…a bad hair day.

Most readers probably follow this blog by reading day-to-day, post-to-post as new entries are uploaded — I appreciate that: thanks for reading! Here’s another way to view the Three Star Owl journal — by categories. In case you haven’t noticed them, categories are the long list of words partway down the left-hand side-bar. It’s a good way to search topics that interest you which might have appeared on these pages, or to catch up on old posts, read a series in sequence (complete or in progress), or check out something you might have missed in a feature such as “Spot the Bird” or “Cranky Owlet” (who, I’ve just realized has not made an appearance for quite a while). Click on one of those categories, and a clump of posts will turn up, most recent at the top, on the topic you’ve chosen.

Every blogger sets their own categories, and many of mine are obvious, like “owls” or “natural history“.  I’ve used some, however, that are a little oblique: for instance, “close in” pulls up posts with macro shots, close-up photos, and detailed species accounts.  “nidification” gets you all the posts I’ve written on nesting, or more generally, reproduction and young life. “doom and gloom” gets you photos and essays on death, dying, and other mundane instances of mortality and bad luck. Fortunately, this last category doesn’t unleash a lot of posts, but, here’s a heads-up — it’s where you’ll find photos of dead organisms and disasters like our Thanksgiving Saguaro Plunge.  This is not a perfect system: it relies on me to be consistent and systematic about tagging each post with the appropriate categories as I add it, and that doesn’t always happen. But for the most part it works, and I invite you to try reading by category.

In fact, here’s one to start on. I’ve just added a new category, launched by the title of the last post: “drawn in“. This category includes all posts with drawings — sketches, watercolors, or digitally-created images — in case you want to check out which direction my non-clay renderings wander (excluding Cranky Owlet, which august personage deserves and is relegated to his own category, see above). Sometimes, as in the last post, the drawings are related to clay work, sometimes, not.

Finally, let me encourage you as always, but especially with hand-drawn items, to CLICK to ENLARGE: often the images embedded in the blog text have lower resolution than the version you see once you click — even when they’re not actually bigger, they’re clearer, have truer colors and sharper contrast.  See what I mean by comparing the image of the dove above as you see it with what you get when you CLICK.

Why not take a look, and let yourself be drawn in…

The VLO (Very Large Owl) sculpture “Windblown Owl” found a new home recently.  The next VLO is underway, currently drying and eventually migrating to a client in California (shhhh, it’s a surprise), and I wanted to use the same greenish-golden surface coloring and glazing effect on the new owl.

I had a basic idea of what had been applied to “Windblown”, but I needed specifics.  That meant doing a bit of sleuthing.  The obvious place to start was my own notebook, which by means of hasty drawings, measurements, and notes records much if not all Three Star Owl clay work, theoretically in detail, although in practice I’m not always as good about it as I should be.  Happily, next to a small sketch, I found helpful marginalia on the slips and glazes used on “Windblown”.

Windblown Owl VLO sketch (photo and drawing A.Shock, click to enlarge) >>

I enjoyed revisiting the drawing, which made me smile, the owl looks so much like a dog riding in a car with its head out the window.  The discoloration of the white background page is a photo-editing effect, a result of mercilessly and excessively bumping the contrast for more stimulating web viewing, as is the ability to see the drawings on the back side of the page, which in the actual book are only faint ghosts of lines.  Shades of paleographical or even forensic document investigation:

• “I say, Holmes, you can see right through the page!”
• “Precisely, Watson.  Evidently our potter had made a bowl with a conical foot and hummingbird squares stamped on it, some little time before glazing the large nocturnal bird.”
• “By Jove, Holmes, how can you possibly know that there were hummingbirds on the bowl?”
• “Because I’m eating my porridge out of it right now.”
• [Watson chuckles] “Capital, Holmes — a bowl with cleverly stamped hummingbirds on it.  Well done!”
• “And, may I add, my dear fellow, it’s made entirely by hand…”

By the way, definitely Rathbone and Bruce, here, I’d say. Brett and Hardwicke would never have shilled for Three Star Owl.

The morning after our latest haboob I found an expiring Sphinx moth, battered by the winds and on its last legs.  It was a big one, not as colorful as some, but marked like bark in black and white, with three orange spots on its abdomen.  It’s a fairly large animal: about three inches long, with an abdomen like my little finger, except segmented and furry.  I’ve identified it as  Manduca rustica, the Rustic Sphinx (if you know different, please let me know), which as an adult moth feeds on deep-throated nectar flowers such as Petunias and Tecoma.

<< Manduca rustica (photos A.Shock, click to enlarge)

Although it’s probable that this individual was done in by the wind, it may also have been at the end of its life span anyway.  I carried it to the outdoor table, and took a few macro shots with my cell-phone macro lens.  That I got any results worth sharing is a bit amazing, since the lens, which is designed for a different cell phone than the one I own, has to be scotch-taped to the device.  (Seriously, scotch-taped to the device, not exaggerating.)

Anyway, here’s the sphinx’s face, with its big night-seeing eye, its furry head, and its coiled, straw-like proboscis, plenty long for reaching down the throats of flowers for the good stuff.

This summer, there’s been much haboobery in the Phoenix area, causing a veritable Haboob-O-Rama.  Just this evening (Sunday) we had what was by my count the fourth significant dust storm of the 2011 monsoon season, which should be winding down, but isn’t.  There’s still dust in our yard from the first big one, which came upon us so fast and hit our part of town so directly that I didn’t get any pictures.

Here’s tonight’s haboob, which struck just at sunset. (All photos A.Shock, click to enlarge):

If the photo looks familiar, it’s because #2 haboob hit at about the same time of day, and I got a similar photo of it from a slightly different vantage point.  See that photo here.  Tonight’s haboob was ummm, taller, if that’s an attribute of haboobs, although it may have just looked that way because it was headed right for me. A few seconds after I snapped this shot, it crashed into the neighborhood, turning everything brown and gritty.

<< In between was #3 haboob, which blew in from the west, a little north of our ‘hood.  I got this photo of it engulfing Camelback Mountain, the summit of which is just barely visible as a triangular shadow between the trees in the midground.  Bonus bird: Not that you can tell in the photo, but the bird flying just above the utility wires in the center of the photo is a Lesser nighthawk.  Knowing it, however, should add to the desert ambience of an otherwise power-line filled image.

Doesn’t it look like a Jeep?

Those dark “headlights” are eyes, which jumping spiders, unlike most spiders, rely on to hunt.  I can count three pairs: two on the front (big and little) and one on the side (little).  See ’em?  There may be more…

We photographed this tiny jumping spider before relocating it outside, since the sofa was not a safe location for it.

So that you can fully comprehend its tininess, know that it’s sitting on my cell phone stylus, which is slightly smaller in diameter than a typical pencil.  Officially: dinkose.  It’s a Dinky Dude of the Desert, arachnid-style.

I don’t know enough about jumping spiders to know its common name, if it has one, or even its genus.  Anyone?  For more info, including technical identification keys and species accounts, click on jumping-spiders.com.  The photos running on the masthead are worth checking it out for.

(Photo by E, edited by A Shock)

They’re aware of you!!  It’s International Vulture Awareness Day, so look alive…

<< Turkey vulture, Cathartes aura.  (Photo A.Shock)

Please to note the Pervious Nostril! Click here for more information.