I came home from knitting group tonight and glanced at the cam shot:  Kekoa, as is usual these days, is tucked into the window sill, and Maya immediately next to and slightly below him is standing at the edge of the louver. He’s snoozing, but his sister, apparently, not nearly as much.

Maybe she’s keeping an eye out in case her parents do some hunting (thanks, Eric!) in the dark.

Hey! Mom! Are you in the kitchen?  Can I have a midflight snack?

I’d be curious to know how it got the thing. A raccoon possibly, maybe a possum: one day last week, I looked out the window to see an empty peanut butter jar out by the olive tree.  (Okay, olive you try thinking of those two flavors together for a moment.)

We recycle such jars, but it had to have still smelled of peanuts.  So okay, that one actually makes sense. The stolen jar, I mean.

Now, earlier in the spring I had a milk jug outside for watering my amaryllises, and I watched some ambitious squirrel rolling and pushing it across the yard to do just what with it, I have no idea. It was quite the sight.  It seemed he was trying to impress his lady love with it. Look! A portable lightweight nest! (He’d chewed a large hole in the side.)  Or, or, an exercise ball! Or…! Isn’t this just the coolest thing! It seemed he wanted to carry it up the tree.

And he had fun fun fun till the owner took the milk jug away.

Now, that peanut butter makes more sense.

But explain this one to me. I can quite promise you it wasn’t there yesterday.  (Although, come to think of it, today was the recycling pick up–there was a breeze–okay, never mind.)

I saw a black squirrel insanely curious a few hours ago, reeeeeeeeeeaching with its nose and then, oh so tentatively, with a paw too towards the new thing, its tail stretched hard straight back ready to whip its whole body around to dash screaming for the hills:

Does it taste good?! Will it BITE!?  It flinched away, then turned back again, unable to resist, reaching to bat at the new animal-smelling thing to see if it would run or jump or fly.

And when I went outside, going, okay, what have you guys stolen from the can now, I reached over to pick it up–

–and it was a ball band from my yarn.

I saw our resident Cooper’s hawk yesterday; it was chasing something towards these flowers.

Several of us were watching the SCPBRG screen together tonight, when, for the first time in awhile, Clara showed up to take her sentry position on the ledge! I’d been missing that the last couple weeks.

I said to the others, She used to hop down from there in the night, once, and go into the nestbox. She would pace in there as if missing their babyhoods. (I didn’t add, but was thinking, and she would also often snuggle down in the far left corner for just a moment.)

Right after I said that, she did exactly those things. For no more than a minute.  Then she flew lightly back up to her sentry position. (Let’s see, the kids have moved out, let’s measure that opening for curtains and put in new furniture, put the old up for a swap on Gravelry…)

But again, only for a moment. Hmm. She walked to the edge of the ledge, looked over, checked on her two fledglings on the louver down there, then walked back to her usual spot, which is, I think, just out of their sight–to avoid, I’ve been told, peregrine cries of Hey, Mom, we want a midnight snack!

They seemed to be doing okay more and more on their own and she had been keeping her distance of late. But for whatever reason, tonight, either they or she just needed that extra sense of presence: Mom’s here.  All’s well.

My Dancing Queen amaryllis is blooming! You know, the bulb I was supposed to toss because it had a red virus it wasn’t supposed to recover from, much less ever bloom again. It’s only two flowers this year instead of four or five on each of multiple stalks.

I think I can live with that.

Meantime, on the peregrine scene, Kekoa left dinner with his sister and mother on a tower at San Jose State University early in order to claim his window ledge first. Maya ate awhile longer, and when she came in, flew to a louver several floors below him. Hmph!  *I* can have my *own* window, so there! With the camera looking straight down from above, the tip of her tail showed.

But then her beak, and then all the sudden her wings and tail were spread wide and she was flying out of there. She circled just out of view, clearly, because she almost immediately reappeared next to her brother.

She gave him a push from behind. Just, you know, to see. Window? Corner?

NO. MINE. I got here first.

Oh okay, be that way, and she settled down for the night next to him. But notice, no feather pulling, no beaking, no running a talon through his tail.

If only my kids had learned to behave that much that fast!

