Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
While I don’t have a phobia about insects and in fact enjoy photographing them, I don’t like the feel of them walking on my skin. I’ve tried to work on it over the years, especially when it’s an insect that won’t harm me, such as this visit to the Oregon coast when flies swarmed around but didn’t bite. I felt for this harbor seal who was getting hounded much worse, they even walked across its eyeballs. It raised a flipper to shoo them off but they didn’t stay away long.
Perhaps wildlife watching would be more apt, it might have been a squirrel in the big trees out front that grabbed his attention rather than a bird. From the summer of 2009 in Portland, this was our first cat tree back before it got so much love it had to be retired.
After months of searching I finally found a location so secret that even the superest of spies won’t be able to … track me … down … welp, time to start searching again.
Sam as a newly adopted kitten in 2008, after he and Emma were released from isolation and given free roam of the house.
Little Squeaks, suspended in softness, in her favorite cat bed.
The rising tide brings waves that overwhelm the sleeping locations of the harbor seals, eventually sending them into the water. The bigger seals often held the ground that let them sleep the longest while the younger seals took the first brunt of the wave action. As each wave swept past, they’d raise their legs in unison, allowing the water to sweep over their bodies instead of knocking them into the sea, though in the end the water always wins.
I could spend hours watching the seals, relaxing on land or swimming in the sea, someday I’d love to spend more time in the area. A couple of years ago when it was time to choose between two job offers, the job in California would have put me relatively close to the coast with not just harbor seals but other mammals I haven’t seen before. If the cost of living had been swapped between the two locations perhaps we’d have gone on a different adventure, but thankfully the Sonoran Desert had its own wonders in store.
An ash-throated flycatcher was about to land in the arms of this saguaro when it noticed the two fuzzy heads in the nest and did a mid-air about face and returned to the trees below. Flycatchers are built to snare insects on the wing so aerial acrobatics are second nature to them. Through it all the saguaro has fruit bursting open up top, offering up both its red pulp and its many seeds to all willing to risk flying above the hawk’s nest. Death comes in many forms in the desert, but so too does life.
A loggerhead shrike jumps from the top arm of a saguaro to try to catch some small prey moving about in the desert below. Oblivious to it all, inside the big nest of sticks are two fuzzy heads barely able to hold themselves up, young Harris’s hawks who can’t much move about the nest much less the desert. The shrike is no threat to the youngsters or it wouldn’t have been allowed this close, as unseen in the picture are three other predators, an adult hawk not visible from my vantage point but sitting atop a saguaro nearby, and two more high up on a transmission tower a ways behind me with an expansive view of the desert and any threats that might approach. An adult had been on the nest at sunrise but had left presumably to hunt while the rest of the family kept an eye on their newest arrivals.
As the seasons pass some animals change elevation seeking temperatures more to their liking, Samwise no exception. With the full heat of summer coming on our snuggler extraordinaire will often come in for some affection and then flee to the tops of the cat trees where he can stretch out and cool off a bit. Trixie feels no such migratory urges and the little furnace has been stretched out along my legs all morning as we watch Formula 1 practicing in Austria.
I was playing around with mixed lighting, Trixie is mostly lit by the dying light of a spring evening streaming through my window, while the walls are lit by small ceiling lights.
Boolie 