Tire dunes

After the rain, wind: the darker wet sand was compressed by a motorcycle tire, leaving a ditch that was then filled with blowing dry sand. Which formed miniature dunes.

Strange to think: I have walked in this area thousands of times, but have never seen (or noticed) this phenomenon before.

Coincidence?

Some time ago, the little vertical plastic box atop this vent pipe blew off. The box went into the neighbors’ yard, and since there’s rarely anyone there, I didn’t bother to pursue.

The plastic grate landed in our yard, and I hung onto it. Until today. In a sudden urge to purge, I started cleaning out my work area, chucking this and many other useless things.

Then, carrying trash to the house, I see this on the ground.

Obviously not where it was meant to be.

An hour from now, I wouldn’t have had a replacement, but now that you mention it….

For some reason

A perfect circle in the middle of the road. Why? How? No clue. I don’t think it’s a rudimentary crop circle, but you never know.

In other news today, the first large lizard we’ve seen in years – easily two feet long. Syd practically tripped over it. I pulled out my phone and started a video … except I didn’t. Something about trying to hit the on-screen tiny video button in full sunlight. So I pressed the button to start and stop recording, and ended up with two snapshots of nothing, since it was moving through undergrowth. Well, next time. Stay tuned! But don’t hold your breath.

Wait … what?

Avocados are long gone. Buds emerging for the next crop.

So what do I find this morning but a freshly-fallen avocado, freshly devoured. Huh?

I didn’t get a picture of the bird, but when I first saw this, it was calmly eating, that far away, glancing up at me from time to time, as if wondering—as usual—who exactly I thought I was hanging around its feeding station.

The honey makers

Years ago I dug up a little nothing-special bush in the back yard and planted it to the right of the driveway, where it grew and grew, exploding with white flowers every spring. Then I found another, and planted it to the left, imagining one day an arch of flowers over the driveway.

This year we’re pretty much there, though the effect isn’t exactly as master-Japanese-gardener as I envisioned. In fact, both could use some serious pruning, but neither is getting it yet, because…

…the bees are loving them!

Swallows!

I’m not sure I have ever experienced this before: the mesmerizing aerial dance of swallows feeding (presumably on mosquitoes—yesss!).

Not in this clip, but an hornero bird returned to its nest atop the power pole with a single screech, entirely atypical because their normal call is long and loud. It was as though it found the air traffic overwhelming, and I would have to agree. A moment later, it moved lower onto the wire, and when a swallow tried to land on the wire near it…well, it was not happy about that.

Never seen before…

We often see fascinating tracks in the sand – lizards, beetles, birds – but this track was unlike any we’d seen before. And, luckily, we didn’t have to guess what made it (note how it almost gets blown off track by the wind at 0:23).