In case you’ve ever wondered about a hawk’s carrying capacity re pets. (The short answer: unless you have a favorite rat running around outside unattended, basically, no worries.)

Meantime, my husband came around the corner this afternoon after a work meeting that I had not realized was a Halloween party by Zoom. I looked up to see my favorite 6’8″er bouncing off the ceiling.

Literally. At the end of the hall where it comes down a bit. I kind of stared a moment, having expected none of this.

Three got kind of squished together in the process, but there were seven of them, and he was looking quite pleased with himself. That costume was so him.

As if having to duck through standard doorframes might not be enough.

It completely made my day when an adult Cooper’s hawk showed up this morning and hung around, unafraid of my movements with the camera. ‘Here, let me give you a profile view now.’ It was giving the local crows and ravens a seasonal heads-up that it does, in fact, own this space.

And to remember that.

And then it swooped down past the windows of my newly-widowed neighbor, an avid birdwatcher, to offer her comfort, too.

Why peregrine falcon facial markings vary the way they do. Fascinating.

Meantime, the heart monitor is on and quietly doing its thing.

Musings on the official pronouncement of their extinction (with apologies to John Denver)

—

All my bugs were pecked

I was ready to go

My stands of woods are now your door (and house and office and and and)

Too long we were so lonesome, now we’re gone

So killed me, now cry for me

Tell me that you’ll pray for–well, the pileateds, anyway, since they’re still around

Tell folks let the older forests grow

Because we’re leaving like the jet stream

Don’t know if their numbers will make it back again

Our climate hates to go

Dream about the days to come

Bring endangered species along

Come the time, your children should get to say

We did it, we brought them back

Made hard choices, it paid off

Look up: how the peregrine falcon soars!

-Alison

I posted yesterday before dinner, early for me.

About an hour later I got the news.

Ronna and her husband moved into town when Luke was a small child, and she was one of those people who is always looking out for everybody around her. Their family grew during the years they lived here and we hoped we would get to see their kids grow up.

But when the rent on their house hit close to four times our mortgage a few years ago, her husband took a job in Fresno and they moved to where they could buy their own house for the first time.

Eventually, he changed jobs again and they moved back. Sort of. Over near the beach about an hour away, and I wanted to figure out how to get together and catch up and see her kids bigger and all that–but for the pandemic.

Meantime, she’d taken up running.

Last I heard she was training for the big one, the Boston Marathon.

Two days ago, Luke was not just getting taller in pictures on Facebook, she was driving him to Utah for college; her folks live near there and she was going to get a visit in with them while getting him settled in for his freshman year.

Thirty minutes from arrival they were hit head-on by a drunk driver and rear-ended. By the injuries, it looks like she swerved hard to avoid the drunk, sparing Luke most of it and taking the brunt herself; he broke his shoulder. But they both lived. I have no idea about the drunk.

She has a long, long road ahead of her and the surgeries to try to save her leg have begun.

There are the covid restrictions on visitors.

Her brother works in the trauma hospital she was taken to, as do other people she knows.

Her sister-in-law’s brother was the first cop to arrive at the scene.

There is so much love surrounding her and her son right now, and someday when she comes home, man, we are going to celebrate!

I had wondered who I had bought this blank card for last year and why but in the moment I needed it it was perfect.

And then today, while thinking about Ronna and all she and her family are having to go through, and if anybody could handle it it would be her, but man–

–I happened to look up.

There was a Cooper’s hawk on the fence.

The nearest two tall trees they nested in are gone now and with an outbreak they’ve asked people not to keep their birdfeeders up. I hadn’t seen a Cooper’s but once in a quick pass-through in a year–but there it was, perched on the fence, then walking down it half the length of the yard, turning, pacing back, the late sun shining brilliantly against its long yellow legs.

When life is at its hardest and most intense, somehow, that’s when they come.

It stopped looking around for small birds and faced the sun, giving me a good look that it was an adult Cooper’s, and just chilled a moment there.

It let me move a few feet to my chair and my phone without being the least bit bothered by it. We took each other in.

I just let love for it, for thanks for the moment, for love for nature, just completely wash over me and out from me towards it. So grateful.

It fluffed its feathers out like it was glad to be home as I snapped pictures like old times, and stayed with me until it was done.

I ordered some metal bird spikes. I had no idea what I was in for.

There were reviews saying be careful assembling these–and they were right. Those V-shaped pieces will fight you to the death when you’re trying to squeeze them so as to fit into the base and if you let up, if you look away, you’re going to have the back of this skewer coming like a flying mousetrap at your face. I got this third piece halfway in, stopped to take its picture, and before I put the phone down it poinged hard back out of there at me. Wearing glasses was a very good thing and its aim was bad. I’m fine.

I got the one strip assembled and there are fourteen more to go and I am checking the height of the apricot against the cage it’s growing out of and procrastinating putting the rest of them together.

