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handmade_ghost

@handmade_ghost@mstdn.games

In the process of moving to @handmade_ghost

she/they 🙋🏳️‍🌈🏴♾️😷🎮🧶🐦📷

Poet, birder, amateur photographer, handmade ghost.

PFP: Vintaged Animal Crossing avatar with bobbed grey hair and owlish glasses, thinking.

BG: Vintaged photo of a queenfisher perched open-billed in a high branch.

Land Back.

began on mastodon.lol
Oct. 2022 :better_pride:

https://justmytoots.com/@handmade_ghost

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. For a complete list of posts, browse on the original instance.

handmade_ghost , to random
@handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

#SilentSunday

Vertical photo of a chapparal hillside in rural Oregon in front of which rushes a pale green river companioned by two miniature waterfalls. The photo was taken using my cell phone's "long exposure" setting, so the water is a thick, dreamy blur--the pale green water like a satin bodice laid out on a golden counterpane of brambles, mahogany, ash, and sage, the smooth gown sheathed in soft, gauzy white rapids. The pair of tiny waterfalls (perhaps just a few feet of drop) emerge from more dense, golden chapparal scrub that looks almost orange in the rising morning light, the full skirts of water like bunches of furzy white tulle awaiting the dancers who might yet come to wear them. A steep hill of sagebrush rises beyond the scene under a nearly white sky. The rain is about to fall.
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    • + dillyd
    loren , to random
    @loren@flipping.rocks avatar

    getting swept up and posting to broomscrolling

    handmade_ghost ,
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    @loren Just going to leave this here for you. 👀🧹 https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=dtthJE3f268&feature=shared&feature=xapp_share

    handmade_ghost ,
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    @loren lmao right? I run around singing "Robot Parade" more than my family would probably prefer.

    handmade_ghost , to random
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    I'm planning to return today to watch the morning show I saw hosted by this pair last weekend. They had so much to say on all my favorite topics (mostly the river, each other, and themselves).

    Photo of a wall of riverside tangle--mountain mahogany, fallen willow, brambles, and etc.--in shades of dry, wintering brown and scruffy, lichenous mustard. A fallen tree towards the bottom of the frame has a long, thin branch arcing up from right to left in the center of the frame, and on that branch sit two belted kingfishers facing each other. On the left, at the tip of the arc, the male sits with eir body elongated, eir blue head and crest rising and dark bill open in speech; eir white throat and belly flash in the sunlight and the powdery blue collar clasp and wings are folded behind em tidily as e leans in to address eir interlocutor. This companion, female, is shown in left-facing profile on the male's right, more of that rich, powdery blue in the face, crest, and wings handsome and matte in the full sunlight, eir blue collar stained russet to match the signature belt and flanking across eir breast. The female, too, is leaning in, though whether to listen more intently or to prepare to interrupt is unclear. They are a splash of color and personality in the midst of the uniform clatter of bare trees and detritus that line the far side of the river that swells, off camera, below.
    ALT
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    • + loren
    handmade_ghost , to random
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    I had a hilarious nonverbal conversation with this robin at the parklet near the lake yesterday morning. If I were better at photo editing, I'd insert some sort of thought bubble for em on the right-hand side of this photo to capture eir purse-lipped, cranky-chicken spirit.

    (If anyone out there has their own take or presumed caption, I'd love to hear it.)

    Photo of an American robin from fairly close up (shown from the midsection up standing in a grassy search of parklet). The wonderful, plump bird seems to be looking at the viewer, head turned and inclined just slightly to eir left so that e is looking at us through one shiny, white-rimmed eye, eir head stretched forward slightly so it appears somewhat elongated--like the head of a chicken. Wonderful grey and white scalelike patterns and speckling can be seen on eir black, comically angry-looking face and on the glimpse of tucked-back black wings flanking eir russet breast. Eir yellow bill, again, lightly cocked, appears pursed, and you can almost feel the presumed bit of snark of a thought bubble emerging in the open, grassy space to the right of them in this almost-inspirational robin-chicken photo.
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    • + loren, sollat, dillyd
    handmade_ghost OP ,
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    @sollat E was like a cranky neighbor coming out to their front porch to give me a piece of their mind. I love em.

    handmade_ghost OP ,
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    @sollat 😂😶

    handmade_ghost OP ,
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    @sollat The youngsters I've encountered have had a definite cranky urchin vibe. Hilarious, adorable, and a little unnerving.

    (Also: My brain now is replaying your "Nobody expects a squat silent robin" with Monty Python-esque staging. 😂)

    handmade_ghost OP ,
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    @dillyd @sollat Yes! So adorable and utterly monstrous lol.

    handmade_ghost , to random
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    Chappell Roan is NPR's Tiny Desk Concert today. ❤️

    handmade_ghost OP ,
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    @loren lmao it was so good and I will have Casual stuck in my head through the weekend for sure

    handmade_ghost OP ,
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    @loren I habitually wander through my house making up new verses for that song lol

    handmade_ghost , to random
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    My first desert phoebe* of the year. I'm sure I've gushed before about my special love of flycatchers, and these particular phoebes are not a common find for me.

