The Empty Nest

The babies are gone.

Scorpion #8, 2007

Back porch, this morning, around 8:45 a.m. It conveniently put itself into a Catch & Release container; I found it as I was emptying bird seed into our plastic bins and, having a little overflow, reached for the smaller bin that's been lying around out there. So the scorpion caught; I released.

The Knock at the Door

There was a knock at the front door tonight. I answered it and found Woodie standing there on the step. He looked weary.
"It's about the kids," he said. "They were supposed to come out of that tree no later than yesterday, and they're still in there."
"Why, yes, I've noticed that," I answered. "What's up with that, anyway?"
"Well, I'm not sure. I think it's all this rain lately. They've been sneezing a lot, and one of them has a little patch of mold growing on his head. I think they're waiting for a sunny day."
I laughed. "They'll be waiting a while yet then, I think, seeing as there's a lot more rain coming!"
"That's just it," he sighed. "Look. Here's the thing. Woodina and I are exhausted. It's bug after maggot after larva after berry after bug, and the thing is, we can't help noticing how much time you guys spend just, you know, watching us. In fact, it's been getting a little irritating lately. Every time I look up, your camera's in my face, and there I am with my mouth full of bug."
I was taken aback. "I thought maybe you sort of liked it," I said. "The attention, and the nice photographs of you and the kids. I was planning on having some framed for you to hang in the tree cavity!"
Woodie looked at me. "I had sort of a different idea," he said. "We thought that you and Hugh could start spending some time with the kids...babysitting, food-gathering, that sort of thing. They'd like to get to know you better. And frankly, we need a rest. So, we're thinking you could start this weekend, because we have plans to go camping down the hill with some friends at the creek. What do you say?"

The Guardians

One of the things not yet written about is when, during one of my long weekend vigils, there was a confrontation of woodpeckers. Ha! Sounds like a collective name—well then, for me at least, hereonafter (is that a word? who cares?) they shall be known as a "Confrontation of Woodpeckers." But I digress. Not that I'm going to say much more about it right now, though, I really just want to post this nice photo of the parents hanging out together in the nest tree afterwards, making sure that no other birds come along to threaten their little ones.

It's What's for Dinner

I LOVE THIS PHOTO, if I do say so myself. I have a whole slew of photos of various foodstuffs brought by the parents to the babes, and plan an interesting segment titled something along the lines of What the Heck Are All of These Things, Anyway? I also love the second photo where it appears that a portion of the bug has been chomped.

30 Days in the Hole

I went out to the patio after I got home tonight and waited and waited and waited with no woodpeckers to be seen, not babes nor adults. I went very close to the tree and could not hear a thing—not a wheeze, not a kek-kek-kek (the babies have graduated to adult sounds, you understand). I was heartbroken to have missed seeing them go. I might have even shed a tear or two or a hundred as I sat there. So imagine my great joy when after about 25 minutes, a wee head poked out!

The Mysterious Yellow Bird

Yesterday evening I had the briefest glimpse of a new bird. It was sitting on the yucca in front of the office window, where the orioles often sit, and I was recalling Hugh commenting recently on how very yellow Mrs. Scott is while I gazed at this yellow bird, and I suddenly realized that this bird was not a Scott at all. It was quite yellow, no black or brown on the parts that I could see, and was gone by the time I ran into the other room and back with the camera. I will watch for it again. There seem to be many new varieties this year—or is it, as I was wondering similarly with the woodpeckers, that I am noticing more, as I am way less stressed out now that I don't have a job that sucks all soul and energy from me? (The other G&S alumni understand this, I know. Kisses to you!)

This yellow bird was the size of the Scotts; it was definitely far larger than the finch family. It was reminiscent of the interloper birds of a few days ago—coincidence?

The Twenty-ninth (29th) Day

It is Monday, and four weeks exactly from the evening that I first heard the babies, who are STILL NOT fledged, gosh darn it. However, it has been so fun to watch them this weekend, even though I am dying for want of seeing them come out; I spent a huge amount of time outside poised in front of the camera with a book or two to while away the time that was not spent glued to the viewfinder. Perhaps tomorrow I will write the brief dissertation I find myself too tired to write tonight, in which I detail the details re what kind of food, and when the parents bring it, and what the tiny heads do, exactly, when they appear, and all that. I had planned on it tonight, but laundry and chard pie and hummingbird/oriole food and feeders and cleaning thereof, and then some more laundry, and then dinner, and god knows what all else got in my way. And I never did get to the mail, which I think has built up for two solid weeks now. Sigh. A person's work is never done. Why am I so dang tired? Am I ill?

So, having observed so frequently the woodpecker parents' Bend and Snap down into the nest with food, I've decided that it is to them that we owe, much more so than penguins, the origin of the men's formal suit with tails, as illustrated in the photo that accompanies this post.

O Little Woodlets

O little woodlets
come out from inside your tree
to meet the bright world!

Loose Ends

I saw some of the baby wrens today—one of them was being harassed by a hummingbird.

The wrens are Bewick's wrens (which is pronounced "Buick's," say the books). The interloper and bonus woodlet are of the Ladder-backed woodpecker species.

