June musings

My front yard looks like a Walt Disney movie. There are 10 turtledoves, a squirrel, 3 blue jays, and a red winged blackbird. At least 5 chip monks, a sparrow, a purple house finch, a cow bird and enough bird seed on the ground for them all to gorge themselves.

The chip monks run right through the turtledoves and make them jump up in the air and put their wings up like hackles because they are being disturbed. The blue jays think the red winged blackbird needs to share whatever white bug he has in his mouth and chase him around the yard. The squirrel does not move. His belly is so white it gleams and I try to remember if squirrels really have white underbellies or just this one. There is one that I see often in the winter with bright white tufts of hair behind his ears. He reminds me of an old man with hair in his ears.

The bird song is amazing and the silence from the now dead cicadas is welcome. The cacophony of just a week ago was deafening and getting quite old. Not being able to speak to someone beside you because bugs are singing out loud is pretty incredible to say the least and truly indescribable for the decibel level. The noise they made would start at 3 am on hot nights and 5 am on cooler nights. If it rained they were silent until their wings dried. Thankfully the good lord saw fit to make that cycle be every 17 years. I’m not sure I would want to live in the woods if it was every year.

June slipped by so quickly this year I almost missed the lightening bugs. I would see them out the bathroom window at night when I got up to use the toilet and would remember that it was June already. Too fast this glorious weather slips by.

The house is being sold and whenever we have a showing Tom and I go to the park to wait it out. This recent sunset was captured only because I had the foresight to bring my iPad with me. Too bad I was not quick enough to catch mama duck and her 10 incredibly tiny ducklings walking in a line to the water’s edge and all hopping in one after another and trailing slime behind them through the scummy water.

Spring has arrived...

..., or has it?

For many years I have had a wren build a nest in the window which houses my air conditioner for the studio. I listen to the fluttering wings as the nest gets built each year and I hear the peeps of the babes as they eagerly eat the meals brought to them by their devoted parents.  I watch the wren swell with pride and hear him announce to anyone or anything that cares to listen, what a great dad he is, what magnificent babies are in the nest. It is a rite of passage; the building of the nest before the weather really changes and the ongoing noise.  Wrens are incredibly loud for such a small bird.

Tom and Laura build bird nests one spring and we hung a few in the yard for the sparrows and other small birds who grace our trees and bushes.  They eat my sister out of house and home as she is the person of interest who gets the feeders filled.  I stopped feeding birds years ago when I realized I just was fattening them up for the greedy cats that lived here, too.

The wren, I have been told, courts many women and has more than one wife.  I can’t prove this, but I have no reason to disbelieve it. Mr. Wren spends a lot of time after the nest is ready convincing Mrs. Wren to choose the nest.

This year the fluttering started in early January.  With this bizarre winter not really arriving, all things outside were confused.  By mid-February when the sub- zero weather actually arrived, all activity stopped at the air conditioner window and silence ensued for several weeks.

Suddenly today there is a flurry of activity, but it isn’t wrens!  I think a sparrow has gotten a real estate license and has evicted the wrens.  I hear arguing and loud chattering and stamping feet on the air conditioner and when I peek out, it is sparrows; dozens of them. I’m sure sparrows have a right to nest as do wrens, they just aren’t as amusing to me.

It seems rather odd that so many sparrows are out there arguing. Maybe sparrows court more than one woman or maybe this one just brought all his friends around to check out his most excellent nest he confiscated from the wren.

Hopefully Mr. Wren will find one of sweet little bird houses and take up residence.  I will miss his boisterous announcement of the wee ones he is always so proud of.