Continuing dry & birdfull
We did manage to have a touch of sprinkles last week, I think it was overnight Wednesday night to Thursday and during Thursday day. Nothing registered in our rain gauge, but the ground was moist all around.
Other than that we have been dry & windy. Spring plus drought means really quite dry and windy. The drought is bringing animals closer to our house. Deer regularly visit our birdbath, and this morning there was a coyote lapping up the water there. No wonder Alan has to fill it once or twice a day! Also, all the gardeners I know have been having plants disappear into the hungry cottontails. Oh well. We got our cages out late, but it looks like all the plants eaten so far just considered themselves pruned.
We are beset by orioles, and I mean that in the best possible way. Sightings of Scott’s orioles (the yellow ones) have been coming in from every corner of the preserve. Most years I have seen a couple of Bullock’s orioles, and just about the time I get their feeder up they are gone. I haven’t seen any for a day or so, so perhaps they have moved on again. But both species of orioles have been quite present for the past couple of weeks. Add the two orioles to the black-headed grosbeaks, and we have been having many flashes of yellow and orange streaking by!
I had been wondering where the mockingbirds were, until finally a week ago I could hear one singing away in the second row of trees from our house. A mocker sets up out there every year; maybe he returns to his same spot.
A day or two before that I was listening to a quite extensive song, which at first seemed to me to belong to a house finch — it had all the little finch-y trills in it — but it was just a bit too varied and long. No other house finch had ever sounded quite like that. I suggested to Alan that maybe it was our first mockingbird of the year, maybe a young adult who just didn’t know that many songs yet; Alan didn’t buy it. But on Monday last, when the for-sure mockingbird finished about four choruses of his repertoire, the “house finch” replied with several times through his not-quite-a-house-finch song. To which the other mocker had to reply.
That pretty much sealed it for me: we have one mature mockingbird and one fairly young one out there dueling with their songs. That’s my story & I’m sticking to it!
Now for stuff that will bore anyone who is here only for nature postings. Two things: 1- as of last Thursday I am allowed to put weight on my now-healed leg. Yay! and 2- posting has been light because I’ve had some software issues. Alan told me how to end around them until they all get solved, and lo & behold: a weather report.