Leaderboard

I had a good "Sasquatch Day" today, starting with a breakfast with 4 local researchers and wives in a restaurant for the first time in over a year, followed with an afternoon sortie into the mountains to check out a couple of lakes N.E. of Mission, BC. I arrived at the first lake about 3:30, after parking on the logging road and making a short, steep, muddy hike down a rough trail to the shore. I found lots of tracks on the soft mud of the beach, but all of them were human and dog, nothing at all that hinted of Sasquatch. I returned to the 4x4, and continued deeper into the mountains, on a much rougher stretch of disused logging road, with speed reduced to 10km/hr. due to deep potholes, lots of rocks, and a rather sketchy looking old bridge, but did not reach the second lake target, as it was getting too late for me to make it the rest of the way there, and still get home by the time I had promised my invalid wife. That one will wait for another time, when I can devote a whole day to the task. It was great to be able to have an indoor social gathering for the first time in ages, and as always, refreshing to body and mind to get out in woods for a while.

Speaking of autofocus option..... Early last week, I went for a quick overnight. Using my thermal, I was able to see mice running hither and yon all night long. Late into the evening, as I was scanning the woods, I picked up something between two trees. It was moving while in place. A second, or two, later I watched a mouse run toward the unidentified object. Then, with a silent and sudden movement, the object leaped upon the mouse. It was an owl. I focused my attention on the black object that was about human height although I could not see any lower body. The angle was odd as the trees, and the object in between, was at 45 degrees. I assumed the lower body was being hidden by one of the trees. It never dawned on me an owl would be on a branch that low. I should have magnified the object x 4.6 then manually focused, then magnified x 9.2 and manually focused. I didn't as I was watching the object for every movement. When I watched the video on my 32" computer screen, it was clear from the start the object was an owl. You could make out the details of the head not readily apparent on the thermal's small OMELED screen. Oh well, a little fun that night and a lesson learned. I'll see if I can upload the video--my skills in this regard are sorely lacking.

Here are a few pics from recent hikes....a larger print above and one that I made below for comparison, some fresh Sotol discards along the trail, and a Black & Yellow garden spider, which are huge, that I almost face planted....yeah I was looking intently at the ground for the dang snakes:)