Encounters with Megafauna

Galleta Meadows, Borrego Springs, California USA, 30 September 2016

With Jeni Bate of Skyscapes for the Soul.

A few days before, we saw the remains of prehistoric megafauna that had been trapped in the La Brea Tar Swamps. There are still a few places you can see them though such as here at Galleta Meadows.

Their brown colour is an evolutionary adaption for living is a desert environment. Indian and African elephants by contrast are grey because they evolved to live in black and white forests before the age of colour. You can see this in old films and nineteenth century photographs.

This appears to be a small group of gomphotheres which are usually very hard to find in the wild. Not sure of the actual species though.

Getting up close and personal with a gomphothere.

A very large locust or grasshopper and a scorpion. Quite a bit larger than a human.

They were just sitting there sizing each other off, hardly moving at all. Well if they were moving at all, I didn’t notice it. Perhaps I shouldn’t have got quite so close. I understand scorpions can move quite quickly when they have a mind to.

Grasshoppers and locusts are essentially the same but they are locusts when they swarm. Younger readers may not remember bygone decades driving through a plague of locusts when they would hit your windscreen like hail. These days the thoughtful agricultural chemical producers have solved this problem by eliminating something like 90% of insects world-wide in the last forty years or so. Before long they could well take this wonderful profit-based progress even further and eliminate all flowering plants. Then we will all be able to experience the extraordinary privilege of living in a desert.

In the meanwhile, Californian residents must have interesting times in locust plagues. Having one of these coming through your car window could make quite a difference to your day.

There was also a group of agricultural workers. They are protesting about low rates of pay for agricultural workers in an insufficiently regulated economy and involved in a form of industrial action known as a go-slow. They are taking this very literally.

You will notice that behind to the right is a tall thin sculpture from the prehistoric era before wifi. It is called a telegraph pole. No-one is sure what a telegraph was. Some kind of precursor to wifi, it seems, using fender telecasters and some kind of drawings.

Here are a couple of ground sloths but they were too preoccupied to notice me. When photographing wildlife you have to be quite sensitive to the situation and not for example wander right up to a ground sloth or a bear to take a selfie.

The largest ground sloths come in at four tonnes and six metres long (20 feet). I’m not sure how big this one was and I didn’t weigh it.

You might think it is surprising to see a Chinese dragon in California but their range has been increasing.

You can see it is shimmying along through the desert sand and this is because it has burrowed through all the way from China.

I didn’t see it breathing any fire but if you sneak up behind it and touch its skin, you can see that it can get very very hot.

Some say that the Chinese Dragon is casting a larger shadow these days but I didn’t really notice that while I was here.

That massive tongue looks almost like the trunk of an elephant so perhaps dragons evolved into elephants.

This looks to be just an ordinary elephant. Perhaps it escaped from a zoo.

There were also a couple of locals here, who appeared to be having navigational difficulties with their vehicle.

I asked them what they were doing there but they didn’t want to talk to me or even acknowledge me so I went off in a huff. (A huff is a somewhat impractical motor vehicle that is a cross between a Hummer and a Fiat 500).

Borrego Palm Canyon

Oct24

Borrego Palm Canyon, Salton Sea, California USA, 30 September 2016

This is a map of our journey to LA, the Salton Sea and Joshua National Park. You may need to click on it to see more detail (all images are larger if you click on them).

Dawn at the Salton Sea.

We drove from LA 160 miles (260km) WSW to Salton City on the Salton Sea. We were guests of Jeni Bate who I had met online through our respective WordPress sites. She showed us around the Salton Sea area and we had a great time. I highly recommend you visit her Art Website: Skyscapes for the Soul.

(More on the ecology and history of the area in a later post).

We headed west from Salton City in the morning. This is a view from the side of the road, perhaps at Montezuma Valley Road Lookout.

We stopped for lunch in the small town of Borrego and saw an exhibition of Jeni’s paintings at the Borrego Art Institute.

This whole area is desert of course. We’re now heading towards Borrego Palm Canyon in Anzo-Borrego Desert State Park. This appears to be at the Borrego Palm Canyon Trailhead.

In the canyon now. This is a barrel cactus.

A hummingbird feeding on an ocotillo (fouquieria splendens).

We met other walkers who had seen bighorn sheep up on the rocky sides of the mountains but we didn’t see them. (Borrego is the Spanish word for these sheep).

Our destination is a grove of Californian Palms (washingtonia filifera), fed by spring water.

The palms can grow up to 20 to 25 metres (60 to 80 feet).

Heading back. An ocotillo in a barren landscape.

