I’m on a tight knitting deadline and had done thousands of stitches on one of my shawl patterns today when I stopped to give my hands a break and just gaze out the window a little while.

My jaw was suddenly…  My stars.  (!) We are not in Cooper’s town anymore.

Cooper’s? 31″ wingspan. And no sign of them all day.

This immense black hawk swooped low across the yard, rising up at the last and landing on the translucent awning over the patio. I watched its shadow from below as it walked noisily across up there, going left, then right. It leaned over the awning to give me a good look at its face–it was looking at the birdfeeder and within a dozen feet of where I was sitting just inside the window. Definitely a hawk, but black? And since when do hawks come that huge?

It was checking out the menu, I guess; squirrels would make a tasty appetizer. (And guess which one was the only thing that stayed put?)

And then, as I followed every move, just waiting to see it clearly again for more details, it took off and swooped back the way it had come, those immense black wings spread wide. WOW.

A Zone-tailed Hawk (the one on the right, definitely). By the book, it’s 51″ tip to tip–it could reach every note on my piano and then some.

They are rare enough and very rare here but there it was, tail and coloring confirming. Sibley’s western guide, again, says that in flight they apparently can be mistaken by other birds for turkey vultures–no worries, just the local garbage collector on cleanup duty, when suddenly *stoop*! It’s a hawk! And as a woman who raised four teenagers and one of them grew to 6’9″, I can only imagine what it takes to feed that thing.  Well, (being helpful) I do have a plethora of squirrels, and a particular one seems happy to step up to the plate or anything else you want to eat him on. Just stay put there a moment, he’ll come challenge anything with wings.

My friend Sandi once told me that one of the cool things about running a yarn store is that every single day, someone new comes in that she’s never seen before: she gets to meet new friends and knitters every day as well as enjoying the regulars, it’s always interesting.

(Okay, sudden visual image of stick out your talons for me a moment so I can wind this yarn on them, will ya? Don’t let the silk snag. Thanks.)

I so want to see this one again!

(Okay, Babelfish translates tant pis as “such an amount of worse” rather than “too bad for you.” Gotta love those transliterations.)

I hadn’t seen my hawks in days and wondered if they didn’t like that I’d changed the looks of a few things out there, like that slip’n’slide for the squirrels with the shiny reflections from the greased foil by the birdfeeder.

Today they made up for it: I saw the female twice, the male once. He flew to a few feet from the window and while gazing in steadily, leaned towards me as if to say hello. I loved it.

But his mate! She came in first, landing on the barbecue grill, and that same squirrel with the severe testosterone poisoning–‘terone ranger!–not a female squirrel defending her young but a male his territory, and I will mention that it was the same one that deliberately motioned threateningly at a hawk last week–at first as she flew in he started to run away, but then when she settled down on the arm of the grill he turned around midrun and audaciously came back to repeat that deliberate menacing act. Going so far as to put a paw on the bottom of the grill poised as if to leap up at her immediately above him.

Get lost, loser. She lifted off.

A little while later, her mate was doing his closeup for me on the wooden box. What a gorgeous bird. Ix-nay on the beef suet with peanuts here, Ma’am, but thanks for trying.

And not a squirrel to be seen. Even though he was the smaller of the two.

Then another hour or so later, the female flew in front of the patio again, abruptly blending into leaves and disappearing into the tree behind the grill. Wow, she’s good at this.

Guess who took offense at her invading his favorite tree?

I watched in disbelief as that little bushytail (he has distinctive markings) deliberately strode down the fenceline toward her like a cat about to pounce. And then he jumped at her! Not quite to her, but with the intent of scaring her off again like a sparrow. She again took off slowly and deliberately–I’ve seen her in a hurry and that wasn’t it–and whether she was responding to an innate instinct on the part of a bird, even a predator, to get away from something coming at her or what, I don’t know.

But wow, that squirrel’s got a Darwin wish. Coopers, looking at Sibley’s western birds guide, do indeed eat small mammals, not just birds.  He’s so got it coming.

