The common idia seemed to be the most abundant of our large moths at the end of last year, but I quite like the feeling of recognizing a familiar species. Anyhow, this is my first of year for grabbing a moth off the porch and putting it in the fridge for a morning portrait. I have ordered some moth-specific collecting equipment (a UV light trap) and am excited for the summer moth season.
Common Idia (Idia aemula), TL 14mm, 5/27/2015, Somerville MA.
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Monty's back from California for a few weeks, and we'd had a weekend of plans for outdoor activity, only to back off from most of them due to the digestive illness that the kids brought home afflicting Monty (I have a worry that I am next). I escaped to go walk around Brooks Estate by myself at 6:30pm, with the thought that I hadn't seen blooming Jack in the Pulpit in some time, but that it should be to-be-found at Brooks Estate. Indeed I found it, though only one somewhat tattered one.
A week ago, when I was there, I met a young man on the trail who confirmed my sighting of the indigo bunting, and told me that watching the resident barred owls was his major interest. Yesterday, I met him again, this time on the paved trail, where one of the barred owls was being mobbed by robins. Apparently he'd had both barred owls interacting with each other in close proximity early in the afternoon (and showed me on the viewscreen of his camera). While watching one, we heard the other calling, and went to look for it, only to return and find the first sitting in full view over the path. By that time the light was failing, so while I got good views with binoculars, my camera had trouble getting a solid focus lock.
Yesterday afternoon I went to Brooks Estate, as a "fit bird watching into limited time" venture. Found a singing male indigo bunting by the stump dump, and got nice looks at him. Stopped to photograph lady's slipper in the woods. Didn't see much else beyond the usual suspects.
Last spring, I had many days in a row (starting in mid April) of seeing black-crowned night-herons roosting by the river in the stand of trees near the BU rotary. This year I saw them for the first time on April 28th, and saw five at once on May 1st. Then I had about a week of seeing them consistently, and as the trees leafed out, more and more days have come when I haven't seen one at all - it's tricky for me to tell if I'm just worse at seeing them, but I think they've been less consistent in this spot.
I haven't had a classic early-May see-all-the-warblers day yet, largely for lack of getting to a good spot. I have been carrying binoculars everywhere I go.
On Saturday, I took the kids to Habitat in Belmont. Slightly to my surprise they were both perfectly willing. Both kids got good looks at this green heron, that George accidentally flushed at turtle pond; we watched it fly and then land on a low branch with good views.
After heading towards the other half of Habitat, we spotted several serious bird watchers with serious bird watcher gear. Most of the way up Highland Farm loop, one of them stopped to chat and showed me where the great horned owl (mother) was perched - apparently they were all looking for the newly mobile great horned owl fledging, which had apparently given good views earlier that morning.
As we neared the meadow, I stopped to watch the chickadee flock, and had my first of year warbler, a pine warbler.
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I went out to Brooks Estate today, absolutely expecting to see the first skunk cabbage of spring, and indeed, there they were. It's somehow satisfying to have seen these each year for many years in a row.
This week I'm off on a business trip to Chicago - a ServiceNow training class. I'm not expecting the content to be scintillating, but it having been 10+ years since anyone sent me on a business trip, I'm excited to go somewhere.
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I'm back this evening from a week long trip to California; much of the week was spent visiting with my half sister in Oakland. We went to Point Reyes together on Friday; I have a lot of photographs to process, so here's just a sampling.
I turned over logs (you can't take me anywhere...) until I found a giant millipede for the kids. Denton did eventually hold it, but needed to be reassured as to the safety of doing so. (At Ranchero San Antonio Open Space Preserve, Los Altos, CA.)
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Sherman does not much like the snow, but if I go out and play with Stella he wants to be part of it.
So I bought a Basis Peak. After reading some reviews, I was pretty sure that the technology and software in this space is not mature enough to be satisfying, but I wanted a technology toy. The last cycle computer I had on my bike was a sad disappointment (in the endlessly-finicky and didn't really work department) and the selling point of the Basis is that it will detect bicycling automatically as an activity. Since that's much of what I do, and metrics makes everything more fun, it seemed like an obvious choice for my toy.
I've been half-heartedly trying to understand a little more about how to find my aerobic zones - my (uninformed) perception is most aerobic activity, at least initially has me breathing very very hard long before my heart rate climbs above 120 or so, but that after fairly prolonged exercise, something somewhat more normal happens. (Related hypothesis: I have a fairly low max heart rate.) Getting the Basis seemed like a way to inform these guesses a bit.
The phone app software for the Basis is pretty terrible. They have a support forum, that covers all the complaints I have, with a bunch of support moderators who confirm how things are, without acknowledging that the requests are totally reasonable. The website gives cute charts, but over-interprets them a bit. Here's how well it thinks I slept Saturday night:
Very plausible, right? It can also tell me that during that interval my pulse was at a consistent 44 bpm (that at least matches direct observations).
The reason I don't believe it is that this is my daytime activity on Sunday:
It's completely and absolutely correct about biking to and from church, but it recorded church as asleep, and likewise a little mid-afternoon computer time as a nap. Never mind that both showed a perky-and-awake pulse in the 60's, and it does know I got 92% quality sleep for 7.5 hours, so why should I be drowsing all day?
I hoped today to take it out on a bike ride, and push past the initial "I am breathing hard, but not really in the zone" interval. Sadly, the black ice coating everything meant that I was not going to get anywhere near my actual limits. The numbers are at least somewhat informative:
It's ok at picking up that I'm biking - a little conservative about the end points - the steps taken at 8:38 are where I fell and picked myself up, about 1/4 mile into the ride. The gap later is where I stop (twice) to read/reply to SMSes (on call for work). During a stretch of the first half, I did spend at least 5min, maybe more, going as fast as I was able, and breathing very hard; the data reflects that, showing a plausible 140's bpm. Close to the middle of the ride, I then spend a good while going cautiously over stretches of ice, before speeding up towards the end of the ride, all nicely reflected by the graph. Subjectively, however, I did not feel like I was working hard, during any of the last half - I was certainly not gasping for breath, which suggests that the 147 bpm high point towards the end of the ride is exactly in the aerobic zone that I was trying to find.
So, I have some validation that the data is potentially useful. A cleaner test may quantify how long a ride is needed to find the zone (perhaps longer than the 30min ride to and from work). I've never recorded (on myself) a pulse higher than 150, but I'm guessing lack of continuous monitoring is the only reason for that. This shall be revisited with more data.
