Strange, strange shadows this evening: sharp and long and very dark, slicing the brightly lit outside in zigzags.

The bigger birds and one squirrel didn’t care but the finches, titmice, and chickadees went home to bed, leaving the birdseed untouched from then on.

We drove through that weirdly semi-Decembery black and white light and went to Nina and Rod’s. Where old friends were gathering and looked at the eclipse with special goggles and chatted into the night.

And almost forgot to actually sing it. To a very good man: Happy Birthday, Rod!

I drove to San Jose near sundown to see the peregrines in person; it’s that time of year. I didn’t get around to it last year and I wasn’t going to miss it again–it’s the birds but it’s also most definitely the people.

Old friends were there: Eric, the gifted photographer who gave me one of his photos two years ago; he let me see the babies on the ledge through his camera on a tripod. They would flap their wings mightily and then hop down and back into the nestbox with their siblings (via the streaming video Alicia had on her Iphone), not ready to take off like the one that oh oops fell over backwards yesterday while preening on the ledge and had to start flapping fast. That was Cobalt, and he has flown well since then–and he had the sense to stay put all night last night. He has gained some altitude in his flights, something they have to learn fast.

Meantime, the three surviving San Francisco fledglings are soaring happily.

Debbie and her sister Gerri (did I spell that right?) arrived. Debbie had come from Reno, and I was very honored that they both made a point of seeing me. Two hats, one knitted like feathers. I wish I’d had one for Eric and everybody else for that matter, but it was okay; he already had an official one, a baseball cap with a falcon embroidered on it. Hard to beat that.

And a good evening was had by all.

Three to fledge yet here. Tomorrow will be a big day for them.

After two years of 100% mortality rate at fledging, the San Francisco peregrine falcon nest has two young males getting good at this flying thing, one female starting to get the idea, and the second female–Amelia (see her fledge starting at 7:29), who had seemed reluctant to go out there, I’m sorry to say didn’t survive today’s attempts.

In the busy middle of downtown, volunteers were trying to follow the birds’ movements to protect the little ones. They take off not only before their flight feathers are fully in, but the feather shafts are still full of blood for that growth, adding weight for extra clumsiness. They have to learn to land with wings as well as with the feet that have been all they’ve really manuevered around the ground with before then.

One male found himself sliding sideways backwards and about to fall off a skyscraper, when his mother came zooming in and body-checked him back up into the gutter where he had a chance to straighten out and fly right. And after catching his breath, he did. Thanks Mom! That was on Mother’s Day.

While the parents kept close watch but were being outnumbered, each of the four eyases took a turn at being rescued: put in a box, taken up in the elevator to the nestbox on the 33d floor of PG&E, doused with water to slow their heart rates and calm them down, and given a second chance.

Here and here are Perry a few days ago, the first to try: he chipped his beak hitting a building and was on the ground stunned, but now he is enjoying this whole airborne idea. And beaks grow like fingernails.

Last year that nest and the San Jose one were in sync, but this year ours was delayed a week by males fighting for Clara and territory. The eggs sat there waiting, which is fine, and incubation only began after things were decided and the new male had taken over. The count to hatching starts not from laying but from when the parents start keeping them warm.

So our fledge watch is about to begin. The males, who being smaller don’t have to put as much time into growing, tend to go first, and ours are getting antsy to try.

And I have old falcon friends to see, too. Friday evening I’ll be there!

Six more rows on that small shawl…

I headed down to Los Gatos Birdwatcher today to pick up some sunflower chips. I had a little time before rush hour traffic would hit going back, so just for fun in that very fun shop I looked around.

Felted birdhouses. I hadn’t seen them before (and you know I would have noticed.) They had delightful, colorful, felted wool birdhouses, with the holes just the right size–you don’t want cowbirds parasitizing the nests nor jays raiding them. The edges of the holes curved inward just so; these were carefully crafted.

I almost pulled out my phone to take a picture, but thought, nah, this is someone else’s artwork. I’ll just put the idea out there–I wonder if anyone else will run with it. I know I’d like to. (And then, I just found this page, but these too are different ones.)

Bird yurts. My wrens would love them.

(With a ps to the new teenage squirrel swaggering around today: let me explain. If I open the door, you run. If I raise the supersoaker, you run. If I soak you, and you didn’t like it, and you didn’t catch the connection between me, it, you, and being soaked, well–that’s why we had a do over.

