Clip Art Captions #3

I forgot to post some clip art on Friday, so maybe this will become a Monday thing.  Something fun to compensate for the horrors of the first day of the work week …

Here we are, in the magical land of Faerie, where apparently everyone runs around in her nightgown under the flowering cherry tree.  Or is there something more sinister at work?  Several children are cowering fearfully against the red-gowned piper.  And is that girl in the lower right sitting down to listen to the bluebird sweetly sing her a song … or has the bird  knocked her down and she is now desperately trying to fend off the fiendish finch?  That little red bird looks ready to strike now that the girl is down.  Dance, little girls, dance, to appease the murderous tendencies of your avian overlords!!

Wow, that was actually worse than a Monday at work …

The Suburban Naturalist

Cover via Amazon

I’m reading a great book right now called Crow planet : essential wisdom from the urban wilderness by Lyanda Lynn Haupt.  It’s about crows, obviously, but more than that it’s about staying connected to the wild even when you have to live in a less-than-wild place.

Suburban southern California isn’t the wildest place around, but it’s where I live and for better or worse, it’s the habitat I grew up in and am adapted to.  The creatures that share this habitat aren’t as glamorous as the wolves and lions and orangutans that inhabit the “wild” parts of the world but they are just as resourceful and just as determined to survive.

The non-domesticated mammals around here are mostly nocturnal but I have seen them: raccoons, skunks, opossums.  We probably have coyotes in the general area, but not right in my neighborhood — there are too many long lived feral cats living here; they would not live long if this was part of a coyote’s territory.

Birds are much more visible, and we have a good variety within walking distance of my house:

• American Crow
• House Sparrow
• House Finch
• European Starling
• Cattle Egret
• Turkey Vulture
• Bushtit
• Yellow-rumped Warbler
• Northern Mockingbird
• Red-tailed Hawk

Go a little further afield and you will find Black-necked Stilts, Common Ibis, Common Egret, Snowy Egret, Great Blue Heron, Canada Goose, Red-winged Blackbird, Common Grackle, Mallard, Brewer’s Blackbird, Scrub Jay, Anna’s Hummingbird, California Gull, Broad-shouldered Hawk, Golden Eagle, California Quail, Brown Towhee, American Goldfinch, Acorn Woodpecker and many more.  These are just the birds I commonly see from time to time while driving around or walking at the botanic garden.

I do have to wonder: do other people notice these fellow denizens of our scruffy-around-the-edges habitat?  Do they just see a black bird or can they tell the difference between a Crow, a Starling, a Brewer’s Blackbird, and a Grackle?  I hope that they do, but I doubt that many people can.  I feel sorry for them; my world is so much richer and wider and wilder for knowing the names of all these different creatures.

A Golden Opportunity

Image by grandmasandy+chuck via Flickr

My sister and I were driving just east of the airport today and saw three large, dark birds kettling over an open field.  Our first thought was, of course, turkey vultures, since they are so common around here.  As we got closer, though, the tell-tale white patches under the wings were missing and the birds weren’t teetering on the wind but smoothly riding it.  They were too big to be red-tailed hawks (and too dark) and at least one of them had a white patch in the center of each wing: definitely an immature golden eagle!

It must have been either a mated pair and one juvenile or one adult and two juveniles (it’s  hard to keep track of birds when they’re flying over your moving car).  It’s been a long time since I’ve see eagles around here.  There used to be a pair that hunted in the big open fields just south of Fourth Street, east of Vineyard, but after one was killed by a car several years ago, we stopped seeing them.

We’ve had a new porch visitor in recent weeks, too: a skunk!  I think it’s a juvenile, because it’s rather small.   I know that skunks carry rabies and (obviously) stink, and that raccoons can attack dogs and cats, but still I get a little thrill out of seeing them right outside my front door.  Just knowing that there are raccoons, skunks, opossums, coyotes, owls, eagles, hawks, Canada geese, egrets, rabbits, ground squirrels, and who knows what other creatures out there makes living in the suburbs a little more tolerable.

For the Birds

On the way home from the chiropractor this evening, I saw a large red-tailed hawk stoop into an empty field near the airport.  I often wonder, when I witness one of nature’s little dramas, how many of the other drivers on the road are even aware of the event.  How often I see crows playing in the wind, cattle egrets prowling for insects in parkways, turkey vultures kettling over thermals, hawks perched on street lights watching for prey; and wonder, am I the only one?

I have seen kingbirds perched on fence wires, starlings swarming in the sky like flying schools of fish, mountain bluebirds swooping in front of the car, road runners next to a freeway onramp, common egrets standing like statues in empty lots, pigeons dancing and black phoebes hawking for insects.  Have you?