Pouring Rain and Birdseed!

Well gosh golly, it's mid-November. I feel that the effect of the time change managed to land us with evening starting at midday and no particular extension of light in the mornings. Funny how that happens. They really should make the time change at some earlier date so it feels less gutting. Yes, we know it's just always dark now! But that's ok. I feel less guilty about taking my time to put out the bird feeder anyways!

I am being very careful with the bird feeder, since avian flu is going around and I don't want to get any lil ones sick. I also, as previously mentioned, don't want to inadvertently lure rats and mice our way. Taking it in each night, washing it frequently, and trying to keep clean underneath by laying out towels to catch all the seed shells that the birdies spit out (they also just generally make a mess when fighting for a spot at the feeder - birds are pugnacious little buggers!)

It's been a pretty good week, but I'm ready to curl up in a ball and not go directly to my dentist appointment. Ah well. I still have a couple of hours and it's far more convenient having a Saturday dentist than trying to arrange something midweek. 

Mood

Last Sunday, we took Allan to the Pacific Science Center. A brilliantly educational institution for kids of all ages! I learned some big important things, myself: mostly that I hate the Pacific Science Center. 

I don't recall feeling that way about it in the past. I might even say I used to love it. But on this particular visit, it struck me as a hellish science arcade full of screaming children, flashing lights and hard echoey surfaces. Oh, and plenty of employees wandering around spraying noxious green cleaning solution willy nilly (I have contact allergies to most cleaning solutions, so it usually portends a nasty rash to see those spray bottles). 

Typically Allan's stamina (measured by "how long Allan can go at an event before she (1) asks to go home, or (2) starts screaming at other children) doesn't go much longer than an hour or ninety minutes. Especially in very stimulating environments like PacSci. Sunday, she was unstoppable! (far less so on Monday, which was not a particularly sunny day all in all... we survived at any rate). The hours just kept ticking. Andrew, usually the Dad of Steel for these things, eventually started feeling the burn too. Given it was Sunday, our big chore day, we were also watching the productive hours while away to null with overstimulated chagrin.

The Spiders were cool though

We finally had to let Allan know that we needed to wrap it up, which prompted fervent indignity over the fact that we hadn't actually visited every feature in the entire space (we hit most, but that place goes on forever!) 

We compromised on a last visit to the butterfly walk, a humid greenhouse full of butterflies and heaving crowds of awestruck (and sneezy) humanity. If we get out of this visit without somebody getting sick, I'll be impressed. Fingers crossed! Flu and COVID shots, time to test your efficacy. 

Andrew had suggested we might be able to drop by the Seattle Center to see pigeons afterwards, which I admit was a little too exciting for me. I brought my nice camera, so I could finally get some close ups of the prettiest trash birds. Thus, ensuring that the opportunity would never come to pass. 

We did not end up getting to look for pigeons, as everyone was fairly well behind and very done by the time we dragged Allan home. But I did see some very charismatic trash birds on the walk to PacSci. 

This gull knows things. And they are definitely side eyeing us all. 

Crows are passionate orators. It's one of my favorite things to watch: They'll get into a full bodied CAWWWWW that requires this sort of hunching up and down motion, a bit like they're spitting up words! Sometimes with a ton of bobbing. It's endearing. And very earnest. 

You tell 'em girl!

Came home feeling wrecked and figured if I were actually coming down with something it would show up on my Garmin sleep tracking. But turns out that my watch fell off my wrist at about midnight, so it thinks I only slept 3 hours and not too fitfully there either. Ah well. Felt about right coming onto Monday! I've been a bit low energy for the rest of the week, unsurprisingly. 

But things carry on, as they do. 

The pond bros (and/or babies, depending on how friggin' adorable they seem in any given moment) seem to have some friends. Or competition. It's a bit of a mixed dynamic. I get the usual attentive appearance from a couple of crowbros, each perched on some nearby platform or tree. I leave peanuts and cashews. They don't wait very long these days before getting down to business. But sometimes other crows crash and sometimes that seems cool. And other times, less cool. 

When it's just the three or four, there's often kind of a circle around the nuts and each crow eats a few, then flies off with a few more to bury or stash in somebody's gutter. 

Yes, that's about two cashews, but I have seen some crows line up four or five and somehow fit them in their beaks before takeoff. 

It gets a little more logistically complex when there's more than four. It seems that turn taking begins to make more sense. And each crow has a small period of time to select some nuts and then make space for the next. 

Taking too long will warrant some hopping, some cawing and some general chastisement. 

I think there may be some form of hierarchy as well, though it's not visibly apparent in other circumstances. It seems that about two of the crows will peck at the other two if they seem to be either cutting ahead of them or eating too greedily. Some kind of relationship there. The other crows don't seem to fight back, so it does seem like somebody was eating out of turn!

Over time, there starts to develop a cycle. Where one takes a share, leaves to stash it, then returns. 

It's fascinating stuff. 

If the cycle is too contentious or there's just not enough food to be patient, one or two might peel off and fly up ahead to get their own Yellow Hat Lady drop. It is usually effective enough. I'm not one to turn them down. 

**

Not that I would be able to call them out in a pinch, but I definitely think our Pond Babies are two mated partners and probably one of their helper children. It's common for male crows to stay with their parents a few extra years after fledging to help raise younger siblings, so I assume some stick around over the winter. That, of course, is a total guess, but I do get mated energy from Peanut and Cashew.  

Here, we have Peanut

Here we have Cashew

Cashew looks funny because of her nictitating membrane (that second eyelid they have). But she seemed to be coming up to beak a bit with Peanut. 

 Yes, crows sneeze. It was an exciting moment!

There was a momentary separation to process the very intense event for everyone involved!

Meanwhile Pecan was in the grass eating some peanuts and generally hopping around. 

Still, they seem to get along just fine when it's the three of them. I can only assume that the entire Pond Park is just a giant infrastructure of cached peanuts, because they definitely hide at least as many as they eat. Squirrels as well. I think they don't like humanity's odds of living another winter and want to be well prepared for the drying up of all those nummy trash bags!

They may have a point. It's been raining like Noah's floods over here! Things are definitely starting to get a bit wet!

But the gulls seem to like it. A ton of them, mostly younger gulls (you can tell by their coloring) have made Pond Park and Highpoint their home for the winter. 

The crows have feelings about this. They mostly coexist, but there's definitely a minor rivalry. So you'll see gangs of each on opposing rooftops, the crows making their displeasure known. I feel ya, Crows! I feel ya! Except I dig the gulls as well. The gulls do make some wonderful trash opportunties, so there's not not a symbiosis. The mallards, meanwhile can't be bothered by the incursion of gulls in their pond. They've also been quite accepting of the flocks of wigeons and the occasional mergansers. 

Uh... Quack?

Not to mention that great blue heron who just ambles around looking to swipe fish

drooly baby!

Anyways, a bit wetter out these, but the birds mind far less than we do! Hopefully we'll have a dryish spot to go out and say hi to the babies, and tomorrow we'll go visit Gramma Pam! Should be awesome! Just have to get through the morning appointments!

 

Happy mid November! Wish my teethies luck!