After laughing at this and remembering the skunkweed by the creek from my youth, I had to ask.

Yes, they do. But not quite like this bee guy had fun with. The apparently official word is that the sound of the fart of a bee is a thing but it has not been studied.

Well why not? Where are all the little kids who hiked the creeks and trails who were supposed to grow up to be scientists? I mean, that’s a ten-year-old’s dream of an investigation.

Okay, then, how about musicians?

Another repeat and a first rock that looks a little lonely and out of place there all by itself. It needs a couple of friends.

Meantime, the peregrine fledglings went through three rescues between the four of them and are all flying around fine now and having a good time. Here they are, mugging for the camera.

I was hoping to do the bottom edge today, but a cast-on and 1800 seed stitches later on US6, I’m not quite there. My hands are looking forward to resting in their lined splints tonight. But man it feels good to get this project going.

Meantime, someone was nosing around directly outside the door not ten feet away from me yesterday. The double pane window fades the gorgeous white speckles against the deep brown contrasting with its scarf of a neck ring. It looked at me: hey, lady, got any birdseed?

No.

There were a lot of new holes in the neighbor’s front yard in the last week and yesterday they didn’t seem to be there anymore and I guess the ground squirrel was looking for somewhere friendlier. I was surprised, because the one I’ve seen has always been exceptionally wary of me or any movement on my part but this one, for a brief moment, had to be talked into remembering that it must act like bigger things eat it.

I noted its retreat went straight out the gate towards our driveway.

Where a burrow has been right under the edge for awhile. I’m guessing the paving material above helps keep its favorite spot warmer at night. After all, these homes were originally built with radiant heating; gotta keep up that mid-century-modern vibe.

Edited to add: they swish their tails to confuse rattlesnakes as to what and where they are. Someone captured a video of one doing that–and throwing mulch at it! I’m guessing it must have been near the squirrel’s nestlings. No harm done to either in this video, and now I know what a rattlesnake’s rattle in action looks like.

Peregrine falcons lay their eggs about 30 hours apart and start brooding just before or after the last one arrives. The eggs don’t start developing until they’re kept continuously warm for it and the goal is to get them to hatch close enough together that they all demand food equally and all get fed. Not demanding like the others conveys a possibility of being less fit and puts that chick at risk because they’ll be the last one fed of what’s left.

Our current pair is on their I think fourth year and they’ve got this thing down.

And so this morning the pips (holes in the eggs) started coming and then the chicks did, start to finish all four of them in less than twelve hours, even though their eggs appeared across about a ninety hour stretch.

Here’s Youtube video of the pips (7 min.) and (8+ min) of the newborn eyases. When the parent pulls gravel towards them while not actively brooding it’s to keep the residual warmth from their bodies close to their young.

You can see the first ones change already just in those first twelve hours.

I found the large utterly dead portion of my coffee berry bush back against the fence and quickly cut it out of there–it appeared to have been chewed.

The definition of a rodent is a mammal whose teeth never stop growing and will grow through the jaw and kill it if it doesn’t gnaw on things to grind them down.

I’m not about to poison them nor hire someone who would, I told a friend of mine.

Get a Havahart trap, was her answer; We did.

You can’t legally release it except right where you caught it.

Right. She said something to the effect that her husband had given theirs swimming lessons.

I looked up Havaharts in the correct size and came away thinking, I’m supposed to lift that big thing with a scared animal with teeth and claws in it and me with no sense of balance? What could be more fun?

So I took the problem to Richard.

He didn’t like the idea of giving them swimming lessons any more than I did. But he had worked up in the hills where ground squirrels are profusely abundant, which attracts rattlesnakes. His building had hired someone–who didn’t trap them, didn’t poison them, they put out contraceptives for them to reduce the population.

Would that affect the hawks? I wanted to know.

Not if there aren’t young being produced and the adults aren’t being sick or dying, right? He didn’t think so.

So I found this research and learned way more on the subject than I had intended. It’s not The Pill, it’s triggering an autoimmune reaction to their favorite parts in the spring. Huh. The gist of it as I read it is that they learned it takes six months to take full effect so they saw better results the second year than the first, where they’d given it too close to breeding time.

They noted that catching and inoculating hundreds of them took a lot of time.

I just want not to have hundreds. But yeah, the ground squirrel was back today (did I see two? Not sure) and that bush next to my apricot tree was showing me what a single one of them, much less a colony, could do.

There are four yards across the fence from ours that all have dogs and we do not. And we have by far the most fruit trees. Where would you hang out if you liked to pop out of your hole in the ground?

Open to all suggestions and stories.

A ground squirrel tunnel popped up right under the edge of my sour cherry tree. And another one at the base of my columnar apple.

One is cute. Two is a thousand, fast.

“Did you know it smells like cinnamon out there?”

