Autumn Maple Leaves

While photographing these autumn Maple leaves...
I discovered this Bushtit bird nest...
...in the tree where all the leaves were gone. 

Beeboo Flying High

Beeboo flying high at Lou's birthday party. 

Straw Bale House in Sunizona

The owner gave me a tour of this straw bale house. It was beautiful both inside and out. You can just barely see the design in the border between the brown and the white adobe. 

This is a single twig from a tumbleweed plant. Notice the flowers near the bottom. The stickers were very sharp. The real name for this plant is Russian Thistle, and it is not native to America. 

Is this a horned toad? I think he was full grown, but only a bit larger than a tree frog. 

black lizard, with gold and green spots. These guys were all over the place, but moved quickly, and were hard to photograph. 

Bilbo Baggins' Misty Mountains (Chiricahua in foreground, New Mexico in background) 

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Here's a real cowboy, with the shirt, boots and hat. 

"Red hot lava" socks 

My favorite, an 8" Dobsonian mount and tube, made entirely out of wood. The outer layer of that tube was made from a single sheet of Mahogany veneer. 

This is a really big telescope. That is a ten foot tall ladder next to it...used by the operator when he wants to climb up and look through the eyepiece. 

This is a 20" diameter, Discovery brand telescope, featuring a Dobsonian mount with struts instead of a tube, and a cloth light baffle. The telescope was also equipped with a micro-electronic "object sensor" to detect when it was pointing at the object the operator requested. 

Here's the back end of the 20" Discovery. You can see the giant chunk of glass. 

The field of telescopes, wearing UV-protective rain coats. Don't they look like a bunch of aliens?