accidentally deleted this, sorry Bill!

Terry S. - Made in Tokyo by 
Mayu Akaba @PikaMayu on IG 

Triple layer Cotton Vintage Kimono

 and other Japanese cottons. With beautiful drawing. 

Send me a pic.

I suppose that we all have our favorite masks to present to the world, always have. Rich sharpie, poor guy who can't get out of his own way, damsel in distress, there are a billion possible variations.

We drove down to my cystoscopy appointment this morning and met a woman in the elevator. "Oh god," she said. "So nice to be with like minded people with similar plumage." She started talking about tripping in the old days and flashbacks and we all shared a laugh.

Each one of us had our masks on the entire time and I suppressed a chuckle. Are we really that typey and transparent? Is there a hippie glow?

I guess so.

Anyway I would like to segue into a thought I had. This would be a great time to take a selfie in your favorite mask and send it over for publication. azurebirdsatgmaildotcom This contagion stuff is not going to last forever you know and there really should be a record.

So send a pic for the blog. Not your prettiest mask necessarily but the one that you use most often, that has seemed to click for you. If and when I get enough of them I will publish. Anonymous is fine,  just let me know. Thanks.

*
To those of you scoring my medical condition at home, the news was not necessarily perfect but then again it never is. There is a polyp in a diverticulited tick in my bladder that looks suspicious. We are going in to get a little piece of it very soon for further inspection. Will let you know.

Don't let your guard down

I sense that a psychological dam has lifted and that people in Fallbrook are starting to go about their business and resume what has previously constituted normal life. But it is clearly too early to think that we are out of the woods here.

We have had a large proportional jump in confirmed Covid 19 cases this week, we are now up to 32 35 36 37. We sat at the 24 mark for about ten days. Then we got six new cases in a bunch a couple days ago and now two more yesterday, a roughly 33% increase in a relatively short period of time. While our numbers are still low compared to some other places in the county, this microbe can move quite quickly. People who thought they were safe have found out that they were not the hard way.

Please wear your masks and remain cautious and vigilant. Remember that as yet, there is no vaccine or cure. While the majority of people recover, it is not pleasant and sometimes fatal for others. Assume the worst and hope for the best.

New gear

Do you see this picture that I took Wednesday in the dark recesses of the marsh? Believe it or not, there is a great horned owl in there but you wouldn't really know it to look at it.

I want to take more pictures of owls but unfortunately, they are creatures of the dark. It is hard to shoot them in shadow. What to do?

Well, what I did do was buy the product known as a Better Beamer. This inexpensive flash extender velcros to my Godox tt685 speedlight flash and concentrates the light through a fresnel lens, allowing the user to gain three stops of light.

I just stuck it to my flash and took some preliminary shots and figured out the setup. It is made for a lens over 300 mm long. Should illuminate to 50 meters.

A friend has an owl box at his home. If everything goes right I am going to show up Saturday evening and give the new apparatus a tryout. Hope to get an owl in front of the strawberry moon.

Vermilion

The spirit of man is nomad, his blood bedouin, and love is the aboriginal tracker on the faded desert spoor of his lost self; and so I came to live my life not by conscious plan or prearranged design but as someone following the flight of a bird.

Laurens van der Post

Ike and Tina

Wes Unseld

Basketball great Wes Unseld has died. Unseld was one of my favorite centers of all time.

He was undersized for the position but he was an absolute bull, a powerful force, great defender and tenacious rebounder.

I fondly remember the Baltimore Bullets star giving Willis Reed all he could handle back when I was a Knick fan.

Of course basketball was a different game back then, there were fewer teams so the talent was not as spread out and thinned down and people played actual defense. It was a tougher game and no one was as tough as Wes Unseld. My brother and I used to emulate his fadeaway jumper and fierce picks when we played hoops in the driveway.

Memphis Slim

Not more birds...

I found roughly a thousand hummingbird pictures that I took last week and forgot to load.

I won't do that to you, don't worry.

Desert plunge

My god, so much has happened. Four or five days and everything is on its head again. Just getting out of the plague thing and we now get to segue into rioting and insurrection. What's next, multi armed invaders from space?

The fearless leader just back from what he maintains was a quick bunker inspection. I am not quite sure if it smacks more of the French Revolution or the Führerbunker? Maybe Czechoslovakia, 1968? Do we get tanks, a guillotine or a cyanide pill? Doesn't feel like it is going to end real well.

