Brad Sondahl's blog

Brad's Blog

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July 2
The new camera doubles as a binocular, as I can see as well in the eyepiece as I would in a monocular, so I can identify birds (assuming I can identify them even with good views)
So here are some from the last couple days, in our neighborhood:

female finch

baby western bluebird

female purple finch

mallards on the mill pond, the little ones scurrying across the lily pads.
Those are my best guesses...

July 4
Our 4th observance was all in the parade and park, promoting our historical society through music and kids playing music on a flatbed trailer in the parade. They and I donated the tips to the museum/historical society. Spirit Lake was one of two places in the county to have a parade, since Covid fears are rising rapidly with the spread. We'll know in a couple of weeks if this was a bad call, but the feeling was good among the people. Yesterday was a bit of a mess since there was a 40 acre wildfire caused by slash burning about 7 miles away at the end of the lake, and the lake was temporarily closed as fire planes and helicopters dipped into the lake to refill water for dumping on the blaze. Everyone was surprised by the early fire since we'd just had an inch or more of rain in the last few days...
This evening I heard a rumbling in the sky and caught this formation of prop planes flying over, which may have been part of the air crew involved in the fire fighting:

July Fools!. I saw this goldeneye family sleeping with the mother "sleeping with one eye open" Here's the other formation:

July 9

Although the new camera is billed as a birding camera, I figured it's also a 60X telescope, so I took a picture of Jupiter with 4 of its moons showing....

These are two different catbirds.

Our feeder is attracting lots of visitors, including purple finches and pine siskins.

California quail.

July 10
This is obviously a big birding month due to the new camera. I finally got a photo of some wrens living in a house I built a few year back that never had users. I figured they were house wrens, which I didn't know we had in this area, and the photo confirms it:

Books read:

Across a Billion Years by Robert Silverberg. Even in 1969, he ought to have known sonar wouldn't work on an asteroid... The book is a reverse version of Spielberg's AI--archaelogists discover early master alien race a billion years afterwards...

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