Bought some very good yarn Tuesday at Purlescence, finished an Ipod hat out of it today. Minimalist. Perfect. And then someone announced a dress-like-Steve-Jobs day in his memory for tomorrow, and St Croix, the Washington Post said, had sold out of his trademark mock turtle in black. Me, though, I’m Thinking Different.
And on the wildlife front.
Towhees jump forward, jump back, scratching back the leaves to look for grubs underneath: they look like they’re skipping an invisible jumprope. It charms me.
After the rain was gone and the sun was shining again a day or two ago, I glanced outside to see a cascade of water spraying sideways off the roof. Just in one spot. Wait–is someone sweeping up there? No, I knew Richard had already left for work, and besides, he would never go up there without a spotter watching the ladder.
It stopped.
There it was again.
It stopped.
There it was again.
I thought, if that’s a towhee scratching that’s one heck of a towhee! That’s a lot of water it’s moving!
I walked outside, seeing a shadow of wings through the translucent awning, and then there was no such cascade to be seen again. Huh.
Today maybe the responsible party showed itself? It came to the porch only for a moment, a California Thrasher. Sibley: “They are difficult to find except when singing.” Oh well… But I got to see it!
Reading another site, it says they no longer breed on the Monterey Peninsula because of habitat fragmentation. Wow. The whole peninsula? And I got to see one here on our more heavily populated one?
Now I know why I threw some suet cake farther out than I usually do. It stabbed that long curved beak at it as fast as it could, looked at me with a stern that-will-not-do because I’d moved, raised its tail and fled. Had I blinked I’d have missed the whole thing.
I am definitely going to throw some peanut suet out in that spot again.