So a quick couple thoughts before I go back to birds. You may call me a pearl clutcher but there is never a reason to damage other people's property that you don't even know because you are angry. They don't deserve it, they don't have it coming. Hurt people that have it coming if you must and feel the need to. Not innocent people who are not part of your movie. That is what petulant children do. Your legitimate message becomes completely lost when you resort to the chaos card.

I have a friend who just boarded up his store. We are supposedly getting a demonstration tonight here. I hope that I never need to board up mine. I guess we will see.

*
EPA limits states and tribes’ ability to protest pipelines and other energy projects.  The right is perfectly happy to protest the second amendment and the freedom of religion, to advocate for an abortion ban. Hell, you can even bring your heavy weaponry. But god forbid you say anything bad about fossil fuels or pollution.

*
So enough reality. Last time I checked in we were smoking fish.

We smoked over cherry wood.

Brian and Sandra know what they are doing.

We had ocean whitefish, which is similar to lake whitefish but not exactly the same, taste wise. Moist, very good.

A big black cod, also known as sablefish. Very high oil content.

Wahoo, which we took off the grill first. Unbelievable. I have only had it oversmoked and tough. Will never be able to eat the commercial stuff again. This was juicy and perfect.

Big eye tuna. High fat content but not extraordinary. Will make great tuna fish.

Salmon. They dry brined it and it was superb but we needed more.

All in all it was quite the feast. Very casual. Leslie made a cucumber salad with dill. Bagels and cream cheese. A perfect feed. Many thanks to our gracious hosts and kudos to their beautiful garden. And we divvied up at the end, a lot left over.

*

Tuesday morning I birded the old San Luis Rey Golf Course with some friends.

All three of these birders are pros and I have learned a lot from them. Vast auditory library, so impressive. You can see my pictures here on ebird. I missed some shots and made some shots but had a great day nonetheless. Love them or hate them, feel free to rate them.

We saw some lovely birds, including this green heron.

Pushed it a little too far though, we were supposed to be in Desert Hot Springs at three and I was late and we didn't get there until almost six and there was a curfew and some cops in the streets. But we made it.

A cannabis friendly spa, the O. It was nice. A little loose in spots, could use some tightening up, but nice layout and design. we were approximately thirty five years older than anyone else there.

We had reservations to a cheaper place but they had called the night before and said due to Covid, no pool or spa and that was not going to work and we cancelled.

Water was great, we were in the jacuzzi past midnight. I would definitely stay there again. The music was annoying, lots of seventies and eighties yacht rock.

I got up at five o'clock the next morning and drove out to the Big Morongo Canyon Reserve, about twenty minutes away.

Morongo and the adjacent Covington Park sit on an old native village that was in turn later homesteaded in the 1870's by a family named Warren. Lots of big trees and a flora and fauna combination that may not have a corollary in Southern California.

Home to many beautiful red birds, including summer tanagers, vermilion flycatachers, hepatic tanagers, western tanagers and more.

But I got to the gate and saw this.

This was a bummer. Morongo was a big reason for my trip. But hey, I would make do, Leslie was having fun in the pool. I would make the best of it.

I birded the circumferance of Covington Park a few times, saw a bunch of vermilions.

But then I had a thought. People were getting into Morongo, I saw it on ebird. But how? I found a Mexican guy who was there with his girlfriend and worked for the county.

He showed me a gate I could use.

Hot damn. But honestly I was a little tired. Three solid days walking and my feet and legs frankly ached. So I did the shorter Marsh loop. It is a boardwalk. Fabulous.

The summer tanagers take your breath away. Heard the early morning song of a yellow breasted chat.

I ended up taking the desert willow trail and the mesquite trail as well and there was something wonderful at every turn, including a great horned owl.

I decided that I wanted to come back very soon when my feet were in better form and go after the canyon itself. It is so great!

But not yesterday. Better part of valor and all that.

I went back to the spa and had another dip.

Took pictures of some of the other guests.

Very colorful group.

We checked out at eleven and drove out to our friend Vickie's in Joshua Tree. What a wonderful person and beautiful home. Victoria Roberts is a great assemblage artist and a longtime friend. So nice to see her.

Drove in to Palm Springs and saw Bob Kaplan after a quick lunch at Rick's. Amazing lunch. Cuban. I had a Cuban sandwich. He marinates his pork loin for twenty four hours and I am a nut for it. Great rice and beans too. Plantains. One more stop at Hadley's for a date banana shake and we were on the road again.

Be safe everybody. Protest if you feel the need, but do not hurt yourselves or anyone else.

Kevin Coyne