Bogieblog

Rain, Glorious Rain

Yesterday, my place received 1" of rain which is fantastic. That 1" equals the amount I had received in the last 5 weeks; consistently there has been 1/4" of rain each week except for about 3 weeks ago when I received none. From the UNL Drought Monitor :

Sure, we aren't as bad as some areas, but the average for the state is somewhere around 8-10" below normal (after a mild snow winter).

Finally got some shots of a cardinal that has been hanging around for most of the summer. He has been very skittish and bolts anytime I open the door . Since most of the summer has been extremely hot for this area, the door and shade is normally closed. However, it has been cooler and cloudy for a couple of days, so the shade has been up on the door. With the lights off in the kitchen, and moving slowly, I could keep from startling him. Although in the last picture, he must have caught a reflection off the phone, or I moved, so he played peekaboo.

I am leaning toward a color mutation for the pinkish, although it could certainly be a young male that hasn't come into it's final colors (none of the young males I have ever seen look like this though).

For the last couple of weeks I've also had a female Ruby-Throated Hummingbird hanging around the planters of flowers on the back porch railing. I finally put a feeder out for her last Monday since those flowers probably don't have much nectar (geraniums) and there aren't many other flowering plants around because of the dry conditions and the goldenrod hasn't opened yet. Haven't seen a male around though so don't know if she is a transient or what.

And that is pretty much the exciting news around here - everyone have a great week!

Maple Down

While working from home, I try to take a break each hour and take a short walk around the house to get the blood flowing again. It doesn't seem like much, but if I worked in the office, I would be going to get coffee/water or the restroom - which is more than 6-10 steps away from my chair.

Tuesday morning as I was in the backyard I heard a crack and saw some green leaves fall in the property behind me (where the parking lot for the apartments to the left is). Didn't think anything of it as small, dead branches have been falling on a regular basis with the drought this summer. My guess is that was the start to the end.

At lunch time, I went to take another gander around my gardens. But when I got out the back door I immediately noticed there was something amiss.

The neighbor's kid to the right happened to be just finishing mowing, so I told him about it because I know sometimes their dog goes back there (not often, but it happens. The next time I went out, I happened to catch the the landlord walking up to the apartments, which was amazing since he is rarely there. I pointed out the widowmaker so he could have it taken care of. By late afternoon, the top had weakened the small trees that were holding it, so that part was down even though the trunk was still in the air.

Friday morning around 9, there was a terrible racket and the house started shaking, then I heard chainsaws starting up. Can you see the guy cutting on the tree top in the first picture?

By noon, this was all that was left. BTW, the terrible racket that had the house shaking was the grinder they used to reduce it all to wood chips - actually wood chunks.

Don't know why the tree came down. It wasn't windy and the tree top looked pretty healthy. As I was picking up the chunks that had made it into my backyard, I noticed they were heavy with moisture, so it is pretty strange. On the other hand, it was a maple, of the junkier kind (not red, swamp or rock), and I believe those are just fairly week trees to begin with.

The last time my area got a decent rain was clear back at the end of June and since then we've gotten a reliable 1/4" of precipitation each week. This past week my area didn't even get any moisture besides dew so we are dry, dry, dry. I've been mowing every 2-3 weeks and this past Friday was one of those times. It only took less than 1 hour and 15 minutes to do both yards, which normally is about 2.3 hours or so. I didn't mow about 1/4 of the neighbor's yard, and about 1/3 of my yard didn't get touched. Those areas were either brown (most of my front yard and part of the side yard), or where even the weeds hadn't bothered to grow (back behind the pen and between the shade garden and sitting area, plus the neighbor's back yard).

NH counts 90+* days like Kansans count 100* days. Our average is 10 days per year, but we are officially up to 21 (or maybe 22 since I didn't see the news Friday night). I know it got up to 90 at my house Friday, but they only count days that Concord gets up there since that is the official spot. However, yesterday the high was int the low 70's so it seems to be turning the corner. Still basically no chances of rain, but cooler will at least help.

Hurricane Isaias Remnants

The morning prior to the hurricane remnants hitting us, I saw a dark blob in the back yard. I thought it was a turtle, but when I got the binoculars out, it was a bird. It took me a while to figure out it was a juvenile robin that had jumped, or fallen out of the nest. It was not yet at the stage it could fly (or maybe just hadn't figured it out yet). (following three pics taken about 9:30 am on 8/4/20)

After a while, I saw Mom and Dad in the area.

That afternoon, I got alerts from both my personal and work phones - tornado warning!The local channel had Hillsboro in the warning area also, just can't see it in this picture. The tornado was indicated by radar (not by sight) and at that time was in Peterborough area, but the storm was moving 50-70 mph (so they said). I let my boss know I was logging off from work, then grabbed the youngsters, put them in their pen, and rolled it into the hallway (closing all the doors around it). Then I grabbed Rita and put her in the basement (she respects the gate at the top of the stairs.