On a side note.  The Washington Post reports on a professor who ran the recent press releases of the members of Congress through a computer to determine patterns, and what surprised him was this: 27% of everything they say is taunting. Not just chest-thumping aren’t I wonderful self-congratulations to their constituents, but actually taunting their opponents and not even pretending to try to work together to get things done in a way that acknowledges that other people have valid points of view too.

This is not the way to govern a diverse people well.

We voters should be watching them like a hawk.

I am proud to say that my Representative, Anna Eshoo, who thanked me warmly for her hat from the Warm Hats Not Hot Heads project for Congress, handled the latest quite respectfully, I feel, while explaining her point of view.  It can be done.

(I mentioned the other day that the Elephant Ear had a trunk that reminded me of snakeskins. I didn’t realize till I saw the photo that there was a knocked-over amaryllis pot (yours, Lene) behind it.)

Angela Tennant’s generosity inspired several hours of knitting-to-go here this afternoon. Note that Angela didn’t get an email notifying her of her win, no time to think what the right thing to do might be, she got a phone call out of the blue from the CEO of XRX and she just instantly offered the gift of the famous afghan to Sue, straight from the heart.  There is a Jewish proverb that says he who saves one person saves the whole world. Yes!

I’d needed that bit of bliss as fortification before the fray.

I’d started before my flu bout and my inner child was whining, Aren’t we *there* yet?

So. Turbotax wanted to know how many weeks of the year my daycare operated under the name “book royalty.” Whoa, back up, what wrong click was that? Daycare? You insist it’s in a rental? I should state the oil revenue from it? Riiight. Okay, have to hit just the right pop-up box here and not there–got it, at last! Book it, Dano.

And now my printer is wishing me many happy returns of the day.  (I’m DONE!!!) I finally don’t have to feel like that pointy-faced squirrel I’ve named Ratnose.  It kept jumping at the feeder from the redwood awning pole (and it was chewing on the pole, too–this will not do), so a few days ago I covered its leaping-off point with aluminum foil and, on second thought, sprayed it with Pam.

I picked up my needles and kept an eye out.

E-YOW! Sliiiiiiide *whoosh!*

Hey, that was fun, can we do it again?

And today there were four healthy eyases eating up a storm. Clara the mother peregrine seemed to be methodically feeding mostly one, then mostly the second and on through till all were falling over sleepy. Then she scraped up the gravel to create a berm for extra warmth on one side, the weather having turned cold, scooted them carefully underneath her wings, and took a rest, too.

I had a conversation tonight with a friend whom I’ve known since junior high, who now lives in the town where we lived during our first job after grad school. She said something about taking her dog to go swim in the local lake.

Lake?

A road I’d driven a thousand times was named after that lake, but I couldn’t remember an actual lake.

She thought I was pulling a junior high stunt on her. So I described my old route to pretty much anywhere from our house in New Hampshire.

Then I went to go do my treadmill time for the evening, and it hit me. I HAD turned left rather than right and driven the other direction on that road–once. I didn’t get very far.  I don’t think the whole thing was paved going that way, and what pavement there was was something you could only find in New England-type weather: there was a yellow sign early on warning “Frost heaves.”

This is back when we were just starting our family. I puzzled over how frost could have morning sickness.

And then I saw the huge boulder in the road. Not on the road–in the road, coming up out of the pavement right smack dab there in my way, bursting out from underneath, taller than the undercarriage of my car. It was at a blind spot where there was barely room for two cars to pass even if that thing hadn’t been there, and highly dangerous.

And so I always drove the long way around to get to the other end of town. I never saw the lake from that road.

Wait again–it came back to me. My friend Dottie Peyser had had that lake in her backyard, near the end of that long route around; her place was such a gorgeous spot of the earth. She ran a smocking guild once a week out of her home, and in those baby days I smocked then like I knit now; she was older than my folks and we were great friends. And what a view she and her husband Bill had out back!

I saw Dottie knitting once at our meeting and teased her about it and she said something to the effect of, well but she was a knitter too, and once you’re a knitter you never get over yarn. You always come back to it.

