Chaos overhead – the Butterfly in the sky
This year the sky is not cooperating. While the days are clear, the night sky is full of clouds. I am wondering if the trend will get far worse as we approach winter given the emerging Super El Niño prediction this year. We are finding ourselves getting aggressive – we are game even on full moon nights. In particular, the deep sky features where hydrogen alpha shines, moon is less of an influence.
Wrapping up with wee little tales
The Scotland trip came and went. I did my first post vacation normal household laundry today – to me this act signifies business as usual. I have not much more to write. It was our first car touring vacation outside of California. Skye offered the landscape of my dreams although I found myself missing the fog. The scotch didn’t disappoint. The coffee was a pleasant surprise. If there is a next time in Scotland, it will have to be the Hebridian islands.
I wanted to end with snippets of tales, in order of observation, those that didn’t want to be left behind in obscurity of a photo album. But before the start of the end, I need to pay my tribute to an Isle of Harris scotch (link) – it was the crispness of apples, the brininess of sea and smell of peat in a glass.
And now for the snippets …
Read the rest of this entry »A walk with midges and clegs in the Ben Nevis range
If going to Scotland during summer, you would be armed against bugs. Question is, does the armory work? The other question is, would it be a Scottish summer walk if the bugs don’t get you?
There are two primary categories of Scottish summer bugs that bite. A wee little gnat, called midge that swarms in shade. And a robust horsefly (or cleg in Scottish) that prefers a sunny heath or moorland. The first one can’t bite through clothes, it can’t handle wind. You don’t feel the midge bite, the bite sites itches later. The second one has vicious fangs, their bite hurts and itches at the same time, and not much gets in their way. I had read that midges prefer certain hosts, like mosquitos. That meant trouble. I already knew that I was a mosquito attractor. So I got heavily armed against the wee gnat since that was the only thing I could arm against. The armory, in addition to long sleeved shirts and ankle length trousers, included perfume – Avon “Skin So Soft” dry oil spray. Apparently, the midges do not like that particular perfume. Then, a deterrent, Smidge. The claim is to deter all biting insects including mosquitos and ticks and being water resistant. And finally, the battleshield, a superfine head net, especially designed so the wee gnats couldn’t get in.
During the Old Man of Storr walk, I got bitten by hundreds of midges. I was busy navigating the thousand steps that led to the old man. I didn’t notice the midges while walking, but later that night I noticed my neck, hands and wrist covered in midge bites. The midge forecast has suggested “moderate” number of midges. I had left the BnB after liberally smearing myself with Avon. By the time the evening walk to Storr had come around, many hours had gone by.
Read the rest of this entry »Obelix’s forgotten menhir, the other famous crag
What they are calling the The Old Man of Storr, I am calling Obelix’s menhir (link). You tell me if I am wrong!
The Old man of Storr hike is popular. It is relatively short (2.5 miles) but steep climb (950 ft), half of it on stone stairs. The biggest challenge is parking. We were advised to avoid the 10-5 timeframe so we did. We started soon after 5. The old man itself is at a lower elevation than the Storr summit, so there was a good chance that by the time we got up, the old man would have been in shadows. As luck would have it, that did not happen.
Lean To Coffee, the cutest little coffee shop
Lean To Coffee is not just cute, they serve delicious coffee. Scotland, in addition to scotch, appears to be obsessed with coffee. Typically, vacation coffee is the kind that builds character – bitter, over-roasted, black liquid that you drink for the caffeine and not for the taste. No so in Scotland. Nearly every cup was acceptable, some even delicious.
Skye seafood
Lookout Bothy, northern most tip of the land
The last visitor’s summary on AllTrails for Lookout Bothy – Rubha Hunish said “super muddy but impeccable views”. Rubha Hunish is a 3.4 mile trail on the northermost tip of Trotternish peninsula (link). On a clear day, one can see the Isle of Lewis across the ocean.
Cuith-Raing (or The Quirang)
Skye is uniquely famous for its crags (and the expansive sky). I would say the same thing for Himalaya, but it is very hard to comprehend the seemingly infinite scale of Himalaya. Skye mountains feel more human scale. I can imagine living in Skye and loving a crag. And getting to know the crag intimately like the back of my hand – across the 1000 hours of sunshine and the remaining 7000 hours of rain, fog and snow.
