Three down

Two days ago, a dove —probably this one— flew up from the upstairs patio when I opened the door, a few feet from a similar one, dead in a corner. This morning I saw this one near the carport, relocating several times to at last find its way into the barbacoa (my workshop), out of the pouring rain, where it died. When I went upstairs, before the rain, to clean up, there was another, smaller one, dead next to the other.

Best guess is that they all got into something poisonous, maybe brought it back to the nest. But when I saw the first dead one, I looked at the nest and saw nothing there. Hard to get a clear view, but also hard to miss something bright white. Sorry guys. We enjoyed having you around.

Winter.

No, this is not a black and white photo. And yes, there is a bird – above the precarious parrot nest.

That time of year…

Memo to self: close screens

Out at our chacra (mini-farm), now happily no longer ours, I discovered an unusual contribution to my working mess: twigs in the sink…

…which had fallen from the light fixture I had built above.

And there were more in the refrigerator.

It seems to have been an avian case study into where not to build a nest. I was glad for that. And I closed the screen on the kitchen window. No idea why it was left open — painting, maybe — but previously I had startled a cat that made a hasty exit through the opened screen. Ya’d think a felluh would learn….

Under a scribbled sky

Another of those “if you painted clouds like this, you’d be called incompetent or lazy.”

Sky spotlight

Unusual phenomenon during my local dog walk yesterday. No time to find a view free of wires, so not great photos, but also not something I remember seeing before.

Two ant parades

Two different species of ants trying to make sense of their paths as they run into each other. No hostility I think, but there does seem to be a bit of confusion. My moving the camera all over the place doesn’t help. But neat: something we haven’t seen before.

The magic patch

At one of the more remote points of our dog walk, I started noticing a textured patch that gave no clue what caused it, or could have caused it. And never seemed to have had anything walk through it.