New Camera

Many months of anticipation.  Nikon has been hinting for several years about an upgrade of their popular P900 bridge camera.  A bridge camera is a camera that has a fixed zoom lens (as opposed to interchangeable lenses) but still offers a range of manual and user specific settings.  This particular camera is especially well suited for bird and wildlife photography because of its superzoom lens. 

I had postponed getting a camera since I was expecting this new camera to come out "any day now", starting several years ago.  Nikon finally announced on July 10 an expected September 6 release date for their new P1000 superzoom camera.  The Frog immediately put us on the waiting list at a camera store in Dallas.  According to social media, many of the online sites did not get the cameras in a timely fashion, but we checked and the store in Dallas had received their shipment.  We went to pick it up on Friday, September 7.

Record rain.  Fall seemed like a great time to get the camera.  There are usually long stretches of dry weather and increasingly cooler temperatures which would provide plenty of opportunities to attempt wildlife pictures.  Not so much this year.  It has been almost unbearably hot and humid...think Houston.   We have also had a tremendous amount of rain.  September is typically our driest month, with an average rainfall of 2.55 inches.  So far this month we have officially had 11.2 inches, making it the wettest September on record.  Given the forecast for rain essentially every day for the next ten days, that is likely to increase.

Of particular note has been the last few days.  On Friday, Sept. 21 (actually it did not start raining until 5 pm) our rain gauge showed we had 5.28 in , another 2.45 inches on Saturday, and 0.08 inches more on Sunday for a total of 8.81 inches.  The heavy rainfall was in a fairly narrow band, but our heavy rainfall is similar to the official totals at DFW airport.  In fact, DFW reported 8.11 inches in a 24 hour period on the 21st and 22nd which is the highest for any 24 hour total at DFW since 1932!

Getting acquainted with the new camera.  Because of all of the rain and humidity, I have spent more time studying the manual and reading reviews than actually taking pictures.  This link at Imaging Resource is a general review of the camera with specifications, performance data, and lots of example photos, most of which are better than I will ever learn to take. 

Most noteworthy about the P1000 is its superzoom.  The lens has a range of 24 - 3000 mm (35mm equivalent)!

To accommodate such a large lens it is a large camera with the form factor not unlike a DSLR. 

 That is especially true when the zoom lens is fully extended.

 
The camera is also heavy for a non-DSLR, over 3 pounds.

Weighing in at 3 lb 4 oz.

Of course, size and weight are relative.  It is only half as heavy as the Frog's DSLR with his zoom lens that goes to "only" 400 mm.  Even with just the standard Nikon neck strap, I did not find it uncomfortable on a several mile hike.

There are obviously many trade offs in the P1000 to achieve such a huge zoom on what is essentially a fancy point and shoot camera.  It will not be nearly as good shooting birds in flight, shooting in low light, or showing as much detail as the Frog's camera.  But I am not that serious of a photographer, so I would never learn to get those great shots anyway.  However, with the superzoom of this camera and all of its automatic features (perfect for dummies like me), this will complement what he can take plus give me good enough shots for posting online.

Despite the heat and humidiy, I have played with the camera at least some both in the backyard and a few times at LLELA.  I am still at the most basic of levels in terms of learning to take pictures, but I am having fun.  At least in bright sunshine with subjects that sit still I have been able to get a few decent shots.

Snowy egret on the Trinity River at LLELA. 1/500s /  f 7.1 / ISO 180 / 2370mm-eq.

Green anole in the garden. 
1/125s /  f 4.5 / ISO 110 / 270mm-eq.

One of the first Monarch butterflies we've seen migrating south at LLELA this fall. 
1/500s /  f 6.3 / ISO 200 / 1580mm-eq.

Food Items for My No Chew Diet

We are still playing indoor games since the outside temps have gone crazy.  Our patio thermometer read 86 when we were eating breakfast at 5 this morning and 102 when we were eating lunch at 11:30.  Yes, both times the thermometer was in the shade.  The forecast for today at DFW is 108.  I am not sure what to expect, since the forecasts have been running on the conservative side.  
 
In addition to an excessive heat warning, we are also under the threat of elevated fire danger and under an ozone action alert.  Gotta appreciate those original folks that settled this area without air-conditioning.  I don't know how they did it.

Thankfully for us a "cool wave" is forecast for next week.

Soft cuisine.  Fortunately, finding indoor activities to keep busy has not been a problem.  One of the major indoor things for me, besides writing blogs of course, has been cooking.  Starting with my oral surgery at the end of May, I was focused on preparing things I could eat with little or no chewing.  My ability to chew is now much improved (although not yet back to normal), but I am still using some of the items on my "soft cuisine" diet.  The things I have been having most fun with are made either with the Instant Pot pressure cooker or the Vitamix blender.

