Hawk

A hawk is hanging out in the apricot tree.  I noticed him a week or so ago.  I tried to take a picture but that is rather had through the window.  But, he has been returning, and the other day I say he was eating another bird of some sort.  He just sat there in the apricot tree pulling feathers off the little bird he held in his claw.  Saturday morning we watched him try to catch another bird.  It managed to get lost in the cherry bushes.  He perched in the aspen tree and I got a much better picture of him.  I guess because we have so many birds around the bird feeders, he thinks it's okay to eat around here too. lol.  He is such an exciting bird to have hanging around.  I believe he is a red tail.  Quite large about a foot long I would guess.  Also, we have had a big fat looking flicker hanging around too.  He sometimes raps around on the eaves.  The little birds are wrens, and sparrows and the junkos have finally shown up.

And here is what my feet look like now the swelling has gone down.

Gone

Most of the birds have headed to the land of warmer airs, I guess. Only one blue scrub jay hands out here and a few sparrows. The group of robins seem to have gleaned everything they found delicious in the garden and about. No hawks, either, flying by the windows. I did get a glimpse of a lone magpie this morning, that's about it. Now, I don't know if I am slow or what, but I just moved the cactus over to the west so I could see the birds feeding in the bowls on it's tips and now they are all mostly gone. Cheez! Maybe some new ones will find us and I will have a new model for another painting, like the Flicker above.

Birds

Today, first thing this morning, a flicker, or what I have always called a wood pecker, was hanging around (this is not the first time either) the house. All at once it lit on the bar of the big window and stayed there for me to view him for a minute. He has an orangy undertail, but the rest of him is black and white. Then he flew to the other side of the house and lit on the bird feeder hanger and pecked at the metal bird there. Later, I saw him, and one of the scrub jays out by the pines have a few cross words with each other. Evidently, what he had to say won, as the scrub jay left. We also have had a flock of young robins here for a week or so. They are pretty busy. We always have the sparrows too. And the big mouthed blue jays have a big mouthed friend, a magpie, that hangs with them. I see and hear him almost daily.

I have been doing some wood batiks of the birds I see here, I like the batiking and the bird theme. Funny, the little hawk lit on the bird feeder and pecked at the metal bird too a while back. How odd is that? Perhaps the shape of the bird entices them?

Arial Entertainment!

Yesterday, we had three red tailed hawks and a couple of magpies giving us quite a show out the window, playing on the wind currents, diving, flying very close to our windows, landing on the peak of the porch roof and the rock wall and the elm tree.  The hawks are like miniature eagles.  I am not sure what the magpies were doing hanging out with the hawks, but they acted like they were all together.  They stayed here for nearly an hour just flying about.  Very entertaining for us old people!

Mountain Bluebirds

We have a pair of mountain bluebirds that keep eyeing the bird houses which are soon, hopefully tomorrow coming down.  So, this morning I spent a couple of hours building a "real bluebird" abode, sized to specifications in a book, but not what I would call a professional job, lol.  I hope I can get it hung tomorrow!  The reason I am anxious about this as a pair nested in the houses last year and the cats, of course got into them.  We saw the cat running by the big window with the bluebirds attacking her.  They were really mad!  However, sadly,  that ending their nesting in the bird houses.  I am hoping to be able to give them a nesting site in which the cats cannot bother them, and we will be able to enjoy their comings and goings and babies all summer or however long that sort of behavior takes.

More Visitors

Visitors recently have been the fox.  He or she trotted across the sage field north of us giving me a very nice chance to admire it, and went down over the edge on this side of the cliffs.  Very reddish colored with white neck scruff and large bushy white ended tail.  Another time,  an unidentified flock of large grayish short tailed birds with bright yellow breasts popped up into view from behind the rock wall to the west.  They sat on the rocks for some time, seemingly like they were discussing something rather grave.  As quickly as they came, after their rest, they all left together, heading to the north.  This morning a little salt and pepper colored dog, I think may have been a medium sized poodle growing out its summer hair cut, was out on the buffalo grass, wandering around. He/she too, left after snooping around our wooden deck.  I am actually always surprised when stray dogs (or cats) show up around here as we are so far from the road, and other people.    The black birds assemble and pick and flutter around every morning to the east, using the apricot tree as their main roost.  This morning, they seemed to be entranced with the snow, and would swoosh down from the tree almost as one, to strut around in the the circle covered in very wet snow pecking into it for whatever it is that blackbirds would want...  perhaps just a nice cold icy drink?  It's  a good thing they took advantage of the snow,  as it is gone now and they will have to go back to the stale watering pan.  

I was supposed to go into town for a flu shot today, but talked myself out of it.  Maybe next week I will make it.  Driving into town seems like such a waste of precious time!

On The Hill

We live on a hill.   A rocky, red sandy, desert type hill.  It is at the bottom of a small but high mountain range.  On our hill grows a few sagebrush, rabbit brush, what I think I definitely identified as horse brush (very stickery), and a few grease woods, some wild grasses, prickly pear catcus, several different weedy looking unidentified plants and some other minor desert fauna that looks like curly thyme, and mosses.  I am sure there are others I missed but you get the idea.  We can see isolated red "hills" from our perch, and we look down on what we call the village whose night lights are lovely too.  We can look out over what we call the badlands to the south, the mountains to the north, red pinon and cedar covered hills to the east, and the village and some of its activities, like fireworks and traffic,  to the west.  We watch beautiful and colorful sunsets each evening, sunrises that surprise us at times, and the wildlife.  

In the last week, our "special" visitors have been, (I think) some migrating hawks.  The hawks and buzzards like to play on the wind currents, and we have them almost at eye level where our house sets.  Three, small sized, light colored with sort of half circled black lines on their tail decided to put on an arial show for us.  At times, it was as if they were suspended just off the side of the hill, really not moving.  Other times they would dive out of sight below the edge of our hill and view.  Suddenly, they might pop straight up and back into our sight.  They stayed for most of one day.  It seems like our summer residents, the buzzards, have left on their journey to where ever they go during the winter as I have not seen them flying by our windows of late.  Also, the big black noisy crows seem to be gone now, along with the humming birds, black birds, wrens, and finches.  We have had, at times what I call the "bobbin birds" which are possibly rock wrens, that run up and down a low rock wall we built from excess rocks from the foundation of the house, bobbing and hunting, but they seem to be gone too. The swallows left early this year, possibly due to no rain for nest building.   We think that soon, however, the robins and mountain bluebirds will converge on our red cedars and strip them of their showy blue berries and entertain us with their quarreling.  We have had one really huge robin that comes back each fall and wants all the berries to herself.  

As Bubba and I walked out to the back of our property this morning, we paused to watch a small herd of six or seven deer.  One, a doe, seemed to be parenting twins.  They did not seem to be concerned that we walked so close to  them , and simply kept munching their way along what ever path they were taking, checking on us often to make sure we did not venture too close to the half grown babies.  We stood still and enjoyed watching for some time.  

Last night, the most lovely of all creatures, the car girls and their mother plus two dogs walked up our dug way for a short visit.  They had a small treat of watermelon and cantaloupe, gave us much needed hugs and kisses then left us happier for the visit.  We are blessed!