We get a ton of rabbits in our yard. They happily eat our grass and spread the seeds of weeds amongst our grass. We figure it is a battle we will lose so why fight it. Instead, we watch out for them. Most of the time they are chomping away on the grass. Occasionally, if it is warm or they are feeling relaxed, we might see them stretch out and take a rest. Here are some of the resting poses of rabbits. If we appear, they instantly return to alert status.
A short distance from our house is an old railcar that is sitting on spare land gradually decaying. It has been here as long as we have and I suspect a lot longer than that. I’m not sure what it is resting on but it does seem to be listing a bit more these days than it was the first time I saw it. I have driven past it on many occasions and often thought that I should take a picture of it. I recently happened to be walking along the road rather than driving so figured I should stop and get a shot. Since it is summer, the plants are grown up around the side of the road so it is a bit harder to get a clear shot of it. I used the longer lens on the phone and stitched together some shots. It would be better to shoot this later in the day when the light is nicer but we shall see if I make the effort to go back – and maybe take a better camera?
With the feeders in our backyard, I have been able to shoot plenty of photos and videos of the hummingbirds coming in to feed. This has been a lot of fun but it has always lacked a little something because of the artificial nature of the environment. Our recent acquisition of new hanging baskets for the backyard has changed this a bit. They are plenty of tiny flowers in these baskets and these have appealed to some of the hummers.
Not all of them, though. The majority still seem to prefer the sugar water in the feeders but some like to work their way around the flowers. This requires a lot more flexibility from the hummingbird to get in to the flowers but they make it look so simple. The flowers are only in sun for part of the day so some of the shots I have got have been in shade while others have been better lit. What matters, though, is that a bird against a flower backdrop has a far more natural feel to it than when they are feeding from one of the artificial food suppliers.
I spent most of the time getting stills of them working around the flowers. It all looks good when you are watching it but only certain angles make for good photos. I did get some video too so a little edit of that is included below.
When planes are on a southerly flow into the Seattle airports, the traffic comes over our house all the time. The SeaTac traffic is always a bit higher but the Boeing Field traffic can be lower and visible from the window. If I notice something is coming, I can grab the camera and take some shots of the jets passing overhead. This includes the 777X test aircraft. On a clear day, things are pretty straightforward but a bit of cloud can really make for more interesting shots.
Just south of our house is a street which is home to one of my favorite trees. I have probably blogged about it before. It is a low and wide tree with a second, smaller tree in front of it that looks like a thicker trunk than it really has. When I worked in Bothell, I used to drive passed it every morning. Now I only see it occasionally when I am driving into Woodinville or riding my bike. I saw it was in bloom and decided to go by early one morning to get some nice light on it. I do love the look of this tree.
I was riding along the Sammammish River Trail back in to Woodinville one weekend when the noise of geese suddenly filled the air. On the other side of the river from the trail are fields which often are filled with geese feeding. A large flock was gathered there on this day but their grazing had been interrupted by the arrival of a bald eagle. It flew across the area and barely changed course as it did so but it certainly startled the geese and they all took to the air.
They flew around in circles for a while waiting for the eagle to get safely out of the area. Then they gradually calmed down and more and more of them settled back in to the fields to resume eating. However, this was a slow process as they had clearly been spooked and weren’t going to relax easily. This was all starting as I cycled up but I did manage to pull my phone out and get a bit of video of this happening so here is the brief burst of excitement before things settled down again.
It seems like we get one big snow storm a year where we live. It might not last long (although it has once) but it can give us a decent dump of snow. This year was the same thing. We got about a foot of snow. The weather warmed up soon afterwards but for a couple of days, we had lots of snow. I took a walk around to see what it was like. Quite a slow walk given how deep the snow was in places. Here are some shots from that weekend. I also took some video while I was out so the video clip is below too. The best bit was the guy with the ATV pulling a bunch of people around on sleds! They looked like they were having a blast.
I saw this tree while out in the neighborhood and through it couldn’t have looked more like an eye if someone had tried to make it. No doubt, the tree was keeping a check on what I was doing! Creepy…
The arrival of the balloon in Woodinville resulted in a previous post of the balloon flying in and another of the crew once the balloon was on the ground. I didn’t just shoot stills during the post landing time, though. I also decided to get a little video of the process of deflating the balloon. I was surprised how long it took but, while there is a large vent on the top of the balloon, once the envelope is lying on its side, the vent is no longer at the top and the air needs to be squeezed out. Here is the video I put together.
I posted about the hot air balloon over our town in this post. At the end of that post, the balloons was descending behind the trees for a landing and I was driving off to find them. It turned out that I had forgotten about a field between the rail tracks and the highway. I came around the corner and the ballon was on the ground but upright sitting in the field. It looked pretty incongruous.
I was clearly not the only person intrigued by this as a bunch of vehicles had gone down the normally quiet road alongside the field. The team was actually still burning as they maneuvered the ballon to the edge of the field to give themselves space to deflate it. Most people got bored with the view, but I decided to try and get photos and video of the whole sequence of deflating the balloon. The light was fading rapidly at this point.
A bunch of the crew grabbed the lines to the top of the balloon as the top vent was opened up. The balloon started to sag rapidly but, once they pulled it over to a certain point, the vent was too low to let the warm air out. Then they waited while another person gathered up the envelope and squeezed the remaining air out. Finally, it sagged to the ground and the final gathering up was quickly completed. By now it was quite dark, and I figured it was time to go home. I am not aware that they use the field to land normally. I wonder if this was a bit of an urgent landing as the light was fading fast and the low winds were limiting options.
