Squirrel OUT!

 The Easter morning squirrel saga continues with more ridiculousness. Ma keeps returning to the box, trying to coax Baby out.

 I'm not ignoring you, Ma. I'm just choosing not to come with you this morning. I have things to do.

 NOT COMING OUT.

 Neither am I! If she doesn't have to I don't have to!

 I would very much like a quick nurse. Why haven't you nursed us this morning? That's mean.

 I haven't nursed you because this morning you are not eating. You are learning how to jump down from the box. You cling with your hinders. And then you just jump down to this branch. Piece of cake.

 That is the most terrifying thing I have ever seen anyone do. Right now I am sorry I was born a squirrel. I should have been born a reptile. Someone who doesn't have to risk life and limb. Someone whose mother isn't CRAZY.

 You're kidding, right? About the jumping?

 I am not kidding. This is how squirrels make a living. By jumping, scrabbling, clinging, wild leaping. You're going to LOVE it.

 

 To a branch that's one inch wide? On their first ever jump in their whole LIFE?? Down THERE??

 Get over it, Liam. Either you leap or I'm going to pull you out of that box and drag you by one leg.

 

  Ma!! Say it ain't so! I want to stay in this box. It's cold and gray outside. I hate outside. In here it's soft and warm and cuddly. I need to work on my art. I have homework.

 

  All right, Mister. I'm done. I'm coming for you.

                                                                     Out you come!

 

 No turning back this time. You're coming with me.

 

  Just a little groin grab, not biting down, gentle but firm. Stop ow-ing. This is how we do it.

 

  Let go your dang hind foot! Mmmmmff...Stop hanging on! You are GOING WITH ME, Mister!

 All right, then, if you're going to hang on, we bite down a little harder. Have it your way. Let go and I'll let up. OW OW OW OW OW!! Geesh, Ma!

 That's it! Down we go!

 Thisisnothappeningthisisnothappening  I'mkeepingmyeyesshut   hoooommmggggg nooooo

In the end, Ma Squirrel carried the babies all the way down the willow trunk and into the woods. I'm not sure how many she had; I couldn't stay at it the whole two hours. I felt really lucky to get a whole sequence of one baby's forced removal. When she had this one moved to her satisfaction, she came back and took five on the roof of the  box. It was 11:34 AM. She had started working with the kids at 9:23 AM, and she had at least one more to go. To my mind, she struck a good balance between coaxing and coercion--always a mother's job. Sometimes coaxing works, and sometimes you have to bite down a little harder.

 

I put some extra peanuts out on the railing and saw her come collect them a few minutes later.

 Good job, Ma Squirrel! And good luck with whoever else is still to be moved. I hope your second home is warm and dry!

A Squirrel's Easter

Easter morning is when those who think about such things envision rebirth, everything and everyone becoming new again. What was dead is now risen. For the squirrels in my backyard owl box, Easter morning 2018 was, apparently, a time of emergence. 

I had suspected a squirrel was nesting in the box, because I'd seen one stretched out on its roof a few times, basking in rare spots of sun. I even said, "Liam, I think there are going to be some baby squirrels in that box before long. Keep an eye out."

And, always watching, he called me into the living room. "Ma! Come look! There's something peeking out of the squirrel box!"

Oh!! What a lovely April 1 surprise! The drama began at 9:23 AM on this gray, cold day. Two little squirrels take their first looks at the world outside. No idea how many are actually in there, but the most we saw at one time was two.

Ma comes to keep a watchful eye. The natives are restless. 

And hungry. Come on inside, Ma. Give us a nursing!

If you want to nurse, I suggest you come outside. 

It's nice out here. A bit chilly, but I have another warm dry place in mind. 

Here's how you do it. You cling, decide where you're going, then just...leap! 

You WHAT???!!

There is no way in the world I am going to do that. Nope. Staying here. 

Oh come on. We're squirrels! We were born to cling! If you don't want to leap, you can just scrabble. 

Like...this? You hang on with your claws? And you don't fall??

I...I can't. 

You can. You will. I will be here to catch you if you fall.  

And I am coming in after you if you refuse. You ARE all leaving this box, this morning. 

I'm hungry. You smell good. Come inside and give us a quick nurse. 

I love you. I love to nurse.

I love you too, but I'm not coming back in that box. If you want to nurse you'll have to come out. 

Maybe if I lean out and sneak a teat...

She left again! Ma! I...I...I'm going to try the clinging thinggg...

Brrrrrr woooo that is so scary! Back in with me. Nope. 

Nopeity nope nope nope. 

Cardinal whistles, "You can do it do it do it do it do it!"

I'm going to try again with you. Don't make me come in after you.

You cling with your hind feet and then you can do anything you want with your front feet. Like this!

By now, it's 9:47. The baby squirrels have been hesitating at the box entrance for 23 minutes.  Ma takes matters into her strong squirrely arms.

She's got him by a hind leg, and she's using her teeth now.  Ow ow ow!

I'm gonna get you out if it's the last thing I...mmmfff...

You little stinkpot. Hanging on with every claw you were born with.

I think I need to call for backup. This is like pushing soup uphill with a fork.

It's now 9:52, and Ma Squirrel's been trying to coax and finally manhandle her babies out of their warm box for 31 minutes. Your blogger's been glued to the window the whole time, shooting from inside the house, for none of this would have happened had Ma seen me outside, watching. 

The story goes on, of course, as they all do,  but it's taken me three hours to edit a zillion photos and get them posted,  and I've got to pack now. Because I'm traveling again! 

TWO ALARM 

ZICK ALERT! 

First: I'll be telling the story of Jemima Jay and my work on Baby Birds for the Explorer Lecture Series Celebrating Women in Science, Cleveland Museum of Natural History, 7 pm Friday, April 13. Booksigning afterward.

Click HERE for Cleveland Museum info! 

Second: I'll fly from Cleveland to Atlanta to kick off events with the Baby Birds/Jemima talk for the ten-day Atlanta Bird Fest on Saturday, April 14, 4 pm, Chattahoochee Nature Center. Booksigning afterward. Please note that online ticket sales end at NOON, Friday, April 13, so grab one of the remaining seats now. 

Click HERE for Atlanta info!  

Thank you, as always, for reading and sharing my adventures. 

I hope to see you somewhere farther on down the line. 

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!