Chicory Blues

It was a perfect Science Chimp morning. Chet and I took off at 8 AM when the temperature was in the 60's. What a beautiful summer it's been!!

This morning's run started with a little doggie CSI. 

A baby bunny (of which there are approximately 8.2 bazillion this year) met its end in our driveway.

How did we know it was a baby? Hair's too short to be from an adult. 

I'm curious about the tiny divots of hair plucked from the rabbit. Not sure what would do this. A Cooper's hawk? (There's one around our driveway a lot of the time). I don't think a fox, brush wolf or bobcat would bother "plucking" a rabbit. Their droppings are full of hair, so they must ingest it. But a hawk just might. Still thinking about this. Falconers might be able to help here. It seems to me that a Cooper's hawk, which always plucks its avian prey, might be moved to pluck a rabbit, yes? No? I'll ask Matt Mullenix. And I bet Liam McGranaghan will know, too! 

Chicory is out all along our road. Hallelujah!

Spontaneous compositions arise wherever chicory blooms. I like the way its cool pinky periwinkle blue plays with the honest straight-up strong blue of the sky.

Really love the sort of street art quality of this one. Chicory opens in response to light and heat. Shaded flowers keep their color longer. And cool mornings with deep shade are tops for chicory photography. 

Let me once again sing the praises of the iPhone camera. What other camera could pick up color in deep shadow, yet keep the sky blue in the brilliantly-lit window hole? Love it, love it. It sees the way I do.

I was excited to find freshly cast, still moist crow pellets on the path. Pellets come out of the bird's digestive tract, but they come from the top part--the crop, and pop out of the bill. They are not poop. They are odor-free, clean, compacted boluses of indigestible things, in this case blackberry seeds. At any rate, a crow pellet is analogous to a hawk or owl pellet, but made of vegetable material. There were also a few beetle elytrae in there, too.

These crow castings had a fetching raspberry hue from the blackberries, and a light sweet fragrance. I loved thinking that I was the first person who'd touched this avian product. 

If you're curious what's written on my left hand, it's "Bucket Nest Change." (I use the delta sign for "change" in my notes). This is an example of foreshadowing.

How did I know they were crow pellets? Well, I deduced it. There was a family group of crows cawing away at my intrusion. There were very fresh fabulous crow tracks just a few feet away. And I've found identical pellets atop round hayrolls, and I know from the fruit seeds in them that they aren't hawk or owl pellets. Crows love to sit on hayrolls. Not rocket science, but it does take a little thinking.  There is a very entertaining post about how I figured out these boluses came from crow craws at this link.

The basic premise some might not realize is that most birds cast pellets. Not just owls. Most birds wind up with a bunch of indigestible stuff in their crops, and that needs to come up, not go on through the digestive tract. Bluebirds, kingbirds, orioles, gulls, shorebirds...they all cast pellets. These are the ones I've seen do it. Many more, I'm sure, do it too.

More fabulous flowers, on a private home construction site near us. Rudbeckia is such a pretty thing, and it's just coming out. There's some Queen Anne's lace and daisies in there, too.  I like this composition, with the steamroller wheels and the black-eyed Susans prettying up the piles of brick.

On to the foreshadowing. This afternoon, I checked the frail little runt bluebird again. No longer frail, it's living strong! Once again, on the right side of the nest cup. (Baby birds tend to keep their places in the nest).

For comparison, here are its biological siblings, the day before. I'd say this bird has caught up, in a big way! It's barely a day behind developmentally, although when I kidnapped it it was looking like a three-day-old to its siblings' seven days. Glory be!

And it is a female, just like its four biological siblings. It's rare to find a bluebird nest with five of the same sex, but it happens.  This photo, taken June 30, 2016. The bird is 13 days old. A bit behind, but well within the range of normal now. We have its dedicated foster parents to thank for that!

Because blowflies infest most nests, I change the foster nest with the "runt" in it. I put the babies in a bucket for a few moments while I clean out the infested nest and fashion a new one out of nice soft  dried hairgrass. And in the old nest, I find more than 30 nasty larvae of Protocalliphora sialia, the bluebird blowfly. They suck the nestlings' blood, and can weaken them. It always makes me happy to think of how much better they'll sleep when not being vampirated.

I tucked the chicks back in their new, clean grass nest and turned for home. It occurred to me that I could probably slip this little female back into her original nest and she'd be fine, albeit the last to fledge. But it ain't broken, so I'm not going to fix it again.  Let's let her be the first to fledge! Girlpower! Runtpower!!

The best part of this shiny blue day? Chet Baker was out in front of me, trotting smartly the whole way. All hail Analapril (the blood pressure med he's on), chicory abloom, bluebirds thriving, and these cool summer mornings!

Summer Stuff, and The Mystery Reveal

This has been the Summer of Fitness for this little family. The kids and I have been running and taking breaks with biking. We're feeling good. Phoebe and Liam are masters at spurring me and Bill to new heights. In this case, running haybales. It is much, much harder than it looks, and I am terrible at it. The hayrolls shift and roll under your feet and they're spaced just a tad too far apart for me, with  my 30" inseam, to feel comfortable leaping from one to the next in a single step, the way Phoebe and Liam are able to. 