She was right, of course.

I wrote to them after we moved here, checking to see how they were doing. The post office returned it for insufficient address. I wrote on the envelope, by now already fairly marked up: Dear California postmaster. This is going to an old part of a small town, where *there are no street numbers* assigned. The mailman there knows everybody and their house by name and by sight. Please deliver.

They did.

Dottie passed away; Bill had a  heart attack and called me to tell me he’d survived it, and that she was gone. He wanted to know how his semi-adopted grandchildren (ours) were doing.

That was 24 years ago. And somewhere, I still have a picture of my oldest, at three, grinning hugely with their teacup poodle in her lap and her arms around it.

A chance mention by someone from junior high about her dog. It brought so many good memories back after I took a moment to reflect on the treadmill.

And it also got me thinking. I never knew that road went along the other side of the water.  How many things do I miss seeing? Even if I can’t do sun, even if it has to be close to sundown, I need to get out in nature all I can. Walk in the redwoods. Splash in the cold edge of the ocean. Make it so I never, ever forget a lake again.

Usually the hatching is spread out over several days, sped up a bit from the timing of the laying, but today, the San Jose nest had three chicks hatch! Little white peregrine fluffballs called eyases. My friend Hilary made the little felted creature in that link for a fundraiser for the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group, and my Malcolm the Falcon shown here last year for me. She is a gifted artist.

Meantime, we had a friend over this evening to work on a computer issue with Richard’s help, and I used the opportunity to make myself sit down with a shawl project that had stumped me–what to do below the shoulders, which pattern to choose–and just simply made myself pick one idea, fer cryin’ out loud, and get on with it.

I had gotten the yolk done and then it had incubated at that stage for about a month, right in sync, come to think of it, with those peregrine eggs. It feels good to see it finally spreading its wings gradually in my hands.

Happy Birthday, Michelle! The sky threw confetti flakes on the day of your birth in celebration!

Yesterday and today were General Conference, wherein members of the Mormon Church can listen to their leaders speaking. One of them, Jeffrey Holland, said that they do not assign topics nor coordinate talks between themselves, rather, they each pray for guidance and for their listeners as well as themselves and take it forward from there.

It’s interesting, but it is a bit of a knitting marathon while we watch four two-hour sessions together over the ‘Net over the two days. Yesterday’s got that Malabrigo hat finished.

Today’s, a new chemo cap for an in-law. I’d forgotten that in my stash was some Rowan Pure Silk DK tucked away, bought on closeout at Purlescence, the only way really I could afford it.

I got it about a year ago, well before her diagnosis, on the grounds that I had no pure silk yarn in my stash, there are a lot of allergic people in the world, and at some point it could well be exactly what I needed even if I had no particular reason for it just then. The color was nice but it was going to be for someone else. There were three skeins on the table, and I hesitated; two seemed the right number for no reason I knew. Three would make a shawlette but that just didn’t feel like quite…somehow…

Two it was.

I can usually talk myself out of that sort of unplanned purchase, but this seemed important.

And then I simply forgot about it.

I found them recently, totally surprised at what was inside the bag–where did I?  Oh! I remember! And I had an allergic in-law whose hair and recent chemo round had not played friends.

And yet Thursday I again did not remember that silk; I grabbed the Malabrigo on impulse while wondering what I was forgetting, and ran out the door.

Had I thought of it then, the Malabrigo hat would never have come to be, and I’m very very grateful it did.

So now tomorrow, just as soon as it would have been anyway, one new silk hat will be in the mail to that good woman to cheer her up amid all that’s going on right now. We talked to her between Conference sessions; light lavender? She loves light lavender!

And meantime, in the entirely silly news department, the new and obnoxious leader-of-the-pack squirrel I mentioned that taunted the hawk taunted me today: all the others know, you do not touch Feederfiller’s feeder and you do not climb the wooden pole next to it. I have them trained.

