Coyotes

 I'd been thinking of coyotes for months now, knowing people had been seeing them.  The crows were going nuts all morning, they've been flocking to the area for a few weeks recently, so I just figured they were moving in as a new hangout.  When they'd first starting to arrive at lunch and making a ruckus, I'd thought there might be an owl or eagle or something, but though they at first seemed agitated, I couldn't find any other source for it, and figured they were just doing lunch (some picking seed pods on trees, some tearing at moss.)  And then walking to lunch yesterday, I happened to look down at a grassy patch and there was a figure there, lolling in the grass.  A big dog.  A coyote.  I stopped and watched it, tried to take a picture with my phone.  And I turned my head, and there was another one, standing in the shadows under a tree, watching.  

The only one I'd seen before had been scrawny, small, these two were on the larger end of coyote size.  My co-worker had seen one a few months ago and thought it was a wolf (we don't have wolves here, I don't think.)

They were still there on my way back, more in the trees.  I stopped to look, and one looked back, and I thought, "Yeah, still a wild animal," though well-fed and healthy looking, also relatively calm and unconcerned with all the people and traffic nearby.  (Might be why I rarely see my rabbits anymore.)  And walked on.  And they've been here all along.

Bird day

I woke up late, and had to rush out without making breakfast. Thought I could stop by a corner grocery to get a sandwich, but when I got closer saw a sign that they were opening late, so no luck.  Took a brief break to run to Starbucks, only thing open, and walking back, I looked down to see I was being rather quietly pursued by a large crow.  It flapped it's wings and kept close to my feet as I walked.  Clearly wanting me to feed it.  And enough recognition in it's eyes that I thought perhaps I might resemble someone who feeds it regularly.  (Or it recognized the bag I was carrying as something that usually contains food.)  I stopped and bit off a piece of scrambled egg and dropped in on the ground.  It ate it, and hopped forward.  Continued to follow me to the door (and by follow, it stayed within a foot or two of me.)  As I approached the door, I noticed something orange-ish in its beak.  It spat that out, a moth (and when did it catch that?), and proceeded to pick off the wings, and replace all of it in its beak.  Watching me the whole time.  I said "goodbye" and went back to work.

Later, when I told people about the crow, someone suggested perhaps it was offering me the moth.  That could be: it made a point of showing it to me, didn't swallow it, and helpfully pulled off its wings to give me the edible part.

I was giving someone a building tour later, and saw a crow hanging out in the lawn, but it didn't act familiar.  And later, I had a snack for it but never found it again, so left snack by rubbish bins.

In other nature, have taken a few detours through green belts, and on my most recent encounter a hummingbird bathing in a running stream.  Lots of other wildlife dashing through the branches.  At the Lake, the eagles and osprey are all back prowling the waters.  Lot of baby geese and ducks.  The Canadian and Cackling Geese flocking en masse.

Carp Season Just Past

Mostly I've been walking the neighborhoods as of late.  There's a coffee shop next to a big field I like to go to.  The park is the second highest point in the City, I think, and has views of cities, bridges, foothills, and mountains.  Also, there's a unsettled wildness about it that reminds me of where I grew up, and I find it pleasing in a very alert way.  It's the bluffs, untamed, even though this isn't a bluff.  At any rate, no one covered it with astro-turf and soccer fields, and there are patches where native meadow plants have been planted; plus it never feels all that crowded.

Last week I decided to check out the Lake on the way to return library books.  Caught the last of the thrashing carp.  When I walked through again a week later, they were gone.  Lots of baby geese though.  Out for a wander with the attending chaperones while the parents floated nearby in the water.  Must have been 30-40 of various ages being guarded by four adults.  Saw a few baby ducks earlier, swimming out alone in a group, didn't see any adults with them.

The weather has been unsettled and unusually dry.  Keep wanting to plant out my tomatoes, but the nights keep turning cold and the days threaten hail, though they don't deliver.

April 22

Rain.  I hear it hit the roof outside as I awaken.  Still, I get up, go get my daily coffee, and wind my way through the neighborhood toward the Lake.  It's all one-way traffic now, so if I want to see any one spot in particular, I have to back-track through the neighborhood first.

I see a lone eagle cross to the eastern side of the lake.  Nearer to shore, three wigeons are foraging on the lawn: two females and one male, but I do think the larger flock has migrated.  Perhaps these three decided to become year-round locals.  They are with a lone male Gadwall.

