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The return of the catbird
May. 20th, 2013 05:31 pmThere's a catbird in the front yard doing a concert from the peabush. Earlier it or a relative was tuning up in the back yard in a mulberry. This one has been talking to a lot of song sparrows and red-winged blackbirds, as well as the odd robin and house finch. I haven't had a mimicking catbird right in my yard for a number of years now. I heard one singing in the yard of the Minn-Stf meeting last Saturday, too. While I doubt that it followed me home, it too had been listening to song sparrows and red-winged blackbirds.
I am so far behind that I don't even know where to begin. David has a job he likes better than the previous one. This means we can go out for dinner together again, which is lovely. (If we go out with other sweeties there's some outside contribution, but we share finances and I have not made money from writing in quite some time now, so just the two of us doing something requires greater consideration in difficult times.)
I have a Secret Project with someone who is not on LJ. I have never had one before! Perhaps it is not really so very Secret, but I am too entertained to actually ask my fellow conspirator whether it is or not.
I know people are still waiting for photographs of Saffron. There are some, but I'm having trouble getting them onto LJ. Soon, I hope. She has settled in pretty well. She seems an insouciant and self-sufficient cat, with a high distractability quotient. She does provide what Raphael calls "affection blitzes," where she will descend on you, purr madly for a very short time, and then go about her business, which mostly involves watching birds and squirrels from the windows, running about very fast, and sleeping. She has not yet decided to play with Cassie, but Cass is allowed to lollop along behind her when she races through the house, as long as a certain minimum distance is maintained.
I am still writing the Liavek novel. I have gotten to the point where I need to stop and consider the shape of things and move stuff around and look at the plot outline and think, "Uh-oh." I am postponing this until after Wiscon.
Hiking season started very late this year. But Raphael and I have been to Elm Creek Park Reserve and to Nerstrand Big Woods State Park for the ephemerals. Nerstrand was alive with red-headed and red-bellied woodpeckers, orioles, redstarts, robins, and chickadees. Eric and I have made three very different visits to Eloise Butler and one to Elm Creek. At Elm Creek, we heard spring peepers in the various small marshes we passed on the Meadowlark Trail, and also a gabble that sounded exactly like ducks. But there were no ducks. There were blue-winged teal and mallards on the creek, but no ducks in the marshes. Also, the gabble started when the peepers thought it was all right to sing and stopped when they thought it wasn't. We concluded that it must be a frog. When Raphael and I went to Elm Creek a week and a half later, I heard a similar gabble in the pond near the Nature Center, and actually saw a frog in the water. It swelled out its cheeks and gabbled. It grabbed another frog. "It's the mysterious duck-frog!" I cried to Raphael, who was peacefully photographing some lichen. "Oh, they're mating!" The frogs broke apart. "Well, maybe flirting." Raphael kindly took some photographs of the frog. We looked it up later, and it looked like a wood frog. Since the first hit Raphael got for "wood frog" said that its call sounded like the gabble of a duck, we felt we had managed the identification. Later on I found a good link to send Eric and discovered that the only way a male wood frog can tell if he has found a female who is ready to have her eggs fertilized is to grasp any handy wood frog. If the grasped frog is thin, it's either male or not full of eggs. If it's fat, then he's got the right idea. I expect the frog I saw had grasped a thin frog and let go at once.
Eric and I saw only the mallards and blue-winged teal; when Raphael and I went, there were trumpeter swans, hooded mergansers, and some kind of diving duck as well as the teal, mallards. And Canada geese, too. Both trips also yielded migratory green darners, always a satisfying sight.
I should do a reading post if I can find my notes. I am reading all your journals and wish you a good remainder of the spring.
Pamela
I am so far behind that I don't even know where to begin. David has a job he likes better than the previous one. This means we can go out for dinner together again, which is lovely. (If we go out with other sweeties there's some outside contribution, but we share finances and I have not made money from writing in quite some time now, so just the two of us doing something requires greater consideration in difficult times.)
I have a Secret Project with someone who is not on LJ. I have never had one before! Perhaps it is not really so very Secret, but I am too entertained to actually ask my fellow conspirator whether it is or not.
I know people are still waiting for photographs of Saffron. There are some, but I'm having trouble getting them onto LJ. Soon, I hope. She has settled in pretty well. She seems an insouciant and self-sufficient cat, with a high distractability quotient. She does provide what Raphael calls "affection blitzes," where she will descend on you, purr madly for a very short time, and then go about her business, which mostly involves watching birds and squirrels from the windows, running about very fast, and sleeping. She has not yet decided to play with Cassie, but Cass is allowed to lollop along behind her when she races through the house, as long as a certain minimum distance is maintained.
I am still writing the Liavek novel. I have gotten to the point where I need to stop and consider the shape of things and move stuff around and look at the plot outline and think, "Uh-oh." I am postponing this until after Wiscon.
Hiking season started very late this year. But Raphael and I have been to Elm Creek Park Reserve and to Nerstrand Big Woods State Park for the ephemerals. Nerstrand was alive with red-headed and red-bellied woodpeckers, orioles, redstarts, robins, and chickadees. Eric and I have made three very different visits to Eloise Butler and one to Elm Creek. At Elm Creek, we heard spring peepers in the various small marshes we passed on the Meadowlark Trail, and also a gabble that sounded exactly like ducks. But there were no ducks. There were blue-winged teal and mallards on the creek, but no ducks in the marshes. Also, the gabble started when the peepers thought it was all right to sing and stopped when they thought it wasn't. We concluded that it must be a frog. When Raphael and I went to Elm Creek a week and a half later, I heard a similar gabble in the pond near the Nature Center, and actually saw a frog in the water. It swelled out its cheeks and gabbled. It grabbed another frog. "It's the mysterious duck-frog!" I cried to Raphael, who was peacefully photographing some lichen. "Oh, they're mating!" The frogs broke apart. "Well, maybe flirting." Raphael kindly took some photographs of the frog. We looked it up later, and it looked like a wood frog. Since the first hit Raphael got for "wood frog" said that its call sounded like the gabble of a duck, we felt we had managed the identification. Later on I found a good link to send Eric and discovered that the only way a male wood frog can tell if he has found a female who is ready to have her eggs fertilized is to grasp any handy wood frog. If the grasped frog is thin, it's either male or not full of eggs. If it's fat, then he's got the right idea. I expect the frog I saw had grasped a thin frog and let go at once.
Eric and I saw only the mallards and blue-winged teal; when Raphael and I went, there were trumpeter swans, hooded mergansers, and some kind of diving duck as well as the teal, mallards. And Canada geese, too. Both trips also yielded migratory green darners, always a satisfying sight.
I should do a reading post if I can find my notes. I am reading all your journals and wish you a good remainder of the spring.
Pamela