The mountains in Skye are part of Appalachian-Caledonian Mountains (link). The range was formed 250 Million years ago and is now scattered across continents – eastern United States and Canada, Greenland, Scandinavia, the British Isles, Brittany, the Iberian Peninsula, and the Anti-Atlas Mountains of Morocco. The oldest rocks in Skye are in Sleat peninsula (southernmost point), Lewisian Gneiss from 2.8 billion years ago. The final shapes that we we see today are result of glacial activity in the last ice age about 20,000 years ago (link).
Our BnB, Woodbine, is located in Uig. It is a good ways up from Portree, the commercial center of Skye. It also meant that we were rather close to the Quirang mountain. It took almost no effort to get there. The last few miles are a single track lane with passing places. The parking lot was nearly full by 10 am. If it weren’t summer, when sun rises at 3 am, I would have tried to catch Quirang at sunrise.
The trail The Quirang, it is a 5.2 miles out and back and should take anywhere between 2-3 hours. That assumes you are walking normally on a trial. It will take twice as long, if not longer, if you the kind that is impressed by rocks. As soon as you get off the parking lot, the view opens up and keeps on producing one grand view after another. So you can’t stop snapping pictures. The valleys, the lochs, the ocean, the sheep, sheep poop (I mean the daisies), the rock slides, the streams, the cliffs, the heather, the tranquil pool and the expansive blue sky.
We snapped a few hundred pictures and made only the first mile and back in three hours. Eventually I had to turn around so I could find a public toilet, the landscape (and the crowd) does not allow for a quick duck behind the bushes.
Where a sheep poops, a daisy grows
They say that the Scottish landscape is dotted with sheep. And they are right. From Inverness, we had headed out to Uig in the Isle of Skye. Apparently, the tourism in Isle of Skye has skyrocketed. The culprit is modernization, the island got connected to the mainland by a bridge on A87 in 1995, replacing the ferry-only option. And who would blame the high rate of tourism. Isle of Skye with its perpetual fog laden craggy landscape looks otherwordly.
An ancient forest in Cairngorms National Park
The Romans called Scotland ‘Caledonia’ and Caledonian pine trees are the name for the native Scottish pine. Incidentally, I had first come across the word Caledonia in the Astrix and Obelix comic series. Caledonian pines do not look like Douglas firs. To experience the ancient Caledonian forests today, one has to visit the Cairngorms National Park. Here in Cairngorms, the forest is dominated by regenerated Scottish pine with a native understory of wild berries, juniper, heather and rowan.
Sticky toffee pudding in Blair Atholl
I had to try the sticky toffee pudding at The Old Manse of Blair (link) restaurant, a Michelin restaurant in Blair Atholl in Pitlochry. The restaurant sources their ingredients within a 30 mile radius. I haven’t had a sticky toffee pudding before so I can’t compare. I can only say that this was an excellent cake. The interior was moist, the sweet and salty toffee sauce had a delicate burnt caramel flavor. The chef has replaced the more traditional dates in the pudding recipe with parsnips, the later being local to the highlands. If the service staff hadn’t mentioned the parsnips, I might have been left wondering about the woody nutmeg flavor.
Hermitage woods, Perthshire
Autumn is the best time to visit Perthshire…..
Edinburgh jewel, Water of Leith walkway
So now we are a week into the Scotland vacation. Edinburgh proved to be a lovely place to babysit the jetlag. It was a bit windy at times, but not the kind that makes you hold on to your hat. It was drizzly but not the kind that soaks you. So we walked. We were staying at The Raeburn in Stockbridge. From there, we walked to museums. We walked to the Royal Mile. We walked the Royal Mile. We walked the Botanical Garden. We walked to dinner. We averaged 7 miles a day. The nicest of these were the Water of Leith walkways. It is like going into a tunnel from one point and emerging somewhere else. Except that the tunnel is a walkway by the river, it is green, only allowing humans and their dogs to walk. The river is clean enough to encourage a bird habitat – we saw herons and mallards. Houses abutted on the walkway. Restaurants too. There were sculptural points of interest.
Read the rest of this entry »Ready, steady and waiting to go
This one is not a competition unless one counts competing with other vacationers. But this is a bucket list trip. Soon we will be on a flight heading up towards Scotland. If all goes to plan, this is what happens.