    This one was sallying about on the ash trees and these budding tips of I-can't-remember (swamp agrimony? help?) that were lining the trailhead near the little wetland alcove under the highway. It was so good watching the gold flash of eir breast under the still-unpredictable afternoon sun.

    *currently known as "Say's" phoebe

    Photo of a horizontal row of towering stalks of smirchy gold columns of buds that stand like fuzzy spears and tridents against a soft focus of dry scrub and new grassy groundcover surrounding a local wetland area. The stalks look like giant buds of cannabis on sticks, or like fuzzy corndogs. Perched in right-facing profile on one budding tine of scruffy trident is a small brown and pale gold flycatcher, pettably soft-looking, eir ashy almond wings with soft white markings tucked behind em and eir tiny black eye, set in that toasted, ashy almond face, gazing unflinchingly into the distance like a ship's admiral studying the sea. The sun is late and cool, warming the golden breast of the admiral's waistcoat. It is almost time for another sally into the wind.
    ALT
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    • + loren
    loren , to random
    @loren@flipping.rocks avatar

    When will the fish doorbell ring me??

    handmade_ghost ,
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    @loren
    No man is a fish door,
    Entire of itself.
    Each is a piece of the lock,
    A part of the canal.
    If a clod be washed away by the water,
    We are all the less.
    As well as if a promontory were.
    As well as if a manor of thine own
    Or of thine friend's were.
    Each fish's life enriches me,
    For I am involved in fishkind.
    Therefore, send not to know
    For whom the fish doorbell rings,
    It will ring for thee.

    dillyd , to random
    @dillyd@allies.social avatar

    [Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

    •
    handmade_ghost ,
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    @dillyd beautiful

    handmade_ghost , to random
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    The arboretum yesterday was full of waxwings up to adorable antics in the hawthorn trees. They guzzled as much of the fairy-food berries as they could handle, and it must have been the entrancing effects of the hawthorn tree that made them almost oblivious to our presence. They lit in the branches as we walked by, sometimes only a foot or two away. I always forget how small they are. They are such brilliant, lovely little friends.

    Photo of two vertical limbs of a hawthorn tree absolutely massed with stems and tiny, bright, red-orange berries. Sitting in diminutive regality in right-facing profile on a climbing stem just left of center is a cedar waxwing. This beautiful little creature with eir pale yellow breast, smooth, almost creamy brown wings and face, and mischievous black bandit mask across the eyes, is staring up with patient anticipation of all the berries e's about to happily gulp down. The crest on eir head is combed smoothly back, like a tiny bicycle-racing helmet, and the flat paintbrush of eir tail, in quiet shadow below a crossing limb, is tipped with yellow. In the background, the sky is bright and blue.
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    • + dillyd, breadandcircuses, loren
    handmade_ghost OP ,
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    It is waxwing, my dudes.

    handmade_ghost OP ,
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    @GamingWolf 😂

    handmade_ghost OP ,
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    @GamingWolf

    that medieval "it is Wednesday my dudes" drawing of a person with curly dark hair in a beautiful robe (blue and red with light green dots) usually seen with a giant frog with a huge grin jumping out of their mouth, only now instead what is coming out of their mouth is a wide-mouthed cedar waxwing. This reworking was clearly done by someone with little to no skill at this kind of photo editing, as bits of blue sky from the photo the waxwing was taken from show around the edges.
    ALT
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    • + loren
    loren , to random
    @loren@flipping.rocks avatar

    Normalize flipping off every golf course you pass

    handmade_ghost ,
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    @loren I usually hiss at them. Is that acceptable?

    handmade_ghost , to random
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    I'm so used to the funny, cranky expressions I usually see on the faces of golden-crowned sparrows that this little friend completely disarmed me. E was sitting in the brush high up the cliffside with me, above the river, both of us just watching Saturday's sun come up together.

