Wye Wildfire Wow!

Below are three frames I saved this afternoon from a CalTrans webcam located near the start of today's Wye Incident in Lake County. The highway you see in the images is Highway 20. The images were captured early on in the incident (within the second hour) and the view is looking eastward just west of the junction with Highway 53.

5:01 p.m.

5:02 p.m.

5:17 p.m.

Images courtesy of CALTRANS.

Picture of the Day - Walker & Wye Fires

This was the scene earlier this evening from Williams, CA. It was captured by an acquaintance of mine who is a NPS firefighter on the Sequoia National Park/Kings Canyon National Park. I know him from the online California fire groups and email lists. It shows the sun setting through the smoke of the Walker Incident and the Wye Incident in Lake County to the west. The fires have forced the shutdown of Highway 20.

Photo by Pranay Manghirmalani (all rights reserved).

Scripture of the Day - Elihu

"When He gives quietude, who then can make trouble? And when He hides His face, who then can behold Him? whether it be thus against an entire people, or against an individual only...". ~ Job 34:29 (Kimicus ad Absurdum translation)

Picture of the Day - Evil Rock

.... or rather "Picture of the Night" and an ominous-looking one at that. This image was taken in the wee hours of this morning from the North Jetty at the southern base of Morro Rock; a large truck-sized chunk of volcanic dacite backlit by a street lamp shrouded in fog. Photo by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved).

Kameron's Birthday Bonfire

My friend Kameron turns 19 tomorrow and elected to celebrate his birthday with a beach bonfire at Cayucos with those friends of his whose schedules allowed. I had the honor of being a part of this celebration and below is my record of what transpired this past afternoon and evening. Note: I bare witness there was NO underage alcohol consumption or use of recreational pharmaceuticals at this event.

Cayucos State Beach at Cayucos Creek Inlet. This is the beach where we bivouacked for Kameron's bonfire.

Cayucos Pier at left and Morro Rock in the distance to the right of it.

The town of Cayucos, CA, showing the pier and Vet's Hall and a crowd of Mormons conducting a youth event.

Kameron's bonfire constructed by your's truly and ready to go.

The bonfire having just been lit and my little dog Tequila chillaxin' with her daddy.

The bonfire now fully-involved and we're grilling our friend Blake Burgess upon it.

The bonfire having burnt down a bit was now ready for cooking hot dogs. Note Tequila guarding her doggy bed.

The cute couple: Krystal Marie "The Squealer" Sprague and Blake "Mad Dog" Burgess

A second couple showed up (Brittany Wolfe and Lonnan McIntyre) and joined our party a bit later.

The other bonfire added to the ambience at this beach this night.

I surprised everybody with some flash just to check everybody was behaving.

Kameron received four thumbs up while I avoided any middle fingers.

Kameron holding court at his birthday bonfire.

I hate photos of myself but Kameron made me pose for this and who was I to deny the birthday boy.

A self-portrait by Kameron.

Say "hermaphrodite" and Krystal will involuntarily squeal for you.

Artistic image #1: no editing was done to this.

Artistic image #2: again, no editing here.

Artistic image #3: bonfire burning down.

All photos (but two by Kameron McMeekin) by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved).

Picture of the Day - 2012 NorCal Fires From Space

Satellite view late this evening/early this afternoon of the Chips Fire (Plumas County - southernmost fire) and Reading Fire (eastern Shasta County - northernmost fire visible in CA) in Northern California as well as various other fires in southern Oregon and northern Nevada. Note monsoonal moisture over parts of eastern California and across the Nevada's Great Basin & Range. Note: the date shows tomorrow but the satellite operates on international time or GMT. Image courtesy of NOAA.

Eclectus Arcania - Bird Is The Word

Today I worked for my buddy Susie Christian, a notable local photographer and bird author, in Morro Bay, CA, for the second time in three days. I did so at this particular time not coincidentally in regards to the ongoing heat wave that has seen Paso Robles (where I reside) hit triple digit temperatures for a week not to mention most of the rest of California.

Susie breeds a type of parrot I have never noticed before and knew nothing about until this week. This form of parrot is called an Eclectus and lives in various location scattered across the Western Pacific Ocean including northeastern Australia, New Guinea, the Moluccas Islands, the Soloman Islands, and Sumba Island in Indonesia. Susie owns more than one sub-species of this beautiful type of tropical bird as evidenced in the images below which show two different female types.

Five arcane eclectus facts:

1. Eclectus are sexually dimorphic which is not a perversion but merely means that the male and female look quite a bit different from one another. Males are green with yellow beaks and the females are red and blue/purple with sometimes some yellow/orange on their tails but always have black beaks.
2. Eclectus are considered a pest in some regions as they have a tendency to eat folk's fruit off their trees, particularly papaya and pomegranate.
3. The average lifespan of the Eclectus is not currently known with any certainty given how recently they became actively held captive and bred in captivity; 30-ish seems like the best guess as this point.
4. Eclectus are polygynandrous which is to say they are dirty birds; both males and females can have multiple partners (please pardon the anthropomorphism there). 
5. Prehistoric Pacific Islanders hunted one now-extinct sub-species of this parrot called the Oceanic Eclectus. It seems to have gone extinct about 3,000 years ago around the time the Tongans settled what would become Tonga.

After spending the better part of two days with the Eclectus I'm beginning to really fall in love with them. Aside from being beautiful they are quite personable and are gifted with oodles of personality. I now officially desire to have one someday and given the name of this bird (and this blog) it seems apropos that this bird become the official mascot here.

This female eclectus, the second one I encountered in the enclosure, was the most spectacular-looking of the three females.

The lone male eclectus was very upset by my presence and needed calming by Susie.

This was the first female I encountered; she seemed to really take to me and wanted to be in close to my face.

My friend Susie trying to calm the male eclectus - to no avail pretty much.

This was the third female I encountered.

Two of the three females in the enclosure (#2 and #3 respectively). This duo is of differing sub-species.

The male was trying to warn his bitches about me, all of whom pretty much ignored him although at the end #2 seemed to respond to him and when over to him.

All photos by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved).