Hummingbirds: the second nest chronicles

It occurs to me that I’ve never finished this hummingbird tale.  Let me begin by telling you the ending:  “and they grew and they grew and they grew until one day they flew away.”  There.  Now you can relax into these pictures.  Happy ending.  I will sprinkle some hummer facts betwixt my pics … Mama birds typically lay two eggs a few days apart.  These were 3 days apart.  Eggs are about the size of a jellybelly jellybean. Eggs incubate for 16-18 days.  Mama is often on the nest, keeping them warm. First baby hatched 12 days after we first noticed the egg.  Mama carries away the egg fragments.  Babies are born with eyes closed.  And their beaks are short. Hummer sibling hatched 3 days later.  In early days, Mama continues to spend much time on the nest keeping babies warm until baby feathers grow in.
tbc …

Just a moment I want to remember …

Saturday morning.  Yummy breakfast.  Second cup of Kauai coffee.  Big Dude reading favorite excerpts from Chesterton essays he’d read.  Two days before The Teen leaves for college.

From “Lying in Bed” by C.K. Chesterton …

“But for the beautiful experiment of lying in bed I might never have discovered it. For years I have been looking for some blank spaces in a modern house to draw on. Paper is much too small for any really allegorical design; as Cyrano de Bergerac says, “Il me faut des géants” [“I need giants”]. But when I tried to find these fine clear spaces in the modern rooms such as we all live in I was continually disappointed. I found an endless pattern and complication of small objects hung like a curtain of fine links between me and my desire. I examined the walls; I found them to my surprise to be already covered with wallpaper, and I found the wallpaper to be already covered with uninteresting images, all bearing a ridiculous resemblance to each other. I could not understand why one arbitrary symbol (a symbol apparently entirely devoid of any religious or philosophical significance) should thus be sprinkled all over my nice walls like a sort of small-pox. The Bible must be referring to wallpapers, I think, when it says, “Use not vain repetitions, as the Gentiles do.” …

Galaxy-ography: Laguna Light

Any night at the beach is a good night.  But some nights are extra good …

 

all pics: Samsung Galaxy 3

Waves at The Wedge …

About a month ago, we had several days of HUGE waves.  One of the evenings, we decided spur-of-the-moment to hop in the car and head over to The Wedge (famed surfing spot in Newport Beach) for sunset and wave watching.  Unfortunately, I spur-of-the-moment grabbed my camera … with the wrong lens (24mm). Oh well.  I will show you my wide angle view of the evening …

I guess we weren’t the only ones with this bright idea …   

Alas, here is where the limitations of my 24mm will become apparent.  These waves are 18-20’…

See the little black dot near the top of the wave?  Surfer.         

See that second wave behind the front wave?  That's the reflected wave that the jetty creates.