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??

Wednesday, April 24th, 2013

??, or hanami is a Japanese term that refers to flower appreciation. It’s most commonly used in early spring, to describe the Japanese tradition of celebration when the cherry blossom trees are in bloom.

That happened in most parts of the country about 3 weeks ago, and amongst the more striking images to come out of Japan this year were the following:

That is a town in which a light snowfall occurred during the spring bloom. This is apparently close to the height of beauty as far as the blossoms are concerned, and the photos from the town were widely shared on the Internet.

The above photo was taken in Ueno park, in Tokyo, a couple of weeks back. This was the height of the season, and the park was full of people out to see the blossoms and having picnics. Can you see what they are all taking photos of?

I enjoyed some hanami of my own today, because the grove of cherry blossoms at SUNY is now in bloom:

Its almost exactly one month later than last year.

The flowers only last a few days. For the Japanese, part of the appeal is the transience. Enjoy them while you can.

Posted in Garden, Miscellaneous, Trip | 2 Comments »

The Grand Return Of The Wildlife Camera!

Thursday, March 7th, 2013

So it’s been a while since I last posted pictures taken in our yard by our stealth camera. The reason is… well the camera died 🙂

Fear not, dear readers, for a replacement has been received. I present: The Primos Truth Cam 35!

This beauty is all digital, noiseless, and features infra red LED’s for pitch-dark photography! Furthermore, the battery life is astounding. Last week I set it up outside. Let’s see what we got…

Here’s the first shot:

As you can see, I aimed it at our squirrel buffet. Now given that the old camera used to die in a day or so, I assumed as much from this one and did not set either the time or date. So everything will be relative to the timestamp on the above. Notice also it records the temperature!

Two days later, this began. Why two days? Well the day I put it out a blizzard blew into town, and the camera was covered in snow for about 36 hours! There are a few photos before the one shown above, but they are blurry from the dregs of snow on the lens.

I hope you like squirrel photos, because there were (ahem) over 850 photos of squirrels on the device when I retrieved it yesterday, after only about 6 days in the yard. The vast majority were more or less the same as the two above, with only the occasional curiosity like this one:

Look at the bulge of his eyeball! What a shot 🙂

Happily, it’s not all squirrels… check out this:

Deer! Give the distance from the camera, I’m extremely pleased with the quality of these night shots. Remember there is no flash, this is infra red only. We were amused to see the deer checking out the squirrel feeder.

It only took two days for the squirrels to completely empty their feedbox (and eat the corn), but the camera revealed that they kept returning to check even long after it was empty:

This makes me want to more regularly feed them!

This last shot was our big surprise. Over the years we have seen (and occasionally photographed) many animal denizens in our yard, but when we looked at the photos yesterday we got quite a surprise (click the photos to make them bigger):

A raccoon! Look at that stripey tail! I’ve never seen a raccoon in our yard, but I’m happy they are there. As you can see, it seems they like the squirrel feeder as well 🙂

Posted in Animals, Family, Garden, Tech | 2 Comments »

Robin’s Nest

Sunday, December 16th, 2012

Earlier in the summer, a Robin built a nest in the tree next to our mailbox.

He was a belligerent fellow, chirping at us every time we went out to check the mail. He was there a week or so, probably trying to attract a lady.

Then we went to Florida on our early-summer vacation, and when we got back he was gone.

The tree was heavy with leaves, and the nest was well hidden for the rest of the year. But now the leaves have fallen, and it’s become quite visible.

The craftwork is amazing, but there’s no evidence it was ever actually used. I expect it will last a while though. I wonder if anyone will use it next year?

Posted in Animals, Family, Garden, Time | Comments Closed

Squirrels Of The World, Rejoice!

Thursday, November 29th, 2012

Here’s our new squirrel feeder:

The screw on the left is for a corncob, the and right hand side is a top-loading container designed to hold ‘squirrel food’. The squirrels can get into it by lifting up the hinged lid.

I installed it about a week ago, and it was a few days before any of the furry little buggers showed any interest. Here’s the first guy we saw using it (these photos are a bit blurry since they were taken at range with my phone and zoomed in):

Initially, as you can see, they just sat on the roof and ate the corncob. of course it didn’t take long for the cob to be stripped, at which point they immediately worked out how to get at the delicious mix or corn and sunflower seeds packed into the hopper:

Aren’t they fat!

When I say ‘they’, this could of course always be the same squirrel. But we think there were at least two, based on the ears. Here’s a ground level shot of one of them enjoying his all-you-can-eat banquet: