First thing I did today was do some pruning in my raspberry patch. The canes are sprouting so I can tell which canes are alive and which ones are dead. I cut off all the dead ones.
The sun was out and the cherry trees are blooming.
Looking for the old turkey vulture’s nest
I’ve been thinking I’d like to go up in the hills and see if I could find an old turkey vulture’s nest I’d found four or five years ago, or was it longer.
I rode up into the hills where I thought I remembered the nest was but it was a long time ago and I just couldn’t remember exactly where, and the forest looks about the same in many places. I remembered it was by a spring and in a big hollowed out redwood stump that the tree had been cut down long ago.
Hiking around looking
I parked here and walked up above the bike looking for big redwood stumps that were hollow.
Not this one
Here’s what a big redwood stump looks like that had been cut down in the old days. This one was not hollow inside and most of them I looked at weren’t hollow either.
I walked through here looking at all the old stumps but I just couldn’t find the old hollow stump.
Maybe this one, but no
This one was hollow and may have been it but if so it hadn’t been used in a long time.
Not this one
Looking down the hollow stump. I remember the nest was in a hollow stump with a small hole near the bottom so the chick could get out and go to the spring to get water. I couldn’t find the small hole in this one so it’s not likely the one.
Gave up and went for a ride
After a couple hours of hiking around looking I was tired out from all the up hills so I gave up and took off for a dirt bike ride up to the ridge top.
I stopped here and used the little log stools under the trees on the left for a break.
After a good break there I rode to this spot and stopped.
Clearing rocks off the roads
I threw a bunch of sharp rocks off the road to make it easier for the dirt bikes to get through here.
And on the way home I stopped to throw these branches off the road that the recent winds knocked down. There’s always stuff on the roads that need to be cleared.
Nice cold drink of spring water
I’d left my loppers up in the hills where I was working on burying the spring water pipes so I stopped to get them. As long as I was up there I got a nice cold drink of spring water here on the way back down to the dirt bike.
Family memorial trees
I also stopped here at the family memorial where my Mom and Dad and a little brother are resting in peace. These are some of the largest redwoods on the property that never got logged.
From there I scooted on home for a much needed nap.
After that I did some chair hopping around the yard just enjoying the day.
There are over a hundred pictures that are served up randomly every time you visit or change pages. They are of earlier pictures of interest and also some just to remind me of things.
A Sony AX33 4K, a video camera that takes stills too. What am I doing with that? I take pictures from my Kayak a lot. I found I was missing interesting shots, because my pic was being processed in my camera, before it would let me take another pic. Since I like to take what I call action stills, I bought this camera to take videos, that I could make stills out of, but, as a bonus, this camera also came with buttons to just take stills and that's what I mostly do, unless something is real interesting or too far away for my still zooms. My digilat zoom setting for video goes to two hundred x, and sometimes I need that, but usually, I only use the 10x lens zoom. Because this camera is HD and 4K, the quality has to be real good and it has a lot of stabilizers on it which really helps out a lot for taking pics on the water.
The other thing it has that is a must is a view finder and I had to buy Sony's top of the line cam to get it. This is a must for taking pics on the water, as you must hold the camera as still as posible and putting that eye piece to the eye forms a tripod with your arms that helps a lot. The eye piece is also a must as it works way better than a LED screen to see what you are taking a picture of in the daylight as the LED screens wash out easily in sunlight.
I also have another video camera, a Canon VIXIA G30. I use them both to mostly take stills. The Sony takes higher resolution stills than the G30. That was a bit of a disappointment as I bought the G30 to replace an older camera I dunked in the river, but then had to buy the Sony to get higher still picture resolution that the G30 was lacking.
