Dogs on the Trail

When I see someone with their dog more than once, it's the dog I recognise more than the person.  There is a guy with a Dalmation that I see on Rose Hills Road.  At least in this case, I know the guys name but not the dog's.  I also see a couple on Workman Hill with a Bichon Frise.  I'm impressed with the dog because it is so light on its feet.  I used to see a middle aged Asian guy on the Skyline trail with a dog of indeterminate breed that always had its right ear sticking up and the left ear flopping over.  And now there is a guy in the neighborhood who has a couple of friendly pitbulls.

I've felt for a long time that dogs (and people) are better behaved off leash.  There was a young lady at the park the other day with a black shepherd off leash.  I made the usual clicking sounds with my tongue so that neither one would be too surprised.  That dog was actually a little timid.  I have a fond memory of meeting a couple with 3 dogs off leash on the Rincon-Shortcut fire road.  I could see how happy those dogs were because 1) they were with their favorite people, 2) they were out in the wilds where things smell so great and 3) they got to go off leash.  And finally, I remember a black lab running kind of sideways up a dirt road in anticipation of getting petted (by me).

Swifts

I was running laps around the fields behind the Cypress Community Center and Cypress High School.  I was playing around with the route and running on the track (since it wasn't muddy) to make 4 laps add up to 8 miles.  One thing I noticed is that right around the geographical center at the border between the Community Center and the High School, swifts (a bird) would start flying laps around me.  One even flew just a few feet in front of me and they always fly within 3 feet of the ground.
After looking it up, it looks like these were white throated swifts (by a process of elimination).  Including wings, they are about the size of one of my hands with wings that are pointed at the tips and two pointed tips at the two corners of their tail.  When they fly, they are completely silent and maneuver very well.  They stop flying in my vicinity when I'm close to a fence and they don't want to fly through a 5 foot wide gap between me and the fence.
The behavior of most animals seems motivated either by food or by family with a few of the more intelligent animals having food related behavior bordering on play.  Crows for instance take a behavior related to stealing eggs - forcefully dropping an egg to break it - and make it more like playing with a ball.  We've had crows dropping immature persimmon fruit on our roof - we can hear it bouncing and the crows chasing after it.  I once saw some crows that had a round plastic container from a vending machine, dropping the container on the sloping side of a levee and hopping down the levee to keep up with the bouncing plastic ball.
So my first guess at the swift activity was that they were trying to intimidate me by "buzzing" me when I got close to their nest.  After reading about their feeding activity where they catch insects while flying, perhaps they expected me to attract insects (as cattle and horses do) and were hoping to pick up something to eat.  They didn't strike me as intimidating, partially because they fly so low.  Hummingbirds, for instance, buzz people, etc in a definitely intimidating fashion, flying directly overhead.  Hummingbirds also have that diving behavior although that strikes me as mating related.
Anyway, if you have some knowledge of white throated swift behavior or can correct my guesses in some way, I'd like to hear about it.

Those Wacky Vultures!

Well maybe comical, not wacky.  On my way home from Silverado Canyon, right about where I left the walls of the canyon, I saw a vulture, perched on an electrical or phone line.  It wasn't holding its balance that well, wobbling back and forth.  I usually see vultures perched on a tree or something a little more solid.

Usually the way I see vultures is when they are soaring and not flapping their wings at all.  I have seen vultures standing on the ground in the morning with their wings spread in the sun to warm up.  We did see a number of them gliding in to trade opinions about how to open up a dead seal on the beach by Arroyo Grande.

Still trudging after all these years

Despite getting food poisoning and crashing my bike in the past month, my main physical issue is ITB problems. I finally decided that it was an ITB flavored knee problem a couple of days ago. So after researching it, I decided that I'm already doing plenty of hip exercises but that I could get the foam roller out and also add a specific exercise for flexing the knee. I did those two yesterday, then ran my usual Rose Hill Road repeats today (increasing my repeats by one) and didn't have much of a problem with my knee. Of course, I need to get in shape because it is the time of year for... the Titus Van Rijn One Hour Run. I have to complete this by June 14th. I'll probably do a one hour run on a dirt track every weekend from now until the deadline. So if I get around the ITB issue, the next issue will be fitness, I hope. And that's always a good issue to work on.
Rose Hill Road is currently very overgrown with wild mustard and thistles. This gives me two concerns, neither of which has materialized yet. The first concern is rattlesnakes. I saw a striped racer the other day and I have seen rattlesnakes in this area in the past so I know there is a potential. My guess (after finding a snake hiding under a plant in the past) is that the snakes are out there, they're just doing a good job of keeping out of trouble. So I'll continue to do as I suggested to some hikers today: watch where I step and step on the dirt (trail).
The second concern is ticks. I have picked up a few ticks in the past in this general area but I haven't seen any hitch a ride on me yet. Not much I can do about this other than not run on overgrown trails and I can't do that because that eliminates running hills for the most part.
So the current program alternates hill repeats with some tentative runs in the grass in the local park. I'm going to move the flat runs to the local dirt track tomorrow and just gradually push this program and try to get in shape of the TVR one hour.