Crowing Hens

This week we heard our first crow from one of our "hens." Looks like we do indeed have a rooster, although we did beat the odds and end up with 7 hens out of 8 chicks. Am still astonished that we had such good luck buying pre-sexed fluffballs. Our little russet colored rooster (not pictured) has found his way to a Craigslist posting and hopefully will find a more rural flock to govern soon.

 

A Woodcock Echo

What does it mean to receive a woodcock echo? I just got one and I'm still mulling it over.

Two years ago when we lived in a condo unit near some swampy marshland a couple of towns over I wrote a blog post about birdwatching out our back windows, inspired by my sighting of a woodcock. I hadn't seen one since my college ornithology class and was surprised and excited to catch a glimpse of the funny, plump bird shuffling through the leaves out back.

Yesterday the boys and I were on a foraging expedition in a leafy, forested sliver of property around the city block from us. Its kind of a forgotten, weedy little patch of land with a little-used trail winding through it, mostly a lot of overgrown brush under some big oak trees a place where the surrounding houses dump their garden clippings in big piles along the path. The boys and I were hoping to snoop out some wild witch hazel but came home instead with wild cherry bark, sassafras root, ribbed plantain leaves, heal-all stalks and white pine needles for various medicinal syrups and salves and recreational cups of tea. (Hooray!)

On the way into the woods scuffing through the leaves we almost stumbled on the small, fawn-bellied body of a dead woodcock. I imagine one of the neighborhood cats took him out in an evening stalking session and then was disillusioned after trying to drag the large prize home and left him there in a pile of maple leaves on the sidewalk.

Its interesting blogging one's life. There are small, odd things I notice, and sock away for writing "material." And small memories often stick in my mind more cleanly...like the last time I saw a woodcock walking along on a January evening off our back patio.

I am not a squeamish girl but dead animals make me catch my breath in my throat. I stood there calming my death-panic and my brain cycled all my related memories: my backyard sighting two years ago, my college class watching woodcock mating flights at dusk, my Papa bird hunting in the fall when I was little, the funny pictures of the round little bird in our over-sized bird book at home and John James Audobon's giant paintings of woodcocks in the big, quiet library at Yale...especially the one of a dead bird, posed so exactly like the still one at our feet.

Life echos are strange things.

The boys and I stood there quietly and then I told them everything I knew about woodcocks: how they were once thought to live part of the year on the moon, how they have eyes that can see almost 360 degrees around them, how they probe their beaks into worm holes and cleverly tweak even hidden food up to the surface for themselves, how they migrate in the cold, how shy they are, how they lay their nests on the ground and how the female raises the babies alone and all about the rocketing sky-show a male gives in the spring sky at dusk. They listened and admired the pretty shades of rust and chocolate on his feathers and his long, fine bill and the gentle tuft of his small, fluffy tail. We talked about animals dying and the circling pattern of life and Nib bent down and wished for a doctor, concerned over what it meant for this pretty bird to have left his body empty, here on the sidewalk.  I squeezed their sad little hands and we scuffed off together through the echoing leaves.

At dinner over a pot of sassafras tea the boys told A all about our encounter and all the things I'd told them about the little bird. I didn't say much, mostly listened but I was interested to see how much they'd soaked in and wondered about what it meant for this bird to echo in my life this way. 

Sarsparilla and Jenny Come To Stay

Pardon the very dirty socks, ya'll.

Snuggling into the soft, warmth of a living animal is a pretty irreplaceable feeling. We tried fish, we tried caterpillars, we tried observing wild animals on occasion and we tried subsisting on visits with pets that friends own. All those things are wonderful and helpful but not quite the same as developing a relationship with a living animal yourself, saying goodnight and good morning to each other, cuddling together on a bad day and learning to observe and understand cross-species communication.

 Our new house residents are a pair of baby sister guinea pigs that the boys named Sarsparilla and Jenny. We found them for free on Craig's List, (source of all good things) and drove home from a small town, a-way up Hwy 15 excitedly making stops in commuter lots and on curbs to peek at them one more time and stop to pick them green twigs and other leafy treats. Ru in particular is pretty beside himself about their arrival but all the boys are very pleased about having our own animal friends and have been very faithful about helping me take care of them. Even Nib is very territorial about his little personal job of filling their food dish with new dried seeds and nuts under my supervision.

