My Back Yard

Squirrelogs should be for squirrels, right?

Iggy and I run a Squirrel Cafe, which is meant to feature a corn cob jammed onto a nail for squirrels’ eating pleasure. But dried corn cobs have been in short supply since the ethanol boom started. Iggy hasn’t found them at Agway in months. So, on his last visit to the store, Iggy bought a package of Squirrelogs made of sweet corn flour molded into a corn cob shape. My fluffy-tailed friends don’t like the Squirrelogs as much as the real thing. But they seem to enjoy gnawing on the logs occasionally.

The squirrels had the Squirrelogs all to themselves. Until yesterday, when I noticed some sparrows pecking at the rain-moistened corn product. They came back again today. Next, I noticed a blue jay working on the Squirrelog.

Birds had ignored the traditional corn cobs in the cafe, but now they’ve taken with gusto to the ersatz replacement. The poor squirrels are sharing yet another food source with the birds. In my backyard, there’s no food that’s exclusive to squirrels. The birds get in on all the action. Plus, they have three feeders that hang off a wall of our house where the squirrels can’t reach.

A brown bird, just a little bit bigger than than the young sparrows sat on the fence outside my kitchen window. The long pointy beak identified it as a cowbird.

Cowbird eggs hatch in the nests of other birds, so it seemed natural the cowbird looked at home among the sparrows.

What if I were a cowbird
who hatched in a song sparrow’s nest?
That explains how my mother looked at me.

This poem comes from Totally Optional Prompt’s prompt of “like a cowbird.“

I tied a red gauzy ribbon to my hummingbird feeder that has faded to pinky red during two years of lonely waiting. The feeder is hanging from a shepherd’s hook at a safe distance from the rowdy feeding of sparrows and squirrels.

No hummingbird has ever visited us. At least not publicly.

But maybe my timing was off in previous years. According to the “Spring 2008 Migration of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds” map, the time is right for some fast flying visitors.

Cross your fingers that they find my feeder!

A robin red-breast hopped across my patio. It pecked at a short, skinny twig, picked it up in its beak, then dropped it. Did the bird think the twig was a worm? I haven’t seen many robins in my back yard, so this was an exotic experience.

But I had an even more exotic experience at the cemetery today. A long skinny animal trotted dog-like across the sidewalk. But it was no dog. Its red fur, pointy ears and luxuriant tail made it a red fox. The fox skittered away from my walking buddy and me, heading into the gully. But after we retreated, it came back up and dug near a gravesite. My buddy thought the fox was burying something. Could it have learned an un-foxy habit from the squirrels who romp through the grounds?

A noise made me look up, and there was my third red-tinged animal of the day: a hawk.

Sea gulls line up for take-off,
face the wind, feel it run over their feathers,
calculate the right moment to life.

There’s an order here.
Liftoff progresses from front to back
as laggards groom their chest feathers
or peck at a pest underwing.

The next in line lifts a leg,
tests the velocity, then,
leery of its force,
sneaks to the back of the pack.

The last four preen and peck
in companionable silence
beneath brilliant sun and booming surf.
There’s no rush to join the bustle of life.

This poem has nothing to do with mythology, but I’m posting it anyway to Totally Optional Prompts.

I didn’t want to go to the beach.

I’d planned an extra day on a business trip to Florida to visit a relative. An emergency drew her away. My nonrefundable ticket kept me there.

The pressures of the week tempted me to stay by my laptop in the Holiday Inn. But it seemed like a shame to be in in Florida yet not see it.

So, armed with a map from the desk clerk, I set off for the beach. My route took me along a residential street planted with banyans, trees with aerial prop roots that seem to threaten to strangle the life out of their parent. So different from the sedate maples, oaks, and pines of my suburban north.

In most of the yards, tropical exotica reigned. But I recognized the long, leggy impatiens pushing up. Back home, it’s too early to plant anything. There’s another month for frost to visit.

Fifteen minutes brought me to a public beach, its half-dozen palapas already claimed by beach chairs and towels, but few bodies. I sat in the shade of one body-less palapa, figuring I’d be gone before the owner could take offense.

The damp sand stuck to the long pants shielding my pale winter skins. Not very comfortable. So I got up for a walk along the ocean’s edge. The deep pink interior of a seashell claimed my eye. Lots of frilled little shells dotted in the sand. I plucked a few as a souvenir for Iggy.

A family of four looked down at beach that had been washed by waves just minutes earlier. The grandmother snapped a photo. Then the boy in floral surfing shorts digs his hand under a live sand dollar and scoops it up to deposit it in the water.

Ten yards off shore, a fin cuts across the waves. Must be a dolphin. Something I’d never spot at a northern beach.

A black duck wears a red face mask that darts around its golden eyes with black irises before meeting at the back of its head. A black feather Mohawk escapes atop. “Don’t feed ‘em or you’ll have ‘em crapping all over the place,” says a potbellied man as the duck waddles across the floor next to the beachside concession stand. A bicycle mirror is clipped to his eyeglasses–the man’s, not the duck’s.

Fresh produce in winter means fewer bobolinks singing, according to “Did Your Shopping List Kill a Songbird?”

Why? Because imported fruits and vegetables are often grown using pesticides that are illegal in the U.S., according to this New York Times op-ed by Bridget Stutchbury.

Maybe he died of old age.

That’s how Iggy responded to finding a dead sparrow in our bird house. By coincident, another dead sparrow turned up on our patio the same day. That one must have been dropped off by a cat.

Sparrows have been scarce around here for the past few months. I wonder why.

But there’s an upside to the sparrows’ absence. Other birds have showed up. Especially a couple of tufted titmice, which are birds, not rodents. Yesterday I watched one fly away with a peanut in its beak. The peanut was almost as big as its head. A tufted titmouse is about the same size as a chickadee.

Yesterday saw the usual smattering of squirrels in my back yard.

But also a couple sparrows, a blue jay, a grackle, and a late night bunny.