I went outside near dusk to set the hose going on the plum and apple trees–it does not rain in summer in California–and came back in. After letting it run about a half hour, I went back out there and, the hose being shortish, simply held it awhile to let it spray over thataway a bit too.

A male Anna’s hummingbird came darting in among the plum leaves near my face, making eye contact. No flowers here, hon, I thought at it.  But that didn’t seem to be what it was looking for:  it zoomed over to the arc of falling droplets, zipping through them over and over. An aerial birdbath!

I’ve been trying to remember to get out there and do that once a week. I just found my incentive. Hose-Anna!

Caught the teenage black squirrel on the suet cake the other day and went looking for something to block him: that’s my wren feeder.

Plant pots have holes to string the string through, hey!

Woke up early this morning to find him completely encircling that four-inch cage, tail and head out of sight on the far side, his rear towards me. He had no idea.

Reality hit when I opened the door a few feet away, squirt gun going. He freaked and landed on the wooden box, not far of a fall and onto a surface with some give (phew!), but it made for a loud landing and wild scrambling and a lot more respect for boundaries.

But to be sure. I threaded the edge of a paper plate to hang above the left side of the pot where I think he managed to climb down it on. I only wish I had the ability to motion-sens0r video whatever he’ll do next.

A silk shawlette got finished and blocked around noon and it’s dry already. Hoping the bride-to-be I haven’t met yet will like it–I’m about to dive into another, maybe a straight rectangle, just to be sure.

The new defroster part came today and between the three of us we got the job done. Richard was pleased a minute or two later, telling me he could hear the ice on those coils already melting–that means we shouldn’t have to take the freezer wall apart again. Othankyouthankyouthankyou.

And. Esperanza, one of the first of the falcons ever to have fledged from San Jose City Hall, made a nest near the end of the Bay Bridge. Three eggs didn’t hatch, but one, very late in the season, did and got banded today. The video is here, above the water, with gorgeous shots of Espie guarding her little one. Enjoy.

I never transplanted my three tomato plants from their six inch pots. I just couldn’t make myself do it. Fourteen tomatoes, I had fourteen actual tomatoes, and I could have scads more if I’d just give their roots a little room to spread out in the sun.

Nope.

I had them right outside the window. Nothing was going to sneak by me this year. Day after day, as the first of the Early Girls gradually turned red, I checked first thing in the morning: still there! Yay! After the last few years’ grief I could hardly believe it and I examined the stem edge of the first repeatedly. Is it ripe enough yet? How about now? Now? Are we almost there? I got a cone of yarn (actually, a merino/cashmere that sold out quickly) from Colourmart that looked like it had been run over by a truck somewhere in transit; it reeked of diesel oil.

Great! Squirrel repellant. I wound the yarn off and the stink washed right out of the wool. I parked the icky cardboard cone where it was standing guard by the first fruit.

I went off to the post office today. No problem. Came home and knit awhile. No problem. Ran off to Whole Foods with Michelle for the dairy-free items she needs. Walked in the door, across the house, straight to the sliding door to check on my plants–

–which is how my first-picked red tomato of the season went straight into the trash. What was left of it. The squirrel had bitten a tiny green one in half and spat it out, then stepped around the cone and the one it was guarding to get to the one in the middle that had been coloring up rapidly as it hung off the other side of the box. It wasn’t the ripest but it would do.

The plants and their now-twelve little fruits are safe inside at last, climbing over an old stereo speaker  instead of the tomato cage supports they really do deserve. But they did get some heat last week so hopefully these will sweeten up nicely. And even if not. Those are MINE.

I walked out of the room. I walked back in two minutes later to find the same obnoxious black squirrel who, when I woke up early this morning found himself suddenly scrambling for cover after reaching the hanging suet cake (have you ever seen a squirrel run hanging upside down clinging eight feet high along a beam? It’s actually quite funny*), the one that breaks all the rules and entices the others to copy him, the one who ran for the hills after I found him standing in my amaryllises this afternoon because yo, that’s squirtgun time and he knew it.

He was at the edge of my amaryllises, perched in their pots, straining forward to see. Right there. Staring about seven feet across the patio at the spot where the tomatoes had been. Not seeing them just inside and moved slightly to the right on the other side of the glass, not distracted away by anything, staring so intently, so fervently, willing them to return, that he didn’t even notice my approach.

His tomatoes! The empty box top! How could his new treat be so, so, just, GONE?!

*ed. to add: I finally figured out why. The herky-jerky motions of the panicky race, when you know the squirrel will always be just fine in the end, reminded me somehow of–I haven’t thought of this in decades!–Penelope Pitstop tied to the train tracks by Snidely Whiplash, with whatsisname riding in that same frantic rhythm to the always-successful rescue.

Jays, like their cousins the crows, are incredibly observant, smart birds. A very short chain of metal links showed up on the wooden box outside. I have no idea where it came from.  I wonder if they’d tried to use it as a tool?

