Baker and The Bun

Chet Baker is as sweet as ever. I look for the silver lining in his going deaf, and I've come up with two. The first is minor. You can sneak a snack wrapped in cellophane without bringing him out of a dead sleep to dog you for a bite. Big deal, I know. I'm trying to look on the bright side here.

The second is good. He's no longer reduced to a quivering, tail-tucked shadow when it thunders. In fact, he'll sit out in the front yard enjoying the cool breeze as a thunderstorm approaches.  He hasn't gone downstairs and burrowed under the kivers in a long time. And that's pretty sweet, to see him unafraid. I guess he's never connected big dark clouds with thunderstorms.

Have a snorgle of soft otter-throat, with essence of fresh linen and ferret. Mmm. Made for indulgence.

Once a major threat to the cottontails that are attempting to cover the earth this year, Baker is now a kind of plaything to them. They enjoy playing Chicken, allowing insanely close approach by their one-time nemesis. 

There are three baby bunnies we see regularly in the yard this summer, and I can't tell them apart, so I call them all Bun. I greet them cheerily, talk to them as I garden, and they have responded by being completely unafraid of me and my little black and white minion.

This was my first encounter with Garage Bun. I was about a yard away as (s)he nibbled Clo-Clo Puffs and met my gaze as her little jaws clomped away. Charmed, I'm sure.

Same Bun,  to judge by the tiny star on its forehead, probably a week later. They're growing like weeds.  

Bun hops up the sidewalk. Awww.

That Bacon just doesn't suspect there's a Bun there.

I'm laughing and pointing, and trying to get Bacon and Bun in the same frame, trying to tell him there's a good chase opportunity being missed, to no avail. The yellow arrow is pointing right at Bun. And Bacon is thinking his own thoughts, probably something like, "Dunner time is 1 hour 13 minutes and 22 seconds away."

Until The Bacon spies The Bun. Ears come forward on both parties. Muscles tense.  I can feel them both anticipating the chase, the moment both have been waiting for. Note the upturned white tail on Bun. She's ready for fun. I hear the low, piglike snort Bacon makes when he's got a chasee in his sights, right before he unleashes Black Lightning. Game on!

For your amusement, Baker and The Bun, in another redonkulous iPhone ZickFlick. Same soundtrack as all of them: Me cackling.

Bacon likes to trot back and take a good snuff at the spot where he last saw Bun sitting. It's as close as he's going to come to having her in his jaws, I expect. That little Cylindrical Pig can still move it on out, but he's no match for the springy elasticity and lightning reflexes of Bun.

I just got back from a week in Arizona last evening, and I swear, Bun ran out of the Rudbeckia as I drove up; (s)he came out to greet me. She seemed genuinely happy to see me, to hear my ridiculous patter as I walked right up to and past her. I've always respected Bun's space, and I try not to push her to run or change what she's doing. She's happy to be Baker's mechanical rabbit, his reason for patrolling the garden beds. And I'm happy to have her. Good rabbit fencing around the vegetable garden makes good neighbors. 

Happy Birthday to Me!

 I usually get a post up on Sundays, but I was working on a new talk and I had to get it done. 

It's only supposed to be 20 minutes, and it'll be delivered at the Saturday banquet for the Sedona Hummingbird Festival (Squee!!). I've figured out that I work something like two hours for each minute of the talk. The amount of time and brainpower I expend on these things is ridiculous. If it comes out right, it sounds extemporaneous. Well, it isn't. Snort.

So I was tied to the desk all day, except for an insanely cool evening walk down Dean's Fork, the subject of its own post. Sunday happened to be my birthday, so I decided if I had to sit all day, I would count the blessings that came my way. Each one would be a present.

My first gift was a handful of protoplasm. A couple of days ago, I looked down at a tire rut at a construction site and saw a puddle of tadpole goo where the day before there'd been rainwater. Because it's late July, the only thing they could be is Cope's gray treefrogs.  I touched them and sure enough a few wriggled in a SAVE ME!! kind of way. Oh no. More than a mile from home, and it's going to be a blistering hot day, and there is no natural water I can reach in shorts for at least another mile, unless...

I glanced around the site and saw a gallon of drinking water on a folding table, with a stack of plastic cups. Eureka!

I scooped up the taddies and a good bit of silt and plopped them in a cup, pouring life-giving water over them. Imagine how good that feels to a tadpole on its dying day. Jogged that mile home carrying the cup of taddies, laughing to myself about how that must've looked to the neighbors. Poured it in a plastic jar and added beaucoup rainwater. I gave them a couple of days to rehydrate before releasing them, and they needed it. When they started acting like tadpoles instead of crumpled bent fetuses, I knew they were ready to go.

This was my first birthday gift.

For future reference, they love koi sticks. Nomnomnom.

On this morning, I took the jar down to our fishpond, fed the comets to repletion, then installed the jar on a shelf in the pond.  One by one, the taddies who had survived their ordeal came up for air, saw the great expanse of water and delicious algae, and swam off into the deep. 

