Category: Whatever Wednesday

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Here’s some of what I’ve been up to lately starting at the beginning of the month with a birding walk up in the mountains above Lake Tahoe. The wildflowers were in bloom. Here are a couple of favorites I saw.

A beautiful view from the trail with Lupine, and Cornflower leaves in the foreground.

There were all sorts of juvenile birds being taught how to forage that morning. I saw Young Cassin’s Finches begging their parents for food, and the parents trying to encourage them to forage on their own, and young White-crown Sparrows foraging with their parents, but the highlight for me was the juvenile Rufous Hummingbird perched on a branch. That was a first for me.

On Monday I got up at 2:45AM to go on my back patio to see if I could spot and photograph any Perseid Meteors. I very nearly went back to bed as there were still clouds from the day before in the sky.

I saw 3 great fireballs streaking across the morning sky, but one was completely out of my frame. One just looks like a streak with no fire ball that was disappointing, but it has a green tail, and one was just partially in my frame. The others I photographed are pink and green. Which I think are from the Aurora Borealis that was visible here. I missed the peak of that. I slept through it.

Here are two images of Perseid Meteors I photographed.

Look how close that fireball came to being in my frame! See it left side bottom edge? There’s another meteor below center as well.

And, I’m still painting. I just finished a big painting for me at 9×12 inches of the Le Moulin de L’Abbye in France. I used a photo from a book called Hotels de Reve en France that I picked up years ago from a Little Free Library. I’ve been sketching from this book for years, but have been afraid to actually add paint out of fear of messing it up. I drew it freehand which took me hours, because drawing is so hard for me, but I am improving! Practice really helps. Anyway, I transferred the drawing to drawing paper so if I did mess it up I could half the drawing time by tracing it. This time I was determined to add paint!

Here’s that painting.

watercolor painting

The reference photo from the book Hotels de Reve en France.

I also made the boys some little handmade sketchbooks. I hope they fill those pages up!

The weather is cooler and the smoke from the Calif. fires has cleared so I’ll be out birding later this week and getting my morning walks in outside.

This is getting long so I’ll close with I hope your week is going well.

Nikon D850\ iPhone 14Plus

more to come…