Now do you get it?)

The jays and I have it down to an occasional dance: they land, I tell them Git, and they show off their beautiful wings and flight patterns.

Only, today I told one “No!” instead and it hesitated: You didn’t say Simon says!

Oh okay, and I gave it the obligatory proper Git while trying not to wreck the effect laughing. There you go, and it was off and away.

Knitting: I picked up a project that someone’s mom has been waiting for me to make for her daughter, and it’s a perfectly fine lace scarf–in sheared mink, fer cryin’ out loud–but I had put it down to pack for our trips and somehow just hadn’t been getting back to it again.

Sunday seemed a particularly good day for knitting for someone else.

Well then.

And so. I haven’t cast off yet, I haven’t blocked it yet to see if it needs more length to it or not (I don’t think so), but for now, I’m calling it essentially done.

And it is so soft. Featherweight. Remember that story in my book? Don’t let the jays near it.

Thank you everybody for the kind words re Uncle Rosel.

Before we left for the graduations, I stuffed three suet cake holders, one new, one extra big, to try to feed the birds after the feeder would be running dry.

During those two weeks a lot of the new baby birds that were just starting to show up got a lot bigger, and again this year we have a junco/house finch hybrid, though I haven’t seen the parental pair this season (that’s an old picture); the little offspring is tiny with short legs and absolutely adorable.

But. There was now a threesome of Pacific scrub jays, and I’m assuming they were young ones just starting to look to find their own place, but that’s a guess. Gorgeous birds, but they are cousins of crows with the bad manners to match and they had totally taken over in our absence.

My beloved wrens had vanished. My towhees wouldn’t come up on the box where I can see them better–I didn’t even see one anywhere for the first few days.

Hey. Where was everybody?

A black-headed grosbeak showed up briefly. That helped.

I found I couldn’t put food out for the ground feeders or the jays not only would take it, they bullied everyone else away–even the squirrels are afraid of them. There’s always been a little of this, but not the constant bombardment happening now.

And so for the last two days, with a shawl project in hand that I wanted done fast, I set myself up in front of the glass door with a loaded supersoaker. I knitted. I kept my eyes up.

At first they were swooping in constantly, one after another, tag-teaming me, it seemed. I had set out suet crumbles and they wanted them badly: this was *their* territory.

Oh no it’s not! Let’s set that straight right now, folks.

They watched me all day: if I went out of the room, they were there the moment my head went around the corner. I could yell all I wanted but they knew I could not get that door open and that squirt gun raised in time to actually get them wet, that they had time to scoop up a beakful before running. Again and again and again. But I still squirted in their direction in a display of territory.

Gradually, though, the challenges grew further apart. They even stopped scooping the food, just flying in behind the tomato plants (temporarily near the end of the box) as if I wouldn’t see them and then giving up and flying after I yelled and approached.

We repeated that little bit of drama today, only, this time I pulled a magazine over the food any time I walked out. Should have thought of that sooner.

And today, for the first time since we came back, a towhee dared come back up on that box again. One of the Bewick’s wrens made an appearance at the far end of the patio. The Oregon juncos and oak titmice and chestnut-backed chickadees had a grand old time. And at about 7:30 I finished the shawl.

The biologist who writes for the local paper says that jays, like mockingbirds, are great mimics. He tells of one that sounded like a truck backing up, another that parroted speech.

I wonder which neighbor is going to hear one singing, Hey! GIT!

Today was banding day: three males, one female peregrine eyas at San Jose City Hall. If you’re curious, there’s a condensed video here: Glenn Stewart from UC Santa Cruz rappelling down from the roof to the top of the hvac unit with its ledges around it, the female (the biggest) sqawking and pecking at him as he works…

…And the thing that was novel to me was the sound. Glenn had a videocam on his helmet this year. I’ve heard descriptions of the kakking, of people hearing the indignant parents from 18 floors below and several city blocks away, but this was the first time I’ve ever been able to really know what they were talking about and I am very grateful for that new helmetcam.

Richard finally asked if I might want to turn it down?

Meantime, right here at my own patio was the swift swooping-by of my own Cooper’s hawk. Let the wild rumpus start!

How on earth did it get up there! Again!

The first time, the morning after we got home, an all-black squirrel was on top of the suet cage I’d kept above Kim’s birdfeeder. In three years, no squirrel had ever reached either one no matter how enticing they had ever seemed: they had checked it out and decided it couldn’t be done and that was that.

