I called first; George, the woman said, will be back in on Friday.

Ah, okay, then, thanks, I wanted to come back in and tell him thank you for how nice he was to me yesterday.

The receptionist’s surprise and delight sounded like a kid who wanted to know what was in that Christmas box: what was that all about? But she didn’t ask and I didn’t say.  And now at least one person who works there knows there’s a customer who was happy enough to be making the effort to say so. Always a good thing.

Come Saturday, meantime, I think we’re due to work on a little habitat destruction together: that morning scene of water intermittently spraying vigorously from the same spot on the roof has happened again two more days, and the rain is days gone. Fallen leaves or something must be providing grubs for something up there, or maybe they’re finding a birdbath effect; clearly there must be standing water. Not a good idea. It’s a mostly-flat roof, a  California fad of the 1950’s.

The first time, there was a towhee perched on the edge of the shed just below there, getting sprayed; it looked back over its shoulder, got doused again, and flew away from it.

Today it was a black squirrel, probably watching to see if there was anything worth raiding. Hey! It snorted and jerked away as it got it full in the face. HEY! And it took a big leap up onto that roof to show just who was boss here.  Cut that out!

End of waterfall.

I’d have loved to have seen the end of that. Although, don’t tell the squirrels that from the occasional audible mad dashes that have ended suddenly midpoint, it seems the hawks have learned that white roofs are great for picking off black squirrels. We have a lot fewer of the big oldtimers than we used to.

And for the first time, a few days ago I saw a hawk disappear into the upper branches of the big redwood whose limbs reach over our house. Right above that spot.

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.

I finished this hat.

I thought of about a hundred more people who would be thrilled to be given a handknit hat. I aim to please.

When there are too many possibilities and too many ideas and my brain can’t settle down and pick one, I start winding balls: something to keep my hands busy and getting something actually done while my mind meanders in the context of handling soft yarn and colors. That usually settles it.

That or dyeing hanks to something new, but it was too chilly to change out of my layers of wool that might get splashed on. Even if stacking balls of yarn like this is as close as we get to building snowmen around here, it was 49F last night and at that rate even my husband might start wearing a hat to bed.

Hopefully when he gets some daylight time and climbs up on that roof tomorrow he’ll be able to figure out why the furnace up there isn’t working. The thing melted its, and I quote, silicon control rectifier (not to mention part of our outside circuit breaker) a few years ago. Crossing our fingers and keeping the darn thing turned off for the moment, glad it’s supposed to warm up for the next few days.

When I got up this morning, there was an upturned finch just outside the sliding glass door. I waited for her to scramble around and get on her way.

I puttered about while every now and then checking on her; mostly, she seemed to sleep, a good response when you need it. Still breathing.

A few hours later I scrounged up a small stick outside the front door, trying not to alarm her, and then returned to the back one, remembering what the peregrine folks taught about birds having a reflex to grab on with their feet; I tentatively held it just above hers, but that was as far as I was going to risk it: first, do no harm.

Nope. Not going to straighten out that way.

The morning gave way to noon when the female Cooper’s decided it was time and swooped in as if to land on the back of the patio chair–whereupon the aggressive gray squirrel stood up high and chased her off his territory! She swooped left, he charged at her (from the ground again, while I was going, As if!), then right again, and then the much-larger hawk went oh forget it and hauled off into the trees, where she disappeared as if becoming one with the branches.

About an hour later I finally made out a large wing as someone preened in there. Different spot. The squirrel was still grazing fallen seed below the chair.

Wait, said Richard later, you got the squirrel to go away by feeding it? Isn’t that, like, broken? I did, though, I threw some nuts out there to make it have too many and want to go hide them, but that was so much something it didn’t expect out of me that it didn’t see but the one that landed right at his nose. So I opened the door again and threw more, and again till he finally got the hint and grabbed the loot and ran.

I was afraid I’d scared the hawk by intruding into its outside space, if only with my arm. It held back.

Finally, the finch woke up and tried hard to roll itself over and finally get away.

That did it. Incoming!