But here’s the thing: I bought them to keep the rabbit out of that seedling but, one strip being pretty useless for that, I balanced it for now on top of two clusters of figs that were starting to turn color. I was out of clamshells so why not try.

The birds haven’t touched anything on that fig tree since. Nuh uh. Not going near that.

Do they know what pigeon spikes are? Can’t they tell it’s only in this one spot? The plastic spikes I used to have, they pretty much ignored.

Three days later, it’s still true. I have ripening figs all over the tree, a goodly number not in clamshells and they’re still left alone.

I went out to check it over tonight–and suddenly remembering that eyes in taller trees were certainly on me as I leaned into that tree, eyes that wanted to know how to thwart that menace, I pretended to be punctured for just a moment there.

That’ll teach’em.

I would have thought squirrel claw marks–but then I saw that beak jab. This one just wasn’t ripe enough yet to be dislodged from the tree that way like the last one was.

Citrus thorns alone hadn’t been enough to keep them off either of them.

So I tried plan B. And this time I succeeded in getting the clamshells to snap shut on both sides. In past years raccoons have pried those open, but since they haven’t been out there till now, whereas with my Fuji apples in previous years I had them out the whole season long, I guess the current critter crop hasn’t figured them out yet.

Which means I got to share a ripe fig with my husband this morning. It was delicious.

On a side note, the breaking news tonight at the Washington Post is that the FDA just okayed booster Moderna and Pfizer doses for the immunocompromised. My cardiologist has already told me he wants me to get one as soon as they okay it.

The first late summer fig. I was amazed that I’d missed seeing it turning brown the day before. I was more amazed the critters hadn’t seen it either.

Figs are hard to get into those plastic clamshells because it’s hard to shut them around them, and they’re not great anyway because the things don’t breathe and the fruit gets hot so the texture ripens before the flavor does and it just hasn’t proven the best solution. (I mostly use them on the apples, they seem to be best for that.) But that’s what I had. That and the citrus spikes, which were already out there. I debated going and grabbing one.

Wait…

Paper. It breathes. It hides. Right? Cut the bottom open to widen it so you can slide it over and the fig can still get some sugar-producing sunlight while no beak could reach that far down. Let’s try it!

And for 24 hours it actually worked.

Then in a total rookie move I went outside just real quick in the afternoon to check if the fig was fully ripe yet–and whichever bird it was saw what was beneath and saw what I did and saw how to get at it. No squirrel touched those spikes. Mockingbird or scrub jay, take your pick. It was probably gone the moment I stepped back inside, but I know it was fast.

So now I have to think up something else for the next one, but it was worth a try. Tape?

Meantime, shared by Andy’s Orchard, here’s an article on Native American peaches in the Southwestern desert from before most Natives had ever heard of white men.

Peaches.

I sure did a double take, how about you?

Four Corners, the Grand Canyon, before their trees were cut down as part of the plan to decimate Natives’ food sources and culture. Peaches. Not quite like ours–they had more nutrition. From seeds from the Spanish near the Rio Grande centuries before that were quickly spread north across the tribes.

A few were not found and survived. A descendant of the man who protected them is working on bringing them back to more of her people.

I asked, Do you/will you grow any of these?

Andy’s Orchard (presumably Andy himself) answered, More research needed.

But as one of the reporter’s sources noted, those would give great root stock for growing other varieties in the desert, too.

You have to get up early if you want to see the bunny.

Only, this time I stopped and simply watched it for awhile to see if it would try to get past the netting over my tomatoes and squash or chew on the cherry or scout for that unripe pomegranate whose weight brought its branch to the ground.

None of those.

It was scouting out the spots where my watering the trees had allowed a pocket of weeds to stay green here and there–and for good measure the dried weeds. A long straw of the invasive decorative grass that the neighbors planted that wants my yard too (and that I had missed in my efforts to pull all those out) disappeared bite by bite and then the seeds dangling off the end were dessert and at last it was gone. It looked around for more.

It had never occurred to me that the weeds and their seeds were what it was living off of.

Nice. I think we might be friends after all.

But this evening I did pick the first reddening tomato, just in case.

We have had a trio of young mockingbirds for days, teenagers teasing their nest mates as far as I can tell.

But today the first tomato got its first tinge of pink. And suddenly there were eight of them! Mockingbirds do not come in flocks. This time there was more chasing out of territory, mixed with perching all around my veggies.

But they did not find their way in yet.

One, however, had learned that if it stood on top of the square-metal-cage’s netting where it was a bit loose and bounced up and down, it could get close enough on the downbeat to snag a blueberry. I was so impressed that I figured it had earned it.

Interesting: if you put the phone’s camera right up to the netting you get its shadow in sharp lines looking like it’s draped directly on half the plant, whereas the actual netting is those blurred-out thicker edges perpendicular to the squares below.

While the flowers demand, never mind all that, look at ME.