Desert cacti, perhaps clavellina cholla.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

Oct17

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, LA California USA, 1 October 2016

The previous post was at the Pavilion for Japanese Art at LACMA; this is from our viewing of the rest of the Art Museum. (Click images for larger size).

Royal Peacock Barge, West Bengal, India, late 19th century.

Miniature ivory depiction of pleasure boat of the Nawab of Bengal.

This is a very modern installation, dated to just before the time we were visiting. It is perhaps somewhere between pop art, dada and surrealism. The artist is not credited.

The assemblage is somewhat anachronistic amongst historical exhibits but does include some references to 19th century Indian works. It is perhaps intended to depict the sense of wonder at the extent to which modern art styles can sometimes diverge from the traditional.

Panel, Gururat, India, early 18th century.

Wood applique with bone; brass roundels.

Altar cabinet, Kham region, eastern Tibet, 19th – 20th century.

Wood with mineral pigments and gilding; brass fittings.

Hindu God Vishnu, Angkor, Cambodia. c. 950AD (sandstone).

Folio from a Buddhist manuscript illustrated with Buddha’s birth stories (Thailand c. 1860-80), atop Sutra Box (Thailand 1920-40, wood laquer and gold leaf).

Buddha Shakyamuni, Sukothai, Thailand, 14th-15th century (copper alloy).

Maharishi (Great Sage) Agastya, Lakhi Sarai, Bihar, India, 12th century (chloritoid phyllite).

Dancer’s headpiece in the form of Hindu Godess Kali, Kerala, India, late 15th century (wood with paint).

The Goddess Sarasvati, Gujurat, India, 1153 by Jagadeva.

Sarasvati, goddess of wisdom and knowledge, embodies the mediæval Indian concept of feminine beauty. Jagadeva was commisioned to create this sculpture to replace an earlier sculpture of Sarasvati that was dedicated in a Jain temple in 1069 but damaged in 1152.

The Hindu Goddess Kali, Kerala, India, 17th century (wood with traces of paint).

Athena, 2nd century Roman copy of Greek original from the late 5th century BC School of Pheidas.

Athena is the Greek goddess of wisdom and of war waged for just causes. She wears a breastplate decorated with the heads of gorgons, the monsters whose piercing gaze turned people who met their eyes to stone. The hollow eye sockets indicate that eyes were originally inlaid and of course, as with all ancient Greek and Roman sculptures, she would originally have been painted in bright colours. The statue was excavated at Ostia, the port of Rome, in 1797.

Portrait of Cosimo I de’ Medici (1519-1574), c. 1572 by Giovanni Bandini (also called Giovanni dell’Opera) (marble).

Madonna and child in a landscape c. 1496-1499 by Cima de Conegliano (Oil on panel).

Saint Crispin (France, c. 1500 (limestone with traces of polychromy).

Saint Crispan is the patron saint of shoe makers. He and his brother Saint Crispian were tortured for their Christian beliefs and beheaded in 285AD.

The Swineherd, 1888, by Paul Gauguin (oi; on canvas).

La Place du Théâtre Français, 1898, by Camille Pissaro (oil on canvas).

Le Havre, bâteaux de peche sortant du port (fishing boats leaving the port), 1874, Claude Monet.

Cabinet, c. 1650-75, from Grand Ducal Workshops (Galleria dei Lavori), (ebony, marble, jasper, lapis lazuli and various hard stones, and bronze with gilding).

The birds and flowers that appear to be painted are actually hundreds of pieces of richly hued pietre dure or hard stones, so the designs are laboriously painted in stone.

Eagle-headed demon ritually expelling sickness and evil spirits from the house, possible purifying anyone entering the King’s living room.

This and following reliefs once adorned the interior walls of the palace of the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II (reigned 883-859 BC). They are from ancient Kalhu (now called Nimrud). He was the first Assyrian king to use stone panels on the interior wall of his palace which was built in mud brick on a stone foundation. The reliefs were originally painted in black, white, red and blue.

In 879 BC Ashurnasirpal held a large festival to celebrate the construction of his new capital which remained the centre of the Assyrian Empire for 150 years. It was surrounded by a massive city wall forty-two feet high (thirteen metres) and five miles long (eight kilometres). At that time it bordered on the Tigris River.

A winged human-headed genie wearing a double bull horn mitre that may be a supernatural projection of the king.

He holds a conical fruit that he has presumably dipped in the bucket of pollen held in preparation for fertilisation of the Tree of Life, an important symbol in Assyrian religious belief.

The king holds a libation bowl and a bow, and he is accompanied by a human-headed genie carrying a bucket. Both are engaged in ritual ceremony.

Fragment of a painted Assyrian relief, Neo-Assyrian dynasty, Northern Iraq, 7th century BC (limestone).