It was the male. Coopernicus landed on the far side of the patio from me and eyed me warily.

I was ten feet from the finch, inside of course. I held very very still.

We proceeded to have a game of Mother May I. He hopped one step sideways. Sideways? Sideways.

Doves copy my blinking patterns, I’ve learned, it seems birds are clearly attuned to eyes: I closed mine just long enough not to be a challenge to his authority (I hoped).  He hopped one step sideways closer.

And, with a gait like a kindergartner learning to skip, raising his wings ever so slightly with each bounce, once more.

The finch saw it and its tail bent over hard, trying: Penelope Pitstop on the train tracks. (My dad’s old Army buddy, whom we met once in Carmel when the folks were here, was a Hanna-Barbara…producer, if I remember right.)

Another sideways hop. Stopped. Eyes steadily on mine. Mother May I?

Yes.

One or two more like that and suddenly, Got it! His huge wings spread wide right in front of me and he flew with it in his feet to the fence.

Nope, too many squirrels here. Exit: stage right!

They don’t stay little…

My cousins John and Dan and Dan’s wife Leslie and their boys came from out of town to stop by for a few hours on their way further south. It is amazing how fast other people’s kids grow up, and it was wonderful to see them. “Richard (the younger) has a baby?!”

Leslie’s mom is an avid knitter?  Who knew? I told her my friend Gunilla Leavitt just bought  The Golden Fleece in Santa Cruz and I bet her mom knows her. I sent them off with a copy of “Wrapped in Comfort” for her mom; family gets extra privileges and all that.

We listened to Conference, good put-up-your-feet-and-knit time. Almost finished that Sea Silk.  Smiled remembering that as a teenager I used to babysit the kids of one of the speakers on the occasional Friday evening back in Maryland; they were good kids. He’s a good and kind and loving man.

The wildlife: this morning when the other squirrels left, my little injured one came out of wherever she’d been, I saw her, she caught the nut deftly in her mouth and immediately did her funny sideways lope to her new hiding place, tucked that conspicuous tail remnant away and disappeared so completely that it surprised me all over again. The others came back; the others left; only then did she appear again, getting seconds and ducking  immediately away under the patio again and safely out of sight. She’s got it all figured out.

Costco, later: I quite enjoyed getting people to smile back.

Meantime: a sample table. People waiting their turn, when, this time it was an old Russian woman who saw that the little paper cups of food in the meat department were going to be all gone by the time it was her turn and she simply shoved her way through the crowd to get to the front.

Given what happened two weeks ago, when she shoved him–“Wait,” I asked Richard afterward, I having stepped away to go get the milk and having completely missed the scene, “some little old lady shoved YOU? You’re a pretty formidable target!”–she did, he said, she shoved him out of her way. By taking him by surprise from behind, I’m sure.

He immediately firmly told her (and the man is not soft spoken) that she was being rude, that all these other people were waiting their turn and she could go back to the back of the line like she was supposed to and wait her turn too.

She was astonished. Nobody had ever told her no like that before, apparently. She responded in a thick Russian accent but clearly she’d understood what he’d said.

“So did she go to the back of the line?” I asked.

She did not, but she did at least wait till he’d gotten his and turned aside.

It’s a start.

If you can’t be a good tree squirrel, be a good ground squirrel. That seemed to be today’s thinking.

We had a weed tree spring up that had pretty branches and we let it be although it was right next to the patio. Canopy is a good thing, right? While I was in and out of the hospital two years ago, it was the last thing anyone was paying attention to.

One day in this Spring’s early growth, though, I happened to walk outside and do a doubletake: when had the edge of the patio gotten lifted up like this! What would it do to the house, and soon, if this kept up. It was a non-native species that offered no support to the wildlife anyway, the birds didn’t even deign to land in it nor did the squirrels touch more than the trunk, much less did any of them gain any sustenance from it; it had to go.

My little black squirrel showed up in the late morning today, daring to come out even earlier this time. A walnut for you, m’dear. She was a little more skittish, a good sign of increasing health. Even her tail was groomed now.

