click any image
to view all as
slideShow click on image:
right for next,
left for previous,
click off image
to exit

Thr, March 1, 2018
    We finally have a taste of winter here in the dry dry Land of Enchantment, our home fire burns continuously, the wind blows biting cold, the temperature does not get above the 40s, we even had some snow, about 2” of light fluffy ephemeral stuff long gone now and we are deep into our mountain of books, at present for me: Ellmann's biography James Joyce, today Joyce's The Dead, tomorrow A Portrait & Ulysses and finally I will read Finnegan's Wake and for K: Urrea's Hummingbird's Daughter & Hurston's Wrapped in Rainbows.

Our 2" of total winter snow fell on 2/11/2018, this is where I was sitting writing on 2/5 & 6

I enclose some recent journal entries with pictures which I started writing Feb 5 with the intention of turning them into this letter, I never said I was fast. [--the above is from a letter to family in March]

Mon, Feb 5, 2018, sitting by the river at the bridge, resting on my walk...
    ...a warm spring-like day, low 70s, p-cloudy, gentle breeze, no flowers yet, give it a break, we had them in Dec and now they are tired and sleeping. Most nights in Jan got into freezing and most days into thawing. I do not remember when last we received any precipitation, sometime in Oct I think. The river still slowly runs though green with algae, the other day I saw a flock of cranes heading north toward the Platte and K heard a nest of sparrow chicks and saw an over wintering robin. K and I spent a month (dec-jan) reading our mountain of books before the fire nursing the flu, we are better now.
    I no longer believe in S. Claus as he did not grant me my two front peepers. The first cataract operation did not go well and I canceled the second. I remain half in the blurry dark, I'll see a different surgeon 2/13. I was depressed at first (flu and half blind) but have rebounded.

K had a piece in the gallery show "Joseph" our town's ambassador on his 55th birthday and two pieces in the current show "Qweird" (both queer and weird) a ceramic fungal fantasy and a surreal pencil drawing of many eyes.

Tue, Feb 6, 2018 10am, still resting on my walk...
    colder then yesterday, low 50s, a clear blue sky, river and acequia still runs through it, people hurrying to mid-morning appointments (well 3 or 4 anyway) a couple of joggers and me at the River Park by the bridge.

Yesterday I saw two of those flowers of December still blooming hunkered down at the edges of adobes or other concrete structures: a Dieteria (native purple aster) and an Erodium (exotic purple Geranium) still thinking this is just an extended fall as opposed to those birds thinking it is spring already. The so-called president should inform those confused plants and animals that there is no climate change due to global warming, ah! they don't 'Twitter!' though some birds while flocking together do twitter within their own web of life.

Sat, 17 Feb 2018 Finally a real walk IN the Park not just to it...

Sitting here at the second footbridge with the Rio Gallinas, both of us impaired but still moving, the sun warm, the sky New Mexico clear blue I celebrate my farthest advance on a walk in maybe two months. So far today with my even more imperfect eyesight (in my impetuous haste I came away only with my old computer/reading glasses) I have seen and photographed (the only sure way I can know what I have seen) a Rock dove sitting on the stoop of his crumbling adobe abode waiting upon his cooing bride within who was probably laying an egg.


Later in the park, guided by a light rapid tap-tap-tapping upon a small dead branch I saw a Downy Woodpecker working the Box-elder for his lunch, when Downy flew off and I turned once more down stream I heard again the tap-tap-tapping behind me, there as another woodpecker working the other side of the same tree for his lunch. I am not sure what who he is, he looked sort of like the Downy, same size, same colors but differently arranged, maybe a juvenile Downy.

A short while later a Red-tailed hawk swooped past me to sit upon a street lamp thereby exciting a couple of caw cawing Crows who chivvied him off to the south, but the hawk quickly returned only to be sent of again by the still raucous crows,
this time to the territory of the University Ravens in the east. It was not long before that Red-tailed returned flying high and fast escorted once more and finally far to the south by four dark silent business-like Ravens. Such is the way of hawks always a threat to others, of crows full of sound fury and trickery, and of ravens who just methodically get the job done.

While sitting there at the second footbridge I saw some doggy friends Wally and Jelly Bean and their human Denise coming across, we chat while I skritch the dogs. Denise alerts me to a heron sighting by little Jelly farther down river we all said ciao and I continued on my walk down stream and...
Lo! a Great Blue Heron! upon a slender flood uprooted trunk spanning Turtle Hole. Crouched down, neck folded he alertly faces toward where D and dogs passed. I take a couple of shots, he unlimbers, turns to face toward me, I advance shooting 'til brush conceals us from the other, then I step into the clear just opposite him, that is too much for him and off he goes down stream to the cattails. I continue my walk, once more I come across from him in the cattails, that was really too much and he took off heading north along the river, the way of all Great Blues when they see me, toward home.

My final sighting of note happened close to home as I was coming up to OLOS (Our Lady of Sorrows) when I heard a soft repetitive chock... chock... chocking sound coming from near a fir where the young Plaza ravens tend to perch, I looked over the tree did not see anything, turned to continue toward the church when I spotted the hawk in the Box-elder, in maneuvering to get a good identifying photo, in the Box-elder the hawk had enough and flew to the fir tree, whereupon the raven (for it was a raven giving the warning) flew out of the fir toward the Plaza.

Once home I turned to my photos and bird book to learn that the OLOS hawk was a juvenile Red-tailed Hawk, (vee shaped white on folded wings and no red tail).

The second woodpecker was a male Ladder-backed Woodpecker, cousin to the Downy, he never turned his white on black striped back to me (actually he did but so fast just a blur I did not see it until I saw these photos), possible the same or a offspring of the first Ladder-back I saw here in 2017, they are not common here in Las Vegas. From my reading that scruffy looking forehead is normal, his drumming is slowish (compared to the Northern Flicker's machine gun burst) about ten beats per second or so and to my ear the same as the Downy. Both woodpeckers have been moved from Picoides to the new genus Dryobates due to genetic sequencing of their DNA, All species in a genus the same ancestors, formerly species were grouped by how they looked.

The Great Blue Heron was also a juvenile (no white forehead nor long plumes) which I assume accounted for his relative tolerance to dogs and humans unlike the adults who always spot me first and then as they fly away north I finally see them. It was a grand walk.

That's all for now,

this 1st of March, 2018