My side of town saw only about 1/4" of rain (as has been usual, 1/4" of rain per week since the 4" more than a month ago). and very little wind. However, at higher elevations there were lots of trees and electrical wires downed, although no tornado or straight line winds.

A couple hours later, I looked around and finally found two juvenile robins. Both were beside the red rhododendron at the side of the house. Before I could grab my phone for a picture, one had gone behind the rhodie or under the burning bush that is behind it, so I could only get a shot of one.

We must have gotten more wind that night, because the next day I found some large limbs had come down. Thursday evening, since the dump is open late, I gathered all the limbs and took them to the shrub pile

I haven't seen the juvenile robins around, and I've only seen one adult robin, so it is hard to say if they got taken by the neighborhood fox, a cat, or are fine and on their own (or even being taken care of by parents somewhere in the swamp). And, previously I had rarely seen both mom and dad robins at the same time, so all I have a questions.

Just looked it up and it seems that the fledglings take a couple of weeks before they fly. They are taken care of by dad while mom lays and sits on more eggs, so I'm going to go with that explanation :)

 

I Can Spy

In early July (holy cow, it seems like just 2 weeks ago, but it was a month ago), my binoculars broke (see Birds and Breakage). Cop Car was kind enough to offer to replace them - like it was Christmas in July, but I needed to pick them out. Only trouble was, that I am ignorant when it comes to all the fancy talk. Such as, my old binoculars were 7x35 and 357 at 1000. I had no idea what those numbers meant. So, I turned to CC asking for a basic primer. She was able to put together more information than I knew I needed (roof prism vs. porro prism, exit pupil etc). And she mentioned in passing that she had trouble finding binoculars that would adjust to her close set eyes - which I immediately recognized as an issue I would have to look out for since my old binoculars had to folded until they hit the stop  - something I never would have thought to look for if she hadn't mentioned that she had that problem.

So after digesting the information and links CC supplied, I set out doing more research because some of the concepts just weren't taking hold. After some digging, I found Birdwatching.com which explained things (especially Field of View - which I understood the concept, but the chart and picture really gave me an understanding) in a manner that got some of the info into my thick head.

Then it was on to researching the different brands/models. The first thing I weeded out was those that had the wrong type of prism (porro prism), then on to weeding out those that had a large IPD (interpupillary distance).  Then it was off to check reviews.

I finally settled on Zeiss Conquest HD binoculars in 10x42 (much more expensive than I would have bought myself - but CC wanted to make sure I had a good pair). I was able to find a good price on FleaBay (New pair, not used). I also managed to find a pair of Like-New Bushnell Expo's (the exact binocular that had broken) for $40, so figured I would pick them up for a knock-around pair.

Everything was here by Friday - I had to pick up the Zeiss from the post office since I had to sign for them.

Spot was helping :)

First, I want to say, that the Bushnell's really were like new. I think they may have been taken out of the case once, put back in and thrown in a closet. The reason I say that is that everything was there, with no mars at all and even with the plastic bags. The only indication that the carry case had been opened is that the instruction booklet was wrinkled (although still crisp and bright). Couldn't be happier with that $40 as people were trying to sell "good" conditions at just $5 less.

the Zeiss are fantastic. I can see squirrels and birds in and around the back yard at bigger than what they would be if they were right beside me. I can identify tree leaves and all sorts of goodness there! They had a smaller IDP than pretty much everything else out there, and I need nearly all of it. Looking at stars, I don't notice any shore shakiness than the Bushnells. That may be due to the prism type, or just the better optics, but I'm happy I went with the 10x instead of 8x magnification.

Now, not everything is peachy keen with the Zeiss, although they are pretty much my preference and have nothing to do with the binoculars themselves. I hate, hate, hate, how they not only make you attach the carry strap yourself, but make it as complicated as possible. Then, once I got the strap  attached, they are made for people with much longer torsos than I. Once I got the length adjusted, I had extra strap lengths hanging out everywhere. Finally decided I didn't need the strap and took it back off (which, considering I spent a good 1/2 hour, and had to do it without glasses or contact in to get close enough to see what I was doing, is really saying something). Okay, yes I'm a spaz, but it is a cheesy system.

The eyepiece protectors are difficult to remove. They want to stick and stay and it takes time to pry them off (I'll admit the Bushnell eyepiece protectors have the opposite problem - so maybe I'm just too picky). The only way to attache the eyepiece protectors to the binoculars is by running the neck strap thru them - which makes no sense to me (I can barely get them off the eyepieces, I can't imagine fighting the strap too). However, I do like that the protectors are a single unit, which is easier to keep track of than separate protectors for each eyepiece (since I'm not using the strap).

However, the far end lens protectors are awesome and attach to the binoculars themselves so you aren't in danger of loosing them. Just flick them off and you are good to go. Interestingly, they attach to the same place as the neck strap would go. Not sure why they didn't use the same system for the eyepiece protectors.

I'm thrilled with the binoculars - thank you for the Christmas in July Cop Car!