And again, as she munched the second walnut quietly on her forearms, a large gray squirrel approached to challenge her for it.

She ducked under that patio square. I did not know she could. But she’s a tiny thing and she had it all figured out and completely disappeared in a space I thought impossible.

The challenger, after she left awhile later, came over and sniffed around there but would not could not climb in there himself. Nuts. He’d missed out again.

Meantime, one shawlette in one skein of Sea Silk, half done, practically knitting itself. It’s amazing to my fingers how thick it feels after baby alpaca laceweight!

(Ed. to add: the tree is gone, thanks!)

For the first time ever, this evening I stepped outside just in time to see both my Cooper’s hawks at once: soaring in a wide circle, surveying the neighborhood from above, their wings held wide to ride on the wind, the one announcing their territory with the other one backing her up (while some crows across the street dared not challenge their airspace but moved down among the treetops, trying to stay out of their sight). Breathtaking.

And more down to earth: she came back today.

She has clearly learned how to manage with how things are now; she didn’t fight it but simply rested on her forearms to eat the nut I rolled to her, but first took it over to the yard and off the hard concrete. Oh!

She had much more energy, though still clearly injured; she had kind of a sideways twist to her leap, a squirrel equivalent of trying to walk in super-high heels with her hips swaying, but leap she could now. A bit slow still, but yesterday I think I could have walked outside and scooped her up; had the wildlife rescue center still been open that till very recently was two blocks away  (their funding got cut), I would seriously have considered trying to get her there.

A much larger gray saw her with her second nut and interrupted his siesta to swagger down from the tree and try to steal it from her. She turned away from him; he came after her again. He saw me suddenly standing up, eyeing him: you leave her alone. This one’s under my care now.

He hesitated, then walked around in a circle as if somehow I wouldn’t follow his movements–and then he leaped on her in an attack, teeth ready to tear into her. (Quite a few of the bigger ones have torn ears; ears seem to be a target in dominance fights.)

But he leaped quickly away again as I started to open the door, and when he was far enough from her that I could aim it specifically, he got squirtgunned for it while she hid in the bushes and trees, up or down I do not know.

But she was clearly so much better than yesterday.  She felt better, she was better nourished, and she had learned quickly how to get by with how things are now rather than inflame the damage by trying to stand upright.

Watching her these last few days has been like watching a part of myself.

I finally sent off a note to my Dr. R yesterday, detailing symptoms we knew too well. It had been nearly a week of it.

He emailed me right back with a clear plan of how to start tackling this, starting with the simple declaration, “I’m sorry to hear this.”

I found a surprising degree of power in that simple declaration. Someone who knew every disease detail but also the potential emotional impact, someone who had hoped with us that the potentially-untreatable might be gone forever, someone who cared deeply and who KNEW…from hospital to hope, every single little thing…

It mattered to him. I knew of course it would. But those words were the most perfectly stated and the most caring rendition of that whole unspeakable everything, and with them, he made all the difference.

And now I could handle it.

I woke up today feeling like that little skunk-striped black squirrel that soon showed up out there: still limping but coping and more food down me and so much more energy than there was before.  I think I’ll be all right.

(Oh, and by the way, when I projected that stitch count to finish that shawl? I forgot to factor in the ruffle. 12,462 stitches in two days. I was determined to bring accomplishment out of the enforced downtime and I did it.)

I happened to pick up two bags of nuts at the bird center last week. Might as well divert them with a little food too occasionally rather than keep fighting them off all the time, and maybe they’ll stop stealing my neighbor’s tomatoes that way. They don’t usually even like tomatoes.

She looked like she was overdue for an appointment with the hairdresser, a skunk stripe beginning to emerge down the center of the black fur in a stark line down her back. Mange.  The tip of her tail has been broken off too for awhile of late and I’ve seen it red, I’ve seen it healing, I’ve seen it infected after that and the tail hairs are very thinned and end in a sharp V that makes it easy to spot her, but now it seemed scabbed over, at least.