We land in Edinburgh and stay four nights. We explore the city and work off the jetlag. During this period, we also get used to the shifts in weather, set aside work worries and get into the vacation mode. Then we hop on a rental car and start heading towards the Perthshire. We stop at Dunkeld and walk along river Tay. Our first night outside Edinburgh is spent in Pitlochry. Next day, we head up towards Inverness. But before we do, we have the option of checking out Pitlochry, or Kingussie. This is when you wish time would dilate and you could do both. But we prefer lingering. Inverness is a two night stay. And here too, we will have options – Cairngorms or Black Isle. We decided not to drive the breathtaking North Coast 500. From Inverness, we will head out to Uig in the Isle of Skye via Achnasheen and Plockton. We stay in Uig for three nights. In Skye I didn’t give ourselves options to leave the Trotternish Peninsula. After Uig, we catch a ferry to Fort Williams and here again we stay two nights to explore the Glencoe region before heading out to Callander. Along the way, we will find ourselves on the edge of the Rannoch moor. From Callander we head back to Edinburgh for our flight back. Our final sight seeing will be the Doune castle where a reenactment of Monty Python and the Holy Grail “Go and boil your bottoms, sons of a silly person!” may occur.
I realized that my utter fascination for the Scottish landscape comes from reading and watching Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, hundreds of times. Conan Doyle grew up in Edinburgh. The story of the Hound of Baskerville is set in Dartmoor, but when Doyle describes the desolate hills, thick rolling banks of fog, and craggy rocks, I think of Scotland Highlands.
California is five times the size of Scotland. Yet, for such a tiny little place, this trip has been exceptionally challenging to plan. I have been trying for several years now. Any which way you look in Scotland, there are breathtaking mountains and lakes, charming villages, and fantastic food. Everything is must do. Everything is top 10. I first started with reading travel books. Then I hoped that AI would come to rescue. Finally, I had to call up a travel planner, Nordic Visitor, to rescue me. They have taken good care of us, have booked us in adorable B&Bs, kept our city to city travels short, given us time to breathe in-between. We drive a lot more in California on a weekend trip than we would drive on this ten day trip.
Yet, I am anxious. All of Scotland has thunderstorm, rain and wind in common. The mountains are often fog laden. This time of the year is also peak midge season – they swarm. If you aren’t careful, they will suck your blood and leave the sites itchy. Then there are many places that are the exceedingly touristy – I hear of the crowd being described as “gridlock” and “infrastructure failure”. I am a morning person, but I don’t like to head over to the car park first thing in the morning. I can’t share nature with noisy crowds. On the Antarctic trip, I was surrounded by chirpy humans, chirpier than the penguins. My movements were also circumscribed due to the fragility of the environment. I couldn’t get away to find a moment of quiet, I couldn’t listen to the nature undisturbed by the humans even for a single minute. I had felt extremely annoyed.
So, wish me luck this time and more importantly, wish me grace.
June bird sketches
This month I have mostly been sketching the loudest backyard bird. Half way through I decided to put a pair on a page, and where possible, a male and a female. With birds, the looks are very different based on sexes and putting them together helps me learn. I have been relying on Cornell for the reference images.
A tree from the land of my ancestors
This is a story surrounding a young Rangpur lime tree that is growing in our courtyard. Some might know the name Rangpur from Tanqueray Rangpur Lime gin. It turns out that this lime is from my ancestral land.
In Bengal, we have a lime called Gandhraj, literally translates to the king of fragrance. The closest it comes to is the smell of thai lime leaves. But the fruit is smooth skinned. Like thai lime, it isn’t juicy. But unlike thai lime, it is the fruit of Gandhraj that has culinary uses. Bengali food tastes the best when eaten with your fingers (link). A single fruit of Gandhraj can be cut into quarters or six pieces and shared by the entire family. The fruit is squeezed with your fingers leaving the amazing aroma on the plate and on your fingers. Every time you bring your food to your mouth, the fragrance of Gandhraj causes a palate cleansing effect.
Read the rest of this entry »Nearly killed her
Last weekend, after nearly 6 years, we got the external windows cleaned. The first and last time we got them cleaned was when Mikiko had come by for post-remodel professional photographs (link). Even before the proverbial water had dried, the female of the pair ran into the window, with a loud soft thud. It isn’t that I don’t know that windows are the second biggest killer of birds in US (link). But it had never happened before.
