Luckily our coop is buttoned up tight with aviary wire. With our previous funky coop, we lost 5 hens to one of these beauties. Is that a scary eye or what? I believe this is a young Sharp-shinned Hawk, what with the yellow legs. There’s something noble looking about raptors.

I met my friend Louie in Bodega Bay yesterday. We went out in his homemade sailboat to pull up a crab pot. Only one crab. Then north along Hwy 1. The pic below is of the beach at Jenner, the mouth of the Russian River, where it was churning with life of seal and bird persuasion. Then  over the next 10 or so miles of winding often-hair-pin cliffside highway to the Timber Cove Inn, where we had (great) hamburgers and dark draft beer and looked out at the ocean, where whales were spouting, on their way from Alaska south to Scammon’s lagoon and other warm water bays for calving. Sun setting just before we got into Pt. Arena. Really a nice day, blue water, a nice swell, surfers out (mostly getting stuffed by straight across 8-foot waves) at Salmon Creek. I feel so lucky, being able to take off for a few days like this, recharging psychic batteries…

“Amazing pictures from Switzerland show where “jetman” Yves Rossy gave this incredible flying display, using a tailor-made jet pack. The aviation enthusiast leapt from a helicopter and performed a series of aerial acrobatics above the Alps. He then joined two jet planes in a synchronized flight. To synchronise their flight paths the jets reduced their speed to 220 kilometres per hour (137 miles per hour), which put their engines at a point close to stalling. Rossy’s previous aerial feats include flying the English Channel and looping the loop around a hot-air balloon.…”

https://pkcrunch.com/amazing-video-jet-man-stunts-alongside-fighter-jets-over-alps/

Window in my office. Various birds on left. On right, from top down: raccoon. big bobcat, small bobcat, fox. I use industrial strength hydrogen peroxide to bleach bones white. Never use Clorox; it eats away the bones.

After being thwarted in our canyon descent, Tomas and I drove into the hills to an isolated dammed-up pond. A week before I’d made a path through the cattails to the water. (I waded out and when it got too deep, just lay on the cattails and they bent over to make a path.) We went swimming, it was very beautiful, pond ringed by cattails, swallows dipping to nab water-skimming insects… At left, I’m coming back in; that’s my bald head a little above the middle, pulling myself along. I felt like a muskrat.

Gathered nori fresh off rocks at low tide. Washed it, dried it, now to roast it. Can’t believe I haven’t done this before. Essence of the sea, you know it’s good for you.

Two photos from the beach, below the turkey buzzard posing artistically, such a choice of perch, such style! When still, these guys aren’t handsome devils like the hawks, but when airborne, they’re magnificent, floating on air currents, tuning direction by adjusting wing ailerons, soaring, floating…A few years ago I had a series of dreams where I was flying. I wasn’t just up in the air, I had to take off. I’d run along, flapping my arms and pretty soon I’d be airborne. It really felt, well…real. Still gives me a thrill to remember how it felt to fly.

Below a dead pelican. Another magnificent bird. Surfers all have watched them skimming waves, seemingly never flapping wings, just gliding along on the wave updraft, in group formation. I’m gonna leave this on the (remote) beach for another few months, so all the flesh is gone, and I’ll take the head and bleach it out for my collection of bird and mammal skulls.