Weedyfield
30 creative works found
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I wish I could have gotten a better look at these interesting shrooms but, in keeping with my promise not to uproot or harm any mushroom, this was all I could see of these critters without digging a ditch around them or pulling them up. Doesn’t really matter tho since you can see how they got their entirely descriptive name, right? ;-)
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Weedy Field is well named and this is one of the weeds that’s prolific in this mini-sanctuary surrounded by parking lots. The original shot wasn’t bad, per se; it was just rather weed-like and I thought it needed another perspective for presentation in Red Bubble. PS God knows I’m an artist and not trying to mess up one of His beauties by trying to “improve” it so please don’t rat on me, OK? :-D
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Nah, Jill isn’t dead. Jill is pregnant and itching. And if any of you can relate to a pregnant woman trying to scratch what USED to be accessible, you can understand her plight. The reason I know she had to roll to get rid of the itch was that she almost fell over trying to use a hind paw and those dogs are BIG. She couldn’t get the spot with either foot or her head. So she walked (that is so strange to say about a rabbit but it is so true) to the spot on Weedy Field’s open space that was the most free of rocks and did like all dogs do. She rolled and wiggled on her back in the dirt. She’s have looked just like a small dog (actually a medium sized dog now that she’s so flippin’ fat…) if not for the huge back feet flopping in the air and the length of her ears. Jill is my newest and largest animal to extend me trust in Weedy Field. I gained her trust all in one magic moment when I happened upon her while she was sound asleep in the Field’s shelter of Cone Grove. She didn’t wake up for at least a minute while I stood and talked to her. When she did wake up, see was rather startled to see me but didn’t run. From about 30 feet away, I talked quietly and she listened, twitching her ears when I stopped talking to hear what was going on around her. When she decided I was OK, she stretched and walked towards me and past to go on her way when there was another 355 degrees of options for directions to go. Of this day, I accidentally surprised her again but this time I was clumsy and forgot where she might be hiding. When I saw her jump up and run, I called to her and she immediately stopped, cocking her ears towards me but not turning her eyes my way. I used the same calm and reassuring voice and she relaxed and tried to do that scratch that didn’t work. LOL! I’m not positive yet but I think Jill will have her young in the second set of trees in Weedy Field. When I stop seeing her about, I’ll leave some fresh lettuce and a carrot or two by the front of that area and check back in a couple hours to see if anything is missing or nibbled. If not, I may try it again because she may be seriously uncomfortable about leaving her young too soon or letting me know where they are. But my guess is that she’ll be coming out to eat around me – within 10 feet or so – before July. Getting something as flighty as a jack rabbit that close willingly will be thrill enough for me. And yes, Jill has her name because the obvious name was too obvious. I’d darn glad I went this way now. Hehehehe! Weedy Field is in the city of Rancho Cordova, just outside Sacramento, CA: 38°35’11.42”N by 121°16’18.81”W. If you use Goggle Earth, you can find it and see it. I work in the building closest to this place and visit it at least once daily to talk with the hummingbirds, play with JJ and the rest of the bluejays, feed the Towhees, doves, and Cedar Waxwings, offer peanuts to Mama, Papa & and the kids, the family of squirrels, and photograph Lizzy, Alpha, and Beta, the lizards. BigYellow passes thru and the highly elusive hawk pops in and out.
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Under the watchful eye of the larger of the siblings, momma hummer feeds the smaller with a very long tongue down the throat. Neither off the fledglings made a sound before, during or after feeding; either they are more mature than other little birds or more concerned about being seen and heard in the nest. The thing most amazing about this scene is mom standing on the edge of the nest and both fledglings fitting inside it while it is less than an inch in circumference! More incredible, they fledged seconds later and both flew well enough to get to different branches in the same tree.
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When I come to “the forest” and Lizzy’s not home, she’s usually hanging around in a tree – literally. If not, she’ll run up the closest one and get a good look at me from almost eye-to-eye level. LOL! I tell ya, Alligator Lizards seem to be insufferably curious and bold when they want to see something closer. I’ll probably find out later that their eyesight is as bad as mine and they can’t tell if it’s me or not unless they sniff me. I wonder what I smell like to a lizard. It better be like honey cuz they munch on live crickets with their cold-blooded bodies. Their breath has to be a bit bizarre, you’d think.
