Love the birds along the marshlands, the name not quite as much; if the population were ever to crash, would you call it no re-egrets?

On my way to the post office today, going down a frontage road that runs alongside the Baylands, a sudden movement caught my eye and I glanced over, glad to be alone on the road.

Was it a courtship display?  There was a tall white egret, swooping over in an arc down to the water: wings stretched wide, a burst of sunlight in its feathers, it looked for all the world as if it were doing a cartwheel.

Glorious.

I had a certain feeling of being watched and looked up.

And there, ten feet away, perched on the back of the nearest outside chair on the patio, as close as he could possibly come, was a hawk. An adult Cooper’s, smaller than the one I’ve seen before, the markings slightly bluer on the head and redder in the brown, beautiful earthy tones–my guess is, the male of the local pair. I think I’ve only ever seen him from a distance before.

Eye to eye we stayed and very still.  I so wanted him not to fly away; let me take in every feather. I remember M. Leeb, my father’s artist friend, telling me when I was 16, Observe for ten minutes. Draw for one.

Would that I could.

After a few moments, he glanced to the side, keeping an eye on the business at hand but no, everyone was playing hide to his seek–and he was off between the trees and gone.

I sat there unable yet to move, not wanting it to be over.

On the knitting front: I have come to realize that I do not own a really warm hat (other than the by-now very ratty very bright red one my grandmother gave me on my 12th birthday) because I haven’t needed to.  I’m not off meeting Parker because I caught a cold–very slight, but a cold–and one does not bring germs to a preemie. I can’t go to the climate of cold yet–but I can knit about it.

So.

When I made the Coronet hat for Michelle, I found myself wanting to revamp the pattern. Plain stockinette above the brim? But that’s not as warm as cabled. Pick up 2/3 of the rows to make the new stitches? But, wait, cabling takes about 1/3 more stitches on average than plain, so, if I pick up every row and cable all over that should work, right?

Yes, I already see the problem: a cable of nine stitches across and the rows come in groups of eight. I’m working on it.

But what I wanted to show here was my answer to the Knitty instructions to kitchener the knit, purl, kniiiiiit, purl, knit stitches as you go across. It kept coming out reversed in the grafting for me. Bag that. I’m a lazy cuss.

So what I did was a three-needle bindoff: one row ready on one needle, the other on another, hold them together with the right sides together on the inside, and then I bound off. You take a third needle and go as if to knit into the first stitch in front and then keep pointing the tip on into the first stitch in the back; finish knitting the stitch. Repeat on the next, then slip the first stitch made over the second just like you would a normal bindoff. It will seem strange to have two stitches popping off each of the left needles as you go rather than one, and it may seem awkward as to which of the two needles to the left is doing the slipping over, but it’s all good and all quick. Not to mention easily undone if you change your mind about doing it that way.

What you see in my picture is how it looks before I’ve woven the ends in; I will use them to tighten up that line a bit. I used a spare length of yarn to bind off with, rather than my working yarn, for that reason (and the fact that my beginning strand was too short. Oops.)

It feels good to be creating.  Something warm, soft, pretty, useful, and brand new coming into the world in my hands.

Now all it’ll need is a wild feather in my cap. I have a black and white one on the mantle that the woodpecker once let go.

Sometimes, setting out a little suet and having a small bird recognize me and fly in in unafraid response to the offering and my tap-tap summoning is such a comfort.

It ought to go in the recycling.  Hmm.

And your conscience would never let you just chuck it.  But you don’t want to clog your sink nor your plumbing with the last dregs of that natural, no-hydrogenated-anything-added almond or peanut butter. And you really don’t want to wait for the warm water on a cold day nor to muck up your hand and on down your arm by going into that thing trying to scrub it out (and then yourself). The thing is just plain messy.

To the tune of “You make me feel like a natural woman,” take it outside to a spot where the glass won’t likely get broken with it rolling around.

Ooh, smell those nuts! Where ARE they?

I counted six black squirrels a few minutes later, a record.  I got to watch fluffytail breakdancing moves: extreme lust mixed with a terrible fear of an unknown object that might pounce on them if they got too close.

I dunno, guys… Stop! Go back! I’ll handle this! *Sniff* leap! *sniff* tremble *sniff*

Hang on, I’m going in!!

And so we had bottled squirrel going on this morning, only the fluff of the tail showing out the top, just enough for the next squirrel to sneak up from behind and make it known it wanted a turn. EeeYOW! HEY!