Trouble is, he’d be happy to munch the plant away long before then.

A small Anya seedling.

Guess who showed up yesterday morning to take a sniff at it? I took that picture right before it stood up and reached its head over.

Until last fall, we hadn’t seen a rabbit in our yard for thirty-three years of living here. Since then it’s been popping up from time to time, but it had been gone long enough now that I’d half-convinced myself an owl or something had gotten it.

Nope.

Guess who opened the box with a new set of NuVue bird netting tents for that seedling and my squashes  immediately after snapping these pictures and scaring it away. Just the right size for protecting a large pot. All I’d needed was a little incentive. Yes it can chew through it if it wants to badly enough but trying to get into a cage is just not high on most wildlife’s list.

The good part is that the new version has–and it’s not in Amazon’s picture–small bright red ribbons hanging down from the top that blow in the wind and startle birds and rodents, and there was no sign of that cottontail today.

I put two tiny squash seedlings to a 15″ pot when none of them were growing at all, figuring it was better to give them a chance than tossing them all straight out, and a month later two plants suddenly finally took off–both in the same pot, of course.

The one that’s dominant is (finally a female flower today after all the males, showing that it’s almost certainly) a zucchini; the smaller one at bottom has yet to announce itself and may get yanked out because you only need one zucchini plant and you’re not supposed to have them that mushed together, are you?

And then there’s this other pot. A squash sown at the same time, transplanted at the same time, treated the same way. Might be a butternut, might be my sister’s Italian white zucchini, might be another green zucchini. All carefully labeled, once upon a time. But it is definitely a bit silly, and I continue to debate trying to somehow get the littler guy in that other pot over into this one before it gets crowded out entirely.

Clearly, planting them inside in the winter did not get any of them the least bit ahead and they got so root bound in their 4″ squares that they couldn’t cope. Or at least I think that’s why.

Anyway. At 23″, apricot 2021 seedling #1 has grown an inch and a half since Friday. I understand now why that other guy said he was able to harvest his first fruit off his tall ones on the third year. Nice.

And on a random note, just because it’s so strange: white-tailed deer caught on camera. (link deleted later due to spamming)

Eating birds. And eggs.

Deer. I’m trying to grok this. Eating the adult nesting birds, their young, and their eggs. They tested by putting out quail eggs and the deer said why thank you very much! It says elk have been caught eating endangered sage grouse and whatever’s in their nests, too.

Foxes, raccoons, and–deer. Who knew?

(Picture courtesy of SCPBRG)

She was fine last week when they banded her and for days after.

There were two peregrine falcon chicks in San Jose this year, a male and a female, hatched after the original nesting attempt failed.

This week, the female started having seizures. Over several hours, she made it out of the nest box into the middle of the runway.

And at last she was gone.

There is a possibility that rat poison had made its way up the food chain and that being larger than her brother she had eaten more of it, but we’ll never know for sure. Please never, ever use the stuff outside.

He seems to be fine.

Her mother stood sentry on the ledge above for hours, keeping her safe. But the young one did not move. Grace came down beside her and stretched her wing wide over her daughter’s lifeless body, and again today. The male eyas tried to nudge his sister.

And then he stood on the lower ledge below his mother, taking in the world he will soon fly off into on his own.

And now he has a name. Phoenix.

Wait, what? Live in a towering 2977′ Tinkertoy/Lego/AtAt mashup on a lot that is smaller than the footprint of my current house? $1.6M? And it’s only been on the market for 706 days? What? C’mon, people, snatch this one up, pronto!

I was looking at video of the San Jose peregrine nestlings pushing/falling/jumping out of the box today and the thought suddenly occurred to me: I had never really noticed that the dark feathers that grow in first and most prominently are the ones in their faces. The ones that make them look more like peregrines to their parents. (Debating to add about that moment years ago when a two day old hatchling that had barely achieved the white fluffball stage died and a few hours later the parents fed it to its siblings. The kids were hungry. Thus my thought that blackening cheeks are likely protective.)

In the 97F heatwave over here, two of my apricot seedlings grew visibly since yesterday, three did not, and the last one seems to finally be kicking the bucket after a long decline. But it may yet surprise me.

Two of the three San Jose peregrines hatched and it is amazing to see them next to that remaining inert egg: they were that small, a week or two ago, and now they’re scooting around the box on their butts with those enormous feet.

That 18th floor ledge with a nest box with shade has become a valuable spot. Today, Hopper2 (they’re named after Grace Hopper) was finishing off a meal where the kids couldn’t see him when he heard something and jumped up on the ledge his mate was on. A third falcon swooped at her  (about a minute in on that video), feet out ready to fight for it, but thought better of it on seeing Grace in immediate maternal defense mode and that there were two of them right there.

It looks like just a swoop and away in the video, with the dad chasing after (“And STAY out!”) –but the still the cam operator got captures the moment. That is an amazing shot.