As our friend Eva in the valley has been pointing out for the last several years birds [save the frantic addicts around neighbors’ hummingbird feeders] are in increasingly short supply.  I haven’t noticed it at Wall so much but here…not a nighthawk, no jay’s squawk, no swallows no wrens woodpeckers kestrels ravens nor eagles in sight; nobody around.

Silence save for the occasional vehicle, chainsaw and a random unseen corvid’s graaak…

We kept up our daily wanders, careful not to fall prey to one of the ubiquitous Ant Lions

until a much-postponed mid-week run to town, “town”

being Gardner for the P.O. followed by

the Walsenburg Transfer Station [accepting trash but no longer cash], Safeway, Habib and

home for more of the same…struggling and straggling up one hill or the other

with rains intermittent

or not.

Meanwhile, for something completely different, this just in from the Gulf where Seth Tane has,

after considerable renovation, sailed from New Iberia for the Sixth Borough on Legs lll, his

repurposed liftboat, while all we do is barely manage to alternate between Fossil Hill one day and the Knoll the next, each about 170′ above the house [the snag below being 100′ up

the Knoll] or try getting ourselves lost in the woods in the rain.

Saturday was the annual Libre meeting, somewhat momentous

in that in addition to the usual business

three new members were proposed; Sunday morning after, the final tally of the vote still out,

we saw a lone Blue Jay in the woods below Fossil Hill…first time this summer. We also have a small hummingbird who keeps coming into Linda’s studio but no wrens, no nighthawks, etc. etc.*

*For years the house hosted wrens [inside, no less], flickers in the siding, swallows, bluebirds and even the occasional kestrel occupied the birdhouses with which we’d covered the woodpecker holes…not to mention various fly-bys but no more. Very quiet, very spooky.