Called a friend this evening who’s at 13 days post-op, asked her her favorite ice cream. Yes she was up to a visit, and yes please!

Rick’s Rather Rich’s Computer Chip it was, and I am late getting back here to type.

Meantime, a hawk rescue on the main cross-town route was posted by the chief of police. Leaving me wondering, do cop cars always have thick soft blankets in the trunk? They should, the more I think about it. Good thing theirs did.

The San Jose peregrine chick (eyas) named Lucia went to hop up on the low ledge a few days ago, overshot, and hopped clean over the thing like she’d jumped on a pogo stick. She was rescued and taken up to the roof. Two days later she was rescued again, but really really really wanted to be several floors below with her three sisters on the HVAC ledge.

Today that’s where the food was when she was hungry and she made it happen. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one manage to float back down to the nest area, much less one that’s not actually flying yet, but she did it!

They’re noticeably different even from yesterday as those dark feathers grow in. This year’s four baby peregrines at San Jose City Hall are all females this year. The fluff is turning into dandelion puffs on the wind and they are getting ready to ride its updrafts.

It’s been a long time since someone yelled at me like that. I was not supposed to be out there. I was not supposed to be in their space. I most definitely was not supposed to be picking the strawberries and blueberries that they hadn’t been able to get at underneath that bird netting.

I looked up. The mourning dove on the telephone wire tucked its head under its wing: Not me!

That mockingbird was somewhere but I wasn’t quite sure just which tree. Loud, insistent, and incessant! I was surprised that a bird could make a person who has such a terrible time hearing on the phone know just how big a piece of its mind it was giving me. Nonstop. I almost wanted to apologize to the neighbors, while at the same time, it was totally making my day. Look at this! I’m hearing a bird!

Here, I offered, looking at one strawberry and then tossing it to the ground, that one you can definitely have. And that one. That’s probably the bug that chomped them–that’s definitely for you, too.

I finished picking the ripe ones and headed on inside so it would know I was no longer–what, a threat to its babies somewhere above my head? Did I accidentally chase off its one chance at a late mate this summer? Beats me.

Meantime, my plastic container of sourdough starter had fallen out of the freezer and shattered and my good friend Sue fed hers last night and brought over a half a jar, ready to go.

And so for the first time in too long there is a loaf of cranberry pumpkin vanilla orange sourdough bread that will be ready by lunchtime tomorrow and we are so looking forward to it.

With berries at breakfast to tide us over till it’s ready.

There’s a road about five miles long that ends at a preserve near the Bay in one direction and runs towards the mountains in the other, sloping upward but never quite reaching that far. On its western end it takes you through what were once endless apricot orchards; now there’s just the Heritage Orchard by city hall and the library. Most of its apricot trees were replanted in the last year or two because the prior ones had had a bad case of old (or it may have been their roots drowned in all those atmospheric rivers.) The new ones are growing nicely with lots of the redness of baby leaves at top and they are in lines facing that road, spaced closely.

Which, on the other side, has Main street and its shops angling away like the arms of a Y.

I was at the front in the right-most of the three lanes coming down that hill while stopped at a red where the two roads come together. A woman was walking across towards the apricot trees but kept turning back and motioning a clear Come on. Come on! to someone I couldn’t see through the taller cars to my left.

The wave of an arm in return and then I saw who she was gesturing to. I had assumed he was standing in the median waiting for the next walk sign, which would mean standing there through another cycle with all those lanes of cars whizzing by, and I didn’t get why he wasn’t just racing to catch up with her–but now it looked like he was actually in the road. That was nuts.

The light turned.

I inched forward.

He waved me emphatically on: GO. GO!

So I did, slowly, not knowing at first why.

Only then did I see.

The car next to me started to then quickly thought better of it. The car in the left turn lane wasn’t going anywhere.

The man was trying to protect what I now knew he knew we wouldn’t have seen in time. It was easily six feet long or more, the shades of gray of the pavement, and as the snake twisted its body in the sun, in those half-rolling motions there was an unexpected glistening, the lighter belly accenting the dark upper.

I have never in my life seen such a huge snake in the wild. Though it seems almost a perversion to describe the widest part of that commuter road in that town as in any way wild.

I will never again hear the phrase herding cats without thinking of that guy trying to encourage a snake to cross the three lanes plus bike lane of that nice warm road.

How many of those baby apricot trees could it climb all at the same time?

—

Conversation later at home: The only native snakes that big around here I think are the rattlesnakes, he told me, and some of them are quite dark. Did you see the patterning?

The right-eye retina scarring got the better of me, I told him. I was the farthest car away and I couldn’t quite see that level of detail to be sure.