But this big newcomer not only leaps at the feeder, shaking out just enough to encourage it, but today it hung onto the pole at the jumpoff spot, marking and announcing its territory for all to see that it and it alone claimed this prize.  Mine! Sunbathing vertically right there.

It kept its eyes on the other side of the pole away from the house. That way I couldn’t see it. It was so proud and so sure this was so that it utterly ignored me as I opened the door and raised the supersoaker.

Can you just hear the screaming tantrum of THAT’S NOT FAIR!!! as it tore down that pole and across the yard and didn’t come back the rest of the evening? While another happily took its place and, with perfect black-glove manners, gleaned falling seeds from the birds above for as long as it wanted?

Thursday night, getting ready for Purlescence, I didn’t have a portable project for it.  I’d finished one and hadn’t decided  the next yet–but it was time to go. I grabbed needles and the first ball of merino I saw and off I went.

I got the brim finished by the time I went to bed that night but I kept wondering why I was knitting this. My daughter-in-law has one like it; was I subconsciously trying to knit her back to being here in person? (Oh, and maybe bring Parker too? This picture’s about six weeks old now, we need to take new ones.) She loved hers so much when I gave it to her that it certainly made me want to go do that again.

Well then.

I didn’t work on it much Friday, despite my nagging desire to finish a thing once started.

The phone rang about 9:00 this morning.

2:00? Okay, thank you, that sounds good, we’ll see you then!

I suddenly had two-thirds of a hat to knit, and fast.  And I mean fast! I knew there was no way I could knit one from the beginning in time for the very helpful fellow who would be dropping by, but for his wife at least, whom I’d never met, I had a head start in that lovely Malabrigo softness.

And I knew that the best way to make a good person happy is to do something to honor those closest to them.

So the doorbell rang this afternoon a little after I danced across the house waving the thing to Richard going, I finished! I finished! The fellow handed me the thing he was going out of his way to drop off for us and started to turn away with a wave and a cheerful hi.

I stopped him a moment. Explained what I’d done. I saw someone I took to be his wife (she was) waiting in the car and waved hi to her as he left, hat now in hand. I shut the door after him.

You know that doorbell rang again before I could get across the house.

And so I got to meet a delightful woman whom I felt matched me right down to the longish gray hair and the hearing aids.  We swapped a few hearing stories and laughed together. The whole time I’d been raceknitting, I’d been wishing I could actually meet her, and I got to!

When a ball of yarn leaps onto your needles like that, sometimes you’ve just got to obey it.

Oh, and one other thing? The female Cooper’s hawk swooped across the yard just about the time I finished, me on my perch just then and she coming to hers, the metal dolly ten feet away. My eyes followed her in as she came and I turned. She seemed to approve of that nest I’d built–awfully small, though, don’t you think–and a moment later, with a nod of her head, (birds do that to gauge distances but never mind) she swooped back to the right and away.

The male Cooper’s swooped in, scattering the finches and doves without catching anything: he seems, relative to the female, to be a bit of a klutz at this hunting thing. Or maybe he wasn’t really hungry just then, just grocery shopping a bit for his waiting mate. Or maybe offspring? I know the first of the San Jose peregrine falcon eggs is supposed to hatch tomorrow.

Well then. How about let’s take a look around at the real estate here.

Then he did something I have never seen before. He waddled over to the giant elephant ears plant. (Writing that got me to go learn for the first time that the edible varieties are where taro root comes from, although if you have the inedible type it’s quite poisonous; I think I won’t experiment.) Hopped up on one of the trunk pieces that have always looked like giant spiked snakeskins to me, coiling back on themselves a bit. Then over to another; the plant is many decades old and has the density of a sideways-growing tree. Those spikes couldn’t have felt good on his feet, though.

Off, then.  He peered around the corner of the metal trashcan that is the outside earthquake supplies stash; nope, no ground birds hiding around there to flush out now, don’t see a nest. Well, crum, a fat towhee would have done nicely. Hmmm.

