The birds came back, or a lot of them did. I don't for the life of me know why they left, or for that matter, where they went, but they are back, and I love them and I missed them. The little juncos that did battle in the spring with Deb's car mirrors, defending their territory against anyone who looks like they do. As in, "Look at that bastard, he looks just like me, he can't be trusted, die junco!" Deb had to put an old towel over her mirrors to keep them from crapping all over the glass and killing themselves. Then there's the towhees. They are about the size of a robin. What I like best about them is their one note question to the world,......" kreee?"....."kreeee?" Only bird sound I've heard that comes with a question mark. The flickers are in the dogwoods every day going after the bright red fruits of the spent flowers. Now there is a beautiful bird. The red shafted flicker. Larger than the robin and wonderfully adorned with spots and a black bib. Basically a woodpecker with an awesome swooping flight path and a loud cry of what I suspect is joy. All three pairs of these unlikely friends were on my new lawn today finding whatever interested them.
Yesterday, I saw, what I thought was a mouse, out of the corner of my eye. It scurried under the metal shed I'm using to store my garden stuff. I immediately got a bait pack and threw it under the shed in hopes of nipping a winter rodent infestation in the bud. It (quite fearlessly) showed up again running from the shed to the compost pile. I got a better look and realized it was a shrew. I remember reading somewhere that a shrew, a voracious carnivore, and therefore uninterested in my poison grain bait pack, needed to consume seven times it's weight in food daily just to keep that high energy metabolism at par. He seems to have moved into my compost pile. Lots of crunchy bugs for it there.
We have a resident black bear. We've gotten some pretty close up looks at each other. We hear him thrashing around in the empty lot just above us every couple of days. Two days ago he was up a very large laurel tree about 30 feet away from our back deck. This is the same kind of evergreen laurel tree that people keep trimmed for hedges, but this one was likely planted many years ago by a bird dropping and was now an attractive jungle gym for the bear. If I had to guess, I would suppose our bear to be about a 200 lb 2 year old. He was sitting way up the tree pulling the black cherry-like fruits into his smacking lips with his front claws. I tried for a while to get a picture, but I couldn't focus on him through the brush, so I just watched him like a private documentary movie with my binoculars.
I suspect this is the same bear that made a 5 bird snack out of my 6 quail just after I had them all set up. The one that escaped is now a pet of a little girl named Cloe who lives up the street. I'm going to have to be a lot smarter about setting up a poultry scene if I live with a bear. One night he shook the whole house enough to wake Deb and I. We sat bolt upright staring at each other in the dim light, wide eyed and thinking, "earthquake! ....then BEAR!" in that order. The second thought was audible. I sprang from bed in my underwear and found the lock jimmied on the little mini basement where the hot water heater lives. I had the remains of the quail food in there and he wanted it. Again, we could hear him thrashing in the woods as he lumbered away. He also woke us up the night he carried the 50 lb sack of alfalfa pellets out of the little garden shed. This brought me out in my undies again accompanied by Deborah providing back up by bashing a big pot with a wooden spoon. A tactic I was completely unprepared for as I peered, scantily clad into the deep dark forest.
I barely kept my shorts clean. We are a formidable team and entertaining enough to expect return visits.
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