Hawks and Squirrels

  This morning when I headed to the studio I noted a fresh killed fox squirrel at the corner.  I wondered if the neighborhood Redtails would scarf it up.  At 11 a buteo as big as a chicken was standing on it. (scroll down and click "older posts" for a photo of our neighborhood hawks.)

  Our neighbors love teacup chihuahuas.  They let their favorite out once to make a backyard run and when they checked on it 20 minutes later a hawk was tearing strips off the dead dog and eating them.  NOT the image one would hope to have of a favored pet.  The guy bought a pellet rifle and lurked in the bushes for a couple of weeks after that, but I don't think he got a shot. 

El Cap in Yosemite.

  A new record for speed-climbing The Nose, a famous rock climbing route on El Capitan.  If you love Yosemite, this is news.  

  This is crossword-puzzle type info if you ever use any 5.11 gear.  5.11 is an offshoot of Royal Robbins outdoor gear.  Robbins is a famous rock climber who climbed in Yosemite often.  He was best friends with Yvon Chouinard, who decided to try and make a living selling climbing gear through his company, Great Pacific Iron Works.  Chouinard made and sold gear that was hard to find back in the 60s.  One of Yvon's items were Billy Goat Pants- a double-seated short or pants to rock climb in.  Chouinard's clothing line took off and became Patagonia.   Robbins say his buddy getting rich and formed Royal Robbins outdoor gear.  Police started wearing Robbins 5.11 pants and he expanded that line into the 5.11 Tactical company and is making a mint.  

  Not bad for a couple of rock climbing bums.

  I wear RR and Patagonia stuff.  Great gear.  I shoot out of 5.11 pants and even have a very early pair that were made by RR.  Everyone wears this stuff.  There was a box of free, black 5.11 hats at the match on Saturday.  I had a Patagonia catalog in the mail when I got home with photos of extreme climbing and clothes.

  5.11, by the way, is a designation of difficulty for a rock climbing route.  There's your 37 across.

  Photo is from a trip the redhead and I took in 2004 during the winter.  We were in a wonderful snowstorm in the Valley.  The redhead had black ravens flocking in through the snowflakes in to eat whatever she offered.

  I just set a personal record for links.  

Two fawns and a doe on the main cam.

  I hunt at the lake sparingly.  125 miles north at a friends Red River County farm we shoot doe tags as permitted by the State Biologists to balance the sex ratio of does to bucks.  My friend up there usually has 30 doe and 10 buck tags for his 120 acres.  We never shoot them all or even get close no matter how many guests and kids we take along.  Part of the permit process is data gathering on the age of the does.  We are shooting the largest does out of any group and they average 2 1/2 years old when we take them.  At the lakehouse here, the does are never hunted.  There aren't any doe tags in Smith County.  The does I regularly see on cam are long faced, long bodied does with deep chests and developed hindquarters.  They must be the maximum age for wild whitetail does in the state.  Range conditions are optimal and there isn't any hunting pressure.  Usually they have twins.

  When I was a kid, we didn't HAVE deer in Smith County.  The first time we found a hoofprint in the mud at the lake spillway it was like finding Bigfoot.  We raced back to the lakehouse and announced it and even the adults come down to look. 

  Now there are so many deer that they are being killed on the highway and seen in town.  Nice to have them back.

Fawn and doe on the main camera.

  The main deer cam runs at the lakehouse all year so I can watch the woods as the seasons change.  I'm assuming the biggest buck sired most of the fawns.  Range conditions are very good so far.  Most of the fawns ought to make it.

Mowing

  When I started photographing one of my favorite subjects was the uncultivated flora, (read:briar and  brush) of the Smith County watersheds.  The fields and farms of an earlier agricultural economy had been abandoned and you could watch fallow fields fill up with tall weeds, saplings, pioneering pines and then hardwoods striving upwards for the light.  It is a very non-human directed energy.  The plants sort themselves out in some sort of pecking order and go about their lives with a competitive energy that is really something to see over a decade or two.  To me it was like watching the mind of God at work while I hunted a place to set my tripod.

 In the cool of this morning I mowed the last corner of yesterdays lawnwork here at the house.  I'm an old hand now at watching weeds and vines try to edge their way in, and largely sympathetic, though I do have to keep a neat yard just so we can get to the cars.  The robins love the new cut grass and hunt behind the mower.  They are nearly domesticated in town- about as wild as chickens, standing around waiting me to strip off the grass.

  It's a job that never ends.  I mow the house in town, then load up the mower and head for the lake.  I mow the lake yard and burn limbs and twigs, then cycle back to town.

  It's one of those unending useless activities that never gets done.  I feel like a monkey that has been handed a coconut.  I can't get in but I can't put it down either.

  So I cut strips while the robins wait and try and meditate on the mind of God.  I hope he's mindful of his idiot servants.