Empty Nest Syndrome

Last week the robins finally flew the coop. I've been watching them develop in the nest outside the Education building at Bartram's for the past few weeks. I miss them.

Here's the tree where Mama was sitting on her nest. You can see it in the crotch of the branch that is third from the left.



The tree is a Redbud and the nest is only about 6 feet high. There's a rock underneath it that I could stand on and stick my camera up above the nest to take pictures (only when Mama was away, of course).

Here she is warily watching me about a month ago when the Redbud was flowering.



Her three tiny bright blue eggs:



The two chicks that hatched (who knows what happened to the third egg). They look like little aliens with clown mouths. Hahaha, cracks me up!



This is what they looked like about a week ago, they're almost too big for the nest!



All last week I stalked the poor robins because I was fascinated with them. Working with kids makes you appreciate the smaller miracles in nature. One day I took a class of third graders by the nest and we all got to see this little miracle:



And then at the end of the week I came in to work and one little robin had already flown away and the other one was testing her wings. She had somehow made it up to a branch above the nest and was sitting there still as a stone while I watched her. I had to go teach and when I returned, she was gone. Ah, life.



Look at how speckley she is!



Good luck little robins.

Fuzzy buddies!

Eek! Look who's hatched!

Which came first?

It's that time, and everyone and their mother has chicks in their living room. Wait, maybe that's just here in Davis.



Regardless, I'm surrounded by people with chickens and I WANT SOME. But that's not in the cards right now, so I have to live vicariously through others and their stability which allows them to have a chicken coop in their backyard.



In college, my friend Emilie and I actually did have chickens. It was hilarious and amazing, and we had to give them to my aunt when they got too big. She has a farm in PA, so they were able to roam free, and annoy the crap out of her duck. We didn't quite know what we were doing, so we bought meat chickens, which was a mistake. They are huge.

This is Speedboat. Or is it Willis?

Duck, Duck, Duck . . . CRANE!

Last Sunday morning I woke up at the crack of dawn to go see the sandhill cranes at Cosumnes River Preserve with a bunch of friends and bird watchers.


consulting the guide books

The area of the preserve that we visited is rented to farmers for corn in the summer, then flooded for the birds in the winter.





Jill works at the preserve, so we had access to most of it. But it wasn't hard to find the cranes, they make really loud noises, and they have a bright red mark on their head. We got to see some of them dancing, which was really cool.



Birds are cool, but there are just so many I can look at before I lose interest. But there were some hard-core birders there with their fancy binoculars and guide books, and it was good bird- and people-watching.





The cranes are stopping at the preserve on their migration, and there were "a million billion" of them there (to quote Jill). There were also many many many other types of birds there, and I asked one of the birders present to tell me what I was seeing at one point. He pointed at several birds, had me squint my eyes to follow his finger, and said "duck . . . duck . . . goose." I'm still laughing.

San Franparrotsco

Well, I had hoped to get some good photos when I was in SF for G's birthday, but we were running around trying to solve the clues for the Treasure Hunt so that didn't happen. But right before the hunt we walked by a little park and we got to see the parrots of Telegraph Hill!


It was really cool because I've heard about them, though I haven't seen the movie. They are a flock of wild parrots that live up on Telegraph Hill and seem to come down to this little park to roost and eat seeds out of people's hands. I don't think anyone knows how they got here in the first place. Apparently the movie is more about a homeless musician who befriends the flock than the flock itself.


But they certainly were friendly. That's my hand. There were people standing around with huge trays of sunflower seeds and all you had to do was hold up a handful of seeds for about 20 seconds and they would fly down and land on your hand. They left tiny little claw marks all over my hand and wrist.


Here are a few nice pictures of SF that I took on a beautiful day in Jan. Pier 39 with all of the sea lions. There's the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.



And the view from Coit Tower. You can see the curves of Lombard Street if you look closely.