My friend Karen was going, And you didn’t Youtube that?!

Okay, that’s a challenge.  So I ask you.  Just what could I do to the next bottle, now that they’ve gotten used to that one, to get that same kind of a reaction out of them? What kind of a squirrel toy would you set up?

(Oh, and, yes the jar is licked clean as expected: all except just inside the curve of the rim below the top. Couldn’t quiiiiite… But judging by the smears between their ears, they tried, clearly, they tried.)

Michelle’s home, Michelle’s home!

We were both saying to the other, I was going to pick up some soy milk for her before this, I don’t know why I didn’t get around to it earlier. We hated to keep her from getting to go straight home after her long day.

And yet.  The outcome was that after talking yesterday about superb teachers–the traffic to the airport was terrible, we were late getting there to pick her up, which means that when we stopped at the grocery store on the way home, we just happened to be there right at the same time as Ginny. Who is the best kindergarten teacher ever and who taught all our kids. (I asked for her specifically all four times.)

That was as perfect a way as I can think of to welcome our daughter home. Talk about old times! And new, and we did.

Ginny is someone who, last I saw, had a small enclosure set up in a corner in her classroom: streamers hanging down to create what she called the butterfly room. The children raised Monarchs in there, and when a child needed some time to calm down, they could go in there for a moment to be still and have the butterflies they’d fed and watched and cared for land on their arms, their shoulders, their heads, alive and peaceful and colorful, eye right to eye.

And then when the proper time in the year came, the children released them to fly free.

Every Monarch they might ever see for the rest of their lives, they could wonder if it was descended from one of their own and feel a kinship to it.

And we claim Ginny as ours forever.

The cheerful, tiny Bewick’s wrens are some of my favorites of the bird world.  One of the things I’ve been doing lately is keeping a small suet cake inside and breaking a little off with the edge of a spoon, taking it outside, and smushing it into crumbs on a wooden box out there where they like to go check out whether the woodpecker working away above on another cake in a holder left any gleanings yet; it’s just a step or two outside the glass door.  I often make two little taps with the spoon as if to call them to dinner, hoping for a little Pavlovian effect. I can play woodpecker too.

Today I was still at the smushing stage when, to my surprise, one of the Bewick’s swooped by in an arc right past where I was bending over, then quickly away to the edge of the patio, waiting expectantly.  Then swooping in to eat as soon as I stepped back inside the door.

And here’s the thing, the most mindboggling thing to me: as it zipped by, I HEARD IT SINGING.

Not the whole song, just a flash of cheerful loud–loud!–notes that disappeared fast between its motions and mine and the near-instant distance away. They’re not only cute–but wow, what a voice!

To the engineers at Sonic Innovations hearing aid company, if you ever see this, thank you for giving me a memory I never expected, with a now-110 dB hearing loss at 8Khz, could be possible again. Wow!

Humming James Taylor’s song that inspired the title. “Took a fall from a windy height, only knew how to hold on tight.”

The first bird I saw this morning when I came out into the family room was that vividly black and white-striped woodpecker, enjoying her breakfast. Good to have things back to normal.

My neighbors have a clothesline with a large, sturdy wooden post to either end, about half of the thing in view of my back window. Today I saw a black squirrel who apparently expected a telephone wire and tried to run down the rope. Twang! It flipped him, he grabbed for it, found himself suddenly clinging upside down while still trying to run the length; that didn’t work so well, so he scrambled to get back up to the top of it. Twang!  He edged away out of my sight, repeatedly being bounced, again and again.

Squirrel trampolines. Who knew.

A few minutes later, a black squirrel safely on the fenceline, (same one?) I looked up again and there, sitting on that post near him and in plain view was the big adult Cooper’s hawk with her blue upper head, sitting in the chilly sunshine.  Casually turning her head every now and then to watch some small bird and then another pass by overhead.  Checking out the entrees.  The squirrel seemed oblivious; she ignored him.

And lifted a big yellow foot and scratched herself. Ah, lovely day today, should make for a good flight.

Meantime I was picking up the phone and calling my neighbor. She ran across her house phone in hand to see the hawk from right there, and together we birdwatched across the telephone wire.

At last it stretched those huge wings wide and flapped off in no particular hurry across my yard. Nope–my feeder was finch-free on the far side too just then. Ah well then.