He fluttered a few feet to the left and scooted his head under a chair on the patio. Nope, noone here either. He backed out, walked around the table right in front of me on the other side of the window standing there watching him, came maybe two feet from the sliding glass door and regarded me for a long moment. There is nothing in the world like looking directly in the eyes of a wild thing.

There was the wooden box immediately to my left set on 2x4s. They’re under there, I know it! Maybe he heard a skittering away? The hawk leaned way over to the side as if to peer under, to where I knew at least one Bewick’s wren had taken cover.

He straightened up. That didn’t work, try again. He leaned his head way to the side and down again. Just can’t seem to get low enough. And then a third time.

Nope. That settled it. Can’t fit under there.

He half-walked half-fluttered around the far side of the box to look from that vantage point.

Still only a 2×4’s height up on this side. No go.

But just past the end of the box, on the ground, was a particularly obnoxious squirrel.

Now, the biggest male of them is the alpha of the patio.  He preens his tail often.  See how big it is? Fear the fluffy: I rule! He thinks the others eat under the feeder only when he allows it. He is a bully. He is happy to chase off all contenders, till the day shall come that some upstart who’s faster than he is decides to outbite and outfight him and claim dominance for themselves.

Dang if that squirrel–it was like a toddler told to stay in time out and sticking their toes over the line of the carpet in their bedroom doorway, testing to see exactly how much they could get away with–

–well, the little birds skitter away from the seed when that squirrel takes a step directly at them.

So after looking straight at that hawk, remember, the littler by a third of the resident Coopers, for several moments, he took a very deliberately menacing half-lunge at the hawk, who wasn’t quite looking in his direction.

Yeah yeah whatever dude, and the hawk lazily lifted itself up to the top of the metal dolly out of the squirrel’s reach. Don’t harass me, I’m not in the mood.

I think had that hawk been looking dead-on at that squirrel at the wrong moment that squirrel would have been toast right then and there.

And you know that, now that it’s thinking it’s gotten away with it and that it’s declared itself alpha yet again of the porch even over all things hawk, that squirrel is going to try to pull that one off again. When the hawk is hungrier. Or maybe when it’s the larger female.  Or when the babies in the nest are yammering (are they yet?) for food.

Squirrel on wry.

Remember this post? Our flowering pear has a nest in it for the first time this year. I guess it’s gotten tall enough and full enough. It’s in direct line of sight of the hawk’s, above and across the yard, brave thing–maybe best to keep an eye out. But it’s there, with new life coming to be inside that little leafy home next to ours.

The hawk usually does a low swoop, but today I saw it zoom over towards the redwood from high enough up that I almost missed it.

Last year, though I didn’t say it here because I was asked not to while I was doing it, I was helping man the remotely-controlled cameras trained on the peregrine falcon nest at City Hall in San Jose, a once in a lifetime experience. I was really dedicated to doing the job well.  Eyes glued to the screen, ready to grab and switch from camera to camera and I got really good at anticipating where they would fly next and capturing the scene for all the classrooms and birdwatchers to see. Those baby peregrines have character and they are adorable.

And there was drama: the eyas that died. The father peregrine bowing his head at his son’s body weeks later, standing still for minutes–and then to my surprise trying to push him under the gravel with the top of his head as if to give him a proper burial. Not with his sharp feet or beak but with his soft feathers.

Who knew a bird could behave so?

Neither of the parents ever stepped on his body at the corner of the nestbox. It was sacred ground.

I went to go see them in person and a fledgling hung over the edge of the ledge above as if waving a wing and grinning at the adoring paparazzi below.

But the cams took over my life, six hours some days of my hand hovered over the mouse, ready to click just so, and it left me unable to do more than the most meager amount of knitting. So many computer-induced icepacks. So many things I wanted to do with my life that got put aside. We upgraded our bandwidth to accommodate the streaming.