Edited to add: after Googling snake types in California? He was apparently right. Rattler.

The first San Jose peregrine falcon eyas of the year hatched today, three more eggs to come.

Remember the two guys in our House race, Simitian and Low, who got the exact same number of votes for second place and so we had three winners in the primary? Someone not currently affiliated with any of them paid for a recount and it was decided today.

But not till after Low had thrown a fit, calling the person paying for it a stooge of the guy who’d come out #1 because they’d had connections in the past, and when asked, Is it not democracy to make the effort to find out who the voters wanted the most?, continued to call doing a recount a corruption.

Well well well guess who came out ahead by five votes after that recount? Egg, meet face.

Personally, I think he found an effective way to make sure Liccardo stays in the #1 spot come November. Real leaders don’t bully.

That distinctive wide, low swoop caught the edge of my sight and I stood as I turned to see if maybe I could see it way over into the neighbor’s yard.

But that’s not where it was. It was perched right there on top of my birdnetting tent.

I looked at the Cooper’s hawk and it looked steadily back at me for about half a minute. It was an adult, a little paler at the lower front than its (grandfather?), Coopernicus, who used to come people watch from time to time during breeding season. Including, memorably, one time when a mourning dove fluttered down off the awning right in front of him and how do you describe a bird doing a double take as he did this sudden, ‘Scuse me, my young’uns would love some of that. Whoosh!

With the tall redwood and silk oak trees gone now that they nested in it was a joy to see that they’re still in the neighborhood.

I caught the rabbit nibbling on my sour cherry blossoms.

Then for several days it avoided this strange new thing.

Today, not so much. And it kept going back in there! Hawkproofing, what’s not to love, right?

Meantime, I had this moment of, hey, that’s it: the infamous white beam! And the gray grooved interior wall in the living room! Ours was exactly like that, only a fair bit darker of a shade in a shaded room, terribly depressing, the only thing I really didn’t like about this house. It took us six years to get rid of it and it may be why I dislike gray on walls so much. Our contractor nailed wallboard over ours, but anyway, here’s a listing that takes me straight back to when we first walked in the door here. Same builder, same floor plan. This one has not been changed much.

Picture number 18. See that white beam connecting the refrigerator side to the oven side?

Eileen, DIL of the then-owners, was in the kitchen, phone in hand, as we and the realtor came in. She saw Richard’s forehead matching up with that board and said to the person on the other end, Oh, THESE people aren’t going to buy this house!

What she also knew was that the master shower had been remodeled to be short enough for her Japanese in-laws. The shower head hit him near bellybutton level, and the stall was small enough that he couldn’t fit in it to kneel down under it.

Within a day or two we had a telescoping shower head. Later, the stall became part of the hallway to the new master bedroom and that beam in the kitchen was the first thing the remodeler took away.

So it was kind of fun to explore our pre-remodel house in those pictures without having to actually live in it again.

I was walking around the back yard to see what the first warm day of Spring had wrought.

The buds on the cherry trees were finally starting to bulge. Their winter had gone on and on, but not today!

The side of the tallest peach towards the pathway of the sun was in its glory with the rest soon to sound the amen.

I was stepping away from it, turned back to see–and was just in time to see a Cooper’s hawk swoop up and land on the telephone line just behind that tree right there in front of me.

If it were our original Coopernicus, who loved to people-watch during breeding season, he’d be about 15 by now; I wondered how many generations this one represented. I stood there with it tolerating me and silently beamed all the love I could its way. I know the tall trees to either side of the yard are gone now; I’m sorry about that. Maybe you never even knew them. I’m glad you’re here. Please stay. Please visit often. I want to have a new fledgling hopping among my amaryllis pots being cute again. I just want you here, and in this moment you are, and I am grateful.

And then too late I went inside and grabbed my phone so I could at least show you where it had been.

Did better today, thanks, everyone.

So how was the eclipse for you all? The only way you could tell there was one here was that the wild rabbit popped out of the bushes as if it were daybreak or dusk and started mowing away at the weeds. Which I thought was pretty funny.

Considerably bigger than two months ago; it’s not a baby anymore. Such a beautiful animal. (Typed while fully aware we went from one wild rabbit that we knew of to seven for awhile a few years ago.)

It does eat the worst of the weeds, which is great–but it also chews on young fruit tree trunks. The most vulnerable are enclosed in heavy-duty Erva bunny -proofing cages, highly recommended even though they’re pricey, so  that’s not an issue there.

The mango doesn’t have one. It probably should.