Part the first, observed and written to the peregrine forum this afternoon:

So Kekoa's been dozing on the louver, minding his own business in the
shade for over an hour, when Maya suddenly flies in right next to him.
She bumps into him. He goes HEY! and steps away a step. She wants
attention. She steps on the tip of his wing and combs it with her foot.

HEY!

He scuttles a little further away from her, and she starts grooming
herself.

Right, Sis. You preen your own feathers, y'hear?

And then Kekoa starts grooming too, each being the mirror for the other.

Later on tonight, they were back on the louver after (I assume) dinner off somewhere; Kekoa got there first and hopped up onto the ledge just above Maya when she came in. He likes that window seat; let his sister have the emergency exit row.

They were together a goodly while with me thinking how sweet it was that those two young fledglings liked to be side-by-side still–when all the sudden they started acting like siblings anywhere. Teasing. Protesting.

Hey! Kekoa has the good seat! I want it!

Maya reached slightly up and started pulling on his wing.

Hey! Mom said we should beak kind to each other!

So I’m kind-of-beaking you here, you got a problem with that?

Little Kekoa gathered his wings together and flipped his tail a bit out of her way. She moved over and leaned, twisting her head in from underneath it as if she could get away with it that way, and ran her beak again down the tip of his wing, grabbing a goodly chunk of feather in the process: Hey, bro! Here, you spilled some anchovies off that pizza, let me help you clean it up.

Get OFF! He danced away, turning around in his spot, still carefully keeping that upper corner.

This went on four times, and in between, Maya was reaching under the ledge, grabbing something unseen and twisting, as if she could undo a screw and turn the whole scene into a Wile E. Coyote moment.

Kekoa simply tucked his tail and his wings out of her way and got them again out of her reach. But he stayed in that corner. That was his spot and he wasn’t going to budge.

Small and nimble beats big and slow any day. So there, Sis.

Notice that, two hours later, they are still in the same places. There’s the whole rest of the window ledge if Maya wants up, but she has stayed standing looking at him. Standing sentry in the night like her mother did.

And he in return watches over her, over his shoulder.

No other bird could possibly do for company at this stage in their lives.

I was channeling my inner Shel Silverstein: oh, I’m looking for my missing fleece…

And my inner Laura Numeroff.

The rest of Edgar’s curly locks had gone missing, and I have someone I want to share him with.

So then a closet suspected of holding them hostage got gleaned of Goodwill-ables.

So then discoveries were made of, wow, that really fits me post-op! Or, wow, that really really doesn’t wear well now with–should I–never mind. Out!

And if a closet gets gleaned of Goodwill-ables, it starts other cleaning in motion.

And if cleaning is in motion, it spreads to other rooms.

And if it spreads to other rooms, you need some hot cocoa. (Trust me on this one.)

And if you have hot cocoa, you have the perfect set-up for knitting with your feet propped up because you could use the rest. But the best knitting requires spinning up some fleece on that wheel. And Edgar would be perfect, if you could find….

And one last thing–if you have a  swept patio and you put a big plastic pot outside there to transplant your tomato plant into and pour in the last of one potting soil bag but decide lifting the other one in its entirety must wait for another day, the squirrels will attack it en masse, grabbing and pulling from opposing sides on their tippy-toes and will knock it over repeatedly trying to climb into it and will roll dirt all over the patio because they know, they just know!, that there has to be good stuff in there just waiting to be raided and you you and YOU get out of here this is MY plunder!

Fer cryin’ out loud, give it a little time, willya?

And the junco and his lady-friend finch were back together on the porch again yesterday, with him feeding her and taking care of her. I’m hoping to see them today, too. (Don’t miss Eric’s falcon photo here and the mouse-over caption.)

It’s a beautiful day out there.

First, Evet’s photos and captions here are just incredible.  Kekoa peeking in through the blinds at City Hall.  Maya missing that landing; being rescued later. The whole thing. Wow.

For tonight’s falcon update, a report from someone on the ground later helped me make sense of who was who and thus why what happened (thank you, Lori). So.