My neighbor told me about having recently watched a bird, she didn’t know what kind, swooping through snapping up the small cloud of termites that swarm here at the start of every rainy season, like catching popcorn as it bursts free of the popper. It was clearly enjoying the rare treat. Hey, little one: have seconds! Thirds! Bring your whole family, make it a feast!

It’s going to be cold enough tonight and tomorrow night that it could actually snow. The rain doesn’t come till the day after, so it looks like the 1964 date for the last snowman-able amount will hold.  But it’s chilly, the little birds are eating up a storm at the feeders, and the big ones await their turn at them. All is in balance.

And we have another flight we’re watching for. John is almost home! Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

I was at the bird center this afternoon stocking up on seed for the month.

Freddie, the owner, asked me, glancing at her computer, if I wanted a suet cake this time with that?

No, I was set, thanks–and then I told her my Nuttall’s, my woodpecker, had not been seen for a few weeks and I’d been missing it.

Yesterday, trying to entice it to come back, I’d replaced the broken bits of the old cake that were in the holder with a big solid new one that had been waiting for it, wondering, if I made it look prettier, set it a nice table up there, would that do it? Had the hawk gotten her? Had she migrated?

I checked it this morning and even though the chickadees like it and the finches will occasionally give it a peck when the feeders are both crowded, it was simply untouched.

No point in buying more yet, then, so, thanks, Freddie, hopefully next time.

And so it was that I was sitting here not long after I returned home, having run gobs of errands after that first one, finding that the grocery store was in total crazy mode, (well…yeah…) having company coming tonight rather than Thursday for dinner, getting home, getting the groceries put away, how to get it all in there and everything done, needing a moment to just finally sit down and crash for a moment, suddenly–

–who should fly in.  My goodness, that brilliant black and white outfit looks formal and perfect for celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday: there she was!

I simply watched, all else fallen away, not glancing away for a second, knowing how fast she can fly out of sight, all the more keenly aware for her absence of how blessed I am to have such moments.  Wow that’s a gorgeous bird.

She ate and ate and ate some more, diving into her food, more than I’ve ever seen her do in one visit. ‘Tis the season.

The Bewick’s wrens, meantime–I actually saw two at once–who never, never fly up to the cake but who come for the crumbs that fall from the woodpecker’s table, have been celebrating the extra crumbles I put out from yesterday’s taking-down; one showed up underneath the Nuttall’s for more, the perfect exclamation point in the flick of its tail.

Dinner to cook, still.  But those wild birds made the weight of it light as a feather.

Having one of the guests later exclaim, “OH! This is my FAVORITE!” topped it all off.

And a good meal was had by all.

I cranked up the stereo to knit by and wondered when the mockingbird will be doing a Dan Fogelberg impersonation?

Earlier in the day, clearly the hawk dove in for his mourning meal. Michelle Millar writes that doves have a lot of dust in their feathers that they leave behind when they hit something.

It had imprinted on this house as its place of safety but discovered it to be a bit of a pane.

And yet I do think it had a ghost of a chance. I found no flurry of feathers. From all I can tell, it escaped the worst and it lived.

And the mockingbird de-clears the stained glass artist a one-hit wonder.

(Thirteen rows today, twenty-eight to go.)

A few more thoughts on the cochlear implant.  I’ve lived through brain arguments. Once was when the brain was telling me up was in two different directions at once: the right one, noted visually and muscularly, and the other ever and forever to the left, falling. It KNEW, just KNEW… No you don’t know! Stop it!

After my car got smashed into ten years ago, I had to learn how to walk despite that inner screaming match. I still fall down when there’s too much or too unfamiliar visual stimulus throwing me off unless I can counter it with enough tactile feedback. Hence the cane. Sticks not groans will brake my bones.

And there was a short while there where I had to wear an old hearing aid and a new one with differing sound responses. It was hard not to feel irritable, sitting in church trying to listen to the speakers and music while finding my consciousness being jerked between one side incoming vs the other, unmatched and unmeshed.

So I have some background experience keeping me from rushing into the implant on one side thing. And yet… Writing yesterday’s post showed me I really have been needing to simply go ask more questions and stop hanging back from finding out more. And I need to try to find out during this open enrollment period whether it would be covered.  Some do some don’t.

I also realized, as I answered comments yesterday, that I will always be able to plug the hearing-aid side via wires I already own into an Ipod (note that I don’t quite own an Ipod yet, but that can be fixed) and listen to my music that way. It won’t be communal listening; my children will exclaim, No no that’s *quite* all right, Mom, do NOT worry about that!