They asked me last week if I were going to sign in and get started again? They hadn’t heard from me…

I was quite sick, and the effort of pitching in was absolutely undoable just then. That sealed it. They’d had no way to know how much I had given up to be a part of that, incredible an experience though it was. I mentioned that the computer that had had all the sign-in information had died the death and been replaced, in case that made them feel better, because it was with great regret and a tremendous sense of freedom that I told them no–no, I didn’t think so. I did hedge and offer to do emergency backup, but that’s not what they wanted. And that was that.

This year (thank you Dad and Richard!) I have my Sibley guides. I have my birdsongs (thank you to our son Richard and Kim!) I’m learning about my own birds right here, learning their personalities and quirks, being befriended by the wrens and awed almost daily by those Cooper’s hawks. Paying attention.

How many times did I not see them because I couldn’t look up from the screen last year?

I was given a great privilege that I’m very grateful to have had, and now I have fledged and discovered my own home.

I knew they did this but had never really asked about it before, but it was time. I called the Los Gatos Birdwatcher shop a few days ago and asked about their delivery days. No way no how was I going to be able to get myself down there nor would they want me to.

And so it was that on yet another rainy day today, my doorbell rang and I ran and opened quick as one of the shop owners stood trying to hold my heavy bag of non-sprouting no-millet no-hulls no-mess sunflower birdseed out of the drips. John offered to put it anywhere I wanted and I motioned to right there just inside the door, thank you so much.

And he handed me my little suet cake.  I keep one hanging and another for crumbling into bits where the Bewick’s wrens can reach, replenishing the supply when the one black squirrel that’s taken a liking to it goes after it. (The others wrinkle their whiskers and go ewww, dude, you *eat* that stuff? But in normal life all I have to do is reach over and touch the supersoaker and he’s out of there.)

Although when I was too ill to manage doing even that, I saw one wren actually fly up to the caged one, alternating stabbing away and frantically looking down at the ground and around. Munching high up on the vertical was clearly not in its comfort zone–but one must eat.

Since I’ve been up and about and more helpful again, that’s been the end of that tomfowlery.

John asked if I were doing better now; yes, mostly, but still, I promised not to breathe on him. (Ignoring the autoimmune side to things–but that is indeed thankfully easing off too.)

And it struck me afterwards that just being asked by someone to whom it clearly mattered made me take stop and take stock and think to myself, Wait–it’s true, I AM a whole lot better. Remember Tuesday? And and? And the Tuesday before? Honey, I got nothin’ to complain about.

Just a little moment in a life.  And yet the way he carried it out was beautiful: he wasn’t just delivering a product, he was serving and doing for me what I could not at that moment do for myself, and serving with grace. For my birds too.  Glad to help. There they were, just outside the glass that is the back wall, chattering away at the feeders, and he looked over at them and smiled.

Shame he didn’t get to see the Cooper’s.  But just imagine all the birds he could tell about.

At first glance as the page opens, it’s a rusted-out skeleton of a very old car with its license plate falling off out of sheer age and neglect. Then you look a little closer… Czech it out! If it were another nationality, we could call it an American I-doily singing in the rain.

Spent some time knitting, coming up with a whole cool new lace idea, putting the project at hand aside to go swatch and go write, not finished tweaking, glad I could do a bit more now. Getting there. Mostly.  Since March 15th I’ve lost seven pounds I really didn’t need to lose, but this morning it had stabilized.

Just please keep that Crohn’s away from me.  If tonight is like last night in reaction to eating a good dinner, (look, Ma! no Zofran!), I’m calling my GI.

The Cooper’s hawk swooped in and landed behind me in the late afternoon during a brief break in the rain, the misted sunlight intensifying the colors in her feathers. Gorgeous. We regarded each other a few minutes.  I think things are going to be okay.

(Ed. to add Friday evening: last night was a far better night than Wednesday night. Thank heavens.)

The gorgeous Cooper’s hawks came hunting twice today; I’m getting to where I can tell them apart by size. Male raptors are always smaller than the females.

It had been raining all day but suddenly there was a brief break.

A small flock of house finches was squabbling at the feeder, red-breasted males and brown soft-striped females all vying for the highest spot as always, while four mourning doves below were sharing peacefully close to the window, where I’d thrown a little seed just for them over where the concrete was dry after taking this picture.

