Daylight

Well guess what time it is?

No, no I have no idea. 

Apparently we were spending "daylight" too profligatly so we are now on a program of draconian austerity measures. It's working out, I guess? 

In anticipation of "Daylight Savings Time" (more formally known as "daylight still stays the same but we fuck with what time it is relative to the light and literally cause heart attacks and universal circadian distress time"), I've been adjusting Allan's and my schedules gradually over the last week. Every day this week, we've gone to bed ten minutes earlier and gotten up ten minutes earlier than the day before. We've basically arrived at the DST jumping point now.

Making the change by ten-minute increments can be logistically involved but also gentler. Since mornings are inevitably the hardest part of the The Not-So-Great Leap Forward, having a little more leisure time to adjust to earlier and earlier is helpful. We've had a lot of slow waking up periods listening to birds in the bedroom this week. This feels superior to throwing the usual GRIND and urgency of morning but an hour earlier for no discernible reason. 

Evenings are a bit more annoying, but we seem to be padded enough that it works out ok. 

...At least when I don't get confused and try to start the bedtime routine an hour before I intended... whoops. 

Little secret: if Allan had discovered I had summoned her to her shower an hour before I intended to and an hour and a half earlier than usual, her entire night would have been thrown into chaos, but luckily it didn't really come up. I just didn't try to shepherd her along her evening routine and let her do her thang. She spent a good twenty minutes running her hand over her geographically textured globe, then another half hour playing a game where she was a cuckoo and I was a reed warbler and the marbles were eggs.  

Voila. Bedtime came while she was still half dressed and adding new rules to the cuckoo egg game, and we got up a bit earlier yet again the next morning!

Everything else is waking up gradually as well. This has been one of the slowest budding years I've seen. Things started budding early, but a large percentage of those still haven't fully opened up. Everything is just on the cusp instead of taking a full primaveral plunge!

The Canada Geese are back! I'm not sure you could say they really were migrating, as they seem to pop in and out all winter. But they are having a stopover anyways. 

Graceful little cobra chickens!

They honestly aren't that aggressive at the moment, it not being the middle of nesting season. Some wretched children came up to the entire group of them a few days ago and were making quite a ruckus. The geese just walked away and seemed annoyed. Maybe their anger management classes are going well. I was a little disappointed, as I think the kids deserved to be hissed at, but such is life. 

As perhaps implied by my previous entry, Steller's jays are also getting around these days. There were two at the pond on Sunday, and one of them was kind enough to actually hold still for a few minutes in a visible place. They seem to prefer to fly around like crazy, then perch in a tree to make a lot of noise while mostly obscured!

Fun fact. Steller's jays and blue jays are the only two species in the Cyanocitta genus. They have a small area of geographic overlap where they interbreed. This has leant to some controversy about whether they are in fact distinct species. Both are in fact jays who are blue. 

But, to me, they have really different vibes... 

versus

We don't have them here, so this is from the internetz

Steller's jay is just generally darker punkier vibe, with a far deeper blue and little to no white. 

The hybrids do stand out a bit...

No idea who took this or where

Anyways,,,

Steller's jays make a number of noises. Some are kind of delightful and some that are delightfully awful. 

The most common are kind of a raspy buzzer noise and what's been largely described as "shook-shook-shook-shook," which is kind of like a vigorously addled rain stick with a little extra voice behind it. And then there's the noise that Allan calls a "beep" and I think of more as a laughing jay noise. The jay by the pond seems very proud of thisone, and sometimes seem to switch to it when they come closer to us. I like to think they are showing off. 

Speaking of beautiful corvids who know how to make a ruckus... 

Most often our regular walk seems to travel through a variety of crow territories. Or at least, one group of crows will greet us at a certain point in our walk and follow up for a specific portion of that walk before peeling off, at which point another group will greet us. 

While I can't distinguish most crows, there are a few that have either distinct vocalizations or other features (the one we've named Sneezy both sneezes and has a bare patch around her eye that stands out quite a bit). And behaviorally, the mated crows and the younger crows are pretty distinct. Enough to get a general sense of different "groups" that build up around the identifiable baes. 

They do all seem to fly off together to roost in the winter months. You can often see giant groups flying off in the same direction close to sun down then. 

But occasionally, they all seem to assemble for what seems a lot like frolicking. 

This week we saw over 60 of them rolling into the pond area, all cawing and chaotic (such a marked contrast from how the ducks and pigeons fly when they fly together!). They landed on the top branches of a couple of large trees, still cawing at each other. It seemed, then, that a few crows from one tree would swoop-fly over to the other tree. And vice versa. Like a giant game of Corvid Red Rover! 

No idea what was actually happening, but it was boisterous! I'm so curious what prompts these giant assemblies!

Meanwhile, the mallards carry on. My impression was that duck sex was dark, gruesome and violent. This is all you see in any "fun science articles". Corkscrew penises and gangbangs and all that. 

While I know this does happen and there have been fights between drakes enough to show some T in the lake, also sometimes it goes differently. 

First off, consensual intercourse does exist in the anatine world. I've read accounts from domestic duck keepers that female ducks do in fact pursue all variety of sexual relationships, including plenty of queer top-bottoming switching and some very long-lasting lesbian romances. So, it's at least possible for a female duck of enjoy and seek out copulation, which I kind of suspected after watching enough mating rituals at the pond. 

Second, sometimes the males just straight up lose their mojos.

 Or something. 

The other day we watched a mallard couple repeat the mating dance several times. The female and the male would both bob their heads at each other (a lot!). They would drink and then dribble water in a sexy duck way for each other. 

Eventually in the heat of passion, the female would flatten her head and "assume the copulatory position" in what I would call a pretty clear show of "hell yes" consent. Then in the heat of passion, the male duck... well, he'd circle a bit and then... he'd start preening or get pretty close and then just wander away. The mood wasn't right, I guess? 

Maybe I'm missing something, but there was some pretty clear body language from the mallard hen and the mallard duck was just not getting coaxed. They eventually moved on and just swam around together instead. 

The whole thing was relatable somehow. We contain multitudes. Not to say that ducks aren't aggressive and forced copulation isn't an obvious evolutionary pressure in the design of male and female duck genitalia, but it's not always like that. 

At any rate, it's either kind of early or well into the morning here. Half the clocks are set to DST and the other half (the electronics who set themselves, thank you very much) are back in PST. And the animals who aren't quite so silly are coasting on a rapidly increasing day length and mostly planning their day in relation to the sun in the sky. It's all topsy turvy here, really. 

And sometimes bedraggled. I'm not sure what happened to this house sparrow and I hope they're ok now, but they did look quite something drying off on the fence a few days ago. 

We, know, house sparrow, we know. You are the emblem for this weekend!