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Beta, the friendly male Alligator Lizard, played a rather silly game of hide and seek without me doing anything to seek him in the dense groundcover. He’d dive into what had to be a forest for him and pop up somewhere else in a few moments. He’d always be looking my direction so it seems they have at least some idea which way they’re going to be looking from deep in the cover. With the sun almost directly overhead, I doubt he was using that much but who knows? Maybe he knows his ‘forest’ so well he can always know where he is and what direction he’s facing. I suppose that might be a rather important thing to know as it just HAS to be a jungle in there. I know: GROANER. :-D
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Mama has dropped her litter somewhere and is just STARVING in the mornings. I guess a lot of breast feeding makes for a really famished rodent because she will run to me from anywhere in or around Weedy Field to get her four peanuts. Occasionally, she must be occupied with squirrel business because she’s a few minutes late and has to go to the usual stash I hide in Cone Grove for just her and Papa. But one way or another, I see her with her morning munchies before I have to return to the ‘salt mine’. Mama gets so close these days you can look into her eyes and see the surrounding human taking impolite pictures while someone is eating. LOL!
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Jill and I had a MAJOR breakthru last week! I went to see her in the shelter of Cone Grove but she wasn’t there. I walked out a bit to where she’s usually hiding if not in the grove and she was munching dried weeds in the middle of Weedy Field. I called to her and once she knew it was me, she resumed eating without fear, letting her ears rise to hear for threats from elsewhere. I watched her for a while and took a pile of pictures (not really photographs as I was aiming to see what she was eating with no effort to capture anything else well. I saw that she wasn’t going to be leaving any time soon so I went back into Cone Grove and restocked the sunflower seeds I saw her munching once before before returning to the new hummingbird feeder to refill it. But I heard a crunch behind me and it was Jill who had followed me into the Grove! I was blown away and she was freaked: so scared her eyes were open painfully wide, her ears were aimed at me for the slightest sign she needed to leave, and she was faced towards the easiest way out of the Grove. But she was THERE and she had obviously followed me in! I was so happy I did my usual ‘freeze completely and talk to her softly’ thing. I about a minute, she relaxed (as usual) and went to the sunflower seeds, looking up at me. I had to laugh but gave her the usual encouraging sounds and she began eating – like a HOG! Good grief, I thought she’d dropped her bunnies already. LOL! I’m almost positive she did but maybe she’s hungry from the feeding of her ‘hare batch’. I sat down without her even stopping to get ready to run (as she usually does), got the Nikon D80 out, and got it focused on her as she ate. I turned off the auto focus to make less noise and disturb her less but she got so used to the sound of the shutter that I turned the auto focus back on and enjoyed the company. Less than 6 feet away from me, a wild jack rabbit was eating from the food I’d originally put out for Towhees and completely calm! Woo hoo! When she’s finished, I talked to her and she looked at me with the most relaxed and interested eyes I’ve seen on anything other that lizards and squirrels – way more intent and intelligent that blue jays, the turkey, and Towhees. This is a shot of Jill listening to me talk to her. I hope to get closer still with some carrots and her continuing to follow me soon. But WOW!!!
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This photograph is mostly to show how calm a wild animal can be after a close encounter with a human being. Contrary to some opinions, not only will Jill retain her “wild” nature and eat what comes naturally (as here) but she will also remain calm after leaving, ears still trained in my direction but you can see in her eyes that she is one comfortable rabbit right now. Never knew I could like a rabbit before, much less a wild jack rabbit – well-known for being extremely flighty and less than interested in humanity. Cool.