Instant Pot.  I really love my Instant Pot and have been using it for a variety of foods.  Making homemade yogurt has become a weekly event.  A batch from a half gallon of milk makes seven half-pint mason jars of Greek yogurt, i.e. a week's supply.  I also regularly use the Instant Pot to make hard-boiled eggs which works really well for egg salad for lunch.  The Instant Pot also makes risotto an easy dinner side dish. 

I probably don't use the Instant Pot as much as I should for actual meals, but still fix beef and broccoli, pot roast, or other such meals regularly. 

Vitamix.  Immediately after surgery I could chew very little and could definitely not eat something like a lettuce salad.   In an attempt to get more fruits and vegetables into my diet, I experimented with several different smoothies.  Fortunately that was at exactly the time I had huge amounts of kale and lettuce in the garden.  That worked out well for two reasons:  1.  I had a large supply of these greens.  2. Mixing the greens in with other things such as fruit allowed me to use lettuce that was bolting and likely too bitter if used alone in a salad. 

I ended up making two different green smoothies fairly regularly, blackberry lettuce smoothie and pineapple banana kale smoothie.

Blackberry lettuce smoothie.  This was my initial no-chew replacement for the bananas and berries that I previously put on my breakfast oatmeal. 

Washing the lettuce from the garden.  The frozen bananas, blueberries, and blackberries are in the background.

 

I spun the lettuce "dry" so I could control how much liquid was being added, but didn't get too concerned about getting rid of all of the water.

The water followed by the lettuce always goes in first and gets pre-ground.  Otherwise there might not be room for the other ingredients.

  

Blending the lettuce and water.

 

Blackberries, blueberries, and bananas ready to go into the lettuce mixture for blending.

Although the recipe says two servings, I considered it to make three (each about 3/4 of a pint).  They seemed to keep fine in the refrigerator for the several days until they were used.

 

Final product in pint jars

Based on a serving of hot oatmeal (or more commonly hot oat bran), one of these jars of lettuce/fruit smoothie, and coffee, I was good to go for breakfast even though I could not chew.  

Date smoothies.  Although I really liked these smoothies, the lettuce from the garden was bolting and getting awfully bitter.  I still wanted something with bananas since the extra potassium seemed to help me avoid leg cramps.  I wasn't sure what I was going to do when I ran across some medjool dates next to the bananas at the grocery.  I knew very little about them, but remembered seeing them listed when I was originally looking at smoothie recipes.  The package said they had one and a half times the amount of potassium as that in bananas, so that sounded like a plus.

I brought them home and found a smoothie recipe that sounded like a reasonable possibility, although the reviews indicated it was very sweet.   Therefore I used a smaller proportion of dates. 

It was still awfully sweet, but I put one of my "double batches" into four half-pint jars (ignore the "3 servings" in my notes).  One of those one cup servings, despite being too sweet as a stand alone item, goes well with the plainness of the oatmeal.

Even though I can chew better now, I am having these date/banana smoothies many mornings.

Pineapple banana kale smoothie.  What about lunch?  I initially had things like cream of tomato soup, but that has an awful lot of salt and I really wanted more fruits and veggies.  I had lots of kale in the garden, so I tried to find something using kale that might give me a no-chew alternative.  Although I like kale, I was afraid the warm weather would be making my kale bitter so I looked for recipes with ingredients that made major contributions to the taste.

My "bunch" of kale as picked from the garden

 

Kale in the spinner after removing from the stems

 

All of the kale in the pictures above stuffed into a two cup measuring cup after spinning.  It was my understanding that 2 cups of kale meant packed.  The chia seeds, bananas, pineapple, and lemon juice are in the background.

 

The two cups of kale after being dumped into the blender on top of the two cups of water.

 

After everything is blended together.

  

The final product in pint jars

As with the first smoothie above, I put this into pint jars.  For me, this recipe made four servings of about 3/4 of a pint each.  It may not look all that appetizing, but it was actually quite good.  I don't think I could taste the kale.  The predominant taste was pineapple and lemon even though I drained off and did not use most of the juice in the can of pineapple chunks.

Initially one of these jars and some pudding or cottage cheese was more than enough for me for lunch.  

Cucumbers finally start to produce.  I was using up the kale in the garden faster than it was growing back, so I did not stay with the kale smoothies forever.  The kale supply began to get low just about the time that I could tolerate some chewing.  With almost perfect timing, I started to get cucumbers in the garden.  . 