She was eating quietly away at ground level, for once not trying to leap to the feeder for a shakedown attempt.

Yet I went to chase her away anyway.

Have you ever been reproached by a squirrel? This one with the white whiskers had been particularly obstreperous in the past, but she just stopped and looked at me, head low.

And then limped slowly away.

Oh.

I felt awful. And particularly so because I know what it’s like to have your balance get wrecked; squirrels do such cirque-de-soleil acts because they can balance so well by the flips of their long tails, and clearly, with hers damaged, things had suddenly not gone well.

I did not see her the rest of yesterday.

Nor today–till finally, in the afternoon, there she was, back on the patio alone in the heat of the Indian summer day, gleaning away at the time the others typically rest up and in the shade of the trees. She would have the ground to herself. Giving me, it felt like, a second chance.

I cracked open the door and she didn’t have the strength to run for it. I rolled a nut gently to her. She watched me. She ate it. I rolled her another, and it went past her; too far, too hard, not even for an almond, no. I tried again. Aimed better that time.

And so we communed a bit together, taking in each other’s measure, me offering her more each time she finished the previous. Nature says it’s Fall and solstice and one must eat much, and she was trying her best. Nature also says look out for hawks, and she glanced skyward a few times and seemed to shrug, eh, whatever.

She kept turning, trying to get a comfortable position. Facing me finally, I saw what I was expecting by then: her hip bone was splayed way out on one side, out of socket or broken I do not know, but I saw her try to straighten up to a squirrel pose but fall down in slow motion onto her forearms, again and again and again, giving up and just eating resting with the nut and her nose against the ground, but deciding to be determined and picking herself up and trying yet again. She hurt, she would do what she had to, but she was not going to let it get her.

There–put the left hind foot way forward to brace, okay, that worked.  She finished that hazelnut upright; I rolled another; she had to figure out all over again how to get the tail and the hip to work out right, and clearly it was hard and discouraging.

And one must put away for the winter too. I rolled one last big nut, thinking she couldn’t possibly eat one more bite, and I was right; she wanted badly to hide it, bury it, do the little squirrelly thing of faking out the bluejays and making and patting over ten holes to hide just the one nut.

But she just couldn’t. She turned back the other way: okay, tree time then.

She tried to go up and started to fall. I held my breath. She was going to DO this. She tried again and made it to the nearest limb. She caught her breath or resolve or something for a minute or two, and then climbed carefully higher where there was a wider limb she could better rest on.

That one hind leg kept giving out on her, but the better perch helped a lot. She couldn’t sit up but a moment–down again, down on her forearms, and that walnut became just the thing to make it all better; she held it and nibbled at it, unmolested by jays or hawks, full and having just a bit of dessert, watching me.

And I felt like I’d redeemed myself. A little.

With a random August picture of Parker thrown in.

There were maybe three times today all day when a small random flock–finches, towhees, titmice, juncos–flew in and grabbed a snack, quick, and scrambled out of sight.

It was very odd to have it so still out there. Even the squirrels barely showed, and when they did their behavior was very subdued: Don’t squirt me bro!

I didn’t see the hawks, but I have no doubt they were seeing me.

I had things to get done. Two packages to get off, one with the four hats going off to Vermont for flood relief, a card tucked inside each with a quick note of what yarns it was made of, who dyed the one from Vermont, and that Judy Sumner had given me it; I wanted to convey a sense of we’re all in this thing together. (I tucked in a few soft sweaters, too.) And this time I insured it.  Because…

I went home after talking to the postal clerk and found an actual place on the USPS website where I could send a message saying, this is the tracking number, this is the date sent, and a Kid Seta and cashmere Rabbit Tracks scarf in red disappeared after Aug 30 on its way to Germany to a recently-retired Army vet who served in Afghanistan. (I wanted them to feel a sense of responsibility to honor one who has given and served much; I certainly do.)

