This squirrel bounded along a wall carrying a walnut in its mouth as I walked down the sidewalk. It stopped and looked at me as if it had been caught in the act of walnut burglary. I had enough time to snap a couple of pictures with my phone and pull out my camera for a better shot before it scampered away.
This solar halo fragment is high in the sky, near where you’d expect something rare like a circumzenithal arc. But it’s wrapped around the sun at just the right distance to be a common 22° circular halo. On July afternoons, the sun is high to begin with!
I found a folder of unsorted photos from my 2010-2013 phone last night and started going through them. I found several gems, like this one!
“I’m rational, unlike you, and if you look at this supposed problem rationally, you’ll understand that it can’t possibly be real because I politically disapprove of some of the proposed solutions.”
— Just about every conservative comment on climate change I’ve seen on Quora.
Gotta love it when the camera’s autofocus insists gives you this wonderfully clear image of…the grass in front of the skittish animal you’re trying to get a picture of before it scampers away.
I did manage to get one shot of it before moving on, and then I was able to spot a clearer view of another rabbit during the same hike.
The last few hikes I’ve done at Madrona Marsh, I’ve taken a lot fewer photos. This time…I went a little overboard taking pictures of just about every type of plant or animal I could to post to iNaturalist. Then I narrowed it down to around 40 “good” photos that I’m posting on Flickr over the next week or so. Sadly, my camera battery ran out about halfway through, leaving me with only my phone. Which was perfectly fine for close-ups and landscapes, but not for zoom shots.
Two views of a 22-degree circular halo around the sun that I saw on a walk this afternoon.
Halos are a lot more common than I used to think. Then I started actually looking for them. Even on a warm day like today, there can still be ice crystals higher in the atmosphere of the right size and shape to cause a display like this (or even more complicated ones).
Usually I just go for a utilitarian, “got a picture of the halo,” but this time I tried about five different things to block the sun, trying to compose an interesting shot as well. I’m going to have to keep that up!
Found this at the grocery store. I, um, guess that answers the question of what coffee to serve with Death By Chocolate cake.
🤷♂️