I had planted cucumber seeds months ago, but they were very slow to come along and even slower to produce cucumbers.  They apparently really love the hot weather.  Starting about a month ago I finally got my first cucumbers. 

Preparing to make bread and butter pickles

They have come along steadily since then and have really picked up the pace as of late.  I now have more bread and butter pickles and cucumber and tomato salad than I can eat.  If I am going to use more of the cucumbers it looks like I need to do some real pickling. 

Fun at LLELA This Summer

We did a three mile walk along Lewisville Lake at Lake Park yesterday morning.  Given the early hour it wasn't too bad, but it was so hazy due to Saharan dust, it was nearly impossible to see across the lake.  We walked at Lake Park rather than going to LLELA so that we could get home earlier and beat the worst of the heat.  It got to 104 officially yesterday and it is only projected to get worse for the foreseeable future.

With the dust and now the high temps forecast, I think it is time to hunker down.  It is time to focus on indoor activities, such as catching up on my blog posts.


So what have we been doing lately?  We have been spending a lot of time walking the trails at LLELA.  Here is the link to our iNaturalist posts by date.  Using iNaturalist, especially with its instant feedback of suggestions for identification, has been a great help in learning to identify the various creatures.

Common LLELA observations.  We have seen many of the usual birds, dragonflies, and butterflies.  We routinely see a variety of herons and egrets, but especially enjoy seeing the Little Blue Herons.  Fortunately they seem more abundant this year.

Little Blue Heron looking for breakfast in the marsh. 7-7-18

We hear lots of smaller birds, but they tend to be hidden among the foliage.  We were excited to catch sight of an indigo bunting who seemed as interested in us as we were with him.

What are you looking at, person?  Indigo bunting, 7-7-18

Of course there are the red-winged blackbirds.  I used to get excited about seeing them, but now almost consider them a nuisance.  They are everywhere this year on the very plentiful American lotus plants that cover the edge of some of the marsh.  They seem to really like the seeds in the center of these plants

Along the boardwalk to high blind on the Bittern Marsh Trail before all of the American Lotus plants went to seed. 6-12-18

Female Red-winged Blackbird on an American Lotus plant seedpod (what is left of the center of the flower).  Yes, the females really look that different from the males.  7-13-18

 

A typical pose for a male Red-winged Blackbird, mouth open making a lot of noise. 7-7-18

The number of dragonflies we see on any given day varies drastically.  We have yet to figure out what are the variables that impact their numbers.  On at least one day the gliders and saddlebags were literally swarming everywhere.  It was reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" but with dragonflies.  Fortunately they are much smaller than birds and harmless, at least to people.

Most days we see lots and lots of Eastern Pondhawks, Common Whitetails, and Widow Skimmers. 

Female Widow Skimmer dragonfly, 7-9-18

However, there are many many others.  What is striking to me is how localized to a particular locality some of the species tend to be.  We love catching sight of the occasional Halloween pennant.  They are usually perched on some tall dead plant on the open prairie or sometimes along the river.

Male Halloween pennant dragonfly 7-1-18

The ebony-jewelwing damselflies are particular striking.  They are quite plentiful in their little environment, but that is only along one gently flowing creek in the heavily wooded area of the Blackjack Trail.  We have been told that is the only place they have been observed in Denton County.

Female ebony jewel wing damselfly. 7-9-18

Butterflies are always fun to spot, but they seem less plentiful this summer compared to spring and fall.  The monarchs will be migrating back through on their journey south to Mexico in the late fall, but we occasionally see the related viceroys and queens.  I am sure before this past year I mistakenly thought all of these near look a likes were monarchs.

Queen butterfly on a buttonbush flower. 7-7-18

One of the common Pearl Crescent butterflies. Very visible are the balls or clubs at then end of its thin antennae, which are typical for butterflies but not for moths. 7-7-18

We have also seen some new things.   We finally saw a beaver, albeit fleetingly.  We saw the wake from something moving rapidly across the marsh, but could not see what it was. As it got closer, we could only see the head. It went directly towards the beaver lodge, dove down and was gone. Wow did it move fast through the water.
 

American beaver, 7-13-18

Beaver headed to the beaver lodge

It is obvious he and his friends have been busy.  They have stopped all flow of water going out of one area of the marsh.  That is good for the beavers during our current drought, because the water remains high around their den.  However, the marsh on the other side of the trail, which is outside of the beaver dams, is almost completely dry.  With no rain in the foreseeable future, that is only going to get worse.