All other species seemed to suddenly be hiding.

Usually, the doves pretty much ignore the flighty little finches, but not this time; there was a sudden flash of dash above and a millisecond behind they too took off.

But they are big and they are slow and they are clearly more worth the effort of the hunt (and there’s a reason why they reproduce more often than the others); the female hawk did a tight u-turn right outside this window as she veered after them.

And gone.

Now, if we could just put another window in that one bedroom so I could see through it in the direction the chases always seem to go… (Can’t. Would make those walls less earthquake safe. Not to code. I asked once.)

A little while later, three doves were feeding near me by the window and the finches too came back. A western jay was going after the hanging nutcake, his killer beak long and thick and sharp and sturdy as he jackhammered off what he wanted.

I looked at the little dove below, noted how tiny and thin its bill was, and thought, yeah, if dinner might fight back, honey, you do lose.

Then the view went silent again. Nothing out there but me and the now-downpouring rain, looking out at empty trees. Take your shoes off at the door, folks, they’re muddy.

The male Cooper’s swooped across the yard, long and low, wings and tail wide, raising up at the last second to the top of the fence.  He did the little tail twitch that comes with settling in.

Only–I was facing his way watching him. And there wasn’t a thing to eat.

This would not do.

He raised one foot just a bit.  Put it down. Then the other. Shook a river of water out of his feathers and channeled it down his back. He turned his head this way and that over and over as he shifted his weight again from foot to foot, looking for all the world like a little boy hauled before the principal–knowing I was there but refusing to look up at me, wanting to be the one having it his way.

Dude. You plunked yourself in the most visible spot in the fence.

Suddenly something caught his eye and he dove down the other side, and whatever he was after had to be right there because there is just no extra space at that spot.

And just to the left, I knew, was the neighbors’ garden. Which, they showed me in delight once, being fellow enthusiasts themselves, the birds like to tear leaves out of to build their nests.

My Coopers probably shared dinner close to their own. I wonder if it’s the big nest in the towering silk oak. I wonder how many young they’ll raise this year. I wonder if the Cooper’s I saw perched on the lightpole at the end of Tennyson Street was one of theirs…

My dear husband went out to buy groceries today, the hood on his jacket pulled down low  over his face as he dashed to the car. Twice, actually, after missing an item.  We will now have our chicken soup.

And we have settled into our warm, dry, but empty nest, knowing that baby birds will hatch soon and we’ll get to see them, too.

We have a shed built by a former owner ages ago with a roof over it covered in many decades’ worth of redwood debris and bright green soft moss, spilling over the edges, quite pretty. The birds and squirrels love it.

Motion caught my eye and I turned just in time to see the Cooper’s hawk swooping up across the edge and over that roof–and the black squirrel sitting up there, startled, saw it just in time too and leaped for the leaves of the twisted old olive tree with zero to spare. Made it!

Just as I was blinking from that little bit of drama, a second Cooper’s swooped right there right at the same spot right in the same way, wings and tail stretched wide to second the motion. That is the first time I’ve ever seen two. It must be spring. Wow.

Still trying to figure out what yesterday’s visitor was. It looked (checking my Sibley guide) somewhat like a Wandering Tattler: a barred black-and-white chest, a heathered brown back, long precise bill coming to a straight point and large size, stabbing delectables in the grass. (Our back yarn isn’t the Bay and those would be shorebirds, but if they Wander…) Except that it had a black bib and, later when it flew, a white spot at the center of the end of the tail as seen from below. Any birders know?

It looked up at me, midstride midmeal, as if to question.

No, thanks, that’s okay, you eat it, go ahead, I’m fine.

And since yesterday, a pleasant smell of toasting nuts has wafted through the house whenever the heater has come on. This beats the heck out of our newly-built first house in New Hampshire in the 80’s: hear the fan. Smell the skunk. Here comes the heat. For a year. Our builder was late finishing, and I’d finally told him firmly that I was going to celebrate Thanksgiving in my house–or his.

