My ongoing recovery from a 6-week coma

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As you can see, Lake Balboa is a recreational lake. It’s fed by the same reclaimed water as the nearby wildlife reserve and the Japanese Garden.

The bird in the second pic bending over for a drink is a black-crowned night-heron. The numerous birds in the third photo are American coots. Those are both native birds gathered for a free meal.

But there were a few species I had never seen before. I thought the the upright, penguin-like ducks in pics 6 &7 were geese. They’re actually called Indian runners though they’re not from India and have nothing to do with Native Americans.

However, they don’t fly. They didn’t fly to Lake Balboa, some idiot dumped their exotic ducks into the lake. 

Though swans are often deliberately put into decorative ponds, we have no idea if that’s the case with the swan couple in the last two photos. They very well could’ve flown to Lake Balboa. If you look at the foot of the swan in the last pic, though, you can see that it has been tagged.

But then, this wasn’t the only tagged bird we saw at the lake. We also saw, unexpectedly, a pigeon with a banded leg. In the past, we’ve spotted Canada geese with leg bands at the wildlife reserve.

To be continued...

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We’ve planned to hike Lake Balboa a few times, but always chickened out in the end. There’s nothing scary about it, but we tend to prefer more natural hikes. The nearby Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Reserve is just as manmade, but it looks natural. And the signs say please don’t feed the wildlife.

We don’t, but plenty of people ignore the signs.

Lake Balboa actually has signs that invite people to feed the birds. And they do.

No sooner had we walked toward Lake Balboa than the ducks started waddling toward us.

The first two pics are of a natural creek that’s much more like our usual hike environs.

Pics 7 & 8 show a large and very aggressive muscovy duck we would encounter later during our picnic. You can also see it in the nineth photo crowding around a mother feeding the birds.

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Atheists Are Putzes Too: Lawrence Krauss’s Teachable Moment for the Movement

I've recently been shown that atheists have their fair share of illusions. Some atheists are idiots, too. I should know.

The hardest illusions to leave behind are those held about your own beliefs. #MeToo is for atheists, too. And so is white nationalism.

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Both of us got pretty fuzzy shots of one of the ravens we saw near the end of our hike, but for a change, mine was slightly sharper. Edit: Inspection of Keith’s photos suggests that this is instead a slightly sharper version of the fuzzier views of the raptor seen in a previous photoset of our return trip.

They followed the raptor in the last photoset. And I thought I had been mistaken in my ID of it as such. But when I looked at the photos afterward, it was clear that it had indeed been a raptor.

The second to last pic is an FX photo of the the striking trees as we neared the trailhead. And the final photo is yet one more rendering of the many striking bridges of Arroyo Seco Natural Park.

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We were treated to one more pleasant surprise. Our homeless artist had also created his art on the other side of the river.

The first four pics were Keith’s the rest are mine, mostly FX pics. Still, Keith doesn’t tend to take pictures of toyon bushes because he’s color blind. He can’t tell their bright red berries from the green of the bush.

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We were interested to see trees growing under the bridges. 

After we finished, we of course saw some more ducks on our trip back. But we also watched another raptor soaring over us. And we also watched a hummingbird flit from flower to flower.

Lovely.

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We had been hiking as much as possible on trails away from the concrete Arroyo Seco. But we were pleasantly surprised when we came upon a natural creek.

Suddenly, we our hike looked a lot more like our usual type.

We had been hoping to see a pond Keith had read about, but we soon realized that we had missed this ideal picnic spot.

We instead picnicked under a bridge, by a wide section of the creek.

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Gun Control: The Times are A-Changin’ as the Young Say Never Again

The times they are a' changin' for gun control, as high schoolers across the land take to the streets. Now it's the NRA and their GOP lackies ducking for cover.

The NRA and their GOP lackies are now the ones running for their lives.

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We were surprised by a close encounter of the raptor kind when a red-tailed hawk landed right in front of us with the squirrel it had just caught. Keith actually saw it swooping down, though he didn’t see the capture.

We followed a nature trail for a while, but it soon transitioned into an archery range.

But another surprise was to come.

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We don’t know what the rest of the message in the second photo. It has a second love in the heart-shaped O in LOVE, followed by THE. The rest has been trampled away.

I like the use of branches to complete a number of these designs.

The fifth photo is an infinity symbol.

The narrow ford in pic 9 would be not a worry if I had been wearing my hiking boots. As it was, I was scared I would have to hike the rest of the way squishing in wet athletic shoes.

The homeless artist who made these art pieces clearly had a lot of time on his hands. And every visitor to Arroyo Seco Natural Park gets to enjoy his handiwork.

The final piece is an arrow, topped by a triangular stone.

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You can see here what made a mostly featureless section of our hike. We once again chanced upon a local who filled us in on the background. These folk art pieces were made by a homeless man who lived under one of the bridges along the way.

I included two angles of the big spiral because the because the view is somewhat different. As you can see in the pic of a snake in the ninth photo, the spiral was close by.

Undoubtedly, one of the coolest and most striking sculptures was the horse made from branches and palm fronds.

To be continued...

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Last Sunday, we hiked Lower Arroyo Seco Nature Park for the first time. Arroyo means dry river.

That’s an apt description. This particular dry river is also covered in concrete.

But the bridges are really striking. We had driven over some of these on the way and back from Pasadena.

And the New Year’s “instillation” in pic 2 turned out to be a hint of what was soon to come.

So was the Northern flicker -- a kind of woodpecker -- in the fifth photo.

It’s likely the heart on the other side of the river has been there since Valentine’s Day.

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America Wins the Diversity Olympics: The Future of the US is Bronzed

The only color that matters at the Olympics is the tone of the winners' medals. No so for President Trump. Yet the future of the US is bronzed.

Our Asian-American Olympic ladies figure skaters are judged foreigners while competing for the country in which they were born. Meanwhile, the world moves past the culture wars Trump continues to stoke and the press clamors to report every quip by a gay skater, revelling in his outré outness.

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Some more FX pics, including of the mallards in “the cave.”

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After Darwin Day: Vestiges of the Unnatural History of Creationists

Why would God create non-functional eyes in cave-dwellers? Creationists thrive in the darkness of ignorance, blinded to insight.

Creationists accept as fact a book in which God orders the slaughter of unicorns, but spares not a word for dinosaurs.

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We took another swing through the succulent garden as we started down the hill. Keith finally managed to get a better silhouette of the raptor before we headed down.

The last two pics are FX photos I took. The final pic is the prickly pear patch on the side of Tarantula Hill.

To be concluded...

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After our picnic, we we walked around the top of the hill. There was a raptor circling over the 360 degree viewing area. I’m not sure which species.

There’s a really nice succulent garden at the top of the hill. We almost always walk through it on visits to the Conejo Valley Botanic Garden.

And a visit to the Butterfly Garden isn’t complete without a photo op in the lovely butterfly bench. I was wearing my Darwin T-shirt because it was the day before Darwin Day -- Charles Darwin’s birthday.