Monday, January 24, 2011

National Unreachable Wilderness Area

The term National Unreachable Wilderness Area is a joke from the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, who went on vacation there in about 1971 and had hilarious stoner adventures. I've used it ever since to describe US National Parkland, and by some twist of fate that I won't get into, I actually work inside one, in Southern California. It's only actually unreachable about three days a year when the road washes out, but it's certainly unreachable then.

This is the view from outside one of our buildings: So Cal sunset on the mountains.


We have all kinds of wildlife, mostly inimical and retiring, like our rattlesnakes. (Rattlesnakes not shown.)

Some of the wildlife is the ubiquitous fluffy bunny.


Some of it couldn't give a toss about humans, although I think this little critter was beginning to resent me after I took a few too many photos.


...at least judging by the way he was 'smiling' at me.


Some of the W.L. picks up the pieces after the inimical ones do their killing. (Actually, it's probably the main road in the valley that does most of the fluffy bunny and raccoon killing.)


We have a lot of vultures.



No, I mean really a *lot* of vultures.

Like that. And that's just one tree.

And I guess we have a lot of mistletoe too. As in the photo above, it really shows up in the winter, when it's green and leafy and the sycamores aren't. It's a hemiparasite. When the sap rises in spring and the sycamore leaves grow to shade it, it's parasitic. In winter it stays green and makes its own food.

3 comments:

KaliDurga said...

Very nice shots of the vulture and the rabbit. What sort of camera did you drag into work to get those?

Lyle Hopwood said...

Thanks. It's a Nikon D5000 body with a Nikkor 18 - 200 mm lens...which is why you see me with a cellphone camera and not my 'big camera' at gigs. It's just too big, heavy and expensive to get into a mosh pit.

The vulture is probably the longest shot I can do without a tripod, but it got several of that quality without camera shake interfering.

KaliDurga said...

Same reason all of my shots are taken with a point'n'shoot pocket camera-- I'm not going to carry something heavy (&/or expensive) when tromping through the woods. Definitely more convenient to have the wildlife come to you.

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