    Close photo of a golden-crowned sparrow, shown in right-facing profile from the "hips" up, staring through a bright, gentle, steady brown eye across the tip of eir small, pointed bill. The deep background shows greening leaves in such soft focus it appears as a pea-green sky, a soft but more recognizable array of grey and mahogany stems and branches rising behind and alongside the sparrow. The face and front of the bird are warmly lit by a band of sunlight that seems to be rising like a spotlight just for em--it catches the pale brown feathers of eir breast, the duskier brown of eir face, and the little thatch of gold that makes a charming hackle of crest across the crown of eir head. A hopeful, morning-has-broken sort of bird photo.
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    • + dillyd, loren
    loren , to random
    @loren@flipping.rocks avatar

    I saw the opossum!!

    handmade_ghost ,
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    @loren :poss_scream: 🎉

    loren , to random
    @loren@flipping.rocks avatar

    okay so i thought this was pretty cool, normally brown headed cowbirds look like the first picture: mostly black with some iridescence and a brown head. but if i really lift the shadows past what looks good to me i see that they are actually much more teal than i expected! these are actually some fancy birds!

    the same image with the shadows lifted, washing out most of the image but showing the teal feathers of their entire body rather than just around their neck

    handmade_ghost ,
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    @loren Right? This is why they basically run around berating all the other birds--for not noticing how fancy they are lol.

    handmade_ghost , to random
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    Queenfisher joy.

    Photo comprised almost entirely of bright blue, cloudless sky. Just left of center, in the direction of eleven o'clock, a female belted kingfisher is shooting almost vertically into the air. Her navy wings are cupped down and spread in the downbeat of her flight, the fingers of each wing catching the sunlight, her white breast with its blue collar and russet belt in warm shadow. Her face is lifted and following the tapestry needle of her bill up, up, towards the morning sun, which calls her from off camera as she darts skyward, her laughter still ringing in my ears from where I stand on the ground far, far below.
    ALT
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    • + loren
    handmade_ghost , to random
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    If this little friend can navigate all the thorns in eir path, maybe I can navigate some of mine.

    Photo of a cold, bright blue sky across which dozens of sharp, thorny branches arc and cross like an elaborate rollercoaster. Sitting in the center left of the photo on one of these thorny stems that climbs the frame like a line graphing an unstoppable rise towards some unknown disaster sits a wee grey and tan songbird. This soft little ping pong ball of a bird--a bushtit--is perched in right-facing profile but with eir head turned towards the camera, a look in eir tiny button-black eyes as though e can read my thoughts and is inviting me to watch as e begins, just after my shutter clicks, to hop from stem to stem to stem in an elaborate flibbertigibbetting amongst the stems, never once alighting on a thorn. E is intense and charming.
    ALT
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    • + loren, dillyd
    handmade_ghost , to random
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    "As a cat, caught by the door opening, on the perilous top shelf, red-jawed and raspberry-clawed, lets itself fall floorward without looking, sure by cat-instinct it will find the ground where innocence is . . .
    so do we let ourselves fall morning-ward through shelves of dream."

    from "Cat-Faith" by Alastair Reid

    Profile-style photo of a fluffy grey and white cat sitting in the top bed of a slate-colored, upholstered cat tree. This is my cat Fell, whose grey face in left-facing profile is a study in the intelligent searching of thoughts, the white blaze sloping artfully down from her forehead to her dusky pink nose, the white whiskers gathered in a delicate, taut spray that curves from the wonderfully ordered follicles around her mouth, the noble chin a kiss of white above the Shakespearean white ruff of her throat. One white paw curls over the rim of the cat bed, her ear turned forward to follow her thoughts. She is caught in a spotlight of a shaded lamp on a dark evening that brightens the beige wall behind her and limns her sculptural floof with light and shadow.
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    • + sollat
    handmade_ghost , to random
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    The snow has come back (boy, has it come back), so it's back to watching birds through the window. Yesterday was comedy hour, and the mourning doves (and I) were enjoying the show.

    Photo of a little black house of a suet feeder suspended from the branches of an oak tree in a suburban(ish) backyard, a red slatted fence beyond. The feeder is absolutely overtaken by starlings, their dark forms wonderfully covered with scattered markings like explosions of stars, all variously perched, feeding, or peeking above each other to search for greater advantage at the feeder. The one in front has eir wings outspread, blurred with motion, as e charges away, full of suet and success.
    Photo of a patch of snowy yard seriously trampled by birds and speckled with discarded seed hulls from a nearby off-camera feeder. Strutting across the snow from left to right is a fantastically speckled rock pigeon, whose feathers are all-over white with dark blue markings like blue willow ware.
    Photo of a slightly dimmer patch of the same snowy, bird-addled yard, matted plant matter in mainly dark orange and straw colors peeking up through the snow here and there in the background. The photo is almost entirely comprised of a very plump, round orb of a California quail (a quorb!), who is showing off the delicate gold cross stitch on the blue-grey and copper of eir breast and wings as e stands in right-facing profile, one skittish foot in front of the other. Eir dark navy-black face is turned three-quarters to the camera, outlined in a curve of bold white racing stripe and headband, a gold tuft of blunt bangs like a wild unibrow between eir eyes and that wonderful quirky plume like a canted apostrophe over eir forehead.

