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.
I hope the birds show their beaks soon.
We used to see robins, Stellar’s Jays, bluejays, yellow wrens, and some juncos nested on our balcony. Then for a while we only saw crows, but this year we have hummingbirds who love the hoya, black headed juncos who eat the new shoots off the daphne, doves, and flickers. And black and gray squirrels who plant stuff in our pots, then dig it back up. Even the insects are fewer and farther between.
As Yosemite Sam would say, “Mah biscuits ‘r burnin’!”
Margaret Keane is gone but not forgotten.
That’s the news as it looks from here!
Been reflecting on same…even the once ubiquitous snails in the garden are rarely seen, their absence corroborated by gardeners around the bay…chalking some of it up to drought which is certainly profound. But canaries in coal mine too as collapse occurs and powers that be double down on the need for ever more cement speed etc.
Still, the work of cultivating a joyful heart is enabled by easing your posts!
Very sad to read this confirmation of what I’ve been observing. Around here, we are seeing goldfinches, red-winged blackbirds, kestrels, robins, flickers, Lewis woodpeckers, an occasional Western Tanager. Putting seed out helps.