When I found a stunned female finch laying on her side, right outside the kitchen door, I wasn’t sure what the protocol was. She looked like my resin house sparrow, stiff. I put on a pair of gloves and picked her up. She chirped but didn’t react otherwise. I expected her to weigh a little, as little as a penny, but I couldn’t feel her weight. Instead, I felt her heart beating. It had the same cadence as mine. I gently put her upright in a flowering pot, supported by succulents. She stayed upright without moving. Then she closed her eyes, as if meditating.
By then, I had learned the protocol. No shoe boxes were to be found. I covered the pot in a stiff paperbag to give her the recommended darkness. And, she rested. I checked on her every 15 minutes. She looked a little more active every time but was quiet. She didn’t preen. She didn’t chirp.
I got a little anxious so I called my mom. She has always been good with pets. She helped calm me down.
By the time I was done chatting with her, darkness had fallen. I didn’t want to leave her on the balcony at the mercy of four legged night prowlers. So I brought the pot into the courtyard (aka aangan), the paperbag still in place. I heard her flutter around which gave me hope. I took off the paperbag and there she was, quietly perching on the edge of the pot. She stayed there for a while. I switched off the aangan lights. This was the safest spot I could find for this wild creature. There are other plants in the aangan, including a newly growing Rangpur lime tree, surrounded by english sorrels.
I wish I had waited to watch her fly away. I didn’t. Instead, I slept fitfully. I woke up early and found her gone.
I hope she is alright. I hope her babies didn’t cry while she was gone. I hope her partner is glad to have her back. I hope she didn’t lose her memory of the event to the concussion. I hope she tells the other birds to not be daft and watch where they are going.
And I need to figure out a window strategy so cleaning them doesn’t come at a cost. I might not be so lucky next time. And if I don’t figure it out, the windows will have to do without any further cleaning.
Chaos overhead – the littlest owl, a life lesson and more
The first constellation that every child learns to recognize is the big dipper or Ursa Major (Saptrishi Mandal). Month of May, Ursa Major is overhead. Did you know that you can’t see Ursa Major from either of the poles? It is one of those things that I was theoretically supposed to know, but I didn’t know until someone said it out aloud. Life lesson – even the most commonplace can become the most elusive.
When I was in Antarctica, I did look up at the sky. I was there in the Antarctic summer, when the days are so long that one didn’t have nightfall. But here in Bay Area, when I look up, the Ursa Major is one of the few constellations I can still see with my naked eye. Hidden amongst its stars, is the littlest of gems – the Owl nebula, the small blue ball of fuzz. The Surfboard Galaxy, the little elliptical red fuzz comes with the Owl. This galaxy and its partner nebula are really really far away for our widefield 300mm lens. Even M81 (Bode’s Galaxy) and M82 (Cigar Galaxy), the brightest of the deep sky objects near Ursa Major (link) are far away, these are even further away.
Proud of a bruise?
In the above picture, the red line is the outline of a shin bruise. I started kickboxing recently. First came online videos and boxing/kicking air from the comfort of my room. Then, more recently, I joined a gym and that meant actual heavy bags. This bruise came from the first day of landing repeated shin kicks on a heavy bag.
It has been a long journey from couch potato to kick boxing…
When Covid had boxed us in, I too found a few extra hours in a day. These hours eventually went into developing movement practices. At some point, I had looked at a body in its fifth decade and extrapolated it to the eighth decade and I didn’t like what I saw.
They say that if you want to do something in your eighties, you need to do them now….
The movements had started with yoga, a practice I was familiar with in my childhood. Then came Qi Gong. Then came a passion for the forests, i.e., hiking. Cross-training followed – to combat the repetitive stress injuries that were a result of working from home, without significant movement for 8-12 hours a day. My routines have now became so varied that I feel like a NASA astronaut (link). And yet, all my activities had been solitary and quiet activities, meditative even. Bulk of my activities were conducted within the confines of a 10 ft x10 ft room, a bedroom turned into an office room. And when not in the room, I was outdoors, on foot in a forest, or on a kayak on the Bay.
I am not a fan of a gym. Loud music and windowless spaces make me claustrophobic. And yet….
I was proud when I signed up for a trial power kickboxing class. I was surprised when I loved the class. The day after, I was surprised when I was upright and not in significant pain. I was even more surprised when I survived half a dozen more of the same. I decided to graduate up from the softer freestanding bag to the heavy bag. And then came the bruise. And I went back for more.
