•
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
Robins! It must be December.
12/08/2022, 12:39:37
|
The Elf writes:
I previously painted a very grim picture of living here in California's Big Valley, but there's a lot to love about it, too.
We don't look for robins in springtime: they're here right now. (By March they'll all fly back north or east into the mountains.) Living smack dab under the Pacific Flyway, we get all kinds of birds in winter, and some that liked the climate and decided to stick around. If we drive less than ten miles away in the San Joaquin-Sacramento Delta (where "Cool Hand Luke" was filmed,) we can see hundreds of sandhill cranes in farmers' fields, gobbling up toads, bugs or whatnot. There are several species of herons and cranes, as well as thousands of ducks, geese, and various other waterfowl. The hillsides, which have been yellow and brown since the grasses and weeds dried up last May, are turning green again with the winter rains. (Summer rain? Yes, maybe once or twice.) We have a massive valley oak in our back yard, planted by some long-ago jay. (Since there were no mature oaks on our street, we had no squirrels back then. Scrub jays abound, and "plant" acorns for winter use, just like the squirrels do. One apparently flew over from a couple of streets away where there WERE oaks, with his "treasure.") We watched it grow from a foot-high seedling to the 100-foot (about 30 meters) high giant it is today. Since we had to knock a hole into our back fence to accommodate its growing trunk, we don't have an accurate measurement of its circumference, but its diameter is about 6 feet. This is a species of black oak, which have the elongated acorns, unlike white oaks with their familiar short, fat acorns. People (usually from "back east") scoff at our climate, and exclaim, "You folks don't have real seasons, since it doesn't snow!" I beg to differ. We've lived here for 55 years, and it snowed at least twice! (Of course it melted in less than an hour.) We actually have at least six seasons: winter (month of December and January,) first spring (around February when the grass grows on the hills and the last oak leaves fall,) second spring (March and April, when all the fruit trees bloom and the leaves reappear, first summer (May and June) when cherries, apricots, and tomatoes are ripe, second summer (June through mid-October) when everything else ripens and it's hot, hot, HOT!, and fall (late October and November--you can tell it's fall because of all the leaves you have to rake up--except for oaks: they drop leaves from October through February. All in all, this is a pretty nice place, especially if you don't care much for shoveling snow. It's a bright, sunny day right now--I think I'll go outside. Yikes! It's 40 DEGREES* out here! Where's my coat and gloves?
* Approx. 4.4 degrees Celsius
|
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
We get robins all year round, but they are not the same as American robins
12/10/2022, 15:30:26
|
|
|
| Displays all thread messages |
Displays thread map |
That to which this responds |
This thread's lead message |
Your most recent Tavern page |
Some years ago, when we were living in our previous house, we had an exceptionally friendly robin.
12/10/2022, 15:51:58
|
Peter2 writes:
What happened was that it flew into the kitchen wondow and stunned itself. We heard the thud, went outside, picked the bird off the ground, and put it in an open-topped cardboard box on some wood wool padding to recover. When it was just coming round, we picked it up, took it outside and put it very gently on a branch of the bush that grew outside our back door, where it came to full consciousness and eventually flew away.After that it lost all fear of us. It would follow us into the workshop (where we kept the bird food) and the when we put the food out, as we did each day, the food and the robin used to hit the ground simultaneously – we reckoned it must have been the best-fed robin in the country. My wife found it one day perched on a banana on the bowl of fruit on the kitchen table, and on another day, when it got lost at the "wrong end" of the workshop, it allowed me to pick it up and take it back outside. One sunny Summer day, my wife's mother was sitting in the garden, and it brought its brood up to her to be fed. It eventually went the way of all flesh, but it lived in our garden for 3 years, which was a good age for a bird as small as that. We called it Fluffball.
|
|
|
