When you pay your four bucks to park at Charmlee State Park in the hills above Malibu, you slip your contribution into the Iron Ranger. Sounds vaguely foreboding.

Well that was unexpected, a one-week hiatus. Back now, like we never left.

Hummingbird up at the barn.


Throwback Thursday, shot Aug. 10 2007

The dog I thought saw this morning racing down the lawn next door and into the pond? Crocodile. Too startled to get a photo so here's the sky instead.

Inching past a display in a slow checkout line in Florida when a woman elbows her boyfriend, pulls a pink stun gun out of her purse and says "Omigod look! They sell my taser batteries here!"

The hard part about the airborne tour of the LA coast is you only get it when you're flying out and away from home.

Palos Verdes:

Long Beach. There's the Queen Mary -- and the LA River:

San Gabriel River? Not sure.

A slight turn to the east and already homesick.

They're very wary, the new coyotes here at the house, and hard to photograph. The female shows up first, gives the dogs a quick glance then lopes up the hill and out of sight. She's not looking but check out her ear -- she's listening to us on the deck behind her.

A few seconds later comes the rest of her clan, two young males, I think, eating up the distance in that quick, efficient trot. The sound in the video is the wind, which for a few hours, had the whole house rocking.

Upping the ante on the whole bi-coastal thing.

Whew.

Here he is, the late, great Evinrude. Boy do I ever miss him. Not sure what that was on his head. But his face? Yeah, he's smiling.

Throwback Thursday: Feb. 6, 2009

First the female emerged, a quick trot through the grasses and into the brush:

Then two more appeared, ignored the (wildly) barking dogs, and headed down the hill.

I wish I knew how to show how small these are, tiny white stars in the rain-green grass.

Everywhere in the canyon these days the nasturtiums are growing, leafing and blooming and rushing to get the toehold that might carry them through until the next rainy season.

It's a little hard to see what with the still-growing grasses on our patch of conservancy land but a new coyote has been nosing around the last few days.

I know the comma is implied but...

We've been buffered by the marine layer the last few days and temps here have been at least 25 degrees cooler than on the other side of the Santa Monica Mountains. So here's a return visit to an October day in 2008 when we drove up into a canyon to catch the sunrise as it cleared the fog.

Throwback Thursday: Above Ramirez Canyon on Oct. 26, 2008 at 6:18 am.

The clock said 6:34 but in real time the sun rose at 5:34 this morning.

Morning light in the non-natives growing here in the hills.

Among the many disappointments in our dry El Nino (SoCal has just 58 percent of average rainfall right now) has been not getting to see Trancas Creek run full force. Although we had a hint of its possibilities during this winter's rare storms, for now it is becalmed.

High tides have once again built up the sand berm that has turned the terminus of the creek into a pond. Here it is this morning just after a pair of ducks flew away, alarmed by the shadow of a hovering hawk. Look close and you can make out the lip of a breaking wave.

We're hitting peak green here in the foothills of the Santa Monica mountains...

Rocky Mountain edition:

We've been light on wildlife lately in the conservancy land behind the little cottage, a few night owls, a few morning crows. Bobcats and coyotes and hawks have been rare. Even gophers and bunnies are scarce.

This morning though, this coyote came out and spent 20 minutes driving the dogs wild while calling her mate. It's not a lovely sound, at least to human ears, pitched high and shrill and with an insistent oh-my-god-please-stop rhythm.

About halfway through this 70-second video you hear a dog bark. The coyote spins and listens, dismisses the sound as not what she's waiting for. There's also a thump from the neighbor below, who heaves something into the field. But she just keeps up her call, the percussive force shaking her entire body.

I'm pretty much alone in enjoying these coyote visits and I know the layers of eight-foot fence here, plus the lack of coyote attacks on my pets, have everything to do with the luxury to appreciate their strange and feral presence.