I do not think he would have been altogether displeased that the skunk hit the fan. (Or whatever took the brunt of the spray.)

Well now. I knew throwing that thoroughly stale brazil nut to that little fluffytail yesterday was a mistake. I didn’t expect him to play gourmet chef with it. That nut smells quite a bit better now than it did when I gave it to him.

Everybody’s a foodie in northern California. (Maybe Virginia too.)

(p.s. With Bev’s suggestion, I looked more closely at the woodpecker section. Gilded Flicker. Cool! That was it!)

They had given it a 50% chance of snow for yesterday or today, the last snow here having been in the mid ’70’s. My kids were disbelieving; I was hoping; my very old snow shovel that, it turned out, was not good for digging to China, was waiting with dilapidation; it didn’t happen. (Yet.) Unless you were several hours south of here at the beach.

And in that toasty weather, Clara, the celebrated City Hall peregrine falcon, laid her first red egg yesterday; every single year that first has come earlier than the previous year’s. Eggs, then white fluffballs, then baby birds with enormous feet, hanging over the 18th floor ledge waving a wing at the gawkers, and–okay, I won’t make them grow up too fast. 240 mph is going to be fast enough.

My resident Cooper’s hawk chased a dove and away.

I saw another Cooper’s standing on a light pole near downtown yesterday and  wondered if it’s one of our previous year’s hatchlings. All these magnificent big birds that had all but vanished when I was a kid: and they are back.

At least one of my Bewick’s wrens has her belly full and low and she seems hungrier than usual. Sweet gherkins or sour for you, m’dear?

And with my white wool of a previous Spring now blue yarn and put to needle, a few more stitches wrap happily around my life.

Cold and rain and a good day to stay in today and quietly knit and answer emails, grateful for the warmth.

A small black squirrel was on my porch, a little shaggy looking against the winter, working at the gleanings from the birdfeeder hanging near the edge of the awning above; its dark fur was a little damp, the seeds more so. It flicked its tail at a few drips that made direct hits.

Something must have caught my eye though I certainly didn’t see it come in. I almost never do. It is a recurring source of wonder to me that that could be so.

She stood on the perch of a metal dolly out there, protected from the rain, the early afternoon sun showing off her gorgeous brown feathers in front, the dark top of her head hooding her, contrasting with the lower half. The gray/black stripes in her tail. She flicked it ever so slightly side-to-side, settling in.

She watched me. She watched the squirrel.

I had inadvertently chased her away from her hunt Tuesday by going outside to fill the feeder at one of those moments when it seemed like I had the whole back yard to myself. She’d been on the neighbor’s roof waiting, and I made her go hungry for the moment. We all need to eat.

And we certainly don’t lack for squirrels here.

I gauged their sizes; there would be no contest when they danced beak to cheek.

She threw her head all the way back, beak wide open, and looked for all the world like she was gargling. I would tell you what it sounded like, too, if it did, if I knew.

The squirrel stopped eating and looked at me. There seemed a little more sunflower on the patio than at times, so surely I must be ready to leap up and take the bounty away from it because, you know, you don’t just give up scrumptiousness to something that’s smaller than you.

The Cooper’s hawk watched the squirrel. She watched me.

I tried to move just slightly to get a better look only when she was turned away, and a split second later it was almost as if she were going, nuh uh uh, I saw that.

Okay, I’ll hold still then.

Okay.

The squirrel, meantime, looked out towards the yard to make sure no hawk was around. Where was everybody else?

The hawk looked at it. The hawk looked at me.

And the squirrel checked every direction except the one where its predator was. Somehow, it never once looked that way the whole time. It looked to where bigger squirrels would surely come from to chase it away from its treasure.

She again arched her head back and–laughed, perhaps. Was she calling her mate? Finally, she spread those huge wings wide and glided down close and right straight over that little black squirrel, her feet kept to herself, then across the yard and away. Darwin marked the territory for later.

And the little black squirrel never once knew what didn’t hit him.