I was just mentioning the eclipse the other day, with respect to God’s providence. 
Well I can assure you a total eclipse remains spectacular even for a viewer not relying on God’s providence. 
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I didn’t know enough to look for the crescent ‘sky holes’ (an artist’s term, my wife, the artist, informed me) projections on the ground near the trees we were by – I was too busy looking up and watching for ‘Baily’s beads’, so I was slightly disappointed to have missed the multiple crescents. I did get a good look at the beads, though.
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Two from Hawaii.
Lava entering the Pacific:
The sun setting into the clouds, from the top of Mauna Kea:
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Those are really exciting to see. It reminded me of this one of rain falling just on San Francisco as seen from a dog park near Berkeley, California at twilight about this time of year, three years ago.
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Maybe this breaks the “rule” for this thread because my real motivation for reviving this here is to post links to some fox videos of a family of foxes we’ve been enjoying spying on through our back door. I’ll put a teaser photo here - but then also a video link. And this is one of the first videos we took in the dusk (through a couple panes of not entirely clean glass). I insist on showing it first, terrible as it is, so that you can better appreciate some subsequent videos of said family to come.
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That’s some pretty captivating creation there. What a show they’re giving you. Do you know where they were denning? I visited an aunt and uncle in New Hampshire once and at a certain time they announced it was time to look out the side window. Sure enough a beautiful red fox bounded through, seemingly not in any hurry as it had nearly every day for some time. But they didn’t have kits. Thanks for sharing.
We have a partially overgrown empty lot next to ours (on the side just behind the decrepit looking storage shed you see the pups running behind in these videos). I suspect their den may be in there, though I haven’t searched it and don’t intend to. I like having our guests feel comfortable around here as you can see they do in these next (and I think better made videos.) Watch this and this and this one in the order given if you want to see them chronologically up through this very afternoon’s shots. But leave the sounds turned down unless you want some hilarity. The only background noises you’ll hear is a bit of NPR radio in one of them and the washing machine in our utility room churning a load of laundry in another (quite a hilarious background noise for what is going on in the back yard!) all interspersed with an occasional muttered comment or two from either my wife or me. You’re seeing uncut footage here, of course. But you get to meet the rest of the fox family.
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I’ve enjoyed watching baby hummingbirds hatch, grow up and fledge but foxes seem far more exotic. Fun to see them so young and then when their movements become more agile. Birds, squirrels and rats is about it around my garden.
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What about you, Dale? Are you someplace with a shelter in place -or whatever they may call it - order in effect? I find we’re getting progressively more careful as time goes on and we learn more about this virus. Fortunately I have a fairly big garden with enough pathways to get a bit of walk in in a pinch. But we are also walking in the neighborhood and I’m still taking the pups out on shorter walks.
The most exotic thing I’ve seen on our place is a mink a couple of decades ago. Apparently some used to raise them years ago, and then they must have been let loose. (I’ve only seen the one in 46 years here.) The peacock a couple of years ago made me do a double take, though. (Someone locally was selling eggs and chicks, I guess.) The woodchuck on the front step was a surprise, too! Turkeys and deer are plentiful. Opossums are not too infrequent, along with raccoons. Sandhill cranes are abundant in season (like now). People (lots of them!) from all over come to see them, but not this year!
This male wood duck was swimming on our driveway last year (we had some serious flooding that came up the apron on the garage to within six feet from the house!):
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What the heck, as long as I’m here why not share a couple photos I got the other day in the garden. I just use my cell phone but I focus on capturing interesting lighting as much as anything else. That’s what drew me to take these. The first two were taken toward twilight and the last sometime in the morning. The flowers in order are a pincushion flower Leucadendron ‘Tango’, an epiphytic blueberry relative called Agapetes ‘Ludgvan Cross’, and an Agave relative called Beshornaria ‘Flamingo Glow’. The flowers of the last one aren’t even open yet but the flower stalk, the sheath and the buds are incredibly colorful anyhow.
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Wow, you have quite a lot of wildlife right outside your door. The wood duck is gorgeous and not common I don’t think. Your mink made me think of a documentary I saw on PBS recently on mustelids. Fascinating creatures.
Wow to you too! Your garden is fantastic!
Wood ducks are pretty common around here actually. A creek is our south property line (on the maps, we live in the north channel of the Platte), and there is a canal and lots of sand pits that are the small lakes (some of them fairly sizable, though) that were formed when they pumped gravel to build the Interstate back in the 60s. Of course there are still sand & gravel companies doing it for country gravel road maintenance and new construction.
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You’ll want to look at every last one.
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Those are spectacular massed like that!
@Laura, that just seems brutal. On the other hand I suppose it is conducive to sheltering.
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