I just love the variety of birds we find in the vineyard, most of which I've never seen before. This Northern Flicker has been hanging around, and today I was lucky enough to get close enough to him to get a shot.
We've also had plenty of snow, so you know what that means....sledding through the Pinot Noir vines,and building snowmen on the front doorstep! Not bad for a couple of former Californians. But even in Oregon, snow days mean play days since they don't happen very often!
These last few nights have been filled with the so-called Supermoon, which, to me is not so much noticeably bigger (or, for that matter, more super in any way) as much as much, much brighter than normal. On Saturday night there was an eclipse of the full moon, but since we were clouded up we didn't see much.
However, once the eclipse was over, the full, brighter-than-normal moon lit up the clouds to a point where I could easily have read a newspaper outside. It honestly looked like a kind of crazy dawn stretching from horizon to horizon from midnight until the real dawn actually broke through several hours later.
And for as many nights as we've had the "supermoon," we've also had a bird that's decided to spend her evenings in the tree outside our bedroom window. And it's been so bright she sings -- beautiful, long, eloquent songs at different points throughout the night. She's a fairly common species of bird we see around our property a lot. During the day, she makes noises I can only describe as a "smooching" sound. That's all her and her other bird friends do all day long -- talk to each other from tree to tree..."Smooch! Smooch!"
But at night....she perches alone and sings a lunar opera of her own design and composing.
Too many of us sing our best song only when we're alone and we think no one is awake or listening. In the harsh light of day we make the same noises as all the fellow travelers in our life's orbit, but during the small hours, we think, dream, and maybe even sing our true colors.
I think the world would be a better place if we all sang our deepest song in the clear light of day, for everyone to hear, instead of just making the noises we think are expected of us, which are usually not particularly inspired or beautiful. Why do we keep our deepest and most inspired selves locked away safely until we think no one else is listening?
Why pretend you are just another smoochy-bird when you are actually, in your deepest soul, a composer of nocturnes and a singer of moonlight librettos, performed under a moon as bright as the dawn?
Last year we decided to allow a bush beneath our bathroom window to grow a little taller, and the result is that a couple of Blue Jays built a nest there and we now have a window on their young ones' little world. There are five of these guys and they are just too cute. You have to look close to see them, they are well camouflaged but definitely there!
It was a waxing moon, about half-full, so the moon was up but not overly bright. I had gone to bed about 10 pm, loathing daylight savings time and the fact that I wasn't really tired yet. About 15 minutes later, I noticed a couple of things: First, the house seemed to creak in several places at once, although I felt nothing unusual. Second, every bird in the countryside started singing. It was the Dawn Chorus at night. They were so loud, and it was so unusual, that I went and got Big Ag, who had been watching television in another part of the house, and brought him to the back door so he could hear it too.
This went on for an hour or two, and then, just like that, it stopped. And the night was as quiet as it normally is.
This morning I awoke to see this:
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-northern-california-earthquake-20140310,0,1233717.story#axzz2vZNmFWYq
Yes, the shaking apparently started at about 10:15 pm last night. Guess our neighborhood songbirds know more than you'd think.
Since I am blessed with not having a job that starts in the morning, most days I have the luxury of waking up slowly, allowing my body to adjust to consciousness...to think, to pray, to meditate before rising. It's a gift I don't take lightly.
Usually I am awakened by the mockingbirds who live in our backyard, which is the one slight negative to the whole experience, because to me mockingbirds are the car alarms of the avian world.
In case you are unfamiliar, the mockingbird's song sounds something like this: "Cheep cheep! Blurt Blurt! Waaooo,Waaaaoooo,Waaoooo,Waaooo! Reeeeet Reeeeet. Meh! Meh! Meh!"
Car alarms, on the other hand, sound something like this: "Woo, woo, woo, woo! Meh! Meh! Meh! Wahooo, Wahooo, Wahooo Wahoo! Aaat, aaat, aaat, aaat, aaat!"
You can see the similarities.
But other than the mockingbirds, the Dawn Chorus is a wonderful way to be awakened each morning, and for some reason I was very conscious of that today. While I was laying in bed thinking, I tried to remember what mornings were like at our last house, the one in the suburbs.
Since we lived 1/4 miles away from an extremely busy rail line, my morning usually began with two or three trains rumbling by, blowing their horns when they reached each intersection. (This had gone on through the night as well, but that's another story.) Some engineers seemed to like to blow the horns of their trains more than others. For some, I suspect it was the reason they lived, breathed, and went faithfully into work each day. It was all about the horn.
Or maybe an engineer's ex-wife lived in our neighborhood, and he passed the word to his engineer buddies to make sure she never got a good night's sleep again, after breaking his heart. That was actually the preferred working theory of mine, back when I lived there.
Anyway, now it's about 5:00 am in my old neighborhood, which means it's time for the neighbor down the street who always forgot he had a working car alarm to open his car door in his driveway to leave for work, setting the alarm off (see the "car alarm" description above for what this sounded like).
Then usually about 6:15 or so, the neighbors across the street would leave for work and the day care drop-off at the school. They would start their car, and immediately the "thump, thump, thump!" of their mega-stereo's bass line would begin, followed by some (usually) obscene rap lyrics. They would go back into the house and back to the car approximately 50 times in the next 10 minutes, slamming the car doors each time they entered or egressed the vehicle, leaving the engine running and the stereo booming the whole time. They'd finally decide to officially shove off, kids in tow, and would leave for work and school soon after.
And the "De-Boom Boom BOOM" of the bass would trail off as they drove down the street.
Of course if it was a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday morning, I would probably already be awake, because our neighborhood was first in line for trash pick-up, and the garbage/recycling and greenwaste trucks would come by about 5 a.m. to start their rounds....4:30 in summer.
If there were any mockingbirds singing on those mornings, I never heard them, because my fellow man pretty much had the sound meter pegged with humanity's din.
And this particular morning meditation today, as I lay in bed with a few acres in between me and my closest neighbor, made me mindful that the cry of mockingbirds is really, not such a bad sound to wake up to after all.
The California Quail. We see them a lot in the yard, along with roadrunners. And they love running in between the rows of the vineyards at work, popping in and out of our line of sight and delighting our customers with their scurrying antics. But of course I love seeing them at home more, because there I can just relax and enjoy watching them for as long as they want to hang out in the yard.
Cute, huh!
I am one of those people who believes when you take an animal into your home, it is a lifetime commitment for as long as the animal survives. A few years back, we had a stray (but tame) dove make its way into our yard. A couple of months later, someone else gave us a white dove. Voila. Pair of doves as pets.
Well, long story short, one of the doves escaped, and now lives happily in our backyard and around the neighborhood (that's him in the photo above). We put food and water out for him and he's not only survived, but thrived, in this limited "wild" experience. However, in about six months --- maybe less -- we will no longer live on this property, and so the task has become to re-capture the dove and put him back into our aviary, so he can move with us and the other birds.
So I've set a trap. A small cage with his lady love inside, and one below, open, with a bowl of food. I am hoping he will enter the bottom cage, I can slam the door shut, and then place both doves, together, back into the big aviary we have at the other end of the yard.
I hate to re-cage him, as he's enjoying his freedom so much. But there's every possibility that, once we move, there will no longer be a food source here, and I don't want to see him starve. Even though he's been "wild" for about three years now, he still feels like my responsibility. And so Operation Re-Capture begins.