Heh.

It’ll all work out.

Meantime. The feeders were deserted today. I didn’t see the hawks, although one had clearly taken prey from one of them before I got up. No sign of the neighbors’ cats. I knew the wildlife is aware of far more going on than I, but it was pretty quiet out there.

So I scattered a few nut pieces outside in the afternoon, bringing me Instant Black Squirrel at last. Just one.

I’ve noticed that if a squirrel pronounces all-ee all-ee in-come free, it’s safe, the birds follow immediately. And so it was. Instant flock.

I’ve wondered about that. Is it because squirrels have a sense of smell for an extra layer of warning, which birds, flying through the clear air, don’t really need and don’t have? Do the birds watch the squirrels for tail flicks? Clearly they do.  Michelle Millar in her “The Birds and Beasts Were There” is convinced that the birds who never returned to her after the great Coyote Fire in Santa Barbara had simply died in the night, asleep and unable to see or smell the oncoming disaster.

Don’t know. I do know, when I’m willing to share a few stale nuts with a squirrel, my birds come back to me.

Meantime, (I know, I’m meandering like bird hops here) I’m picking up steam and back to knitting again. I celebrated with baby alpaca, wanting to wrap this project up before my qiviut arrives.  Knitterly FYI: I bought a skein of their arctic blend, which I’m told will be back in stock in six weeks or so, and it passed my test: yes, it is totally de-haired and very soft, as anything with qiviut in it should be, and so I ordered the 50/50 to try that out too. If you hear a delighted squeal of YES! at the doorstep, that will be me with the box.

And I will crank the music up high and knit.

Hmmm. *checking* Nope. Still sick. Still being boring. But catching up on some of the reading I’ve wanted to do. For the record? “The Birds and the Beasts Were There” is laugh-out-loud funny at times but I was looking up a lot of bird photos and descriptions to know for sure what she was talking about.

My parents would be pleased with that, and rightly so.

There were a couple of obviously sick people on my flights on Saturday and now I’m doing the cold/mild fever thing myself and taking it easy.

This morning, I got an email from my childhood friend Karen (Water Turtles shawl Karen, yes) that, though she didn’t know it and didn’t know I needed it, challenged me to be positive with her simple question, had I seen any good birds lately?

I glanced out the window wistfully, thinking,  not since the juvenile Cooper’s swooping hunt in front of me that I will forever associate with Smokey. That was really cool.

Just a few moments ago as I write this, a sense of motion caught my peripheral vision, though, and I turned: there was an adult Cooper’s with its striking blueish and white striped head, regal, huge, that had just landed on the dolly that is outside on the covered porch from where it got left out after hauling something or other back and forth to the car.  It was still there because someone (ahem) had mused to herself that it was out of the rain and you know, it might make a possible moment’s perch sometime.

Indeed.

It was facing me. Holding still.  Given its size, I’m guessing it was a female.  (They’re bigger than the males.) I admired the hawk’s long, wide-striped tail; in the moment I thought that, it casually stretched it wide for me in seeming yawning response, slightly gap-toothed to the left where a feather was growing back in. (Yeah, my hair’s been like that too after last year’s everything…)

It regarded me, turning its head to the side a bit for a closer look. It lifted one foot a little off the cold metal but not high enough to show it was relaxing the way birds do, and then having said hello to cheer me up, took off for the warmth and stealth of the tree branches.  Besides, how are you going to catch that squirrel when it’s cowering between the legs of those chairs in the way.

The squirrel reappeared under the feeder almost immediately after the hawk left.

Careful, little guy. We serve breakfast, lunch and dinner here.

My first pair of baby booties ever is done. They may fit the kid when he’s about two, the ends aren’t run in nor the buttons decided on, but there’s this tremendous sense of breaking past my inner barriers on knitting footwear: I did it! (If you need inspiration, look here at all these other Saartje’s. Talk about cute!)

Something caught my eye and I looked up.

Ah.  Playing field hawk-y today.  That’s why the yard’s been so empty. I thought of Smokey; nice touch, boss! It’s beautiful!

One small finch, maybe hungry enough to finally risk it for a late lunch, flitted alone onto the stained glass birdfeeder tucked far under the awning  into the porch where it’s a ten-foot-wide alcove, surrounded tightly by floor-to-ceiling glass on three sides. I was standing just inside, looking out.