I am told that the bruising would go away in 1-3 months…
May bird sketches
The other day, I was listening to The Wild’s “Bird watching and listening with Libby Mills”. What stuck me is that Libby listens more than she watches. We live under a giant oak tree. It attracts a number of birds and I can only recognize the vocalization of Anna’s hummingbird and crow. Since Libby, I am on a quest to try and recognize my backyard birds – armed with the Merlin app. Merlin allows you to record and it does an instant recognition. So if you have overlapping vocalization, it can distinguish.
I am learning to draw birds and for subjects I lean towards well taken photographs. I lean more towards Californian birds but sometimes I pick an unfamiliar bird. Libby has inspired me to focus on my backyard birds, perhaps I will draw the most vocal.
Moving on from daddy-longlegs
Mounts are the foundation of all astrophotography. I appreciate this new hardware but I was grateful before. I am grateful for a sky full of stars. When we couldn’t track the stars, we had star trails (link). The star adventurer GTI with our DSLR allowed us to take photos of the Pleiades (link), the Orion nebula (link), the Andromeda galaxy and the Milky Way (link). The star adventurer GTI combined with our first dedicated telescope and astro camera allowed us to take photos of several nebulas, Flaming Star and Tadpole (link), the Rosette (link), the Heart (link), and the Horse and the Flame (link).
Chaos overhead – Markarian’s chain, a string of galaxies
NASA’s photos of Markarian’s Chain is amazingly pretty (link), as are the Markarian’s eyes (link). While Messier had previously cataloged several of these galaxies, the Armenian astrophysicist, Benjamin Markarian identified that at least seven of them were moving coherently in the same direction.
To fully appreciate this portion of the sky, start with looking at the relative position of the large galaxies in Virgo constellation (link), specifically note the location of M49 (visually, it is the brightest galaxy in Virgo) and M84 (part of Markarian’s chain). Now look at the annotated Vera Rubin image (link) that includes M49 but not M84.
Am I developing an obsession for my hands?
A couple of years ago, I had signed up for a video editing class. For fun. I had shot some footage of my hands and had hoped to convert the footage into a short 30s movie in honor of Agnès Varda. That footage has yet to come together. I suspect I had picked my hands for a class project theme because I see them in my peripheral view all the time, whether it is typing, or cooking or gardening. I find my hands interesting. Even when I was a young woman, my veins were prominent. They make my hands looks far more mature for their age. I now know the vein pattern to be like fingerprint, a biometric. The right and left hands are differently patterned and are unique to me.
And now, the joints in my hands have started to hurt. An acupuncture session brings temporary relief and then the hurt comes back. The right hand has been particularly irksome for the last year. I finally decided to go in for a doctor’s visit and surprise, surprise, he diagnosed me with basal thumb arthritis, same as the left hand. Btw, the left hand which is a lot more arthritic, hurts a lot less. The doctor says that is because I am right handed and I am overusing my right hand. The diagnosis came in the same week that I had signed up for my first kickboxing class – while most of the time one is kicking, at times, one is meant to be boxing. I attended the class with braces on my hands and punched air instead. I have also started drawing birds recently. The week of my x-rays, we were focusing on feathers. Bird feathers are attached to their arms. And their primaries are attached to what we call our hands. The primaries generate thrust, propel the bird forward, and facilitate maneuvering. Pretty darn important, won’t you say?
My hummingbirds
My backyard hummingbirds, Anna’s hummingbirds, have turned me into a bird lover. Yes, there are song birds in the garden, but they love to hide. There are migratory birds in the Bay, but they need me to leave my home. My hummingbirds are always there for me. The feeder is right outside my kitchen. I can see them when I want to, and hear them. They are not afraid to approach me. And this kind, Anna’s, don’t migrate away.
This year, I finally decided to take a plunge into bird photography. Unlike full moon (link), hummingbird photography needs a good amount of skill even to get started. I won’t deny that I find the camera infuriatingly complicated. There are so many buttons. And the menu is a mile long. But my hummingbirds are nudging me. I am also learning to draw birds from John Muir Laws (he likes to be called Jack), a learning trajectory that is a lot less steeper than learning to operate a modern DLSR camera.
Here are two shots, two months apart – late winter when the tree is bare and early spring with new leaves on the crepe myrtle. Both are taken during evening when the sun is low on the horizon. My regular feeder has feet for them to sit on, and they do like sitting. But sitting hummingbirds don’t make for good pictures. So this feeder comes out when I plan to shoot. I put the tripod in my kitchen and shoot in between cooking.
Locomotoring 
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