Up Early

 Up at 5:30 AM.  Walking the dog by 6:30

13th St.

A Colorful Neighbor

This shop is just a block from us.  Should you be in need of knickknacks, trinkets or tchotchkes this is the place to go.  I seldom find anything I really need there, but it is fun to browse because of the endless variety of decorative items.

Walking The Dog

Spring Finery

This large Siamese was following a woman pushing a stroller.  He was complaining loudly, apparently wanting her to stop, but she plowed on around the corner and left him behind.  I called him and he walked in my direction, but I was not the human he was looking for.

Acorn Mystery

 When I did an image search of just these large seed pods I got results which showed a variety of possibilities for identification including sycamores and oaks.  A search using an image of the contained component yielded no better results.

I went back to the park to take a better look and saw that a number of the pods had opened to reveal what appears to be a cap on an acorn.

Another image search seemed to narrow the choice to some kind of oak, possibly a Bur Oak.  I believe there are around five hundred types of oaks, so I'll await the judgment of someone with real expertise on the subject.

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( I am told by a trusted source that the correct answer is "Bur Oak".)

Osteo Mystery

 I found this pretty little bleached bone while walking the dog and slipped it in a coat pocket.

By the time I got home, the bone had broken in half.

I'm assuming because of the hollowness that the bone originally belonged to a bird.  A quick look at the Wikipedia bird anatomy articles suggests the bone is part of the wing, the Humerus, as shown in this diagrammatic representation.

The birds we see at our feeders are mostly sparrows, finches and a few pigeons, and doves. And, lately, some suet has attracted the attention of a Curve-billed Thrasher.

The size of the bone looks about right for a pigeon.

Walking the Dog

 

Friday Sunset

 

Cool Morning

Housing by the Numbers

 If you look around Albuquerque nearly all the new housing under construction will look like the one on the right.

That house on the right and the two north of it built at the same time all sold for about $400,000 each.  

To buy or rent one of those three houses you need an income of about $98,000 a year.

The median household income in New Mexico is $50,000.