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Taken just this morning, I got my first glimpse of the young that Mama has been rearing in Cone Grove. One was still extremely eager to nurse but mom was having none of it, preferring to run a bit away and make the spoiled child fend for himself. That kid ran up a tree and disappeared but the one that stayed, this one, actually got a peanut on his first try – VERY unusual since they seem to hunt visually for a while before switching to mostly sniffing about. That means one of these guys is gonna be a friend of mine relatively soon and Mama’s gonna be proud of him, as will I! I found the other baby in the sunflower seeds and wolfing them so that’s where most of them have been going; I can now tell by the way they are opened as opposed to chewed like Jill does or pecked like the turkey does. Another new development: “Tweet” (whatever she is!) hs built a nest about 4 times bigger than she is so SOMETHING big is gonna be in there soon. She wasn’t amused by my photographing the location but I’d already known it had to be close and just today found it. More images to come!
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This was just awesome! Hadn’t seen Jill in a while and assumed she was taking care of her brood somewhere hidden. But I almost stepped on her today when she waited until the last possible moment to move out of Mr. Clumbsy’s way. LOL! I called to her and as before she responded with an instant end of her running. But unlike ever before, this time, she ran right up to me. TWO FEET in front of me, this wild jackrabbit trusted me enough to get so close I could barely get the camera to capture the moment. I’d have the 75 – 300 telephoto lens on and she was way too close for it to focus easily. I had to hold it back a bit to get it somewhat happy; as you can see, this shot is NOT in perfect focus so don’t blame Nikon OR me. LOL! Jill was just making sure I knew she was the best rabbit a guy could know in Weedy Field. A totally cool experience!
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This is the shot I expected to get when Jill recognized me and stopped running away. She was cool and calm but alert and about 20 feet from me. Seconds after this, she ran AT me which is when I got the other shot – barely – because she ran too close for the lens I had ready. LOL! I noticed something crummy about all of the shots tho: they were taken under the blood-red smoky sun so it threw the white balance off in the camera and it couldn’t be corrected well in Adobe PhotoShop Elements 3. There are no accurate reference colours (black, gray, or white) to use. I tried to fake it a bit and run filters for red saturation but I can’t tell if they are even close because of my colourblindness. One thing is positive tho: no two images responded to the sky and the editing the same way so they are probably all seen as very different for people with natural colour sight. This is an issue I have no clue how to correct so if anyone has suggestions, I’m all ears. Odds are tho that the red imbalance will be changing moment to moment with the density of the smoke and nothing can compensate for it but the extreme accuracy of the human eye – the non-colourblind one, that is. LOL!
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I should have known that having four sons would be a bit much for a scrub jay. With a ratio like that, where would JJ’s grandkids be? Mere glimmers in a bird eye? ;-) Today, I got to meet one of the females from the same time period as JJ’s sons. (By the way, I call them JJ’s sons and daughters because they are fledglings from this year, not because i know anything in particular about what went on in the privacy of JJ’s marital nest! It just makes it easier and more fun to put the ages with the family names. As soon as I get a very ticked off jay mom demanding I stop saying she was flitting around with some worldly ‘stray jay’, we’ll just wrap them all up in one happy family, cool? :-D) Anyway, as with most birds, the brighter ones are the males and scrub jays are no exception. It’s just that the daughters look a LOT scrubbier than the sons. LOL! The off-white is there but then there’s this ‘dishwater-blond’ white that really makes them look…well, scrubbier indeed. But the girls are charming in the extreme. They don’t compete for food; they wait for the guys to grab something and get the hell out of the way before they come right up and patiently await something specifically for them. And they want a SPECIFIC nut for some weird reason. There can be 12 on the ground (because the sons are still wearing their chicken disguises and need a lot of options or they fuss at each other and get nada anyway) and the females will wait until I toss one to them for them to come down bravely and get theirs. And bravely, they come. They are already as brave as JJ took weeks to become, sitting very close and very still while I photograph them. And the expressions on their beaks (Sorry, that was just dumb as dirt. My bad.) is priceless. Heads almost upside down while looking at me, heads cocked at all angles, and those inscrutable jay frowns over their overbites! I got a killer set of shots fom my first encounter with the females. This is one of them. They will all be close-ups because the girls like being close to the camera when they ‘pose for peanuts’. Go figure. Hehehehe!
