Author Archives: kitty

More from the Game Cameras

June was a bad month for game cam­eras. One of the Brown­ings died — no idea why. And the replace­ment Bush­nells are tak­ing some time to get set up the way we want them. Still there were a cou­ple of inter­est­ing sight­ings and good pic­tures.

Things we see dur­ing the day:

two up on the huckleberry

two up on the way out

We’ve seen both the res­i­dent does —  skin­ny neck and ragged ear. There’s also a lit­tle buck­ling but he’s not show­ing up on the cam­eras yet.

skinny neck

skin­ny neck

ragged ear

ragged ear

There are two coy­otes:
We’re still learn­ing to tell them apart. One has very dis­tinct col­oration on his face. The oth­er is not so dra­mat­i­cal­ly marked.

coyote #1

first there is this in the sep­tic field — blur­ry as heck

coyote number 2

30 sec­onds lat­er on the pas­ture road (the female?)

wiley

this is the male — I think.

Things we see at night:
The deer of course.

deer in the night

deer in the night

and our only shots of the coy­ote pair togeth­er.

two fer

coy­ote pair going up the dri­ve­way

scary eyes!

coy­ote pair com­ing back down the dri­ve­way

Equal­ly flashy but not so scary.

to up on the way back from Lyle Lovett

That’s some flash gear.

trash night in the sticks

not so wildlife

after concert stroll

an evening walk in the rain

Game Cameras in the Late Winter and Early Spring

It’s been a while since I’ve post­ed any of the game cam­era pic­tures. Even when we are ignor­ing them they sit in the woods and on the dri­ve­way and qui­et­ly go about their busi­ness.

Most­ly we get shots of deer. A few of which have iden­ti­fi­able traits. There’s Torn Ear.

wonder how it got that way

Torn Ear

and one that I call Short Neck.

plays football?

Short Neck

We see lots of butts.

the big predator goes for a stroll

Night Time Walk

going off road on the way home?

And the Big Bike

back to the short bus

Back of the Defend­er

We’ve seen a coy­ote a bunch of times. For a cou­ple of days at a time about every month. Both in the woods and on the dri­ve­way. Giz­mo tracks something/someone up the low­er pas­ture road most morn­ings. I think the coy­otes are around more often than they end up on cam­era.

going for a stroll

Coy­ote Walks Down the Dri­ve­way

And sur­prise! We spot­ted a pair.

are you coming with me or not?

Two! Coy­otes

We also get occa­sion­al sight­ings of Bob the Cat. Only in the sep­tic field nev­er on the dri­ve­way. I can’t fig­ure out how he’s get­ting onto and off of the sep­tic field.

looking for something

Bob the Cat

Occa­sion­al­ly the cam­eras get arty.

arty, no?

Game Cam­era Art

We’ve pulled that cam­eras in for down­load­ing and bat­tery replace­ments. They should go back out this week­end. We’re going to move the one from the sep­tic field to down at the oth­er end of the pas­ture near the manure pile. See who’s using that low­er pas­ture road. More pic­tures next month. (maybe)

Pretty Flowers are Pretty

Not too many words for this post. We returned to La Encan­ta­da Orquideario to see what new won­ders there were in the rainy sea­son. Sad­ly there has not been near­ly as much rain as usu­al this sum­mer and the orchids are suf­fer­ing a bit. (And they are hav­ing to buy water.)

P1010153

A stream runs through the mid­dle of the plan­ta­tion.

DSC_4228

And a rick­ety bridge cross­es the stream. (I am not real­ly this much of a munchkin — Jim took the pic­ture from far up the slope.)

DSC_4211

Here are a selec­tion of love­ly flow­ers from big, about 3″ across, to tiny, less that a 1⁄4″ across.

For mak­ing it all the way to tend of this post you get a bonus:

Sunday in Oaxaca

The first day in Oax­a­ca is always a lit­tle slow — we have flight hang­over and a bit of the alti­tude wib­bles. So most­ly we hang out and run a few errands. And It being Sun­day we went to the Zoco­lo for the noon con­cert.

But first… Duran­go. Who’s grown into quite a nice boy.

Dalmation.

Duran­go — the house dog, Won­der­ing where the ball went.

Any Sun­day trip to the Zoco­lo starts with cof­fee and a bit of break­fast.

Coffee for me!

Cap­puchi­no!

Then you wan­der around for a while. Today we saw some new sculp­tures by Fer­nan­do Andri­ac­ci.

Bull.

Bull.

Anatomically Correct Bull.

Anatom­i­cal­ly Cor­rect Bull.

Dragon Fly

Drag­on Fly

The point of Sun­day in the Zoco­lo how­ev­er is the Oax­a­ca State Band con­cert. Here’s a minute of the first piece, a bit of Schu­bert. Pre­ced­ed by the church bells tolling noon.

 

On our way home I stopped to take a anoth­er pic­ture of a lit­tle cat decal. I’ve been tak­ing pic­tures of this for a num­ber of years. It gets tat­ti­er and tat­ti­er but I still love it.

black cat sticker.

Cat Stick­er on the Wall by the Local Mar­ket

New to the area is this art work on the wall on Miguel Negrete at Inde­pen­den­cia.

Mural on the Wall

About 2/3rds of the Mur­al

 

Eggs in Muffin Tins

These are a sort of quiche-like things that we make in muf­fin tins in order to have some­thing quick avail­able for break­fast. You can use any sort of cheese, meat or greens that you fan­cy or have hang­ing out at the bot­tom of the fridge.

It’s utter­ly adjustable as long as you keep the egg:milk/cream ration con­sis­tent and don’t over­do the vol­ume of the add-ins.