    Photo of a pair of mourning doves sitting, plump and huddled together, staring down at the off-camera shenanigans in my snowy backyard from their perch in the scrubby, dark branches of an old plum tree. One is quite pale, eir wings tucked demurely behind em, eir head slightly raised above eir floof as one might raise an eyebrow. The other is hunkered almost into a ball, the dark spots on eir wings and eir wings' rounded feathertips showing prettily.
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    • + loren
    handmade_ghost , to random
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    night, live.

    Vertical photo of a floofy grey and white cat lying atop a bookshelf beside some Tolkien in a classically "library lion" pose: Her white paws are poised nearly side by side under her white ruff, her intelligent grey face is inclined thoughtfully to the side as she looks out through a pair of golden eyes on either side of her white blaze, and her the grey elegance of her back legs stretched out, white paws extended just beyond the edge of the shelf. In the background is a blur of the blue upholstery and cream sisal of a tall cat tree and a silver-framed watercolor interpretation of Eowyn and Faramir.
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    • + Xenograg, jodystillwrites
    handmade_ghost , to random
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    There are often hoards of greater white-fronted geese in our neighborhood this time of year, but sometimes you find just a pair of them off on their own, scheming their goosey schemes and skeptical of anyone who comes close enough to listen in.

    Photo of a pair of plump, smallish brown and white geese with their backs to the camera, loitering in the tamped, driftwood-colored grass of an empty neighborhood lot. The birds' heads seem to be facing each other, showing brown heads with white faces and bright orange bills that glint in the light as they both turn to look back over their shoulders towards the camera. It's as though they've abruptly paused their conversation and are pursuing their lip, either because they've been found out gossiping or because I've been found wanting. The sun is bright and full, playing up the bright orange rubber of their legs and the smoky walnut of their wings. In soft focus in the background stand fuzzy straws of bulrush against the faded blue of a lake.
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    • + Krisss
    handmade_ghost , to random
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    to this week last year when I was scanning the far bank of the wetland reserve for sandhill cranes, and then all of a sudden hundreds of snow geese rose up and flew in an astonishing murmuration on the other side of the parking lot. 😮

    (I'll boost the old post with the video with your indulgence/forgiveness, because I am remembering it so strongly today, but you can also find it here: https://mstdn.games/@handmade_ghost/109848832227685300)

    Photo that attempts to capture hundreds of snow geese against a cold blue winter sky as they flock in formation in a band that covers most of the frames sky from the bottom left corner to the upper right. The geese appear tiny due to the wide capture--like a trillion printed commas that have somehow escaped their types pages--but if you zoom in, you can see the curves of their wings as they all coordinate in unison.
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    • + RolloTreadway
    handmade_ghost , to random
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    Female bald eagle* posing for a postage stamp.

    *There is a mated pair that live in the local woodland park. I can only tell one from the other when they're together (the female is noticeably larger). I love to watch em leap from this snag (which is a few yard away from the live Ponderosa where their nest sits) and go spiraling out towards the nearby river to fish.

    Photo of an enormous brown raptor with a striking white hood and tailfeathers and a broad, hooked bill. E is shown, poised to leap, in left-facing profile atop the thick, dry, grey curl of an old snag. Eir scaly, dark gold feet grip the dead wood of the defunct Ponderosa pine, black talons curled and sharp. Eir wings are lifted high above eir head and ready to stretch wide in flight. E is a bird at the starting blocks, powerfully held in readiness, gold eye focused intensely as e leans into the wind.
    ALT
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    • + breadandcircuses
    bookgaga , to poetry group
    @bookgaga@mastodon.social avatar

    "I threw a snowball across the backyard.
    My dog ran after it to bring it back.
    It broke as it fell, scattering snow over snow.
    She stood confused, seeing and smelling nothing.
    She searched in widening circles until I called her."

    @poetry
    Listen by Miller Williams from The Ways We Touch (1997 University of Illnois Press) http://tinyurl.com/yc6zd4a7

    Close-up of a handwritten transcription of the poem "Listen" by Miller Williams from the poetry collection The Ways We Touch
    Close-up of a handwritten transcription of the poem "Listen" by Miller Williams from the poetry collection The Ways We Touch

    handmade_ghost ,
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    @bookgaga @poetry The measured rhythms of Miller Williams are always such a thoughtful pleasure.

    handmade_ghost , to random
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    Thrilled by this sudden upswell of over 100 snow geese that just rose out of the marsh where I was walking and then soared about together as though they wanted to get a murmuration going.

    A video of easily over one hundred snow geese--bright white geese with black-dipped wing tips--swirling and looping together in the sky above a marsh like a sort of murmuration. At times the camera catches them up close as they tilt up towards the sky, showing their undersides and outstretched wings.

    handmade_ghost OP ,
    @handmade_ghost@mstdn.games avatar

    @RolloTreadway It was truly breathtaking.

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