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Fresh from less than three hours ago, this shot of Jill shows her in Cone Grove of Weedy Field but sitting closer to where I always sit instead of where she’s been up until now. I did my usual announcing that I’m coming in with soft words, whistles and smacks of my lips since I hate to surprise anyone when I walk into THEIR home unannounced. LOL! I turned the last corner towards my sitting spot rather quickly since the only reply I got was from blue jays and they don’t really live in Cone Grove. Suddenly, I’m 10 feet from Jill, face-to-face! She was rather sprawled out on the cooler wet pine needles that the overnight sprinklers had moistened. She looked up but didn’t rise. I took that to mean she was OK with me being there so I squatted down and chatted with her while she groomed. Not too much interesting about rabbit grooming as opposed to cat or dog grooming with on big exception: a jack rabbit can stick almost have a hind foot into and down her ear! GROOOOOOOSSSSSS! That’s about 4 inches of foot buried in rabbit earwax – not a pretty sight at all. Especially getting it out of the toes!!! But the trust it showed, while she could only halfway hear and couldn’t run quickly if she tried, was astounding. She even seemed to love the sensation of her toes in her ear because she closed her eyes as if savouring the sensation. LMAO! Finally almost completely prepared, I had the baby carrots ready and showed her one. No reaction. I said it was a carrot. No reaction. I told her that Bugs Bunny likes them. Blank expression on her face but obviously listening. I gathered up my courage and tossed one her direction. Mildly more attention but no banana. (Gasp. Did I actually type that???) She didn’t act as tho the toss at her was an attack so I braved three more tosses within 2 feet of her and she didn’t react as if it was food or a problem so I’m hoping she comes back an nibbles them later. Jill stood and stretched, looked back at me and stared a moment before loping off (now that she can actually lop again!). Not too far, mind you; only far enough to get dirt to roll in like before. Seems dogs, cats and rabbits all like a little dust-up after a bath…. Silly wabbit!
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What a sheer delight the daughters are! Fearless, quiet, interactive, and overtly expressive with their postures, if not their facial expressions. LOL!
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I don’t know how but I think I lost the trust of Jill a couple days ago. She never fully calms around me anymore (See her eyes here.), her body as tightly wound as…. well as a typical jackrabbit. She will alloy me to stand 25 – 30 feet away and take pictures but that’s it. No more sitting closer to her and talking. But oddly enough, she only sits where I used to. That’s a small issue since I had the squirrels trained to go there to find the nuts when they missed me in the morning. Oh well, I DO realize that Jill is a wild animal and our weird closeness was, indeed, weird. LOL! She’ll probably still be around now that she calls Weedy Field her home. And Cone Grove, being the least hot and most secure place in Weedy Field will be surrendered to her to also call her own. Who knows, maybe she’ll be back to chat with me once she gets “with bunny” again. And since jack rabbits breed like…like rabbits, I doubt it will be all that long before she’s waddling and looking for a human to chat with. :-)
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A couple things about this image are groundbreaking. First, Mama came up to me and a group of people who were banished to the outside of the building during our lunch hour. She was about 50 feet from the nearest of her trees to climb for protection so this was HIGHLY unusual for her. Mama came out at a much later time in the day than I’ve usually seen her, and she came alone – sans her two kids who seem to have managed to deal with squirrel life on their own these days. Second, she was interactive to the extreme, all but chatting with strangers as well as me. I didn’t have any peanuts with me so a co-worker went inside to get some and she waited patiently to be fed by someone else. LOL! After a few nuts, she pleaded her case for a few more, which we found out later were for her to hide. But the coolest part of this little development was that Mama wasn’t afraid of two (human) children who were completely fascinated by her. Their loud voices were tolerated and their quick movements were as well. The kids got such a thrill from her that they named her Smore. They didn’t know she was female until I told them but the name seems to be sufficiently ambisexterous to work either way. So “Mama” is now proclaimed to be “Smore” from here on and if I forget, there are two little kids who are gonna want to kick my derrière. LOL! Sometimes, life is really, really strange, ya know?