It probably depicts King Sargon (reigned 722-705 BC) and still shows traces of the colourful paint that once adorned all Assyrian reliefs.

Head of a Royal Guard from Persepolis, Achæmenid period, Southern Iran, 5th century BC (limestone).

This fragment once belonged to the inner decorated panel of the eastern staircase of the Apadana, the sumptuous audience hall of the Achæmenid kings at Persepolis.

20th century sculpture but I missed the label. Giacometti maybe?

Netsuke Gallery, LACMA

Oct11

Netsuke Gallery, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, LA California USA, 1 October 2016

Close by La Brea Tar Pits, we next visited the Pavillion for Japanese Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (ACMNA).

Haniwa Horse from 6th century.

Haniwa are terracotta clay figures buried with the dead as funerary objects. They are from the Kofun period of 3rd to 6th century AD, when horses were first domesticated in Japan and this would have been from the grave of an important person, probably in Southern Honshu.

Chest of drawers from the 18th century. Lacquer over wood with gold and silver flakes.

It is decorated with several views around Lake Biwa and was made for the lord of Hikone Castle.

Jar from Kamakura period, c. 1200-1400AD.

Tokoname ware; coil-built stoneware with ash glaze.

Female Shinto deity, 14th century.

Due to a close association of Shinto with the Imperial Court, such figures were shown in court robes as real people and were kept in close shrines, not viewable by devotees.

Sake bottles, 17th to 19th centuries.

Contemporary vessel by Shimizu Ichiji, 2012.

Stoneware with sprayed slip decoration.

(No description. I didn’t photograph the label).

Daruma by Torei Enji, hanging scroll, ink on silk, 18th century.

Daruma was the semi-legendary Zen Master who brought Zen from China to Japan in the early 6th century. Torei Enji was himself an eminent Zen Master who wrote a description of Zen practice, still read today, entitled “The undying Lamp of Zen”.

Kanzan and Jittoku by Shunso Shoju, ink on paper, late 18th or early 19th century.

Kanzan and Jittoku were enlightened people who lived on Cold Mountain (Hanshan) in China in about the 9th century and they are symbolically represented in this drawing. Here is a poem by Kanzan (or Hanshan to the Chinese):

Men ask the way through the clouds,

The cloud’s way dark, without a sign.

High summits are of naked rock.

In deep valleys sun never shines.

Behind you green peaks, and in front,

To east the white clouds, and to west –

Want to know where the cloud way lies?

It’s there, in the centre of the Void!

(No description. I didn’t photograph the label).

This is the first of the netsuke. Three others follow. They are unique to Japan and because kimono had no pockets. Instead, the Japanese used inro or segmented hanging boxes. They were on a cord which went through the netsuke and attached to the obi or kimono sash. The netsuke prevented the inro and cord slipping out from beneath the obi.

They needed to be light and small yet strong and support a hole through them so they are masterpieces of miniature design.

European archer, 18th century.

La Brea Tar Pits

Oct3

Los Angeles, California USA, 29 September 2016

I had long been interested in visiting the La Brea Tar Pits. It’s a place where oil oozes to the surface and forms asphalt. This in turn becomes covered with water and leaves. Animals wander in and become trapped and then predators come and they are trapped too. This has been happening for up to 38,000 years and still happens to some extent today although the areas are now fenced off. The bodies of the trapped animals are preserved in the asphalt.

This is Harlan’s Ground Sloth ((Glossotherium Harlani). It was a little under two metres tall and 700 kilos in weight. The largest giant sloth was six metres long (including the tail) and weighed four tonnes.

Antique Bison (Bison Antiquus). It had a larger body, larger hump and larger horns than the surviving species.

On the left and centre, American Mastadon (Mammut Americanus). They had shorter legs, a longer body and tusks up to five metres long, as compared to modern elephants (not close relatives). On the right is an extinct camel, Camelus Hesternus, a bit larger than modern camels and probably with one hump. Camels evolved in the Americas and this species was likely exterminated by the arrival of humans.

Colombian Mammoth (Mammathus Columbi), up to four metres tall and ten tonnes in weight. Tusks could be up to five metres long. It is not clear to what extent climate change or human hunting was responsible for their extinction.

Large Game of Thrones puppy, or alternatively, Dire Wolf (Canis Dirus). It was probably a little larger than the largest wolves today but had stronger jaws and bite.

Big Pussycat or Naegele’s Giant Jaguar (Panthera Atrox), also known as the American Lion. It was larger than both a Siberian tiger and a Sabre-Toothed Cat. There is some doubt as to whether it was closer to today’s lions or jaguars. Jaguars, though, have one of the strongest bites of all animals behind only some crocodiles and hippos, stronger than tigers, so if it was more like a jaguar it wold have had a fearsome bite.