I went to Purlescence tonight, got to see Jasmin and Gigi and a whole bunch of people and talk and listen and soak in the yarny essence of everything and just in case, looked and found a pretty close match on the Kid Seta. I’ve got more of the laceweight cashmere. But the hesitance was in the thought, if I don’t buy it the original will show up, right? Just a little more hope a little longer.

At one point, Kay walked around the room handing out copies of Piecework Magazine’s new Knitting Traditions issue. We were all thumbing through it, reading it, admiring things in it, when Kay, who had by then sat down and was doing likewise, exclaimed suddenly, “Ohmygosh! That’s Ruth!” (She may have said “Ruth’s” with me missing the s.)

Wait, what? I didn’t see any pictures of…

Sandi (sitting on floor, left and front) came over and apologized for having forgotten to tell her it was in there:  Ava Coleman had an article in there on christening gowns, and as an example showed the beautiful lace gown she had knit for her granddaughter.

Ava happens to be Sandi’s mom (correction and thank you Kathy: her former mother-in-law–I knew that… It’s just that she’s the only mom to Sandi I’ve ever known, and they’re such a natural fit of caring, talented, knitterly people.)

Now I got it: that wasn’t someone’s following the same pattern as… That WAS Ruth’s!

You only get to turn 80 once and yesterday was a milestone day for my mother-in-law.  So I’m going to say it out loud here, too: Happy Birthday, MomH!

The Cooper’s hawk caught my attention this morning with a successful hunt. This time he (she?) took its kill up to a tree and disappeared just below the center of that first picture there (no, that’s a leaf, he’s behind there), the occasional small bit of fluff floating down in the breeze.

He swooped through again about three hours later, highly unusual in the middle of the day and it was a hot one at that. He perched in the olive tree (second picture), fanning out his feathers and turning to catch a breeze between them just so. That’s his tail below the limb. I did not see a second hawk at the time, although it sure looks like it from the camera–if it is, it’s standing behind the chopped end of that big limb and leaning left and up towards its mate.

And a few hours after that, one zoomed in a half circle around the first birdfeeder, straightened, immediately did a right-angle turn and swooped its 31″ wingspan within the 10′ foot-wide foot-of-the-L part of the covered patio and around Kim’s feeder just perfectly so and back out to a tree. And then, before even two minutes were up, he did it again! With a pause somehow at the end of that last circle, as if he were trying to scare a squirrel out from hiding. (And there is one that darts under the barbecue smoker over there. Clearly, it’s not fooling anybody.) But wow, what an air show!

My first thought was, now come on, you know no prey flew in there in between; are you really that impatient and hungry?

But the next time Coopernicus dropped all pretense of stealth: he flew to the most exposed branch jutting out into the yard from up high, the sun radiating off his chestnut front, as if to proclaim to all the world–

–and that’s when I finally got it.

Glenn Stewart of UC Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group has mentioned that at fall equinox, birds display some of the same behaviors they do at spring equinox, and that the peregrine falcons, specifically, make a particular show of guarding and announcing their established territory.

My yard was being announced as off limits to all comers.

And they’d been challenged on it yesterday. Yesterday, I had a small crowd of crows fly overhead for the first time in a long time and the Cooper’s pounced on prey in front of me not long after. Those crows will attack hawk young in the nest in the spring–so today I guess they’re not taking any chances: not of the crows and definitely not of any other hawks. From that king-of-the-mountain limb, something overhead bothered him and he flew off after it and over my head, not at hunting speed; that flight definitely felt different. Just don’t get in his way.

Dinnertime, a little later–and there, a Cooper’s, yet again, and away to the left. And again and to the right! Swoop! Swoop!

I had a shawl I’d knitted out of random baby alpaca laceweight a few years ago that I’d lost some of my notes for and some of what I did find was fairly scrambled, definitely not the copy meant for keeps. I’d been wanting to reknit it, definitely writing the pattern down and writing it right this time. It was going to be a lot of work. I’ve avoided it all this time.

Today I sat down with my birdwatching and my Lisa Souza baby alpaca laceweight in Sapphire, gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous, in the color of the deepening sky well before the dark, and worked that pattern out.  I have written it. I am knitting it to test it. I’ve got it.