We also got a good look at an anhinga, sometimes called a snake bird due to its long neck.  They are somewhat rare around here, but this seems to be at least the second year that a pair has returned to LLELA for the summer.

Anhinga. 7-10-18  Note the webbed feet.

We finally saw a Sad Underwing moth, or what the Frog refers to as "Mothra" (yes, as in Godzilla's Mothra).  They are huge, with  wings that are 3-4 inches long.  What is not obvious from this picture is how well camouflaged they are while sitting in plain sight on the bark of large trees.  Even looking directly at them, they can be hard to see. If they had not been pointed out to us by another LLELA iNaturalist enthusiast, we would have continued to unknowingly pass by and never see them.

Sad Underwing moth, 7-9-18

Interesting behavior.  We are also making enough observations to begin to recognize what is abnormal or at least unusual behavior.  In one instance we stumbled across several dozen velvet ants (which are really a type of wasp) fighting over a female.

Male velvet ants pursuing a female. 7-4-18

Unlike the males, the female is unwinged, hence the common name "ant".  Here is the link to our description and pictures on iNaturalist.   The responses from some of the more experienced observers were interesting.

BTW, the other name for some of these velvet ants is "cow killer" because the female's sting is among the most painful insect stings known.  Their velvet texture may make them look cuddly, but leave these little ladies alone!

Turtles.  Finally, I must mention turtles.  We were fortunate to spot this little guy and move him off the road before he got run over.

Eastern mud turtle on the road. 7-10-18

We very rarely see turtles, but are on the look out for them after taking the training earlier this month to use the LOTEK radio receiver to track one of the turtles at LLELA that is equipped with a radio transmitter.  That is a portable radio receiver and a hand held directional antenna.  Here is the link to the Facebook post with the pictures on the day we went with the group to find her.  I was so excited to spot her that I forgot to take pictures myself. That is a closed group, so hope the link will work.

The tagged turtle is a female three-toed box turtle.  Studies of her travels will hopefully be the beginning of a larger turtle project/study at LLELA.  A habitat (really a large cage) has been constructed to house baby turtles, but I am not sure when the turtles will be introduced.  The baby turtles will eventually be released at LELLA, but they may have to live in the habitat for several years.  Most baby turtles don't live to adulthood, but hopefully this habitat will improve their chances of survival.  However, if they make it to adulthood, three-toed box turtles can live for decades or perhaps even to 100.  Who knew??!

The motivation for the study is the rapid decrease in observation of box turtles at LLELA.  They don't usually respond well to relocation (they try to return home even over long distances!), hence the idea of raising little ones on site.  Hopefully they will think this is home and stick around.  However, so little is known about them that even that is unclear.  It is believed they normally don't stray more than 250 yards in their lifetime, but this little LLELA gal sometimes moves several hundred feet or more in a week.  I am absolutely amazed by that given how difficult the terrain would be for something the size of a turtle.

We have not gone out by ourselves looking for this turtle since it is somewhat of a pain to arrange to get the radio receiver.  It is also not necessarily a pleasant hike even with more moderate temperatures, since she will be somewhere off trail and usually in the midst of poison ivy. (This time of year she likes moist but not wet ground in the shade, the same perfect habitat for poison ivy.)

However, since I love to play with gps tracks and maps, I did plot her reported locations on Google Earth.  The yellow track is an earlier gps track of the Blackjack Trail I had from my gps.  The red track is our gps track looking for her with the group on June 23.  I have not updated the map since our trip to find her with the group, but she has been found a couple of times since then.  She moves around a lot more than I would have imagined and probably more than the nominal 250 yard range listed for these turtles.  I don't know how to put a distance scale on the map below, but the distance between the 6-7-18 point and the 6-9-18 point is 409 feet.

I am not sure how involved we will be with this project, but as you can probably tell we are having fun.  I also feel good if we can contribute a little as a citizen scientist in various ways through projects such as this or through iNaturalist...even if we are very much on the citizen end of citizen scientist.

Home Repairs

I have not posted recently but we have been very busy and some of the activities have been more exciting than we would prefer.

Home fixes.  As I mentioned in a previous post, there have been an unusually large number of things around the house this year that have needed repairs.  Some were just major nuisances, such as the need to replace the microwave and the washing machine.  More recently there were multiple problems with the sprinkler system.  However, some of the problems were bigger.

Garage.  One of the more major problems was the ceiling in the garage.  We went out one day and a piece of plasterboard on the ceiling had separated and was beginning to fall.  We quickly propped it up with a board to prevent it from falling completely and tried to nail it back into place, but that was not going to solve the problem long term.