I love this photo, from the mid-air capture of Bill's stride, to the overhanging and touchably close dark cloud, to the tiny figures of the kids. That's Phoebs and Liam waiting at the extreme left end of the hayroll line, cheering their daddy onward. For me, this photo is a big metaphor for the supreme effort of launching your kids into the world. You're doing absolutely all you can to scratch up the huge piles of money, not to mention the emotional wherewithal, to let them go. And the bales shift and roll underfoot. You just try not to fall, not to let them down.

And they're just smiling at you.

 Lookit Dad and Mom go. 

Whee! Lookit me go. 

Phoebe is soaking in her last few days at home. She and Chet Baker do a lot of cuddling, and they take selfies and leave them on my phone for me to find. 

The place is looking pretty amazing after a summer of well-timed substantial rains. We finally got a bit over an inch the night of August 11, after our first real dry spell. I was starting to water the gardens. When I heard the blessed rain lashing down at 3 AM, I sighed and smiled and crossed watering off my rather long to-do list. Thank you.

The Rudbeckia has exploded as it never has. Goldsturm, a rather invasive cultivar of the wildflower, Rudbeckia hirta, is just the thing for the parched soil along our garage. Let it go. Every once in awhile I pull up double handfuls of it to clear around a rose or lavender, but it can duke it out with the pink hibiscus. We'll see who wins. I'm betting on brown-eyed Beckie.

Liam and I are spending more time together in the car as I schlepp him to his ride to cross-country practice every afternoon. Sometimes we get to laughing helplessly. Actually, most of the time. Liam is SO funny.

 He was trying to text a grocery list to Bill on my phone. (Note that the only item on Bill's list was Epsom Salts. See photo above. Epsom salts are our friend.)

 Liam tried to type "Popsicles," but the phone knew better.

iPhones have their own skewed sense of humor and a vocabulary that comes from Mars, or perhaps Gomorrah. Pop cocked? Honestly, my phone will substitute the oddest things for the innocent words I really want. No! I'm not talking about body parts here! I never do in text messages!! Stop that! Damn you, Autocorrect!

Bill brought home the pop cocked  

popsicles and the Epsom salts and I collapsed into the tub, having thoroughly overdone it this past weekend. Chet Baker accompanied me as he always does, and stood half on, half off the scale staring at me. 

You get much better results if you leave a paw or two off the scale. Try it.

Lest you think that Chet is getting porky, he had just cleaned up his big evening bowl of kibble, and he has a bit of a food baby, which will resolve by mid-morning. We all get those.

I left you with a handful of myskeries in the last post, and I promised to tell you what they were.

No flippin' idea. Something nocturnal that eats a wide variety of insects, throwing up. I think. Screech owl, skunk, dunno. Never will. Sigh.

 Pellet from an Eastern bluebird, most likely. Fruit seeds and beetle parts. Could also be an Eastern kingbird pellet. Both cast them, and there's no way to tell for sure. But I'd bet on EABL. Not sure that kingbirds are taking a whole lot of fruit just yet. They switch over almost entirely to fruit on the wintering grounds, but probably aren't doing that yet.

 An unformed pellet, probably from a red-shouldered hawk. Mammal fur and bones, but something that looks suspiciously like a snake or turtle tail on the right side, as well. I know it looks like a dropping, but it is odorless and has no fecal matter in it. So this is probably junk from a red-shouldered hawk's crop. I've found two box turtles this summer that were opened by red-shoulders, as we had a pair nest successfully in our east valley. I would post the photos, because I find them interesting, but they make me too sad. I wish the red-shoulders would eat other things than centurion box turtles.

I told you this one. Old wax lips, which through the miracle of heat transform into lava lamp goo.

Leaf stems (petioles) of Sauromatum venosum, the Corpseflower or Voodoo Lily. Family Araceae. Makes a nasty smelling black spathe/spadix thing in May, right by my front door. Multiplies. So I pulled a bunch of it out. Removed the tubers and leaf tops to deepen the mystery. Here's the blossom (and Chet as a year-old pup!) in an old post, "Look, Darling, the Corpseflower is in Bloom!"  And much more information  and a sleek three-year-old Bacon in this post, "Digging the Corpseflower." 

OK--the big myskery. Regurgitated pellet of an American crow. At least, from the size and composition of it (fruit seeds and beetle parts), that's my best guess. They frequent the haybales; there's a family of five out there most of the time. It can't be a kestrel pellet because kestrels don't eat dewberries and blackberries. 

It isn't skunk poo because it was odorless and free of fecal matter. And a skunk would have a tough time getting atop a hayroll. 

Had to be the regurgitated pellet of a big bird that sits on haybales and is an omnivore. C'est voila. Crow. Don't feel bad. It took me 45 minutes in a deep brown study to figure it out. 

End of a Mojo Coconut Chocolate Chip Bar. And American Crow pellet. Be careful which one you grab, Zick.