Next along, a carp or catfish, is breaching the surface of the water; I've been looking for them, so was excited by the sighting, alas, it was the only one.  Near the fishing docks, an osprey flies overhead, fish in talons, no eagle to intercept.  Assuming it made it safely to the nest.  A pair of Wood ducks swims under the dock in front of me.  Also, the coffee stand is open today.  Been closed.  I didn't go close enough to read the sign (probably says "one customer at a time.")  The nearby Starbuck's has re-opened as well, though only for mobile pick-ups. Big banner out front, green balloons marking the proper entrance.

The water level seemed low, it's been dry for the past month.  Steady rain all day.  I was soaked by the time I made it back home.  But the people were sparse, and air was clean and balsam-y from the cottonwoods, leafing out in orange-tinged green.  No cotton fluff, yet.  Allergies getting a bit of a break from the rain.

Birds, Birds, Birds

April 21.  Bird fun of the morning walk.  I see a large bird fly low, from the Lake into the neighborhood.  It seems small for an eagle at first glance.  A little while later, I hear the tell-tale cry of an American Bald Eagle, and look over to see a dark lump high in a douglas fir, two crows swooping and diving at it.  While they take a time out, two more come over to harass the eagle, but get bored and quickly move along to other trees.  I think there might've been a crow's nest in the fir.  The eagle flies off to another tree, unimpeded.

Some minutes on, I walk to the end of the fishing dock to look around, see if any carp are around.  I catch sight of an osprey just as it folds its wings back to make a dive at the water.  Often they seem to just practice, but this one hits the water, and when it rises back up, I can see a small fish in it's talons.  It flies toward nearby trees, but out-of-the blue an eagle comes in for a steal, and the two maneuver low in the sky, below the treetops.  The osprey drops the fish to the ground before flying back over the water.  The eagle drops down to the ground.  I run over to see what happened, but can't find the fish, I did see it drop.  The eagle flies off after crows harass it.  Either the crows or the eagle took the fish.  I look up, and the eagle has vanished, two osprey circle high above the water.  Crows look down at me from a tree, then go back to gathering nesting material.

April 20.  The American Wigeons have definitely left.  I haven't seen them in over a week.  Last saw them on April 10, before the Lake was closed for Easter weekend.  We walked a wide berth around the Lake on the following Monday afternoon, but the weather was nice, and the crowds had returned, so we kept our distance, and I didn't notice the wigeons.

April 17.  Hear a commotion up in the trees.  A pair of woodpeckers (hairy? downy?) are battling with a pair of nuthatches over a tree cavity nest.  The woodpeckers win, the female inside the hole, cleaning it out, and tossing sawdust over the edge.  I've been back since, but haven't seen them again.

April 13-16.  Morning walks.  I've been walking through the neighborhood more than the Lake, but one of the mornings, saw ducklings again.  Near the boating docks.  Chasing down the low-hovering mosquitos, removing them from the air voraciously, one at a time.

April 8.  I hear the high-pitched cries of ducklings, and walk toward the water to see two new babies swimming along the shoreline, in the safety of the overhang.

April 7. First sighting of an osprey.  Crows that sneak in and steal my seeds, eat them in a tree.  Stellar jay, robins, starlings, wigeons still here.

The Redpolls are Back!

Out for a walk early on Saturday morning.  Having lost the ability to discern what day it is, thought it was Sunday when I woke up, but happily realized it was actually Saturday, and only the start of the weekend, rather than its end.

The air was cold.  It must have rained heavily over night: the play fields and pathways were flooded, covered in birds, wigeons and gulls, mostly, hunting for worms.  When I got near the lake, I decided to walk counter-clockwise, testing out my feet, to see how far I could walk.  All week walking had proved difficult, in extreme foot pain, once again.  Then, last night, the pain inexplicably lessened, and seems to be holding off (going from about a nine to a two on a one-to-ten scale.)

A wind kicked up the waves, they raced each other to slap and splash at the shoreline, but the rain initially held off.  Across the lake I could see its approach, causing a haziness in the houses and trees.  Another tree down, cut into logs, and left lying in a pile in the grass.  The rain began to fall, light at first, coming sideways in the wind.  (Now that I'm inside again, the wind has really kicked up, trees swaying in and out of my view through the window.)  Mallards waddled up away from the water, and across the pathways, taking no notice of the joggers dodging them as the former searched for worms.