Board (next to the garage door rail) wedged between the floor and the ceiling

We had known the ceiling was having problems for some time, but thought it was mostly cosmetic.  It now appeared it had gotten bad enough that we needed to do something sooner rather than later.

We called the construction company that had fixed our roof after the hail damage last spring (only finished late this spring).  Yes, they could fix it.  The plaster board on the ceiling would need to be replaced.  We also decided to get the various holes fixed in the walls and have everything painted.

All of that did not sound too bad, except for one issue:  What do we do with everything in the garage?  An awful lot of stuff had accumulated in the 37 years since we moved in.  We thought about a "Pod" in the driveway but there was apparently not enough vertical clearance to get it and the device used to move it down the alley.

After much googling we discovered that the containers rented by U-Haul (only 7' high) seemed like a possibility.  After talking to U-Haul in person, that was a go.  The containers would be too small to hold ladders and longer pieces of lumber (the containers were only 8' x 4.5'), but two of them would hold most of the other stuff in the garage.

Several days before the construction was to begin, U-Haul delivered two U-Boxes.  They came on a large flatbed truck.  The delivery person parked on Brazos at the end of the alley and brought each one in with a specially designed forklift.

U-Boxes in the driveway, actually after construction was completed.  I forgot to take a picture early on in the process.

Then it was a mad scramble over several days to get everything packed and loaded.  That was after we had already tried to throw out, recycle, or give away as much stuff as possible. 

No liquids were allowed inside the boxes, so we stacked buckets with paint, pesticides, and other goodies in the bathtub inside the house.  The mower and gasoline went onto the patio under a tarp.

It doesn't look all that impressive just looking at these pics, but it was a tremendous amount of work--mostly by the Frog-- to get all of this stuff moved.  The garage sure seemed a lot bigger with everything gone.

It looks awfully empty.  The board holding up the ceiling plasterboard is still in place.

Lots of holes in the walls and problems on the ceiling.  All the pegboard and the shelves came down eventually and were replaced.

After removing the pegboard, shelves, and misc hangers, removing wood trim along the floor and around the doors and windows, and patching the holes in the walls, the next step was removing the ceiling.

Ceiling now in pieces on the floor.  Gwen's yellow step stool, which I had forgotten about, fell from the attic.  I gifted that to one of the workers since he was finding it useful.

I did not do a very good job of documenting this project, but the crew got everything put back together in about five days.  The workers even helped us move some of the heavier items back into place since it nearly killed us moving them out. 


It doesn't seem like what we had done would make much difference, but it really does look a lot better.

I am still impressed with how easy the person from U-Haul was able to move the U-Boxes. The video below shows her retrieving the boxes after everything was finished.

Sick Cedar Elm .  With the garage back together and the multiple (albeit somewhat major) sprinkler problems fixed, we thought we were finished with major problems for awhile.  We were wrong.

Center trunk is dead.  Right trunk is beginning to lean precariously.

 
We knew that the center of the three trunks of one of the cedar elms never leafed out this spring and appeared dead.  More recently, one of the other trunks looked to be leaning badly.  We were afraid it would collapse totally, something that had happened to the multi-trunk cedar elm on the other side of the yard several years ago.

We called our arborist and he agreed the center trunk should be removed and the other two trunks could be stabilized by connecting a cable between them.  So that is what they ended up doing earlier this week.

 

Tree crew arrives...the low hanging branches are still visible over the mailbox and light pole on the left.

 First the center trunk came down.

Then up two of them went to lighten the load on the leaning part of the tree.

Up he goes

Unfortunately some of the good limbs had to be cut to lighten the load on the leaning trunk.

Then using a monster drill, they drilled holes in the two remaining trunks and installed a cable between them.

I can't imagine using this drill on the ground, let alone balanced high in a tree.

Preparing the cable

Cutting off excess cable after it is strung through the trunk.  Note the multiple ropes (using a fancy pulley system) higher up on the left that are providing temporary tension between the two remaining main trunks

By that time, they had quite the pile of branches.  It was quickly turned into sawdust with their super mulcher.

New electrical service.  I would like to think this is the end of excitement on the street for awhile, but it probably is not.  All of the utilities have been flagged in both the front and back because the electric company is running new electrical service.  In fact, you can see a yellow flag and some yellow marks in the street for our gas line in some of the tree removal pictures above. They started digging in yards across the street late this week and will probably get to our service in the alley next week.

Solid food again.  At least I am now able to start eating more solid foods after dental surgery several weeks ago.  I will post more about my food adventures, some of it using produce from the garden, in my next post.