A falcon landed in the early evening on top of the nestbox, its back to the camera with prey in claw: big, I mean big, and not a pigeon.   One of the adults, who turned out to be Clara, landed immediately after on the ledge right by the first.

And then there they stood. Perfectly still. I wondered if the two parents were waiting for the fledglings to arrive for dinner and if they were going to tell them to go pluck their own now? But it was just odd to see them not doing anything with it.

And then the crow put on its best Monty Python accent and waved a weak bit of a hello at the camera, “I’m not dead yet!”

Hey! Maya, it turned out, the one gripping it, bent down.  Steak shouldn’t be that tartare, you stop it.  She stopped it.

I was thinking of the dead crow left on the ledge when Maya fledged, undevoured for hours before they ate it–crows seem not to be their favorite food.  (Neither are they tolerated in harassing the young.)

Finally Kekoa flew in.  And then the three of them stood there stock still like hunters posing for the camera with their trophy. Waiting for the whole family to come to dinner?  Yo?  EC?

Ewwww, Mommmm, crowwwww, I wanted pigeon for dinner!

Finally Maya started in on this plucking thing–and then all at once it was a free-for-all. One flew to the runway with it, one stepped on it, the other pulled the prey and the sibling down the runway a bit, here, you get the wing I  get the rest I carried it up here you couldn’t!

Clara had caught it, it turns out, and had passed it mid-air to Kekoa, who, being male and therefore smaller, was losing altitude under the weight of the monstrous bird.  He then apparently lost the bird.  Just like Veer from last year.  Clara got it back and handed it off to Maya–Maya’s first successful prey transfer, as far as we know. Maya managed to gain altitude and got it up there to that nestbox. (Neener neener, little guy.)

Where she had to figure out what to do next.

They were later seen taking to the skies, dancing for the camera again, but I was off to knitting group and had to call it a night.

Where I knitted featherations.

There was the most intense, colorful sunset this evening: a long beach of gold reaching towards the top of City Hall towering over San Jose, and above it, layer on layer of white wisps of cloud against lighter and darker shades of blue sky, like a tide rolling in, the foam spreading forward over the water to tickle your feet in the sand.

And framed in that sky stood a peregrine falcon at the top corner of the building.  I so hope someone took permanent stills of what could be seen on the cam.  The wind was blowing her upper feathers outward, like a woman wearing a shawl against the cold on a brisk evening by the Bay.

Then at least two (EC, the father, was shown perched on the other side of the building) took off to go splash in that air.  Playing. Soaring. Swooping. Not in the frenzied fury of protecting their eyrie but just trying out, yet again, how it feels to ride a thermal. All that time in the nestbox, Maya, did you ever imagine we could do this!

One swooped toward the camera.  Hey you!  Come soar with us too!

We have a lot of housefinches at the feeder, and one of the things I’ve learned is that at this time of year, the males feed the females to show they’re good stock to choose from and as they’re raising a family.

Which leads to the daily sight these days of pairs of them at a time hanging off a single oval-shaped perch on the thing, both of them struggling for a grip while I think, honey, you could grab that seed yourself and not have to flutter your wings quite all so pretty like that if you only knew; there’s plenty of sunflower there.

And just every so often you’ll see a male ignoring some strange chick’s entreaties.

I always wondered if it was the same one, if perhaps she’d lost her mate?  We do have a hawk nearby. You never know.

And I wonder if that’s the one I saw today.  She landed on the narrow outside of the window sill–I have never seen any bird do that before–and looked in right at me. (And later, down at the empty Corningware measuring cup on the floor that was just inside that I fill the feeder with. I got the hint.)

But what was even more surprising was what happened next: a junco followed her there and looked in too.  Quite close to her.  That got me to stop and watch them.

And what I saw was that junco staying near her this afternoon and going out of his way to feed that female finch.  The juncos tend to be ground birds here, being peaceable birds, not liking to fight their way in like the finches do over the feeder; fallouts will do.  He would pick up a seed off the patio and feed her with it, and if he found one behind her, would hop around in front of her to get her attention and stretch up just slightly to give it to her.  Over and over and over.