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Smore, the Squirrel Formerly Known As Mama, is seen calmly ripping a peanut to shreds for two little kids to adore. They named her and their name is the one I’ll use from now on (unless I forget and someone here will remind me, I’m sure!) Again, I aimed for her hands as opposed to her eyes, giving the attention to what she’s doing but still showing the look of calmness in Smore’s eyes. I’ve never seen a squirrel this comfortable with human children close by.
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This is some of the life I’ve been closely interacting with over the last year and a half. Weedy Field is the undeveloped ‘green belt’ between the parking lots for unnamed buildings B and W. It is full of trees with birds, lizards, mushrooms, squirrels, dragonflies, butterflies, and at least one friendly female Jack rabbit. After being in this space for months, most of the animals have come to know me, sometimes because I feed them raw peanuts and raw sunflower seeds, and partly because they are as curious as I am! Four sets of parents had offspring they showed off: the hummingbirds, blue jays, squirrels, and lizards. Jill (the Jack rabbit) had her bunnies elsewhere but stayed close to me throughout her pregnancy – very close, as you’ll see. At least two animals died, tho they weren’t ones close to me. There’s ongoing evidence of humans making visits for global hide-and-seek with GeoCache. There were also scores of transient visitors such as magpies, robins, wild turkeys, Cedar Waxwings, Towhees, and a huge, beautiful red-tailed hawk. (The hawk died in a poisoning incident I’m deeply disturbed by but another will come as the squirrel population re-blooms). The place turns bright yellow in the early Summer from the poppies, fiery red in the Fall, quieter and moody in deep Winter, and both noisy and busy in the Spring. With all this and jet fighters making touch-and-go’s on the nearby runways and turkey buzzards circling high overhead, there are no days where something interesting doesn’t happen and many days that could fill up a lot more than the 75 minutes I have available to visit each work day. I hope you enjoy this collection and perhaps come out to see the wonders of God’s Little Strip of Land, nestled between all the rapid growth of Rancho Cordova – and oasis of natural beauty.
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A semi-companion piece to Mama’s Hands, this shot was taken a long time before the other but it was yet another victim of the “80,000+ Combined Shots Syndrome”: so many folders, so many days, so many interruptions, so many etc. LOL! I haven’t a clue if there are tons of better shots saved in over 500GB of storage between three computers, scores of DVD’s and CD’s, flash drives, xD cards, SD cards, BFD cards… (sigh) Oh well, when I die, someone is going to have to do a LOT of deleting and/or reformatting to be able to store much more than a 12kb smilie anywhere! By the way, Papa has become very comfortable with many of the rest of my co-workers. He comes to their calls, waits for them to get MY peanuts (since they don’t think to get any), and generally asks as tho everyone is his friend now. LOL! The strange part is that almost all of the rest of Weedy Field is branching out as well: Jill allows herself to be seen by others; JJ’s kids come out and beg everyone for peanuts; and best of all, the Crows Family is learning how to trust people enough to get their peanuts before the jays snatch them all away. That’s BIG because they are still feeding their HUMONGOUS “baby” who’s too…uh, chicken to do much more than holler for dad & mom when he see’s us outside. If you ever want to see a disgusted look on a bird, check out a crow who’s trying to open a peanut (while standing over two others) to feed a kid as big as he is while fearless blue jays snatch everything in sight before he can even get a TASTE of one! Crows can actually frown somehow, like furrowing their feathers or something. Anyway, I’ve vowed to start mining my archives… next year. ;-) / __________ / Nikon D80 data~~ / F/5.6 / Exposure 1/160, / ISO-100 / 70-300 mm telephoto (handheld) / Metering: spot
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Here’s another shot of Papa from Weedy Field. This is in the Cone Grove, the only place where I feed him now. The Weedy Field hawk made a run at him and could have had fresh squirrel for dinner while I was feeding him out in the parking lot right by the back door! It freaked us both out rather badly, not to mention the other employees who were watching. My bad feeding habits nearly cost the life of one of my dearest buddies! Of course, that’s nature taking its course but I’d rather be a casual observer than an active facilitator, ya know? LOL! Anyway, Papa and I have adjusted back to our usual habit, where the hawk still lurks but would have a much harder time making a kill. I suppose the hawk isn’t amused but ya gotta pick your friends, right? ;-)