I like to feed the ground birds: the towhees, the juncos, the doves, the titmice that would rather pick a safflower seed off the concrete than deal with the feisty finches. But during the week of solstice, the jays did what the hawks have done previously: felt compelled to declare the birdfeeder territory theirs alone.

For months, I’ve been throwing suet crumbles under the box. This worked for awhile; the littler birds caught on quickly and even the towhees started squeezing somehow under that 2″ high space, emerging quickly and nervously but victorious.

The scrub jays, whose view of that was blocked from where they perch in the trees, nevertheless figured it out. With heightened hormones last week, one threatened a towhee yet again for having food, then decided hey, a jay could get shoulder-deep under there, too, at least.

The strange thing about it was that that same suet is available in hanging holders, one of them big enough for a jay to eat off of, and occasionally they do. But the fact that I don’t let them or try not to let them snatch the ground birds’ food means that it is clearly imperative to them that that’s what they must have. Delete favorite political joke here. So.

So okay, that’s that. And as of yesterday I stopped putting anything around the box.

And I stopped giving them grief about it. Go. Look. Nothing to see, move along, move along. (Let’s break their habit right now.) I did give in just once yesterday, with a towhee hopping all over looking, and the unseen jays, the pair out there, immediately bullied their way past the others to it. I think I was still coming back in the sliding door, too soon to turn around in time to stop them. Okay, so that’s really that. Done.

They didn’t increase the number of visits to the big hanger. They weren’t hungry. It was all about dominance, and they perched on the box several times or down on the patio beside it and looked in at me like, wait–what’s up with this? One swooped in and scooped up imaginary food off the box into its beak to show me it could. They ducked a peek under it, sure I must have snuck some under there somewhere. Nada.

A western tanager flew to the big hanger today, the first I’ve seen all year, another bird too big to perch on the small cake, but the big one, no problem. Here, guys: let me show you how it’s done.

The jays left it alone.

We have a laser pointer that tells the temperature of whatever you aim it at. 62F on the orange juice inside the fridge is not a good idea. (I vacuum the coils.)

Meantime…

My friend Gail needed a ride hither and yon today; she’d saved up four errands for one big afternoon on the go. Reading happened. Knitting happened, and a nebulous idea for a pattern began to actually come to be while I waited.

On our way back towards her house, there it was again, on the same telephone line, though further down the road this time. We both saw it and again exclaimed over it: by the size and shape I’d say this one was a female. Beautiful, beautiful big bird standing watch over the cars going by.

And so once again a Cooper’s hawk made our day while driving Gail around. And after I got home, I saw two Nuttall’s woodpeckers dancing together around my olive tree. I’d seen one bathing in the water in the curb last week so I knew one was around somewhere again. I’d been waiting for months. Two!

And life is good.

Now to get back to work on that project. (Yup. More of the dk silk, in not wheat but wheat cream, a pale golden shade.)

I was saying to someone just yesterday that I hadn’t seen my hawks in months and I missed them. Rather fiercely, actually. I hoped they were okay. The squirrel population seems to have suddenly gone bonkers–ten at once?!–and a few of the new ones trying to raid whatever they can have looked close to starving. This didn’t help me think the hawks were okay out there. The balance was off.

I moved a chair on the patio to try to thwart the little monsters and I guess it made the perch he needed: later, as if summoned, the male Cooper’s landed on the back of it. It was afternoon. It was not his usual hunting time.

He glanced around the patio a bit because that’s just what you do when you’re a raptor, but mostly he was watching me watching him while I was being fervently grateful he’d come. He’s here! He’s alive! And the ravens didn’t bully him out of his territory after all. Yay!

If a wild thing living free can feel loved, I was giving it my best.

He looked relaxed, and to prove that he fluffed out his chest and head feathers a bit. LookywhatIcando.

You sweet showoff you. So gorgeous.

We enjoyed each other’s company awhile longer, and then, mission accomplished, he was off in no particular hurry.

I got up, baked some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and soon Michelle was home and then Richard; we walked next door to wish our neighbors goodbye.

When we moved here, the folks two doors down had children in college and gone and ours were not all born yet; now ours are grown and gone and they’ve decided it was time for them to move next to their children. Their house sold in a day.  Ohio will be very different.

And so their three-doors-down neighbors were throwing a goodbye party, something we all needed in our impending loss; who else would know about how their orange Persian with the jet-engine purr who would walk over to hang out with my kids? Or would come crash a nearby party like the one just then? We will miss those good people. I’m so glad we got to see them.

Side note: probably fifteen years ago now, I combed that cat’s long soft fur, spun about 18″ out of it, plied it with silk and knit a 1×2″ piece. Glued some pearl beads on some round toothpicks and put the live stitches on my faux knitting needles. Add a pin backing, and there you go!

She kept that memento of him on her fridge for years for all to see.