In front of my window. On the chair. On the table. On the ground. Those two were clearly a bonded pair, staying close to each other, and when one flew off the other went with, when one came back the other did too.  It was the oddest thing, seeing a small brown bird and a different small brown bird with a black head and chest out there in the world taking care of each other regardless of their differences because it seemed to them the right thing to do.

And somehow it filled me with just the greatest sense of hope.

So we had Maya snoozing behind the peregrine nestbox, enjoying the warmer day. Wake up, yawn, stretttttttch–and suddenly she was flapping crazily, falling off the ledge backwards, going down down down flapping still facing the building as she fell out of camera view.

You know, I have that kind of graceful sure-footedness myself.

Clearly, she came out of it okay.  Kekoa was later seen staying close by her side, hanging with his peep. I so wish there were a video of the two on the end of the ledge watching something overhead: their feet danced and their whole bodies twirled in a complete circle in perfect unison together with their gaze straight up, then their heads turned in exact sync, side to side, side to side.

They’ve been touching beaks when they greet each other and occasionally just because. It’s absolutely adorable.  When they seem satisfied, or that they’re reassuring themselves, their tails do a quick sideways waggle as a last or nearly-last step in settling in to wherever they’ve landed.

They’ve been spending the last few nights on the louver, and were settled there tonight I thought for the night with Clara having just taken up her sentry duty above, when Clara suddenly took off.  One by one the little ones did too from down below.  One came back–briefly, and took off again.

For the last hour or so, Clara has been standing on Kekoa’s favorite spot on that louver, tapping her talons, looking at her watch, waiting for those teenagers, looking out over the city.

And once–just once–I saw her open her beak and yell. Now she’s back to her usual patient sentry duty.  It may well be that she moved to where she could see them wherever it is they’re perching tonight.

And a white bit of fluff from their chickhoods just floated down gently past her from the nestbox area above.

First, the evening peregrine report I gave to my fellow falconistas:

Clara showed up a few minutes before eight and paced the inside of the
nestbox back and forth, finally stopping, head bowed with Little Boy
Blue's remains just in front of her. Her beak opened wide a moment, her
head went down, and she appeared to be trying to push it all down, down
into the gravel with the top of her head bowed way over. She came back
up with her empty beak closed.

Then she hopped out of the box. Flew to her sentry spot. She preened
just a moment, and then was away and out of sight.

Kekoa and Maya continue to hang out on the louver, Kekoa's face to the
building, Maya's in her back--wait, now she's looking around again. But
she's clearly no longer afraid of heights nor of standing on the edge
looking down. Cool.

Meantime, there was a two-hour hearing health to-do at our clinic today and I was curious to know what the latest and greatest hearing aids might be.  I decided to go.

I made it through the first 35 minutes of, this is what hearing loss is, this is what hearing aids are, and this–I guffawed out loud without meaning to, having gotten my first pair at 27–is why they won’t make you look old. The statistic appeared on their PowerPoint: 65% of the people who wear them are under 65!

Granted, I’m not new at this.  But I was disappointed that when the speaker talked about speech sounding like mumbling without hearing aids, she didn’t say outright that the reason is because consonants are higher pitched than the vowels because they’re made with your tongue against your teeth instead of vibrating in your throat. I remember what a revelation and how extremely helpful that one piece of information was to me at 18 when I was told I was going slowly deaf (it was an aspirin allergy, we eventually found out).  It all made sense now why I could hear someone and not process what they were saying.

Can you imagine some person there who IS old–the conference room was packed with old–who thinks they’re going senile when that’s all that’s the matter? I wanted to exclaim, Be merciful, woman, don’t dumb it down!

I escaped.  When one of the audiologists stepped out the crowded conference-room door in front of me, I followed her. She’d gone to the end of the hall to direct incoming human traffic if need be. Well, so I was the traffic, then: I had questions to ask, definitely, and no patience to sit through another 85 minutes of that, not even with my makes-me-look-old knitting.

The best thing to do, she told me, was go talk to the vendors set up outside in the courtyard.