Uh, that would be a yes. I poured it down the edges of those two holes to make the place inhospitable (and then did a better job of covering the cherry’s roots with an old oven rack, since cherry roots and young trunks are supposed to be a particular favorite.) Pepper and mint they can get used to; cinnamon is both sharp tasting and it gets on their paws and their fur and their noses and they’ll keep avoiding it.

Or at least in my experience so far.

So we’ll see.

I wonder how many neighbors were thinking cinnamon roll thoughts today.

It looks like it unzipped its back to relax on a warm day. (Photo taken yesterday; it hit 90F today.)

The Erva people clearly listened to their customers, because a few said that wild rabbits had been able to leap into their cages.

They won’t leap up into a pot because there might be a predator just waiting for the moment, but they can see what’s inside those cages at ground level.

So the latest ones are taller and wider and there is now an XL protecting my baby peach tree. Because I have to know I’m doing everything I can to help that thing succeed.

Update: the video just posted. We have three peregrine falcon eggs at San Jose City Hall! Likely a fourth to come in a day or so.

I blocked the preferred escape route of the desert rabbit–I put a planting pot saucer in its path–and haven’t seen it since. Instead, a California ground squirrel showed up the next day to graze the low-lying broadleafs.

Never google them. They nest in large colonies, and if they don’t have one, two of them will make one, fast. They destroy your trees, they dig under your house in intricate tunnels, they eat everything and they will brave going up your fruit trees and its tree squirrels if that’s what it takes.

But I just see the one, and it’s chunky and cuddly-looking and pretty. But I think I’ll invite the rabbit back.

Turns out that in the Bay Area, ground squirrels have recently been documented hunting and eating voles. When the vole population explodes so do their attacks on them. Did you have ground squirrels on your apex predator list? They are if you’re a vole.

Meantime, in my brother’s very gerrymandered district (he lived an hour away from it when he moved there), two white Republican men and a Black man who’s a Democrat were running. And we’re talking Georgia.

That Democrat got the most votes in today’s special election. Honey, we are getting there.

My Frost peach decided to be a good sport about spring, and one can only wonder how different the two resulting peaches would be. (Usually, though, you thin one out when they’re that close together.)

While I was outside, an Oregon Junco flew to the low power line that connects to the house and turned and stared me down. I laughed. It chirped. I walked a little closer (I wanted to get that Frost’s photo.) It let me know I was under orders to get out of its way, stat.

Just then a female junco flew to the tree nearest its intended mate.

She chirped.

He puffed out his chest to make himself look huge and gave her his voice’s best. I wish I could have heard it but I saw, from really quite close.

I was dismissed. More laughing didn’t faze them, nor my going where I wanted to go (gently, slowly.) This was all about each other by now.

So many birds around. What a difference nine days makes. So grateful to the tree crew that took nesting season as seriously as I did and got that rotting Chinese pepper out the very next morning after I’d asked them so that the scrub jays, the only ones that seemed to like that particular tree, could have time to plan.

That’s not a new seedling, it’s actual new growth sprouting from a node on last year’s cherry tomato that I’d thought long dead.

So.

I was out checking the tiny bits of green appearing on tree after tree yesterday when movement caught my eye and I looked up.

And there, just flapping down onto the power line, was a Cooper’s hawk in the late sun. I’m a little out of practice so I couldn’t tell you by the size whether it was a male or a female, but it was content to let me stand there thrilled at its presence. So I’m guessing male, since back when we had a pair nesting above the house it was always the male that was curious about those funny humans inside that big windowed box and occasionally outside of it. I would bird watch; it would people watch.

Its mate was far warier.

I wondered how many generations removed this one might be from our inquisitive Coopernicus. The fledgling that hopped through my amaryllis pots some years ago with a parent guarding nearby would be getting old now.

It was just so good to see a hawk in my yard again.

The bed was upright and it probably helped to be tall; he assured me, No–trees, clouds, I can see out the window. Not all of it but yeah, I can see.

Good, I feel much better about that.

Meantime, I was stepping out the door today when a crow tumbled–no other word could describe it–out of the holly bush right in front of me and took off on foot, one disjointed wing at a funky angle after its roll down that prickliness.

I later did a search on whether crows fake injuries to lead you away from their nests, and the answer was, very rarely; they’ll be aggressive, they’ll caw for other crows to help them defend and mob, but faking injuries is pretty much for smaller more vulnerable birds, especially ground-nesting ones.

We’ve all seen crows playing king of the mountain at the tippy top of the highest tree around. They like height.

So, let’s see, there’s a snowy plover video here. But that one faked it with both wings. This was just one, and its quick walk was a bit awkward, too.

It couldn’t possibly have had a nest in that short holly bush–there’s no room in those tight spaces for a bird that size even if it wanted to. It was probably there to go after the berries. I wondered if one of the very small species that sometimes does nest in there (with a name like flycatcher you know they and their meals are small) had attacked it from inside there when it landed? I don’t know.

Did you run under my car. How am I supposed to get you to leave.