I was finishing up the laundry in the early evening, thinking it was about time to start on dinner, and came around the corner just in time to see the last of the speeding tilted sweep around the feeder and the landing in the yard.

Uh oh, she’s back–Coopernicus looked up at me.

Then his right wing fluttered and he struggled, a second flutter like he was catching his balance–and then a firm stillness. (Cooper’s hawks kill their prey with their feet.)

He watched me.

I watched him.

He let me flash a camera at him and then go over to the couch and peer over the edge for a better look.

The squirrels had disappeared, cowering; one has lost the end of its tail of late. They’ve learned a little respect.  I wondered if the one on the patio had ducked under the lawnmower blade again–I don’t know how he managed that squeeze, but there was one time I bumped the handle and had an explosion of black fur dashing out at my feet.

The hawk and I took each other’s measure for a long, long moment. But one black squirrel, unable to stand it any longer, moved in the trees, and at last he lifted off to get his dinner ready elsewhere.

He’ll take his with some Fall seasoning: a finch assault and pepper.

An “if only I’d had the Flip camera…” moment.

There’s a difference in how all the birds hanging around the feeder flit away in the triviality of nothing at all,  just because someone else did, and then amble right back a moment later, vs when it’s for real.  When they move that fast in a straight line, they’re all about the intense escape attempt.

That kind of movement caught my eye and I turned to see: the squirrel in the tree leaped away just in time and the Cooper’s, which had to have been right there all along unseen by it or me, apparently decided to go after something on my single-story roof above my head.

It swept out of that tree, not even paying attention to the bushytail that was trying so hard to get away, and swooped down low for stealth, then pulled up right before the awning to snatch whatever it was going after, all of it in an instant.

But what that means is that I glanced up just in time to see a brilliantly lit up, beautiful big hawk as it burst into the sunshine from the trees–and then it was heading right straight towards my face!  Till the last second. I got to see at warp speed my Cooper’s from a flying angle totally new to me and to see its determination eye directly to eye as a squirrel would for the last time.

I froze in utter awe at the force of Nature that it is. I felt quite the empathy for those squirrels. I hope it was a great meal.

————

p.s. (Photo from August.) There is nothing in the world like a Skype chat with Parker and his parents now that he’s old enough to remember us and to break into gigglefits when we smile and to wave back at us. Love it. Love him. Our daughter-in-law and son are doing a great job.

I posted this on Facebook a few hours ago:

“Ten years ago, we all came together. Today, I have been knitting a second warm hat for the people in Vermont who lost–belongings, for the most part, but still, the comforts of home, gone. I will never be a firefighter, but I can at least try to be a flood fighter.”

This time it’s more of Judy Sumner’s yarn, knitted with a strand of navy merino/cashmere 50/50. I want it warm and I want it soft. It’s something I can do about it and in honor of Judy’s good name.

————–

Coopernicus. I do think that would make a great name for him. I saw my male Cooper’s hawk this evening! After lamenting to my daughter on the phone minutes before that it had been awhile. He was standing on the barbecue grill, watching the birdfeeders, watching me, twitching his tail side-to-side and shuffling foot to foot, perhaps unsettled by my having moved. A moulting flank feather was prominently askew–here, let me brush that cowlick for you.

There is a point on the back of the awning pole where the squirrels have recently learned to try to tear a seam in my taped-up parchment paper, just enough to get a toehold they can leap to the feeder from. Word got out fast; the flashmobs returned. I finally put a chair back under the Brome yesterday and that brought an abrupt stop to that behavior again.  Curious, that.

And so, considering the supersoaker briefly, I decided to ignore the black one gleaning on the ground; it’s Sunday, let him alone. It’ s just one and he’s behaving. Should he hop up on the chair and up to the feeder, he’d be coming from immediately below it: no swinging, no seed, no waiting crowd hoping for the pinata to spew, cage closed. Have a good meal, little guy.

His sudden scurrying later caught my eye and that’s what got me to turn to see. (And if I’d opened that glass door and used that soaker it never would have shown up.)

