Spring!

Remember this post? Our flowering pear has a nest in it for the first time this year. I guess it’s gotten tall enough and full enough. It’s in direct line of sight of the hawk’s, above and across the yard, brave thing–maybe best to keep an eye out. But it’s there, with new life coming to be inside that little leafy home next to ours.

The hawk usually does a low swoop, but today I saw it zoom over towards the redwood from high enough up that I almost missed it.

Last year, though I didn’t say it here because I was asked not to while I was doing it, I was helping man the remotely-controlled cameras trained on the peregrine falcon nest at City Hall in San Jose, a once in a lifetime experience. I was really dedicated to doing the job well.  Eyes glued to the screen, ready to grab and switch from camera to camera and I got really good at anticipating where they would fly next and capturing the scene for all the classrooms and birdwatchers to see. Those baby peregrines have character and they are adorable.

And there was drama: the eyas that died. The father peregrine bowing his head at his son’s body weeks later, standing still for minutes–and then to my surprise trying to push him under the gravel with the top of his head as if to give him a proper burial. Not with his sharp feet or beak but with his soft feathers.

Who knew a bird could behave so?

Neither of the parents ever stepped on his body at the corner of the nestbox. It was sacred ground.

I went to go see them in person and a fledgling hung over the edge of the ledge above as if waving a wing and grinning at the adoring paparazzi below.

But the cams took over my life, six hours some days of my hand hovered over the mouse, ready to click just so, and it left me unable to do more than the most meager amount of knitting. So many computer-induced icepacks. So many things I wanted to do with my life that got put aside. We upgraded our bandwidth to accommodate the streaming.

They asked me last week if I were going to sign in and get started again? They hadn’t heard from me…

I was quite sick, and the effort of pitching in was absolutely undoable just then. That sealed it. They’d had no way to know how much I had given up to be a part of that, incredible an experience though it was. I mentioned that the computer that had had all the sign-in information had died the death and been replaced, in case that made them feel better, because it was with great regret and a tremendous sense of freedom that I told them no–no, I didn’t think so. I did hedge and offer to do emergency backup, but that’s not what they wanted. And that was that.

This year (thank you Dad and Richard!) I have my Sibley guides. I have my birdsongs (thank you to our son Richard and Kim!) I’m learning about my own birds right here, learning their personalities and quirks, being befriended by the wrens and awed almost daily by those Cooper’s hawks. Paying attention.

How many times did I not see them because I couldn’t look up from the screen last year?

I was given a great privilege that I’m very grateful to have had, and now I have fledged and discovered my own home.