finally, rain

After 80 + something days of a dry spell, it's finally raining in earnest now.  There was  small amount yesterday morning, a tease that put water on the roadways and knocked leaves into the storm drains and onto the sidewalks, but when I walked across the grass in the afternoon, the ground still felt dry and crunched under my feet.

I know the swallows have long-since flown south.  They were missing last time I walked in the Fill in mid-September, mallards, shovelers, and grebes on the ponds, occasional calls from northern flickers and a belted-kingfisher broke the silence.  I have been using my lunch-hour to take a Finnish class, so no long walks for the time being.  Sometimes the birds come to visit me: a stellar jay popped onto the window sill in a quick succession of threes to plunk off the plump spiders living there, then disappeared.  The hummingbirds are flying over daily to check out the camilla bush outside my window, there are buds forming, but no flowers, so no nectar yet.  Also, flocks of chickadees and other small birds land to pick off mites off of the leaves.

Last weekend when I was cleaning out the recycling, a couple of crows were hanging around.  I fed them some leftovers, and I initially thought they were keeping out of the yard because I was walking in and out of the house, but then I noticed they were fixated on a particular spot of grass.  They began to tear out clumps of dried-up lawn and pick out something from the ground and eat it.  I walked over to get a closer look, they only hopped a few feet over.  Apparently, they knew there would be grubs under the grass at that time, or are they always there? They were eating up the grubs/maggots like popcorn.  How did they know? Always fascinating to me.