Halfway, I considered turning around (I still don't like the other half closer to home), but continued on, drenched now from the rain, but I was wearing rain gear and my feet were holding up, so I forged ahead.  The rain let up.  The wind let up.  The water was calm, a mirror, once again.  Though later on, I considered that this side (west and south) must be protected somehow, as when I get back over to the east side, the water is rough once again, and the trees are swaying with every chilly gust of wind.

Near the boat house, geese huddled together on a dock, taking it over.  One lone gadwall among them.  On the next dock over, a massive heron sat on the end, easily larger than any of the geese, and one lone mottled bird.  I stepped closer for a look, and saw that it was an immature male shoveler.   My shoes sunk in the mud as I moved back up to a graveled path.

Almost home, the wind kicked up again, and a large flock of tiny birds caught my attention as they dropped from a birch tree to the ground, there were at least a hundred.  I moved to the outer edge of the canopy, branches hanging over my head, and I stood still.  I remembered the redpolls now, and wondered if they have returned (we are not in their normal range, but they visited in January two or threes years ago, found them in about the same location.  They live almost entirely on birch seeds in the winter.)  They got used to my presence and came to feed in the branches above my head, the only way I could get a good id on them.  The first bird was a chickadee, but the later ones had red cap on their heads, and a rosy bloom along the edges of their breasts (males.)  Redpolls.

I stood there until I got too cold, and then made my way back home, glad that I didn't turn around earlier.

What's been going on

My pet hummingbird is singing on a branch, outside my window.  Big drops of rain beginning to fall, the sheltering leaves becoming fewer and fewer as we move deeper toward winter.  Still, it sits there, poofing out its feathers to look like a chickadee.

Walked the lake on Friday, pausing to watch a heron wander back and forth through the water.  Eventually, it grabbed a flat yellow fish and swallowed it whole, its throat bulged out.  Must've been a perch or sunfish of some kind.  Some hundred meters later, I came across a youngish raccoon, its face wet from bathing.  We both stopped abruptly, having shocked one another.  Then the raccoon looked out to make a run for it, but there were too many dogs, so it lumped its way beside the lake until it found a tree to hide out in.

After injuring my foot over the summer, and stating that wildlife would have to come visit me, we had a mother and two baby raccoons as regulars, both across the courtyard, and then rolling around in the grass outside the building at work.  Then, a baby gull showed up late in the summer (our yearly pet.)  It arrived on a day I was on leave, but survived the weekend, and I saw it on Monday.  It was fully gray, and looked old enough to survive.  Late in the afternoon it was practicing flight, by jumping off of a raised platform and flapping its wings.  I left the water bowl out over night, we were in a heat wave at the time.  It crossed my mind that maybe I shouldn't.  In the morning, the bird was dead, ripped apart by the mother raccoon, presumably to teach its offspring how to hunt.  They left it under my co-workers window.  They came back to feed on it, and I knocked on the glass; the mother looked up at me with it's bloody face, then proceeded to go wash its paws and face in the water bowl.  (So, then doubly regretted leaving the water out.  Though, I think it was more a matter of unfortunate timing, I think the raccoons only came through on certain days, and the fifth day of the gull, the unfortunately coincided with that the raccoons' rounds.)  I called someone to come remove the carcass and the bowl, they eventually came a couple of days later and took the bird, but only kicked the water bowl over, to drain it.  My co-worker volunteered to wear gloves and pick it up to dispose of it.

The rabbits re-appeared, a couple of babies hanging out in the grass.  I walked out one afternoon to see one gasping for breath, and called someone about that, but it died shortly after.  All I can think was that it got poisoned, someone handled it, or a dog got to it.  It had been fine earlier in the day.  So, all in all, my summer was full of animal trauma.

I have yet to see the resident deer.  The raccoons continue to wander past, now just the two younger ones, without the full reign of the world they formerly had during the summer.  The wildlife keeping to the shadows now that the students have returned to the area.

The summer birds have long gone, Western Grebes, and Common Mergansers have returned.  No sign of the Am. Wigeons, yet.

The rains fall and the wind blows; each day the trees hold fewer leaves, more open to the sky.  Nature prepares for sleep.