They are gentle and silky soft, no finger biting or panicked clawing like rabbits. They are nervous about humans but they have become less skittish over time and are much calmer when people act calmly around them. They now recognize feeding and petting and our other interactions and they will happily sit in arms or laps for fairly indefinite periods of time. They are clever, bright-eyed, social foragers who are most active during the day which makes just watching them lots of fun. They are non-invasive, not smelly, neat and not loud although they do make gentle little squeaking, chirping noises to communicate. They eat raw vegetable and fruit scraps (squishy grapes, carrot tops and apple cores are well-loved), hay in quantity and packaged store grain based food but they get very excited about gifts of grass bouquets trimmed with dandelions eating the flowers and leaves the boys bring them with equal relish. They love to play with green sticks and gnaw rows of little hash marks down  them like miniature beavers keeping their teeth trimmed just so.

Such fun to have a little bright spot like this in our home routine. I have spent some exhausted evenings when the house was finally quiet and I felt spent with one pocket pet snuggled up on my chest, nuzzling that soft fur and looking into those glinting bright eyes just feeling better again. Companionship is so warming, even of the rodent variety. I think A is still not sure he allowed a good thing (I swear to you I got his permission first!) and he has yet to physically touch either one of them and calls them a bit reservedly, with a sniff  "the pigs" but hopefully he'll warm with time. Until then, the boys and I will get in all the snuggles we can....genuine pet-owners at last! I like to think Beatrix Potter would be proud and I think she'd especially approve of their forays into the garden on sunny days We have found that they can be carried outdoors in arms, followed by the boxy, wire section of their home and then put to graze directly onto some warm spot on the lawn, not too far from a good patch of clover. A little garden work seems to make them very happy indeed, life is not so very rough for our girls.

"Guinea Pigs" a watercolor by Beatrix Potter from her collection Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes

Hiking Weather.

 It's hiking season! We went out for a good trek this weekend, warming the boys up for our upcoming visit to Yellowstone National Park. They're good little trailblazers, running in short bursts down the path ahead of us, and always excited to look for "treasures" on the way.

 We have a Nature Shelf in our dining room china cupboard, for just these sorts of finds. The rule is that if you carry it home yourself, then you get to keep it. I haul no booty for the crew, only my own treasures. But I am generous with my shelf space and allow any little feather or rock or stick a place if it is lovingly hauled back in the pocket of a young collector.

 We saw a few live creatures on this hike...like this beautiful little orange Eastern Newt...the only newt we have in our state, apparently! He held perfectly still while we all crept up close to him for a good look and then, Dee even stroked him with an outstretched index finger and he still sat stoically. We'd have stayed longer and tried holding him if the mosquitoes had allowed it.

 We saw a whole bunch of mating pairs of sexton beetles, like this one, on a tree stump. After I little research at home I found out that this meant that the beetles had found a dead animal somewhere nearby and the males had sent out pheremone signals to attract wives and all the new couples would now fight it out for ownership of the corpse where the winning pair would lay eggs and raise young. Just a little woodland drama for you! They are really pretty insects, if a bit macabre.

 Then we saw this snake....just about to cross our path when we startled it into high-tailing back into the woods. It's a rat snake, and was pretty long although very slender. A and I guessed it was between three and four feet in length...longer than Ru is tall. Handily, it is non-venomous, and also shy. I'm pretty certain I saw a rat snake one other time when we lived at the condo, last year or the year before....it was whirling it's way up a tree, looping around the trunk in quick spirals. Apparently this snake is an agile forest dweller that is adept at both climbing and swimming, able to get around cleverly wherever it finds itself.

Just before we finished our walk, Dee sat down to rest on a rock by the trail and found this little, glinting dragonfly wing. Quite an impressive souvenir for a three year old to spot! My inner outdoors-woman was very proud. I'd say the boys will do just fine Out West.