I want to put the rest of my sunflower seedlings out there but you know they’d be gone in a night. I do need to buy more Ervas.

Pro tip: do not follow the instructions to stake the cages to the ground: you want them to rattle when a possum or raccoon tries to climb over it, because then they won’t. Mine don’t.

Meantime, the camera isn’t doing a great job of picking out the differences in these blues as I play with the fog/clouds and sky, but I’m getting there.

Now that the pros have chimed in.

The interloper with the jess attached to her leg four days ago was a nine year old anatum peregrine, a type that sometimes has juvenile-type markings into adulthood, and she has since come back to her falconer.

But while she was on the lam she ignored the male peregrine defending his mate and his territory and flew right into the nest box where Hartley, the female, had just laid her first egg of the season.

The video, per the falconers, showed the intruder excited about that new egg (like a grandma!) and the behavior between the two females was chummy and familiar–like they were at a baby shower.

No you don’t get to brood it, now that’s enough now move along move along hon.

Years ago, San Jose had a new city hall with an HVAC ledge with a half-wall eighteen stories up. (And every time I look at it I think of whoever didn’t bother to smooth that sloppy upper surface down because surely nobody would ever lay eyes on it. Hah!)

A yearling female peregrine falcon spotted it, decided that cliff would make a great and well-protected territory, and claimed it. A male peregrine spotted her and it and decided that was a deal worth waiting around for a year for while she grew up. Peregrines were still vanishingly rare then as the species recovered, and who knew if he might ever get another chance at a mate and a territory.

Remote-control cameras were set up, and by the time they were actually ready to nest a biologist had put a wooden box with gravel in it for them to lay their eggs into. Wildlike.

And thus began the San Jose City Hall peregrines. Some may remember that I was on that camera crew for a season.

Last year with the avian flu decimating local populations we had a pair and expectations of egg laying any day–and then the female was found on the ground dying. Positive for flu. The male apparently did, too.

Another pair came in. Courtship ensued. The male vanished.

A yearling male found the place and a female who gave him the side-eye at first. But sometimes yearlings can pull it off and there were no adults around fending him off or trying to take over so she let him stay, and the one viable egg she laid may have been his or may have been the previous male’s–but whatever, they were an established pair with a territory now and they raised young together.

He’s an adult now and they’ve been having a good start to the season.

Today a yearling female found this great place to claim!

Now, a good reason why juvenile raptors have different plumage from the adults is so that the adults won’t attack them, just give them notice that this is taken, mosey on along now, young’un, shoo.

But she didn’t want to.

Go.

(She’s a teenager.) No! Not gonna! You can’t make me!

At first it was just the male swooping at her; then the female joined in. They didn’t go talon-to-talon attacking, they just dive-bombed close enough that she ducked again and again and again, her feathers a-kimbo, nearly falling off the ledge but determined. It was quite the show.

But at last she went on her way.

Which means, if anything happens to the current female, there will be a new one likely watching and waiting to step right in. And peregrine falcons, even juveniles, will adopt and raise any nestlings if they don’t have any of their own to watch over.

That male’s got a pretty sweet deal going.

And our nest just got a bit of an insurance policy.

I am grabbing onto a little sunny Spring here before the new atmospheric river goes Niagara on us Wednesday through next Wednesday.

This was taken four days ago; the oxalis is a solid blanket of blossoms now. They were the first thing I saw when we were house-hunting, absolutely celebratory. Sold.

There was a flock of crows yelling in the air. I looked: nope, they’d picked the neighbor’s overripe persimmons clean weeks ago. Thought so.

To the left, there it was: the hawk they were screaming at, soaring higher than they dared go, but they were making sure it knew they could take him on, for sure, them and their best buddies down here. Go! Shoo!

There were reports from San Jose that the peregrine falcons have begun the countdown towards the eggs to come.

And then of course this guy suddenly showed up. Hadn’t seen one of them in awhile.

Maybe the hawk noted its escape route past the mandarin tree, since rabbits always run for the same exit. Cute little guy. Future raccoon food. Or great-grandparent by August.

Last year there was a rabbit that would dash under the mango, and I’m guessing it chewed on it because the tree’s not been doing so well ever since. Not dead, not growing, no black spots of sickness but not deep green anymore either, not flowering, just sitting there on the edge of the bed deciding whether to wake up along with everybody else.

A little fertilizer for the season’s breakfast and we’ll see if that makes a difference.

Turns out pennies can be valuable after all. Behold: as bear fur. The sculpture on Google’s campus is named Curious.

I’m picturing running fingernails down those edges to hear its music–I bet he’d sing a baritone.