One owl at 3:10 AM, then a duet for a time. The calls were deep and I imagined large birds, a pair of Barred or Great Horned owls. Now I wonder what was going on. What was their experience at that hour?
Day dawned, cool and fresh, enough to leave the door open and let in fresh air. Bright white and yellow eastern clouds catching the sunrise and a blue sky for the day. Crows calling in the distance at the edge of the woods and nuthatch calling from the oak by the front door. Purple finch likes holding onto the wire basket of the seed feeder. Scruffy red male cardinal, below the feeder cracks open sunflower seeds with loud chirps repeating every thirty seconds or so.
This morning I am nature man. Sitting outside, small innocuous ants climb over my foot and up on my shin, exploring. I feel something soft moving on my neck and reach up to pull down a small yellow spider. I put it on the arm of my chair so it can go on its way. Overhead, I hear the whir of hummingbird wings 4 feet away drinking from the feeder I filled and hung yesterday. Pleased that one bird has found the feeder and hoping it returns with its friends, I do not look up and risk scaring it away.. and lo', it does return.
Loud red-headed woodpecker gives its half-musical rapid 4-5 or 6 - pulsed call, like its drumming on dead branches. Blue jay gives a two note musical nasal call and is answered by the tufted titmouse nasal scolding. I play the tufted titmouse call from Cornell two or three times on my laptop and the local titmouse starts up a five minute disputation.
Cry of red-shouldered or red-tailed hawk does not
stop an incautious squirrel from jumping down from one tree and hopping
across the grass to another.
By 10 o'clock the morning conversation, among the birds is over. Their topics of the day have been settled. Time now for the katydids and cicadas to begin.
Mild south breeze blows in air from the sun-warmed big grassy lawn. It will be time to go indoors in an hour or less. For now, it is all fine and wonderful out here.
