Sunrise--early Jan.

Take winter, early morning clouds at sunrise and receive pure beauty.

Hummingbird Acrobatics

I'm standing waiting for The Guy's big water trough to fill up. I see a hummingbird hovering about 15 feet up in the air, just hanging there. Then he suddenly zooms straight upwards until I can not see him, at least 40 feet up. Then just as fast, he swoops straight down to the ground & pulls out in a curve just above the ground to end up hovering in about the same place where I first saw him. He hovers & then sweeps upwards again, down again, curves again & back to hang place. He did this for nearly 15 minutes without doing anything else until he finally went & sat on a bush for a while.

So, what was *that* about?

Spring has Sprung

And it has sprung in late Dec/early Jan, which is so wrong. We had a good rain in October and more rain in November & Dec. We had cold weather for late Nov & early Dec. Then the last part of Dec. was warm & dry. Apparently, various birds & plants decided that it was now spring. I have garden plants in full bloom. Various birds are doing spring songs of territory and mating, but not the quail. I guess they know it isn't really spring yet. And the gophers have sprung too. I have a new theory about gophers. They stay dormant in the soil like weed seed and when it is spring, they suddenly pop up all over the place. We trapped 8 of them last spring and had no further problem. This past week, I have fresh gopher mounds in 3 places. Two of the places are in the center of the property, 100's of feet from adjacent property where gophers stay year round. Yep, the gophers just appeared out of nowhere. Traps are going in this afternoon. The Great Horned Owls I have been hearing every morning shortly before sunrise for the past weeks, need to get with it and catch these gophers. One of the owl's favorite perches is the eucalyptus tree near the garden, where one gopher mound is. Maybe those owls are looking in the other direction? The roses are putting out new growth and we haven't pruned yet--yikes.

I am enjoying the warm weather, but it is just so wrong.