Go ahead, give Sam and I the bird. We don’t mind, we like birds.
Sam and I were outside this morning so he could do his duty and a blue jay was making racket like blue jays are prone to do, and I thought, you know, blue jays remind me of summer. See, we haven’t had much (if any) summer here in the Pacific Northwest. While the rest of the U.S. has been sweltering in extreme heat, burning up in wildfires, drowning in floods or being blown away by storms, we are experiencing basically the same weather we always have. We wake up in the morning to grey skies, partial if not full cloud cover and drizzle. We might get some weak-Willie sunshine later in the day - our usual weather pattern - but we don’t bet on it. Miraculously, we had sunshine almost all day yesterday for the 4th of July. We barbecued with the neighbors and it was a very nice holiday. The temperature hit a whopping 60-something and even though we kept our jackets handy we didn’t need them.
But, getting back to birds. Blue jays are great. They’re noisy, feisty, obnoxious and greedy among other things, and those probably are their good qualities. I’ve had a couple of memorable run -ins with blue jays in the summer. Once on a camping trip with my daughters a blue jay stole my hot dog right off the barbecue grill and flew up into a nearby tree. When I cursed him and demanded my hot dog back, he dropped it in the dirt at my feet as if to say, “Fine! I just noticed it wasn’t kosher anyway.”
Another time a blue jay stole a cold hot dog I had laid out on a table prior to cooking. This was at a picnic on an island in the San Juans. I didn’t get that dog back. The jay just took off with it. Those crazy buggers love peanuts in the shell too. We use to lay peanuts out on our deck railing for the jays until we realized they were pooping all over our deck.
It’s too bad we don’t have meadowlarks here. There are a few left in Montana. I’ve heard an occasional one in a wheat field outside of Bozeman. For my money meadowlarks have the sweetest song of all the birds.
We like robins here too. They’re pretty common around our house. In the spring they sing like Pavarotti (Justin Bieber for you young people) and gather worms. I love to watch them stand quietly on the grass, their heads cocked to one side listening for worms squirming just underground. They are good hunter/gatherers.
Another bird we have a lot of around here is the red-winged black bird. I really like to hear them trill as they stand on a reed in a pond. That’s a cool sound.
We have lots of crows here too. They consistently vie with the jays for most obnoxious bird of the realm.
We even have a couple of mourning doves here, which really surprised me when I discovered them, because I didn’t think any lived in this area. There are lots of doves over by Bozeman. Every time we visit that area I like to go for a walk and listen to the doves cooing.
Another sound I really like is the call of a loon. We don’t have loons here at home, but I got to sit on the deck of a beautiful log cabin by a lake in the Canadian wilderness onetime and listen to the loons - awesome!
Ducks quacking and geese honking are okay sounds too. We have lots of each one here at home. We even had this male and female mallard couple take up residence in the street outside our house where rainwater runoff pools up all the time. The street has dried up now so the ducks are gone. I was kind of hoping they would have baby ducks and we could watch the little guys learn to swim. But Sam might have wanted to chase them.
Oh well, three bags of poop on our weather, gratefully, we have the birds and their beautiful songs to keep our spirits up. Excuse me now, I think I hear a woodpecker knocking.
Sam and I were outside this morning so he could do his duty and a blue jay was making racket like blue jays are prone to do, and I thought, you know, blue jays remind me of summer. See, we haven’t had much (if any) summer here in the Pacific Northwest. While the rest of the U.S. has been sweltering in extreme heat, burning up in wildfires, drowning in floods or being blown away by storms, we are experiencing basically the same weather we always have. We wake up in the morning to grey skies, partial if not full cloud cover and drizzle. We might get some weak-Willie sunshine later in the day - our usual weather pattern - but we don’t bet on it. Miraculously, we had sunshine almost all day yesterday for the 4th of July. We barbecued with the neighbors and it was a very nice holiday. The temperature hit a whopping 60-something and even though we kept our jackets handy we didn’t need them.
But, getting back to birds. Blue jays are great. They’re noisy, feisty, obnoxious and greedy among other things, and those probably are their good qualities. I’ve had a couple of memorable run -ins with blue jays in the summer. Once on a camping trip with my daughters a blue jay stole my hot dog right off the barbecue grill and flew up into a nearby tree. When I cursed him and demanded my hot dog back, he dropped it in the dirt at my feet as if to say, “Fine! I just noticed it wasn’t kosher anyway.”
Another time a blue jay stole a cold hot dog I had laid out on a table prior to cooking. This was at a picnic on an island in the San Juans. I didn’t get that dog back. The jay just took off with it. Those crazy buggers love peanuts in the shell too. We use to lay peanuts out on our deck railing for the jays until we realized they were pooping all over our deck.
It’s too bad we don’t have meadowlarks here. There are a few left in Montana. I’ve heard an occasional one in a wheat field outside of Bozeman. For my money meadowlarks have the sweetest song of all the birds.
We like robins here too. They’re pretty common around our house. In the spring they sing like Pavarotti (Justin Bieber for you young people) and gather worms. I love to watch them stand quietly on the grass, their heads cocked to one side listening for worms squirming just underground. They are good hunter/gatherers.
Another bird we have a lot of around here is the red-winged black bird. I really like to hear them trill as they stand on a reed in a pond. That’s a cool sound.
We have lots of crows here too. They consistently vie with the jays for most obnoxious bird of the realm.
We even have a couple of mourning doves here, which really surprised me when I discovered them, because I didn’t think any lived in this area. There are lots of doves over by Bozeman. Every time we visit that area I like to go for a walk and listen to the doves cooing.
Another sound I really like is the call of a loon. We don’t have loons here at home, but I got to sit on the deck of a beautiful log cabin by a lake in the Canadian wilderness onetime and listen to the loons - awesome!
Ducks quacking and geese honking are okay sounds too. We have lots of each one here at home. We even had this male and female mallard couple take up residence in the street outside our house where rainwater runoff pools up all the time. The street has dried up now so the ducks are gone. I was kind of hoping they would have baby ducks and we could watch the little guys learn to swim. But Sam might have wanted to chase them.
Oh well, three bags of poop on our weather, gratefully, we have the birds and their beautiful songs to keep our spirits up. Excuse me now, I think I hear a woodpecker knocking.
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