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“Hey! There’s your rabbit, Lenny!” Those words spoken by a co-worker (before I got burned, but that’s another tale) warmed my heart since I hadn’t seen Jill in ages. I still call out for her in case she’s about but unsure it’s her human friend but nothing and no sightings by others. Then, the excited yell and I was off with my camera towards where I was pointed. Sure enough, a jack rabbit was in the bushes but a little ways outside Weedy Field. I shadowed her as she started running off and called out to her repeatedly in the voice I always use to calm her. And just like before, she stopped between bushes and looked at me. I didn’t raise the camera quickly, not wanting to frighten her away. Soon enough, she stopped staring and visibly relaxed, grooming herself as I slowly started shooting. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to get the Nikon camera set for some shots into a relatively dark place but touched that darn flash button just before I took this shot. I was bracketing exposures so it wasn’t a tragedy but it did something that never happened with Jill’s eyes: it caused that nasty non-red eye animals get when hit by a bright light. Anyway, she stayed until I had to leave which was highly comforting. But when I looked at the shots on the laptop during lunchtime, I was quite surprised to see this certainly was not Jill! I’d seen Jill so much and so closely that I knew her face and didn’t realize it was unique to her. But this rabbit is much smaller, has a “cheekier” face, and the ears are very much smaller and smoother on the tips. Needless to say, I was shocked that another jackrabbit decided to trust me and not jet off as nature dictates. And for it to be younger made this discovery extremely wonderful! I don’t want to say it was my voice that did the calming but that’s the only thing in common between my first encounters with two different jackrabbits. I don’t want to say for sure that this is one of Jill’s kids that I knew before it was even born but it could be. And I don’t want to get my hopes up that this hare will become a resident of Weedy Field or be my friend but it might happen. I DO wanna say “YIPPIE!” All those nasty details… / ____________ / Nikon D80 / Nikkor 70-300 lens / F-stop: 5.6 / Exposure: 1/60 / ISO: 100 / Metering mode: pattern / full MANUAL mode / Creative shooting mode was normal / Shot taken at 8:42am (3 minutes before the end of my 15 min. break) 12/3/08 / Adobe PhotoShop Elements 3 used for resizing and extensive eye fix-up.
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Yesterday the lone dove of Weedy Field made an appearance. Woo hoo! I don’t know where it has been but I guess it laid low after the taking of the other by the hawk. But the actions o this dove match the actions of the previously sited lone one so I’m positive this was the same bird. :-D This shot is probably not of either the doves from the Weedy Field couple. It was taken just outside Weedy Field before I observed any doves making it home. But this was the image I was planning to post in memoriam after finding all the light-coloured and fresh falling feathers after the hawk made a kill. I can’t really ID many birds and I just took a guess that it was a dove from the colour and the fact that both were suddenly missing. LOL! Maybe a gull or pigeon were the victims but it doesn’t matter because another of my Weedy Field friends takes wing – if only solo now – once again. :-) BTW, both Mama and Papa squirrel are making the very careful rounds in the trees but allowing me to see them again. Today, Papa ran thru four trees to get close enough to look me in the eye, just for fun. LOL! He got his usual hidden nuts and was busy reburying them before I got out of Cone Grove. It started raining today and the wind is blowing hard. Probably a good day to either pack a lunch or unpack one and eat it since a new one was just delivered. ;-)
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Jill is just too much fun for an animal that doesn’t talk, make sounds, retrieve things, climb in your lap… Generally she doesn’t do anything at all. Certainly nothing she doesn’t want to do. Here she was looking back at me from about 15 feet. She’s still in the “quick departure” mode but she relaxed soon enough, as she always does. :-)
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