This one swam curlicues, dove, wriggled through the algae; its joy on being in proper habitat that wouldn't dry up was palpable. Honestly, I don't know how tadpoles do it, always watching the water levels, praying for rain, facing the imminent prospect of death by baking. Ugh.

There being no puddles left anywhere in the sweltering July heat, our water garden was my best choice. I had to hope the fish would leave them be. Comets aren't very predatory where small swimmers are concerned. As I was monitoring their exodus from the jar, I saw a tiny comet, the first spawn of my four fish, swim by. If he can make it, they can, too. 

Second present: BUN.

 There's a litter of three young cottontails in the yard who, having grown up in the sanctum sanctorum of Indigo Hill, have no frame of reference for humans as dangerous animals. They barely recognize Chet as a threat, which (let's be frank) he barely is. So these foolish little animals perk their ears attentively but go on chewing clover when I speak to them, kneel down and take iPhone photos of them from barely five feet away. Dumb bunnies. But of course, I adore them. So, Bun. They're all three named Bun.

I have a little family of brown thrashers in the yard! I don't know if any of them are Cletus, Melba or Harper; I think not, because the adults aren't tame at all. But oh, being able to look out and see thrashers doing thrasher things, dust bathing, sunning, hunting bugs or, in the case of one of the parents, grabbing a sunflower seed and pounding the shell off--it's just the best. This is a juvenile. Gift 3.

Seeing the laborious way a thrasher, which doesn't hold seeds in its toes for shelling, has to pound the hull off a seed, I spread sunflower hearts in all their favorite spots. Watching them gobble them down: Gift 4.

Present # 5: Someone dribbled squirrel! He appreciates the sunflower hearts very much. He ooches around on his belly picking them up one by one. I have to say I love my squirrels. They annoy the hell out of me, but they're such fun to watch! So they're paying their way, at least partly.

The sunflower hearts brought in MamaCoon and her three kits! Gift #6: July 24 was first day she's brought them out at noontime.

It's amazing how long those raccoon babies are dependent. The smarter the animal; the more complex and comprehensive its diet, the longer the juvenile dependency period.

It takes a long time to learn to be a raccoon.

Gift 7: the yard robin resents crowding by a ruffian house sparrow, tells him to back off! Just having a robin in the Spa, ahhh. But this combo was too much.

 

#8: speaking of Back Off, a mourning dove warns a squirrel it's too close.  I am big! I will beat you with my wing! Interestingly, a dove would NEVER let a chipmunk get that close. Chipmunks are far more dangerous than squirrels. They're nastya-s little animals. Chipmunks remind me of the killer rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. 

 Adult male Cooper's hawk makes two passes through the feeder zone. I manage to capture its bill, leg and foot, enough to identify it, as it fetches up in the Japanese maple. Not a great photo, but still gift #9.

This just in!! July 25: I saw the Coop take a pass at some doves just now and scuttled with camera downstairs to shoot it from the bedroom. This is through two panes of glass, at a terrible angle, but OH MY. Talk about a gift, hurled from the Other Side. Thanks DOD!!

On the first shot, I captured the whole hawk. When it turned toward me, I lost my head and focused on its face. Ah well. Too excited to shoot well.

Please note that this hawk is perched in a retired, or as I love to say, recovering bonsai. DOD, you place your gifts so well. He adored my bonsai. 

You beautiful thing!! Please help yourself to mourning doves, and  take a house sparrow as a chaser, willya? You're also most welcome to squirrels, but please not the one who sccoches around on his belleh.

#10: Seeing a gray squirrel use its tail as a hat and parasol.

At this point it's 98 in the shade,  easily 102 in the sun, and I'm so thankful to be inside mostly (not) working on my talk. 

 # 11: a rubythroat investigates the coneflower, seeming to find a sip of nectar in the disc. Not something I see every day, but these midsummer juveniles try everything.

There has to be nectar in this big fat bud. Just has to. I'll wait for it to open. This photo: Gift 12.

I have a variety of wire supports for my tall cardinalflower and Fuchsias, and the hummingbirds adore them. Hummies appreciate thin perches. They can watch for Cooper's hawks from them. It must be nice to be too small and fast to bother with. But you still have to stay vigilant. 

 

This photo: Gift 13.

Meanwhile, fall migrants (yes, I said it; fall begins in July for warblers!) are sifting through the yard. A young yellow-throated warbler on its leisurely path southward. Or westward, or eastward...they do a bit of wandering.  This has to be one of my favorite warblers, Gift #14. Get the picture? Everything out there is a gift. I had intended to put all my birthday gifts in one blogpost, but it's evolved into at least three. And that is a gift in itself.

Happy birthday to me! Now you can see why it takes me so dang long to put together a talk. Or a blogpost. A giant set of Venetian blinds for the studio window would probably go a long way toward increasing efficiency, but ignoring the show going on just outside those windows in late July? Unthinkable! All but a couple of these photos were taken through my studio window, through the crop netting screens that cover them. Gift #14: having such a big, comfortable blind for a house!