I held obediently still now for the hawk. He eyeballed me, then the feeders again, doing the head bob that helps a bird judge distance just before takeoff. I thought there was still an oblivious finch on my daughter-in-law’s feeder and chanced a glance behind me.

At long last he swooped–doing a sharp turn, to my surprise, not around a feeder but around the exact point on that pole to see if that squirrel was hiding on the tear-the-paper spot.

Nope. But it was a clear sign that he’d been studying their behaviors closely.

Blink and he was gone. Such a beautiful, beautiful bird, lit up in the lowering sun, blue- and near-white faced and chestnut brown, then bluegray wings wide to the wind, flying free.

Knitting two strands of soft merino/silk dk on 3.75 mm needles in tight cablework was like knitting at sock density and took me longer to finish than I thought it would. But it will be warm.

Ellen of Half Pint Farms in Vermont named this colorway Evening Shadows. We were in the Green Mountain State three years ago, just before the leaves turned, and I fell in love with how the fog and shadows from the mountains painted the world in purpley blues across the pined forests–add in the Judy Sumner connection to this particular hank and nothing else would do for knitting for Vermont relief.

As I finished it up today, I was distracted a moment by a California towhee outside my window, a Claude Monet study in browns: when you get a chance to see them up close in direct sunlight, there’s actually a surprising amount of other shades mixed in there, even a bit of brick red. They are designed to fade into the landscape, and yet they are a fair bit more complex than one expects at first glance.

They are not skittish birds. They never fly into the window, even when a hawk threatens, they just head straight for home. They never try to crowd onto the feeders, whose perches are too tight for them anyway: they know what they want and they know where they want to go to find it. (I should be so lucky when I’m stashdiving, said the woman with scars on her arm from going through a window as a kid.)

And I promised to show Karin‘s yarn: here’s her Atlantic color sock weight she gifted me with; it’s deeper and more intense in real life. Pretty stuff.

On to the next project!

There has been a juvenile Cooper’s hawk in view several times this past week, the first time I’ve seen one all year and after I had reconciled myself to the thought that no fledglings had succeeded from the nest above the house.  I guess one did!

Two days ago I saw it swoop from the fence, spread its striped tail in a circle and do a tight U-turn to line itself up just so to come up from behind a squirrel on the ground, which froze. It started to reach for it–and then I, trying to get a better look, apparently spooked it away from its lunch. (Sorry!)  But what a sight!

Meantime. I mentioned to a friend just yesterday that in our temperate climate the songbirds will often brood twice if conditions are good. (I didn’t say I thought that was roughly at the spring and summer solstices.)

When Kathy was here a few weeks ago, she brought me a bagful of fur brushed from her dog to scare the squirrels away from my amaryllises. It was pretty well mashed together; this was good, it had enough heft it wouldn’t easily blow away. I spread it around the pots with the biggest fistful closest to my daughter-in-law’s birdfeeder.

It’s been long enough now that I can definitely say, it worked! And the stuff stayed put, too!

Today I did a doubletake: there was a small clump of it, quite loosened up and now in a round-to-oval shape (or at least the part that I could see), peeking out from under the wooden box on the patio. Moving. With one sunflower seed stuck in it as if to mimic an eye.

Wait, what?

I looked at the amaryllis table and there was a big gouge facing me taken out of that big clump,  but I had no idea how it had come off after all this time. The wind was still catching at the loosened fuzz, meantime, which was going up, down, up, down–but wait–what wind?

As I puzzled over it, a little Bewick’s wren popped out from under the box and looked up at me as if to say hi. Or maybe, duh. (The clump had stopped moving.)

And then the fur and the bird were gone. Poof!

It was at least a half hour, maybe an hour later that I looked out again and saw this small amount. (It was much lighter in the sun’s direct light than the camera’s. Note the new shape.)

The most white part of the fur had been separated out and rejected. Beige only, thank you. We like to keep the lights down low, shhhh now, our babies will be sleeping.