Last Monday it was warm, all day. I declared it a shorts day and took a drink, my book, and camera out to the backyard.
Robins were out and about.
This is the same robin only on a fence and turned away. Amazing to me how they look like a completely different bird.
The mourning doves were out and about. They are such calm birds.
I got some golden hour light on this one.
This is a 29 second video summarizing the non-sparrow birds that visit the camera feeder. I’m up to about 220 visits a day. Almosts all of them house sparrows with some juncos thrown in. So what I call interesting birds is not very many. That’s okay.
Last Thursday it rained and then late in the day the sun came out and I happened to be driving by to see this church with some great golden hour light so I stopped and got a photo.
Earlier last week during a cold wet miserable day I was on the RiverParks Trails here in Tulsa and captured this image of downtown Tulsa. It’s kind of grainy but I like it.
At local park on a sunny day I got this pond and skies.
I went to the Tulsa Boat Show last Friday. On nice days the Tulsa Driller is always a must do photograph.
Expo Square is where the Golden Driller is, right on Route 66. The county has made some improvements
And a backyard skywatch photo looking east.
And again in the backyard looking northwest.
And from the front driveway looking down the road to the west.
The other day we had a lot of fog in the neighborhood, and I liked the way the streetlight near our house looked so I attempted an artsy shot to capture what it looked like. I didn’t really succeed in what I was trying but I liked the shot anyway.
The streetlight cast a shadow I hadn’t even noticed when I took the shot. It made a shadow out of the adjacent stop sign. So even though I didn’t get what I was wanting, I am happy with the shadow I captured.
Also with shadows, today is Groundhog Day. We don’t have a groundhog but we got two chunky critters. Kodi,
And Lizzy,
They both saw their shadow. So I guess that we are going to have six more weeks of winter. You folks in the southern hemisphere, I guess you get six more weeks of summer, I don’t know how that works.
Another wildlife art themed Adventure Lab Geocache popped up on the Tulsa RiverParks so I ventured out there on a cold day to figure it out.
Mountain Goat
It was done by the same guy that did another one a couple months ago. So you key on these wildlife sculptures, and you have to get some information from the accompanying plaque to prove you were there. Also, you get a clue to a real geocache in a container.
The Moose and Me – could be a book title.
Mountain Lion
So I hobbled up and down the RiverParks trails chasing down these clues.
Geese
A bald eagle. I have seen real ones cruising up and down the river and perched on logs in the river.
I did spot a hawk looking for his lunch.
And I saw white bird, maybe a seagull, I don’t know flying up ther river.
So I got my certificate that I completed the cache. I was also the “First to Find” for it. That is a big deal to us nerdy types. I found the real associated cache and was the FTF for it as well. It felt good to get out of the house after the stretch of nasty weather we had.
I still have my bird camera going. I get over 120 hits and day. I’m going to say literally 95% are house sparrow, 3% are juncos, 1% are dove, and 1% are squirrels. So here is a one minute video of selected birds for the past week.
That is it this week. I hope everyone is doing well.
I went looking for a geocache last week that was supposed to be near the site of a former World War II era prisoner of war camp near the Tulsa suburb of Bixby. There is no trace of the camp left, nor was there any trace of a geocache. Bixby has some of the most expensive land in Oklahoma. It is Arkansas River bottomland, flat as a pancake. Used to be huge vegetable and grass farms here but they are pretty much gone and real estate development is taking over. You can see to the right of the photo that there is a new subdivision is going in there. Flat is good for both agriculture and subdivisions I guess. Just between you and me though, I wouldn’t live in a flood plain. I think here in the USA that climate change can jump up and bite you in the rear end.
Coming home I came across this building close to the house. I have always loved this structure. Very clean lines and lots of glass. I love the little sunshades they have on the south side (to the left).
I was picking up pizza at rush hour the other night. I loved the light in this photo plus a big dark cloud was hanging out over town. It was ominous.
This is from the parking lot of the pizza place. I love the cloud and the cars in traffic and the whole thing. I have the technology to take the sign down and the power lines but you know, doing that just causes more problems in my opinion. I am sorry the photo is so grainy. I shot it in RAW on my iphone using the Halide app.
And another jigsaw puzzle. This one of an arch somewhere in the high desert. This one was harder than I anticipated by I “got-r-done.”
So that is it for this week in my unexciting, waiting on knee replacement surgery, life.
This ivy (or whatever it is) at Tulsa’s Guthrie Green provides some cooling shade in the summer from Oklahoma’s brutal sun and heat. In the winter it provides some shadows.
A short distance away a bamboo fence (or whatever it is) provides a green all year screen between a parking lot and the sidewalk.
You can tell I know all about plants!! Never had a lesson!
These are some older photos from our trailcam that I had on the back patio back when it snowed.
A dark eyed junco (toward the bottom of the photo)
A squirrel, we have lots of those and they eat a lot.
A male Northern Cardinal
A female Cardinal, (under the chair to the right)
I think these are a pair of house finches.
Kodi, our Pomeranian, loves the snow.
He also likes being snug and warm. It was so much of a fight to get him in the crate we just let him sleep in his bed beside our bed. He stays in it all night and has no problem settling down for the night. Win/win.
Lizzie never quite gets enough nap time.
Here they are together in the living room.
A couple of geese I found at the local mall.
Still loving my bird camera. I am getting about 140 visits a day. So this is a 30 second video showing the different species of birds that come visit. House sparrows, cardinals, black eyed juncos, mourning doves, an occasional house finch. It’s quite the device.
No big adventures lately so what I have this week are Skywatch “targets of opportunity.” Sights I saw while going about my business.
First up is a driveway skywatch shot one morning. I could see the sky so I ventured out on the driveway to take the shot.
This one is from the parking lot of my brother’s assisted living facility. There were some funky looking clouds so I shot them over some neighboring woods.
I was running an errand in the late afternoon one day last week and noticed our former church had the days last light on the steeple. By the time I got over and took the shot things had dimmed. The photo is quite grainy but here it is.
Monday, January 20th was a huge day for America. An historic day that all Americans honored.
Martin Luther King Day!! Of course and many of celebrated by participating in or watching the Parade for the day in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, just north of downtown.
It was bitterly cold but that didn’t stop neither the participants nor the watchers.
Lots of civic organizations, city government, the University of Tulsa
And Oklahoma State University were represented.
My former employer, ONEOK, Inc has been a sponsor and participant for years. They had a nice float,
and a ton of marchers braving the cold. One thing that was missing that I was looking forward to was their drill team. I participated as a marcher in 2019, not in the drill team. I made a video back then of them practicing before the parade.
I think they are pretty good. They should come back!!
And here is ONEGAS, our sister company, they broke apart years ago.
And Williams Corporation, another huge employer and growing, headquartered in Houston. I expect one of these days a merger between ONEOK and Williams. When that happens they’ll probably move their headquarters to Houston. Houston is the center of the energy universe and has been that way for over a half century.
And here is our District Attorney walking with Tulsa Police officers.
And QuikTrip, a big convenience store chain headquartered in Tulsa. I got a couple of gift certificates for coffee.
They floats and marchers just kept on coming. After an hour I left. I was freezing.
Watching the Tulsa community turn out in force to honor the legacy of Martin Luther King was definitely the high point for me on Monday.
When I worked in downtown Tulsa I would walk by these windows every so often. I thought they were marvelous. I always wanted to see what they looked like from the inside but that never happened. Oh well.