Greaaaaaat… We peeked through the blinds together and she pointed out a particular table in the shade near the door–I later went to the guy and said, I can’t be out in the sun at all. You’ve got two minutes. He used his three minutes well. And I went home with the usual two temporary very small spots of white-out in my vision that are my first sign of sun overdose. Worth it. They have a music setting now… I need to learn more, but I’ve got the brochure and I’ve started.

Meantime, upstairs, as she and I talked, I got the impression she was enjoying being able to be really helpful and informative for someone who was motivated and who knew what she was talking about.  For me, I was thrilled at being able to talk about the health stuff that is part of the context without having a new person get all sorry about it–it just is, is all, move on.

She told me what I needed to know about cochlear implants should I have to have that next surgery (I’ve spent the last four or five days getting over yet another blockage) and should I again lose hearing from the pain meds–tylenol. I can do tylenol.  Which is not so good in the scalpel department.  I described the dilaudid going into the IV and the voices of the medical personnel around me going out.

I am a musician. A fairly deaf musician, but a musician. She told me the implants wouldn’t give me music quite well enough–but they would give me back speech. She talked about having to retrain the brain to hear again amidst noise, and I was like, yeah yeah been there done that a couple of times now I know all about that. But then, she said: for speech, my hearing would be normal with this.

She said it again for emphasis.  Normal.

I very nearly burst into tears on the spot. Which totally surprised me.

But would I give up music, really hearing music at perfect pitch, for life? No.

Which is fine because they wouldn’t give me the implants at Stanford without putting me through a bajillion tests to make absolutely sure I can’t manage on the hearing aids. And I can.

At least until that next surgery.

But now I have a backup plan for something that had had me in such great fear.  After having been told over and over in  years past (before the surgeries and the reaction) that cochlear implants would do me no good.

They would do me unfathomable good should I come to need them.  Again, I have a backup plan, now that I need one.  And I cannot begin to tell you what a relief that is.

Another peregrine post–they grow up so fast, the season’s so short.

Maya made it into a palm tree this morning but was being harassed by some crows. (Note that one of the San Francisco fledglings died on its first flight last year while being chased by ravens.)  Her mother tried to help out.  Her father finally decided he’d had enough of that and buzzed them: Don’t you mess with my daughter!

They didn’t let up.  He divebombed them–at which point they backed off and gave her her space.  She flew out of that badbird neighborhood.

I noticed the peregrines did indeed eat crow later at lunch. So there.

Maya flew around near City Hall, bit by bit, losing altitude perch by perch as she flew without quite making it home. One report said she’d climbed five flights of outside stairs! You know, you *are* a bird, there’s an easier way to do that…

Finally she ended up on the ground right in front of the main door of the Rotunda at City Hall, exhausted, a peregrine protester, declaring emphatically that it is indeed true: you can’t flight City Hall.  Binoculars on the ground had been following her, City Hall was notified, and so it was that the facilities people surrounded her in a circle till the rescuers could get to her.

And then like last year, it was a hat, a box, a trip up the elevator, a dousing on an already-rainy day just to make it clear she was not to fly off in a panic while the rescuers fled the roof but was to sit there and take it easy.

And she did.  Real easy. Mostly she hid her face from that scary edge, still not used to this heights thing, staying in one place and snoozing her fatigue off.  Meantime, her parents–and her brother!–did flybys around and around overhead, screaming warnings to the two-legged intruders in their territory.

Kekoa couldn’t keep it up too long with his still-short wings, though. He took a rest, then eventually a short hop up to where his sister was and stayed right by her and kept her company like a good little brother.

But the little scamp couldn’t resist sticking his head over the edge, watching the camera following him, eyeballing it and playing peek-a-boo again.  Oooh, is it still there? Is it still moving? Does it taste good? If I sit on it again will it hatch?

At one point, EC flew into the nest when none of the others were around and hopped over to where the remains of his son Little Boy Blue still lay.  He stood there, head bowed towards it as if considering, for several long moments.  Then to my great surprise he tried to bury a part of it in the gravel in the nestbox.

Then he flew.

After something like six hours, finally the parents brought food down to the runway area and that did it:  Maya came down and got a good bite. The cameras switched to her just seconds before and caught her going over and most of the way down, wings flapping properly. There now, dear, that wasn’t so hard, was it?