But we went out of town, the bigger birdfeeder ran out, and the other must have still been loaded.

The first thing I noticed when we got home was that Kim’s beautiful stained-glass feeder was smashed on the ground. But that was the pretty one!

Years ago, Richard ran some insulated wiring through a hole he drilled at the top of the wall of his home office at the foot of the L of the patio.  A few hours after the first time I caught him, I looked up from the computer and somehow that same squirrel was swinging on those wires high above my nose on the other side of the glass, trying to find a new path to that suet cake and not sure how to make the leap from there–the angle of them was totally wrong. How he got there I can only make a wild guess.

Nothing but glass and height between us and it knew it was caught again. Only, this time it missed its intended halfway-down point and fell seven feet straight down to the concrete.

And that was that. Order was restored. I hoped.

I’d been missing my usual black-and-red squirrel but he had disappeared. And yet this morning, he was back in his usual post, in charge of all things patio like before as if he’d never left–and the all-black one with the gap in his tail was gone.

And then I went outside.

Oh.

Well maybe the others won’t copy his leaps after all, not after that. He got carried away with it. I know a talon-toed chef who clearly served squirrel for breakfast.

Lots and lots of things I had thought I would get done today, but it turned out to be a good one for resting up and taking it easy. Found the right yarn for my aunt. Swatched a pattern idea. Nixed it.

Then an email came in: a friend had a severe migraine and a daughter to pick up at the airport in less than an hour. Help?

And so her daughter and I had a great visit all the way home, a rare treat when it’s someone else’s college kid coming back. I thought she was surely joking when she mentioned it was cold (it was 72) but no; her university’s in Hawaii, and she was laughing at herself for de-acclimatizing so easily. (I’d love to visit her campus…)

That got me going, and so I went to Milk Pail to get the manufacturing cream to make chocolate tortes for the people who gave us our own rides to and from the airport this past week.

And…  Just before dusk, in the blink of an eye and then gone, a Cooper’s hawk swerved under the birdfeeder and over the black squirrel that had no idea that that was something he should be worried about.  I got to see one of my hawks! I’m home.

The early bird flew down, grabbed at a worm but it got away, hopped a few feet over thataway (it had just stopped raining) and went for another and missed again. The robin flew.

Awhile later, 10:30 or so, a robin came again. It went straight to the first spot, only, this bird leaned its head sideways close to the ground, listening and quickly looking down a few times and bam!  Got it! It stretched and stretched what had to have been a meal big enough to last all day or to feed a whole nestful.

All the bird had needed was patient watching and listening.

We have such a patient daughter-in-law. Our son Richard is, too.

We had great fun watching and listening and playing with and cheering up a tired Parker today. It’s hard to sleep in new exciting places where you might miss out on something if you didn’t stay awake every minute (except 20 of them that snatched him despite his best efforts.)

He was easily cheered. I told his mother, he is so clearly a well-loved child.

The squirrels always watch me carefully when I reach for the sandals just inside the door: this means business. They’ll tense,  turn halfway so as to run but not taking their eyes off me, frozen and ready to explode in motion.

Because if I’m putting those sandals on it means I’m serious. I’m coming into their territory.

I put some suet out for the ground birds today and needed to run an errand and just really didn’t want it all to go to the bushytails while the towhees and wrens and juncos and golden-crowned sparrows got nothing . Hmm.

And so, for the first time, I tried putting those sandals outside to stand guard, remembering the chant of childhood: stinky feet smell my feet give me something good to eat.

Or not.

None of the squirrels would even come back to the patio, and an hour later the suet was untouched.  Somehow even the bluejay stayed away, and it’s been pretty aggressive lately (I assume while feeding nestlings).

Huh. Well, that worked!

I’ll have to keep it a novelty, though.

(I’m putting in some old photos to show off some of my patterns.)

I was at the pharmacy today and admired–out loud–the beautiful handknit shawl in muted plums the woman next to me was wearing.  The yarn was clearly hand dyed, and I asked her, Madeline Tosh?

Another knitter! She was thrilled. We ended up sitting down together and talking lace shawls, parting reluctantly only because she had to leave for her doctor’s appointment.

And I now knew why I’d gone out the door wishing I were wearing some of my knitting, but the afternoon was a bit warm for it. But I tell you: she totally made my day.

