Comet, gazelle making holes?

Friday afternoon: Gazelle, apparently without horns, spotted down in the pines just off valley road, just to the north of the central trail. Graceful warbler calls

Friday night went out to spot 17P Holmes, the comet orbiting between Mars and Jupiter that has inexplicably increased in brightness lately. The moon was almost full and quite high in the eastern sky which made eyeballing the comet pretty difficult but with binoculars it was possible. Husband patiently directed me to the right part of the north eastern sky, which can be tricky when so many more stars are visible through binos which are not part of the usual constellations but suddenly after passing the seventh star I came across something unusual and obvious- looked like a tiny bright spider cocoon up there but clearly greater in diameter than any of the stars. Wow! Mars was also visible, just risen above Adam in the north eastern sky.

My 11 year old son was excited to see it, his first comet and we all made the special blessing on such phenomena

'Baruch ata adon-ai elo-henu melech ha'olam, oseh m'aseh breishit'

'Blessed art thou our Lord, Our God, King of the universe, who does the work of Creation'

I like the fact the blessing is in the present tense.. 'oseh'= does, which implies an ongoing process rather than a one-off creation way back.

Saturday: Range 15-23 degrees C, 20 degrees C at 4 p.m. Wind in west, ~6kt

High altitude cyrrus clouds

Shortly before we left the yellow vented bulbuls were very active and vocal in the Bauhinia. Looking, it seemed like a 'chak chak' face off going on in there.. hard to tell how many between the large leaves but from the comings and goings up there and between individuals in the willow, seemed like two families involved. Border dispute between two of this year's families ?

Quiet quiet in terms of birds. In the old orchard we found a few mounds of gazelle droppings and some peculiar markings, at first I took them for small burrows, but a pair of them, like slanted eyes in shape. I thought at first they might have been made by the mole rats but unusual for them to leave such holes on the surface, especially a pair till husband said he'd noticed a couple more of these paired holes. We realised they could have been made by the buck gazelle poking his horns into the ground. Why would he do that?

Hyraxes active. There was a cat stalking nearby. Some of the adult hyraxes are almost the size of a cat and several together could definitely keep a cat at bay and protect babies. No doubt the cat was hoping to get lucky and find an unprotected youngster.

Just before dusk was the crow return to roost flyby.. today just a scattered band of about a dozen hooded crows returning from the north. Some Jackdaw calls, Syrian woodpeckers quite active, some calls and several noticed in flight, and quite long flights between different sections of the area. Jays active as usual,

This evening approaching 10 p.m. sky was clear, plenty stars, moon, Mars out but felt cool drops of water on my face. A dew was settling on me- humidity was up to about 95% at that time and it was condensing in the cool of the evening.