Sabre-toothed Cat (Smilodon Fatalis), about the same size as a African lion but much more heavily built. It was an ambush predator and died out due to climate change.

An exposed section of tar pit.

Jamaica to USA

Sep26

Jamaica and USA, 22 September 2016

This is from a flight from Montego Bay, Jamaica to Charleston, South Carolina. A later flight to Los Angeles was at night and I didn’t take any photographs on that one.

Houses at the water’s edge near the airport in Montego Bay.

A couple of hours above the Florida coast. West Palm Beach maybe.

All the cloud shots are not far apart.

Approaching Charleston.

America – the land of individuality?

Charleston in the distance.

When we got to Charleston, we had to wait for maybe hours in a long security queue while the time to catch the next flight faded away. A German couple near us tried to jump the queue to where some friends of theirs were, but they were seen by officials and sent to the very last place in the line.

When I got to LA and picked up a rental car near the airport, I had to return to get the rental company to show me how to get the drivers seat back up. I had found a control to recline it but had gone too far and that control didn’t put it back up(!). There was a different control in a different location for that.

Then when I got onto the crowded freeway (at night) I found that the side mirrors were electronic and I couldn’t tell how far away other cars were. That made changing lanes quite freaky. Still, we got where we needed to go without incident.

I also spent a fair amount of time this week dealing with corrupted images and backups. When I came to start considering my California images for processing, I found I had 300 corrupted and unusable images. My backup to the Cloud is supposed to go back to 2017 when I started Cloud backup but the relevant backup only went back to May which must be when I had a motherboard change. My local backup to a Drobo was no good because only have enough space to retain recent backups. But I do have an old backup to disk from 2017. At first that seemed inaccessible but I eventually retrieved the files I needed from it. This just goes to show the value of the old adage that you should always have three separate backups.

Jamaica Monochromes

Sep20

26 to 30 September 2016, Jamaica.

Links go to colour posts (for more information and context). If an image does not have a link, the preceding one applies.

Click on any image to see it larger.

Arriving at Treasure Beach.

Appleton Rum Refinery.

Treasure Beach.

Early rum still.

Treasure Beach.

Sunrise at Treasure Beach.

Black River.

From Treasure Beach to Black River.

Floyd’s Pelican Bar.

Undermined house at mouth of Black River. Notice the front stairs as well as the angle of the house.

Passing boat.

Passing canoe.

Black River.

Crocodile.

Captain Ted, our skipper.

Floyd’s Pelican Bar

Floyd’s Pelican Bar.

Continuing on…

Treasure Beach.

South West Coast.

Treasure Beach to Montego Bay

Roadside refreshments and shells.

Yellow-faced Grasquit, female or immature male.

Jamaican Mango.

Bananaquit.

The red-billed streamertail (Trochilus polytmus), also known as the doctor bird, scissor-tail or scissors tail hummingbird, the national bird of Jamaica.

Plymouth (Montserrat) Monochromes

Sep12

22 to 25 September 2016, Montserrat

Plymouth has been described as “the Vesuvius of the Caribbean”. See this post . for a detailed account of the eruptions and the history of Montserrat.

Links go to colour posts (for more information and context). If an image does not have a link, the preceding one applies.

Click on any image to see it larger.

Plymouth (Montserrat).

Montserrat Springs Hotel.

Montserrat Monochromes 1

Sep5

22 to 25 September 2016, Montserrat

Links go to colour posts (for more information and context). If an image does not have a link, the preceding one applies.

Click on any image to see it larger.

Redonda.

Antigua to Montserrat.

Montserrat.

East coast of Montserrat and volcano.

Brades Fire Station.

Montserrat – North and East Coast – and History.

(Note the comprehensive account of the dramatic history of Montserrat in this post).

Lookout Yard Sugar Mill

Lookout Yard Sugar Mill.

Post-eruption housing.

Trant’s.

New lava coastline at trant’s.

Buried sugar mill, Trants.

Buried buildings, Trants.

Main road, north of Plymouth.

Montserrat Springs Hotel.

St Anthony’s Church.

Air Studios.

Back on the main road.

Soufrière Hills Volcano.

Waterworks Estate.

Sunset.

Milky way at night (click to see more).

Bunkum Bay Beach.

Treasure Beach to Montego Bay.

Antigua Monochromes

Aug29

18-22 September 2016, Antigua

Links go to posts with the colour versions of the images (where there may also be more information and context). If an image does not have a link, the preceding one applies. (Click on any image to see it larger).