They Taunt Us with Their Tiny Heads

28 Days

It is the 28th day and the woodlets have not come out yet. I've been up since 7 and may lose my eyesight from staring at the tree against the backdrop of the glaringly bright morning sky. But do the woodlets care? No. No, they don't.

Oh no! I let it slip again how this is all about ME ME ME. Darn it, I hate it when I do that.

Their Tiny Heads Appear

The most exciting parts of the day (apart from the visiting siblings, one who's never been to my house before, and another who's been out of the country for a couple of weeks) were the cameo appearances throughout the day of some of the Woodlets. Two of them are shown here; now we know there are at least two, evidenced by the mark-on-head and lack thereof. I have to go to bed now so I can get up at the crack of dawn to see the emergence of the babies that I KNOW IS DESTINED TO HAPPEN TOMORROW, I JUST KNOW IT. I do. I just know it. It is time.

Day 27: The Interlopers

Many more things happened today after the excitement of the baby wrens. The woodlets showed their heads (at least, some of them; at most, all of them—we'll find out soon which is true), some (human) relatives visited, and some interlopers visited the Woodie tree. Featured here are members of that last group.

The bird above was one of a pair. The bird below was by himself, and is clearly of the same variety as the Bonus Woodlet of a couple of weeks ago. This little woodpecker made his way up the tree, clearly in search of food and not nest-marauding or anything, but was roundly (and understandably) chased away by whichever golden-fronted parent was closer as soon as he (interloper) got near the woodlets' hole.

This is the Last of It, I Swear

(Why oh why oh why did this one have to be out of focus?)

Some of these photos illustrate the pink underarm area of the juvenile wren—so dainty and sweet. And their tails are so short! The parents' tails are three times this length. Very interesting.

The Baby Wrens Emerge! Part IV

The Baby Wrens Emerge! Part III

Even after the first babies came out, the parents kept showing up with food, no doubt for strength, encouragement, and enticement. I am fascinated by the solicitousness of parent birds.

The Baby Wrens Emerge! Part II

So "The Baby Wrens Emerge! Part I" explains why I was up earlier than I might have chosen and sitting at my desk when Hugh, who had still been keeping an eye on the Woods' tree from the front room, suddenly cried out,"There is a baby wren ONE FOOT FROM MY FACE!" There was also a loud whacking noise which turned out to be Hamilton throwing himself against the window which is next to the nesting skull. You could practically see blood dripping from his jaws and his pink brains whirling at the thought of fat little babies.

Needless to say, I grabbed the camera (how many times have I typed those words?) and went outside. The wrens are so shy; I was worried that my presence would frighten them, so I hunkered down behind the mountain laurel at the skull-end of the porch and started snapping. The photo above is not the best of the photos, but is of the first baby to emerge. More to come!

And, hey, Happy Birthday to Hank! How special to have a nest of baby birds fly into the world on your birthday!

The Baby Wrens Emerge! Part I

Binoculars in hand, Hugh excitedly dragged me out of bed this morning because he thought the woodlets were coming out; he'd seen a small, dark head poking out of the hole. I staggered up, grabbed a cup of coffee (with Hugh saying YOU BETTER HURRY all the while), went out the back door with the camera, and made my way in stealth mode over to my "blind" (a patch of scrawny oak seedlings) by the tree. Woodie flew in from the left after I sat down, thereby negating my caution, since from the left I was in full view. Seeing me put him on High Alert, with the loud krrrrrrrr! krrrrrrrr! krrrrrrrr! to go with it. So I sat and waited, and nothing happened. Finally Woodie came over with a little food, but there were no woodlets to be seen (though I heard 'em, of course). After ten minutes or so I gave it up and went back in for more coffee.

OK, Just One More

Another sky.

The Madrone: This is IT for Tonight

The madrone outside our kitchen window is peeling like mad. It's beautiful. More about madrones tomorrow, too. For whatever reason, I am utterly exhausted this week, so am behind on everything and trying to catch up. This weekend, this weekend, this weekend....

Oh, but one more thing: it's also bearing berries! Haven't checked for a week or so, but they were in the unripe making when I last did so.

More about the Mockingbird

What I love about our mockingbird(s?) is that he/she (they? I better just pick one pronoun and stick with it) knows the songs of all our birds. He usually starts with the cardinal and segues into the rest: the oriole, the wren, the bobwhite, the scrub jay, the finch, the woodpecker, etc. It's amazingly site-specific. With the simpler songs, sometimes it's quite difficult to tell if it's the mocker or the real thing, until the next mock begins.

The Old Audubon's Orioles Nest

This morning Mrs. Scott was hopping around, and even got in, the old nest in the wisteria on the front porch that the Audubon's Orioles built but never nested in two or three years ago. I wonder what she was thinking. Are she and the Mr. considering using it, or was she just seeing how the other orioles live?

I learned a little bit about these nests at the time; if I remember correctly, they are semi-pendulous, meaning that they mostly hang rather than be supported. Last winter when the wisteria was bare, one day I thought I'd get out there and take the nest down to preserve it, as it's so beautifully made and intricate, and because neither the original builders nor anyone else has ever used it. However, I found it so woven into the wisteria that I would have had to cut a lot of the plant and the nest itself to get it down, so I just left it. It's nice to look at where it is, anyway.