Now it was up against the neighbor’s house near a bush, that wing and walk still odd. My holly was out of sight and it did not fly to return to it. It cawed loudly, one loud yell, a pause, then another, just as a hawk soared from behind that house and coming into my view–but I don’t think the crow could see it yet. Huh.

I said to Richard later, If it actually was injured, why would it call attention to itself by yelling like that?

To call in reinforcements.

Oh of course. Yes that makes sense.

There was a neighbor I don’t know taking a determined fast walk just then, barbells in hand. I almost asked her, Did you see that crow being weird?!

But the question, um, might have seemed a tad close to home on the part of the one asking it so never mind, I didn’t.

Coyotes, once exterminated in San Francisco, have been back for about twenty-five years now, forming packs and territories and creating really cool sound effects for people in lockdown during Covid. There are about 200 now.

Several dogs being walked have been taken, with small white dogs being the apparent preference. A five year old child playing in a group at the park got attacked recently and needed stitches. That aggressive coyote is no more and they would test its brain for rabies–if the current administration hadn’t laid off the Federal civil servant who does that. It’s in a freezer, waiting for sanity to return.

One young male feeling the population pressure swam to Alcatraz.

The San Francisco packs’ DNA all tracked with animals from north of the city–they did not come up the open space preserves on the peninsula. The assumption then was that they came trotting across the Golden Gate bridge, but there were so few in Marin County that there would have been no reason for them to take that risk weaving among all those cars.

But here’s where it takes a turn: two different sources told this coyote enthusiast that the leg-trap ban that passed in a state proposition so angered one guy they knew that he blamed the liberals in the City by the Bay and sought revenge.

By using a different trap, a loophole in the law, set to hurt (badly) but not kill.

And then, having separated them from their packs and territories, he drove those injured coyotes across the Golden Gate Bridge and set them free in the Presidio. Repeatedly.

I don’t think he was expecting them to become celebrated, but mostly they have been.

Although I imagine the parents of that little kid would like a word.

An officer’s body cam footage of handcuffing an emu on the lam is the video we all need right now.

Meantime, I have a question. Macy’s was selling a cashmere turtleneck for $43 plus a $10 off coupon, in a color I liked. $33. I sprang for it. I figured it wouldn’t be the best quality but cashmere at the price of cotton, hey.

It arrived quite perfumed. I don’t know if it was worn and returned or just happened to be next to the warehouse’s moth repellent efforts, but it looked fine. I debated returning it but there were none left to exchange it for so I thought, nah, I can wash that out.

Several spots refused to get wet. On both front and back but not the sleeves. We’re talking blotches an inch and two inches high or more.

I held it under. I soaked it in unscented suds for hours. I defied the ‘don’t agitate the water’ rule of hand washing woolens and squished soapy water through those spots again and again but they stayed looking exactly how they had: bone dry. Huh. If it was mill oils repelling the water the soap would be breaking that down by now. If it was super wash treated, ie the yarns coated in the thinnest film of plastic so it can be machine washed and dried, they would have used it as a selling point (without admitting to the plastic part.)

What gives? I’m a fiber artist, I should certainly know. A fraudulently synthetic-cashmere blend that spun out into clumps of just synthetic?

I tried working water into it during the rinses, too. (Tepid water not cold thankyouverymuch.)

I didn’t spin it out–if it turned out blotchy I wanted to be able to say it had not touched the washer nor dryer.

Hours later, while laid flat to dry, those gaps slowly slowly closed up and the thing became a solid color again, darker of course because it’s wet but at least now it all looked wet.

Huh.

Well, the mill oils with their dried hair mousse effect are definitely washed out now because the sweater has softened up beautifully.

I like it. Hey Mikey.

For the record: yesterday was the day that for the first time ever, a Red-tailed hawk swooped around our patio coming right close to the window with me on the other side, wings spread wide and deep orange tail outstretched, to the pomegranate tree and then to complete the circle away to the bay laurel, to look around and check out the digs here. In my yard.

I have seen them up in the hills many times but never here much less right! Here! Glorious!

And for the record, yesterday was the day my friend Heather L utterly blew me away. She was half-afraid they wouldn’t fit or that their stitches might be too uneven or or or.

Oh honey. Wow. Wow. Wow. They could not possibly have been a more perfect gift of love and skill and talent. Wow. And the colors! And trees to welcome that new hawk to perch and observe from: may it forever feel at home here. Wow.

The fluttering orange wings caught my eye.

And made me think wistfully of my late neighbors, who had planted milkweed in their small garden for the monarchs. It’s probably still there; the new family would do the same.

But to the mystery of how monarch butterflies know to follow their migration routes going north and then south across multiple generations to finish the task, there is also this: how do they know, out of all the miles of terrain below, where their favorite food is? Should it disappear, how do they find the next patch nearby?

What is it like to see the world from a butterfly’s view?

Where most human faces turn to see them and smile, glad for the moment.