I got to talking with Bill, who’s behind our fence.  What are the chances that the one person who would know anything would be the one person I said anything to! I asked him whether my birdfeeder had brought more birds into his yard too; he chuckled and admitted he didn’t know birds, really–but: there was a dove that hit the window trying to get away from a hawk and then the hawk hit it too! A big hawk. It had lain there about a half hour before finally picking itself up.

Was it a Cooper’s? Was it the female? (I’m thinking, a third larger, a rounder front, tell me…)

He knew it was a hawk, he chuckled, but that’s about it.

After today’s visit I know the male is clearly doing fine. I hope his mate is too–but it was good to know at least something.

And I bet Bill went home and looked up Cooper’s hawks.

And we all hugged the friends who are leaving and, even knowing they need to, so much wished they wouldn’t go.

The doorbell rang this evening. Wasn’t expecting anybody. It was Phyllis and her husband Lee, newly home from Morro Bay–small world, Nancy!–offering a small but potent sachet of fresh lavender from a grower there. (This looks to me like enough to protect any size yarn stash. My little sachet is 8g.)

I had to know if they’d seen… I told them there are two nesting pairs of peregrines on Morro Rock that sits at the edge of the land: one only hunts this direction, the other, only that, with a gentlemen’s agreement that neither shall cross into the other’s territory.

Lee: “We saw one!” Wayyy high up in the air, as they viewed it through someone’s scope; with his camera ever at the ready, “I got an eight pixel picture,” he laughed.

Sounds about right.

A cast off finished, the knitting put aside, a book picked up while my piano was being tuned. “Footprints on the Toilet Seat: Memoirs of a Falcon Doctor” by J. David Remple. My copy came signed via Glenn Stewart of UCSC, who was helping his friend get some publicity for it.

And what a book! It is self published and it is at times achingly in need of a copy editor for the punctuation goofs. Forgive it that: the story flows well of itself, and it is by the man who, with his wife, established the first hospital specifically for falcons in the land where falconry goes so far back it is mentioned in the Quran.

His wife the year had before decided to study Arabic, just on a whim, having no idea that they would soon get talked into leaving Wyoming and taking this job in the United Arab Emirates where they would stay for eighteen years.

Falcons are migratory birds in the Middle East, passing through there between summer and winter grounds. By tradition there, then, the big ones they capture must be males–well, obviously!–except as anyone who reads this blog knows, actually, the females are the ones who are a third larger.

You can imagine the conversations that start right off the plane.

Wildlife and wildly different peoples’ lives. Read this book.

Our hero in this story is a study in grays who has claimed a particular spot on a particular branch where he likes to perch in the afternoons; he doesn’t come to the patio but rather occasionally dives down to stab an insect in the yard.

And then back up to that spot to spend a great deal of time, tail gently seesawing, looking me in the eye if I take the time to notice.

Glancing in a mirror this afternoon as I went by, a raven reflected via the skylight caught my eye.

Our neighbor has an Australian tree called a Silk Oak, oak being generic for tree there.  The raven (2.6 lbs, 53″ wingspan) was lazily flopping through the branches and then hefted itself up to where the orange blossoms were. Clearly it had found food: its head disappeared into the orange again and again while it tried to steady itself against the flimsiness of the wildly swaying limb.

There was a mockingbird, 1.7 oz, 14″, at the top of our Chinese elm. Studying that raven. It flew to the other tree above and behind while I thought, careful, little one.

Then suddenly it zoomed straight down at the raven, hoping to startle it away.

Who ignored it.

Back up, dove again, harder, again carefully from behind, veering off at the last. This time the hassled raven tried to hop flap a little out of its way.

Dive! And now it went all out and it clearly connected–I wondered: do little birds grab a clawful of feathers when they’re vehemently defending their territory or perhaps nest?

I don’t know, but enough already, now the raven was clearly trying to escape. It disappeared. The mockingbird did a little “And STAY out!” dance in the air.

My back patio is made up of long concrete rectangles separated by narrow wooden boards to decorate the space that gives the concrete room to expand and contract with the weather.

I have my squirrels trained: they are free to graze on their half under the birdfeeder, but they may not step past that lengthwise wooden barrier (augmented by a few amaryllis pots); the peanut-suet crumbles are for the ground birds only.

It’s been months since I’ve seen one cross that line. They’ve been remarkably well behaved.

Which made today all the funnier. There was the small black female with the quirky tail standing up, front paws tucked in, looking occasionally between those pots towards the forbidden land but then turning away as expected.

And then I looked up again. She paced to the right and then splayed herself flat under the shade of the picnic table–and, staring at me, placed one paw deliberately on the concrete just barely on the other side of that wood. She knew I don’t ever climb under that table: this was hers.

Stayed staring. Waited for me to react. For something like a full minute, which is a very long time when you are eye to eye with a wild thing.

It was so human and so utterly like the two-year-olds I used to have that finally I could only burst out laughing.

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?)