That hawk watched it.

And I watched the hawk. I had never seen it go from perch to pursuit.

It spent about five minutes sizing me up, whether I would move, whether I was a threat; I was inside, yes, but visually between it and its prey.

I held still.

I kept waiting.

I finally cautiously reached for the camera. It was okay with that. I took the first shot. Okay. I opened the sliding door and hit the zoom button. Okay.

I closed the door quietly and waited.

The little house finch was on the far side from it, dipping deep into its sunflowers and could not see the hawk. The Cooper’s waited to see if it had been tipped off. No.

And then all at once, it spread its wings wide and I got to watch it do its own zooming in, a tight horseshoe manuever in that alcove, clearly aware of the walls of glass while focused on its prey. The finch, startled as this massive bird suddenly careened at it around the feeder, made a break for it and dashed for the treetops, the hawk gaining on it by sheer size of wingbeat as they were lost to view.

The birdfeeder swung wildly in their wake.

Coopers average a 31″ wingspan and their tails are long.  Watching that hawk do that maneuver in that small space at that speed right in front of me at eye level as I stood there a few feet away was something to remember forever. Wow.

When you are married to a computer scientist and it is nearly Halloween, you get a cable plugged into your monitor that makes your computer haunted: random back buttons, caps locks, punctuation or letters that scoot to the far end of the screen, the cursor twittering around in circles… Alright, thanks, dear, that’s enough Halloween spirit for the moment. Out!

Meantime.  I got up early this morning and was puttering around, when I saw…

This past spring my neighbor was having her tallest tree trimmed (not this redwood) when the city’s tree workers abruptly stopped and told her that was all they could do–no explanation. ‘Bye.

It is against Federal law to disturb a raptor’s nest, after all the DDT damage that nearly wiped out many large bird species. Still, since that tree trimming, there had been no sign of the resident Cooper’s hawk, and I have missed it.  I’ve wondered if the babies survived.

The bluejays, who nested elsewhere this year with a hawk’s nest right there overhead, recently noticed it was safe to take over my yard again, and there have been at least three of them fighting territorial fights over my feeder the last few weeks.

Not today.  Not a jay in sight all day. There was a juvenile Cooper’s, big, stunningly beautiful, perched on the arm of the barbecue grill out there, taking the measure of the yard. Glancing nonchalantly over towards the birdfeeders: hey breakfast, where are you? I asked for room service!

I guess the juveniles survived that tree trimming after all?

It didn’t happen to look up behind it.  I took this picture from where it had been. If it had, it would have seen a small black squirrel on that post, tail completely fluffed, peering over the edge of the roof of the shed. Mesmerized. It couldn’t take its eyes off that hawk. It moved only slightly, a little closer in as if for a better look, hovering right over the edge, during the moments the hawk turned safely totally away and towards the feeders.

And I sat watching them, measuring the size and potential speed of the squirrel relative to the hawk: if it wants you, honey, you are dead meat.

The hawk was cool with my being there, so much so that I even managed to reach for my camera after a careful long minute or so. Then, before I could raise it, it beat its wings wide, glided across my yard, and was gone.

Off hunting for my cursor for me.

It’s interesting watching the birds really flock at the feeders just a little before it starts to rain. They know it’s coming and they want nourishment against the cold and the water in a safe, dry place.

Thank you all, meantime, for the support, and I knitted a few rows today. Decided it wasn’t worth pushing it too soon, but at the same time I was delighted that I could. Another day or two and it’ll all be back to normal.

Except…

Me: “I don’t WANT to do a liquid diet! I’m hungry and I want some real food!”

Hubby, looking at me steadily: “Nasal gastric tube.”

He had me and he knew it.  Four days that felt ever increasingly like having surgery without anesthesia. Never again.

Well, at least you can pack a lot of nourishment into soup.  So now the blockage, too, which had been ignoring my protests of I so did not earn it, is starting to improve. And Don is right: Stones into Schools, written by Mortenson himself, is the better book, but Three Cups of Tea, the one that made the man’s name and cause known, is vastly important in its own write.

Remember my dying tomato plant of a month ago? Its main branches are just straws now, bent in half from birds landing on it and going Whoa! as the stems collapsed under them–I saw them.

I discovered a new tomato on a small, still-green branch yesterday. It cheered me greatly, and all the more today.