Tag: nature
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Hawaii: History, Honeycreepers, and the HURT 100 – Part 1
We look out over the vast Pacific that forms our temporary backyard and watch the sun set as large waves break on the volcanic rock in front of us and Brown Boobies fly northward just offshore. This is our first of ten nights on the island of Oahu. It’s my first time in the state […]
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Land Use Changes in the Antelope Valley
[Featured image: A Northern Harrier flies over a solar farm outside of Bakersfield, California in May 2016] Google Earth’s time feature allows you to easily take a look at how land use changes over time. I produced this video, without commentary, showing land use changes in the western Antelope Valley from 1985 – 2016.
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Sometimes Rare Birds are Easy
[Featured image: Grasshopper Sparrow at Viña Vieja Park, Pasadena, 10 November 2016] I decided to do a “chase” today for a rare species: a Grasshopper Sparrow that was reported at Viña Vieja Park in Pasadena, approximately 10 miles from my house. While that species is certainly not a life bird for me (as they aren’t all […]
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Lewis’s Woodpecker and Other Things
[Featured image: Lewis’s Woodpecker at Bette Davis Picnic Area, Burbank, Los Angeles County on October 26, 2016] As today was not a running day, I decided to make it a birding day. There was a report on the LaCoBirds listserv yesterday of a Lewis’s Woodpecker at Bette Davis Picnic Area near Griffith Park. As that […]
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After the Rain
[Featured image: a Yellow-rumped Warbler feeds on laurel sumac berries] I had outdoor plans for early this morning, but upon awaking to the first rain of the fall, I decided I’d rather get some work done on the computer and enjoy my coffee. At around 9am or so, the clouds cleared over Mt. Washington and […]
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Morning at Hahamongna
[Featured image: Subadult Cooper’s Hawk] I had a little time this morning, so I decided to head over to Hahamongna Watershed Park by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and do a little birding. I parked on the west side of the park, an area that was formerly called “Oak Grove Park”, proceeded southward over […]
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An Eruption of Hemiptera
I took a short bird walk, as I often do, through Elyria Canyon Park this morning. Unlike yesterday’s fairly active day, today was a little boring with roughly half the species I had yesterday after one pass through the park. I decided not to walk back through and went home instead. There was one occurrence […]
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Map: What We’ve Lost
Around 10:30 am yesterday I was driving northeast on Highway 14. The San Gabriel Mountains were on my right. For the better part of a half hour I saw little other than charred hillsides and moon-scaped mountains. My view was a product of the recent Sand Fire, the largest in the San Gabriel Mountains since […]
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Kayaking Upper Newport Bay
While losing the ability to train for this year’s Angeles Crest 100 has been upsetting to me, I am enjoying the time that has suddenly become available to me to do other things. Some of these things are things that I have wanted to do for quite some time, but never really found the time […]
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Ken Burton Trail Reborn
Since I began serious trail running in 2010, two of the closer trails to me in the San Gabriel Mountains were only runnable via out-and-back routes. This changed at the start of May when the Ken Burton Trail, closed since the 2009 Station Fire, reopened due to the diligent work of the Mt. Wilson Bicycling […]
England | Ecology 