The Fungus

There has been SO MUCH RAIN this spring and, officially as of yesterday, this summer! As a result, there are fungi popping up all over the place. This tiny and curious orange stuff is growing prettily on the Ladder to Nowhere* that is propped against the back porch roof. Fritz and Hamilton sometimes climb that ladder and prowl around on the little roof (seeking birds to eat, no doubt). The first photo is from this morning around 8 a.m.; I took the for-scale photo w/finger this evening, probably twelve or more hours later; you can see how shriveled and dried the fungus has become in that time.

I love love love all this rain EXCEPT FOR not being able to take the camera out in it, and for the dullness and lack of light it provides in some photos. (I like to think it's the weather rather than my bad picture-taking, of course.)

*It is a Ladder to Nowhere for humans, not cats, because the porch roof is so utterly unsupported that it would be a very bad idea indeed to try to be on it.

The Evening

I arrived home before dark tonight! Barely, but it counts; Monday and Tuesday nights I didn't get here until after 10, so this was a refreshing change. However, I am so zonked that all I've had energy to do is bring the shopping in, change clothes, get the camera, wander around with the camera, check on the Woodlets, wander around with the camera some more, and finally take some sunset photos because I'd lost the light for everything else and besides there was nothing else around, for once, to snap. Not that the sky was not spectacular—au contraire, mon frere, au contraire!

Strange thoughts flicker like ghosts through my weary, fevered brain. Has it really been 3 weeks since I first heard the Woodlets? Is there really noise issuing from the tree, or is it a trick of the wind and the ear? Are they, perhaps, special-needs babies who will never leave the tree because they were, oh, born without wings, and so must live in darkness all their lives, with Woodie and Woodina spending all their time every day for all eternity feeding them? Only the Shadow knows....

That's Shovel Mountain in the distance there, by the way. A distinctive and handsome landmark, I have always thought.

Scorpion #7, 2007

10:45 p.m. beneath the dining table. Hamilton was playing around under there when I saw him moving with interest toward something small and fast.

With the last one, something clicked; no longer am I convinced that they are somehow going to manage to escape their plastic tub during the night, so this one's just waiting on the counter until morning.

Either the cats never get bitten or they do and it just doesn't bother them much. There was that time last year when I was positive that Ham had eaten one in the tub; we never learned for sure what happened there.

The Bird That Never Shuts Up

Crazy mockingbird
Has identity problems.
Whose song to sing next?

Haiku

Velvet ant, hurry!
They miss you back at the nest—
don't let me stop you.

Tarantula love:
It's mating season. This is
why they cross the road.

Hey! Did you know that
armadillos jump when scared?
Bodes ill for life span.

Suddenly a shot
Rings out across the valley.
Who has been killed now?

I actually took not one single photo yesterday. I did see a velvet ant but was talking on the phone so could not shoot. It was about a half or three-quarters of an inch long, which is much smaller than the one I'd previously seen—that guy was giant. And yes, there was a lot of gunfire from the ranch across the way: spastic, the-folks-are-away-teens-gone-wild, haiku-inspiring gunfire.

Sunday Morning Miscellany

From my desk here at home I can see the hummingbird and oriole feeders, the wrens coming and going further down the porch where their skull is, and the Woods' tree off to the right, close enough to see the nest hole and their attendance thereat. Outside the window at left is the oak tree where the titmice frequently nest and where the scrub jays hang; of late, it's also a favorite spot of the bobwhite, who's out there even as I type. The hummingbirds have a party going on this morning; they're going crazy around the feeders while Mr Scott's cleaning and fluffing in the cedar tree directly in front of me (it was a wet and probably chilly night). Hugh is angry at the mourning doves which are constantly at the birdfeeders. They are there so often and in such numbers that we've started chasing them off when we see them so the other, littler birds can have their turns. We have a couple of squirrels who visit regularly, too, but I'm convinced that the doves are the reason we now have to fill the feeders every other day.

Last night I discovered who's been breaking into the sunflower seed container outside our bedroom door. Before bed I'd brought the seed inside; around midnight I heard snuffling and small steps and looked up to see a little masked raccoon face. This morning the black-crested titmouse above was finishing up the last of the seeds from Friday night's raid. The juvenile below was by the feeder. I love how they sit with their little feet together to hold the seeds while they eat. I am curious about the black mark on this guy's left cheek. His right doesn't have one, nor do the other titmice; my guess is that it's temporary and will go away as he grows up.

I Owe Hugh Fifty Cents

Prehistoric cries!
Parent woodpeckers on tree;
Babes are heard, not seen.

I Owe Hugh a Quarter

I suspect this is the case, even though the day is not quite over yet.

We're Almost There

I'm tired and have it in me to comment only briefly. We watched the tree for a while this evening. Woodie is sticking very close by to the nest and the little birds are getting louder and more distinct; they have bursts where they suddenly sound like actual birds instead of static or a dog whimper. I bet Hugh a quarter that they're coming out tomorrow.