 

In the Woods

We moved the game cam­eras to new loca­tions two week­ends ago.

This one we thought was a sleep­ing area.

1150:060515:59F:BDF ONE :5

1150:060515:59F:BDF ONE :5

But a cou­ple of weeks of obser­va­tion reveals noth­ing.

The oth­er cam­era was placed at the south end of the sep­tic field. An open area sur­round­ed by for­est and home to at least one bun­ny colony. Which explains the pres­ence of this fel­low.

1207:060415:54F:BDF TWO :5

1207:060415:54F:BDF TWO :5

He gets a close up.

1207:060415:54F:BDF TWO :5

1207:060415:54F:BDF TWO :5

We’ve also got the required butts. This one is espe­cial­ly graph­ic.

1905:061315:59F:BDF TWO :7

1905:061315:59F:BDF TWO :7

And a nice shot of the neighbor’s dogs hav­ing a bit of a romp. Giv­en the time stamps I’d guess that they had pur­sued the deer from their own yard to our woods.

1911:061315:59F:BDF TWO :7

1911:061315:59F:BDF TWO :7

The Things You See in the Woods

For Christ­mas this year we got our­selves a cou­ple of game cama­ras so that we could get a bet­ter look at the ani­mals ( includ­ing neigh­bors) who are using the net­work of trails that goes through our woods. (Peo­ple out here in the West usu­al­ly call what we’ve got for­est. But I’m old school and from the East, where the 20 acres that we’ve got would be called a Woods. So Woods it is for me.)

The cam­eras are a pair of Brown­ing Strike Force (BTC-5). We got a two pack on sale. They take day­light col­or pho­tos and night­time infra-red. They can also shoot video but we haven’t exper­i­ment­ed with that yet.

Each pho­to comes with a bunch of data at the bot­tom. Tem­per­a­ture, moon­phase (use­ful at night) date and time, as well as a set­table cam­era name. We have one that’s unnamed and one that’s named BDF TWO.

Pret­ty typ­i­cal in the day­time pho­tos are the deer. This was tak­en at the inter­sec­tion of the two main paths to the imme­di­ate south of the log­ging road.

This spot at is at the intersection of two main paths.

Typ­i­cal Deer Shot

We also get oth­er people’s dogs. Any­one know this fel­low?

run, run, they're coming

Run­ning Dog

The night pic­tures can be pret­ty —  shots of the deer brows­ing or trav­el­ing to sleep­ing spots. I’m think­ing that the next time we move the cam­eras I’ll try to find a fre­quent­ly used sleep­ing spot for one of them.

This spot is off of the path back to the garage. It’s at the junc­tion of two deer trails that can’t eas­i­ly be walked by humans.

Maybe she stepped on a slug?

Tiny Steps

Who's there?

Look­ing Up

A few min­utes lat­er anoth­er deer comes by.

Yummy fern shoots

Night Brows­er

Late in April we had a new night vis­i­tor.

It’s the first sight­ing of the bob­cat that we thought might be hang­ing around. (Look at the low­er cen­ter of the frame.)

well hello kitty.

Bob­cat!

Note the short tail with the dark tip.

padding along in the night

Cat Butt

bye!

Part­ing Shot

We’ve had no sign of the bear that was here last win­ter. Maybe he and the bob­cat aren’t amenable to shar­ing turf?

Well, we did find this Bear.

Jim on a trials bike.

The Papa Bear Out Rid­ing

And here Jim is walk­ing the dog in the morn­ing before it’s light enough for the cam­era to switch to day­time. (Yeah, it says 8:45 but I think the cam­era missed day­light sav­ings time — besides it stays dark in the woods.)

hurry up Dad

Are You Com­ing?

For some rea­son (cam­era tim­ing?) we get lots of butts.

tails up!

Lots of These Butts.

Jim on the trials bike.

Moto Butt

The two most com­mon butts in the woods. Me and the Big G.

oof, not flattering.

Let’s Go!

 

A New Space Ship!

Last year, I caught the Sport-Tour­ing bike bug again. I have owned sev­er­al over the years, and a quick ride on a friend’s ’09 BMW R1200RT real­ly remind­ed me what I was miss­ing on  my long-legged ‘Tur­bo Giraffe’ (KTM 950 Adven­ture). So I began list­ing bikes I might want and research­ing them. One by one they got crossed off the list, the Tri­umph Tro­phy SE being the last non-BMW to be crossed off; nice bike, but a bit bor­ing in the motor depart­ment.

So it was, I found myself on 8 march 2014 at South Sound BMW look­ing at  a left-over 2013 K1600GT. I’ve always want­ed to own an inline  six-cylin­der motor­cy­cle and a 12-cylin­der car. I’m now 1 for 2 in that area. 🙂

A quick test ride and a hand­shake deal was agreed to. The next day saw me take deliv­ery of said beast and then ride it 65 miles home in a mon­soon of a down­pour. Yes­ter­day, I final­ly got a chance to wash her off and take a few pics, so here we are.

K1600GT-1
front view. don’t look now but some­thing is gain­ing on you!

 

 

 

K1600GT-2
Left side. all clean and shiny. 685 miles at this point
2013 K1600GT Montego Blue
2013 K1600GT Mon­tego Blue
K1600GT-6
The view from the bridge. When the loud han­dle is twist­ed, you’d bet­ter be hang­ing on!
K1600GT-4
right side, rear. the pipes are sor­ta sil­ly look­ing, but they don’t sound bad, and a set of Akra’s cost big bucks.
K1600GT-5
right side, show­ing off the mighty inline-6, and it’s for­ward cant. Is this the new Slant-6?