She is on the upper ledge behind the nestbox for the night. Kekoa is on the louver where he can keep an eye on her.

I’m grateful to those who took the time to be the boots on the ground ready to rescue as needed. (I can just imagine the crick in one’s neck after doing that all day.)  They were needed.

And all is well now in falconland.

(Added later) Okay, here’s something new: it’s 10:30 pm and *Clara* is in the nestbox! With her daughter standing sentry!  Clara has a classic spot where she spends her nights where she can see her young in the box, once they’re old enough and it’s warm enough that they don’t need to be tucked under her wings but she still wants to watch over her flock by night. The city lights fill the upper background, the runway below; it is the iconic shot of her.

I watched. She came out and flew up to her usual spot.  There you go.  Maya, who earlier in the night had been pancaked flat like a young falcon does, is standing there, too, at the end of that same ledge. Watching over her brother below.

This is a picture I took last year of the top floors of SJ City Hall. The nestbox is at the top of the jutting-out concrete somewhat to the right, the louvers are the lines across the windows to the left.

Remember last year’s incident? This year’s fledging process isn’t finished yet, but here’s what we’ve got so far:

—————

This is a perfectly good nest. I see no reason to leave.  I’m not going to, and you can’t make me!

(Dear, this is getting ridiculous.)

(Here, let me try.)  Lunch is served, kids, come and gettt itttt…  Down here, Maya.

Kekoa hesitated till the pigeon was nearly gone, then made it safely down to the louver and joined in. Maya watched. Finally, it was just too much and she, as Channon put it, let freedom wing. (That link is a successful video capture of her first flight. It is very cool to watch, and you get to see the boingy-boing effect.  She made it! Yay!)

She’s been there ever since, mostly huddled away from looking down. At one point both of them had their heads pushed up against the building: if we can’t see it, it can’t scare us.

Maybe tomorrow her mother will deliver food to the nest area to make her come back up.  It would require going upwards, but it might still be the easiest thing to do next, at least in terms of confidence in this whole idea of being a flighty young thing.

Meantime, awhile after eating, Kekoa flew to the one place the camera absolutely could not reach him: he sat on top of it.  Then he winged it to the far end of the building to the right, and the camera, angled up and across, showed the corner on the diagonal–and that little scamp played peek-a-boo!  Leaning his face way out and eyeballing the camera, ducking back, leaning out again, from above the point of the triangle effect, below the point, turning away and out of sight, sometimes showing his backside, sometimes not at all.  Hah!  There you are!  I see you! Can’t catch me!

And then he took off from there to the end of the ledge and down and bounced and flew over just a bit to the louver.

Hey. I can’t leave my sister all alone like that.

He has stayed with her ever since. He knows by now that he can make it back up to the ledge behind the nestbox, but she doesn’t know yet that she can. So he’s staying on that louver, and they are snuggled up for the night.

Dad, Piz’za Chicago…?

NO.

Let’s see, (male teenage peregrine) flying is fun. But flying means being hungry all day.  Forget that, I’m staying home. Hmm, maybe rent a good movie, how about “UP!”?

Let’s see (female teenage peregrine) HE got to do it, why can’t I?  It’s not f  AIR!  (Flappity flappity flappity. Watch out, she’s on edge today.)

Um, pigeon, my favorite.  Thanks, Mom.  Hey, bro, you want some? Lemme think about it.

KIDS–DON’T SQUAB-ble.

Let’s see (both) let’s charge at Mom or Dad on the ledge and make them fly off and have to circle back. Hah, madeja blink! (But note that neither of them does this to the other. There are rules to this game.)

(Both) I didn’t go to bed last night and I’m not going to bed tonight and you can’t make me!

(Kekoa parks himself on low ledge behind nestbox, tail to the wind. Stretches occasionally. Maya sits on the end of the upper ledge close by: last night, flapping from time to time. Tonight, she has her tail going off the ledge too, being daring like her brother. Both seem to be snoozing rather than pulling an all-nighter this time.)

Hey, Piz’za Chicago is down the street and they do delivery. Dad?

(Parent)  (grumble) (Talk about a pie-in-the-sky plan.) Kids!