And to add a total non sequitur that is close to my heart, remembering that opossum: please. Make sure you’re all the way awake before you try to chase marauding wildlife away from your birdfeeders.

Coming home from church, Richard saw it too during a red light and exclaimed, “That’s a big one!” The sun shone through its feathers enough to verify that our Zone-tailed hawk was back, the one with the eight-octave wings.

Only, instead of soaring at a leisurely pace towards the decimation of its frantic prey like before, a crow that was losing distance fast, this time, a robin-size bird was attacking it. It was cartoonish: the littler bird was I think less than the size of the feet of the monstrous other, but it veered at the intruder again and again (not quite making contact), You leave my babies ALONE! Get OUT!

A good natured, Well all right, then. And it Zoned out.

Later in the evening, there was a reception held by old friends of Karen Bentley Pollick while she was in town and she had invited me to come. I felt a little the intruder compared to her childhood friends she would be seeing but I was looking forward to it.

Before I ever got in the door there, I saw an elderly couple talking to someone outside, she in a motorized chair unable to go up the front steps, he standing, and in delight I exclaimed, That’s got to be Doris!

I stepped to where she could see me, with ohmygoshwhatareYOUdoing here! on both sides.

Doris was the first lupus patient I ever met after my own diagnosis, the one who took me under her wing and helped me get used to the idea of facing a major disease for the rest of my life. Thank you Karen for making it so I got to see her again! Doris has survived postpolio syndrome, lupus, and breast cancer, and at 81 she’s still going and ready to party. Her Don is a peach and I have no doubt his support has had a great deal to do with it.

We reminisced a bit and they couldn’t believe my babies were so grown up. Three graduating from grad school this Spring? How! Wow.

I got a moment to talk to him inside and thanked him for looking after her all these years–and the sudden, nakedly grateful look on his face surprised me. Someone knew.

He asked how I was doing. I said, I’m doing well enough now to be able to say that this is what I waited twenty-two years since my diagnosis to get to. It is nice to be at this point.

And I wished silently that Doris’s progressive postpolio syndrome could have had that as an option.

Don is one of the best, with an easy laugh that sees the two of them through much.

I’ve got me a good one, too.  And today he looked up with me and we enjoyed the show in the sky together.

Paraphrasing there.

An intense day: a noon lupus meeting–and I couldn’t find a place to park without a lot of sun time.  Which I cannot risk. After driving all the way over there, I simply had to bag it.

Which was okay–I was going to have to leave early anyway, because I got an email last night that a friend needed a ride to her eye doctor three towns away. Dilate and wait, rush hour traffic coming back.

Annnnd…

I had promised to bring dinner to someone else at six.

I drove her, I waited, I knitted, I dropped her off at home, I went straight to Costco. It was past 5:30 when I got out of there with a rotisserie chicken and enough extras to keep them happy, apologizing for the lack of creative input thereto. Done.

Sat down finally at home with some Costco pizza, my first meal in seven hours and all I could do at that point–sorry for not waiting, Richard–and collapsed into a chair at last.

And saw the bottom half of a hawk swooping past the very top of the window.

Nobody on the bird feeders, sorry; my pepperoni’s too salty and really not what you’d like. I walked out of the room. Back a few minutes later, in time to see what I at first thought were falling olive leaves and then realized were feathers. Somewhere the Cooper’s had found its favorite, a dove.

But wait. Trees. Angle. Distance. Wind? How were they falling exactly there?

I wasn’t the only one who was fascinated. A young black squirrel on the patio didn’t run for cover, didn’t duck under the picnic table at the last second and hide on the chair legs like I saw one do last year–it loped over to the center of the grass and then stood on its hind legs, stretching upwards, sniffing as far as its nose could reach, staring, clearly, at the hawk. (My view up there was hampered by the awning.)

I remembered the one last year that liked to taunt the Cooper’s and how predictably that eventually turned out.

Then this one took off up the tree to get an even closer look.

Dude!

Didn’t your momma ever teach you not to get in a tree with strangers?

The first fledgling of Spring landed on my patio today: a baby goldfinch, very small, with a strikingly short tail (so far) and able to flutter to the ground for fallen sunflowers, but not even trying landing on those birdfeeder perches up there yet. Especially with that crowd around it.

What delighted me all the more was two house finches, usually an argumentative group and usually fighting for the highest spot up there, down with the little one, acting like they were showing the young cousin around to make sure she got enough to eat.