Deck the Halls with Floods of Jolly?

I have been getting a bazillion notifications on Facebook letting me know that my friends are marked safe from the crazy ass flooding that's been going on. So, let this serve as your notification that I am indeed safe from the floods. Given that Seattle was in a "rain shadow" and - perhaps more relevantly - I continue my habit of living atop stupidly tall and steep hills, this may serve as little shock. but nonetheless, it was touch and go there for a while. 

It has in fact been rainy. On Wednesday, Allan learned why most Seattleites don't truck with umbrellas. We took our usual walk. It was pouring, so she took one. It was also windy. Because this is how it goes here. The umbrella flipped inside out about two hundred times in a forty five minute death-slog, and I got personally quite drenched as the one who was expected to flip it back into order. Allan got a little water on her pants and will never recover. Such is the PNW. 

That rainfall is causing pretty severe flooding up north, but hereabouts it's mostly just causing Narcrowssis a little extra gazing room!

During the worst days of last week, the crows and other birdies all took shelter, but any day that it was milder, they were out in double force, storing up for the next storm.

Our biggest guests of honor were northern flickers and a bajillion robins!!

As previously mentioned, northern flickers are from the woodpecker family, but they don't peck wood. They will peck metal trash cans and anything with totally fabulous acoustics, because turns out a lot of the rhythmic woodpecker drumming you hear is actually their form of a bird song. But for food, flickers peck the ground. Which is fascinating to watch in its own right. 

How many flicker peckers would peck at the ground if flicker peckers were pecking?? 

Apparently three! I somehow always thought there was only one flicker in our neighborhood. I referred to the odd flicker noises as "the flicker" but it turns out there's at least three. And earlier this week, they were travelling in a trio. 

We looked out the window mid week and there they were! In our yard! Briefly. It's like running into a celebrity at your local grocery store! I tried to get their autographs, but to no avail. I did get some blurry pictures! So, we consider it a win!

And then, there are the robins. Until recently, I had also pretty much only seen the one robin. Then a little while ago, I was delighted to see three robins in a tree. 

But this week has been bonkers! Down the main street to the park, there is nothing but robins now. Well, ok there are always (and i mean always) juncos and chickadees. But robins! Making their strange wahooooo party trumpet noises, rocking their white eyeliner, and flying tree to tree with a little stopover for extra worms. 

Unsurprisingly, we are also seeing an increased influx of gulls. Even more than before! Mornings are redolent with gull shrieks, which sounds kind of like a drunk eagle. And in fact, we saw (and heard) the rather racous moment where a bunch of gulls were mobbing a bald eagle a little while back! It was exhilerating!

 This of course triggers some territorial disputes. There have been several crow-gull standoffs over several different bags of trash-food. And yesterday, the gulls pretty much invaded the pond. As Allan said, "this is no longer a duck pond. This is THE GULL POND." 

Not sure why they decided the pond was the place to be, although I can only imagine it feels like a jacuzzi after their maritime efforts. 

The pond crows were also back after some sheltering, and they had some opinions about this. I'm not entirely sure what they were because I don't speak loud repeated cawing from various sentinel points around the pond, but they were definitely acting a bit different. 

Including the gonzo ass crow who decided to play the swooping game with a seagull. 

A few weeks ago we saw crows flying together and taking turns with one swooping into the other's general flight path, causing both to drop off course and drop several feet before swooping. This was a little bit more cautious, but a similar kind of game in which the crow was just basically getting in the gull's protective bubble by flying very very close

The gull had some screeches to make about it and eventually they retreated to a power line pole, while the crow perched nearby on a power line. The other gulls and crows stayed out of it. 

No gulls or crows were harmed in the making of this slight bit of punkage?

Crows like to live with no regretz... 

Or who knows! I'm not really sure if we know whether crows experience regret, although they are capable of a neurological looping that allows them to re-experience something and analyze it (much like humans). This does seem to form a lot of the basis of learning. I'm not sure if that rises to the level of regret, as much as a learning opportunity. But what is regret if not a "If that comes up again, don't do it next time?" 

Gulls respecting each other's personal space

Ok, seems like we put a lot more into it, but we tend to do that... 

I always see the adage that people will regret the things they didn't do more than the things they did. Is that really true?

As somebody deeply prone to debilitating decision paralysis, I feel like that ought to be me, but actually that's a naw for me. There isn't some confession I wish I had made. Or some adventurous choice I shied away from that will always leave me wondering what could have been.

 The things I regret are typically things I should have known better or clearly did know better. Things which were small slips with lasting consequences. 

 I don't seem regret any number of dramatic things I failed to do by inertia, because usually there were good enough reasons not to do them or I just would have! And I can tell you the things that could have gone wrong "if only I had..." I don't regret not kissing the guy (I do regret kissing some of the others). Beyond which, I can't regret a life that brings me to my daughter being who she is, and many of those "if only" type avenues might shy away from her. 

When I was a teenager I had a very large surge of nostalgia that interlocked with regret and this made me fervently wish I could relive my first year of high school. This has passed. It was weird. I decidedly never ever want to do that again. But I don't think I really had regrets within that. I think life as a teenager is just hard and I wanted to take solace in something familiar. 

Overall, I don't really have a lot of "if only I'd acted faster or sooner!" And I do have a much larger "If only I hadn't..." Despite generally not being riddled with regret, my regrets are typically over being a dumb shit, thanks much. 

I don't know if that speaks more to how I am more fundamentally cautious, whether it's a testament to my profound dislike of change (until I find sameness unbearable anyways), or if it just speaks to the fact that I because I am generally so hesitant to act, a lot of my actions end up being extremely impulsive, because impulsive actions are the only ones that break through the analysis paralysis. Welcome to the AuDHD paradigm!

I should clarify that this is true when we're talking about a sense of regret that centers culpability and remorse. There's another sense of regret that captures more of a sorrow for a thing that couldn't happen regardless. Holding a nostalgia for a world that I had no power to inhabit.

When Allan was younger, she would sometimes cry because she knew she was not a real bunny (or later, cat). It broke her heart that she was born human. That seems to have passed, but I see the sentiment as more in this realm. And this one I can definitely get behind. Not necessarily for who I was born to be, but for the little circumstances that made it harder in this way or that. Or, well, all the "if onlys" that make fun thought experiments and usually bleaker speculative fiction. 

This is captured by Merriam Webster's second definition for the noun regret "Sorrow aroused by circumstances beyond one's control or power to repair." It is also captured by the verbal definition "to mourn the loss or death of or to miss very much. 

Still, it's not the word I would grab onto to describe that particular sense of longing for a land you've never touched or fear you might not again. I wouldn't go around saying "hey, love, I regret you!" But that sense is there. And it's a sense where I understand how it can take a larger hold of one's grief. 

I'm not sure crows experience that. Certainly it would be challenging to find a way to prove it. But they definitely do experience a sense of warmth towards their loved ones, and a great satisfaction in a good meal and harassing other birds! That's really, the life, I think!

We were hoping to start this morning with a Birding 101 class, but the darned thing sold out within 30 minutes, so today will be free form. I hope everyone in my general area continues to be safe. And all y'all out there with real winter... what's that like? 

Stay dry all!!