Miscellaneous: Year-end Birding

I do quarterly bird surveys for two private properties in Sonoma County whose owners want an ongoing record of bird abundance and diversity. 

Inevitably, I end up looking at a lot of plants and insects as well. This past year (2024), I did the two winter surveys as well as three Audubon Christmas Bird Counts, all in December. 

With the unusually high levels of rain we've had in the past six weeks, there were mushrooms everywhere. I'm still learning to identify mushrooms and I don't have the confidence to harvest and consume the occasional edible species I encounter, but I very much enjoy seeing them. Here are a couple of bird photos from my year-end birding expeditions and some mushroom photos as well. 

Miscellaneous: President Jimmy Carter dies at 100

President Carter died last week at the age of 100. His presidency was marked by a number of crises, particularly the Iran Hostage Crisis, as it came to be known, and ongoing rampant inflation. It was during this period and the preceding Ford administration that I remember getting 9% interest or more on a certificate of deposit.Opinions of Carter as a president appear to be mixed, but he seems to have been almost universally respected for his activities after he left office, particularly his devotion of a great deal of time to Habitat for Humanity. Perhaps he wasn't very effective as a political leader, but I'd much rather have another Jimmy Carter in the White House than the criminal soon to take over there. RIP

Art I'm Making: "Curious Boy" (c. 1975)

Over the last two days, I finally got around to cleaning up my photographic darkroom (which has morphed into a wine cellar) and I think I've now got it to a state that will allow the wine and the photo equipment to co-exist. I'm looking forward to putting the equipment to use again.

While cleaning and straightening, I found the negative for this photo, which I remember having titled "Curious Boy." I made this photograph when I was 15. I vaguely recall winning an honorable mention for it in a contest. The image was made on a bus in Dayton, Ohio, c. 1975. It's on Kodak Plus-X film. At the time, I would have been using a Yashica TL-Electro. Two years later, I had graduated to an Olympus OM-2, a camera that I still have and use occasionally. 

Seeing the image now, I'm a little disappointed that the boy's face isn't more crisply focused, but this was done before auto-focus was a thing. It was a fleeting moment. The boy turned around. I lifted my camera and pushed the shutter button. I probably had only a second to adjust the focus if I had any time at all. 

Rain: Another 4.2 inches

Since last reporting, we've had another 4.2 inches of new precipitation, mostly between December 26 and December 29. That brings our total for the 2024–2025 rain year to 24.5 inches, which is well ahead of normal for this time of year. Average annual rainfall in Santa Rosa is about 34 inches and we still have about three months to go in the current season.