Bark with Lichen

Most trees nearby have lichen, usually less than this. Mostly cloudy today--this struck me as I was out on a short walk late this afternoon in a vain search for birds. Some were around earlier, including red crossbills, lots of eastern bluebirds, chipping sparrows, and goldfinches, a couple of yellow-bellied sapsuckers, and a handful of other species. Many were juveniles. None were close enough for a decent blip (except the crossbills--but I did one of them yesterday). Not our best summer here, but better than our worst.

This image stretches about 9 inches (20 cm across), covering 2/3 of the trunk. It is merged in Photoshop from two horizontal images with my 400 mm lens with a 2x extender--my usual rig for birds.

Congratulations to the U.S. women's soccer team for their gold medal! Our TV reception is minimal, but we do have internet, and to view the Olympics on the Comcast cable service (which we subscribe to at home) I had to retrieve our user name and a temporary password via a laborious on-line chat. But that worked, and we saw the tense gold-medal match against the Japanese on our laptop quite well, despite the slow internet connection.

I just realized that the year-ago blip shows the fan that I blipped six days ago.