Blessed, that's all!

A Bunny Named Blaze

We have a lot of rabbits. I like rabbits. I like to watch them. I have to say I hate what rabbits do to my gardens, especially in early spring and summer—mowing down tender transplants almost the moment I plant them. I have to put everything in baskets, on benches, or on pedestals, and even so they still thwart me, climbing up to mow things down. It’s been years since I have been able to plant a geranium in the ground. For someone who loves geraniums as much as I do, that’s a significant sacrifice.

Rabbits are amazingly catlike, the way they groom themselves and lay around, the way they spar and tussle and fight. They’re cool animals. I wish they didn’t kill geraniums and salvias, portulaca and lobelia and BASIL—they ate all my kitchen garden basil this year! That's why I grow most of it in the fenced garden. No wascally wabbit gets my summer pesto.

However. Every once in awhile a rabbit comes along and steals my heart despite it all. One such is Blaze. I first saw him as a newly-fledged baby, and I did a triple-take. What the heck is that on his face? A blaze. Oh, how adorable. Eastern cottontails usually have a dash of white between their ears; Blaze just took it farther.


A few days later I saw Blaze in the company of a large old rabbit, who I guessed might be his mom. I don’t know—they might not have been related at all, but Blaze was hanging around this animal as if he knew it. Rabbits fledge very small, and they’re on their own and eating clover while they’ll still fit in the palm of your hand.


The big rabbit took off, and Blaze followed.

But rabbits grow very fast. I didn’t see Blaze for a couple of weeks when wow! There he was, still hanging out beneath the studio birches. All grown up, with a clover flower hanging out the side of his mouth, being typewritered in, chchchchchch.


What a fine bunny Blaze has grown up to be. And so far he has stayed out of my flower beds.

I love this picture, even though I took it through my studio panes.

FYI I don’t let Chet Baker out when Blaze is in the backyard.

I'm posting (sort of, well, trying to post) from the Asa Wright Nature Center in Trinidad, which is a magical island twelve miles off Venezuela's coast. We are in Bird Heaven, learning how to digiscope with fabulous Leica equipment. Thank you, Leica, for bringing us here, together, just me and Bill and some wonderful company. Today: bearded bellbirds, white-bearded manakins, and beardless tyrannulets. Happy sigh. But putting up a picture heavy blog post here is like squeezing a cow through a transom. It ain't easy, and it takes a lot of time, and time is what I don't have. Too many cool birds to ogle. So there may be interruptions in the flow. At least this time I'm having fun.

The Resolute Bunny

Snow and ice are tough on mammals as well as birds. We laid in and served about 50 pounds of corn during the weeks of snow-in. I'm sure the coyotes, great horned owls and redtails appreciate our corn-fed rabbits.

I was amused, as dusk came on, to see the Bower Bunneh cleaning up corn in a most picturesque way.

A doe came out of the trees, hoping to share.
First she sniffed around the back entrance. Bower Bunneh didn't budge.


So the doe gave Bunneh a wide berth and tried another approach. I love the ear positions on the animals in this shot. The bunny is alert and resolute; the deer undecided.


Bunneh moved off a bit, but didn't give way.


All right. I'm coming in. You are a rabbit and I am an ungulate, many times your size.


I may be a rabbit, but I am no pushover. Go find corn somewhere else, Pointy Toes.



Can't you do something about this, Corn Lady?

Bunny Goes A-Birding

Before the first big snow, Bill built a bower for the birds. How many B's do you count in that sentence?

He built it of birch. There I go again.

And boughs of balsam from our Christmas tree. This is getting ridiculous. I guess I've got B. on my mind. Thanks to the miracle of sleepovers, the house is empty except for us. So why am I here blogging? Well might you ask.

Later...A couple of cardinals share her space.

This bunny thinks the bower is just fine, especially when I throw cracked corn, black oil sunflower and sunflower hearts under there. She is a birding bunny. I like to take pictures of her under there, hoping to get a good combination of pretty birds in the picture.Oh, sweet. A white-throated sparrow, a tree sparrow, and a female cardinal. She looks pleased. I love mammals that are kind to birds.

The tree sparrow shows off its wingbars, and the bunny shows her front paws.


My personal best: Birding Bunneh, eastern towhee, cardinal, and tree sparrow. We're honored to host three towhees, one a female! and five tree sparrows this winter. These shots were taken at dusk, through a window. It's been such a gorgeous winter for birdfeeding. The snow makes it all look so sanitary. As I write this, the snow is finally melting off and phew! the layers upon layers of sunflower hulls on the ground are not nearly so photogenic. Although the snow and ice inconvenienced us a bit, I adored it when a fresh inch or two would fall during the night and scrub everything clean again.

I'm going to do a series of snow posts now before winter is but a distant memory. I took brazilians of images which I will share with you while it is still winter.