Robins

Yesterday began and ended with drizzle and heavy fog.  However, around lunch time I returned home from an errand, and while the skies were still gray, the fog and mist had temporarily lifted.  I got out of the car and decided to walk down to the end of the driveway and pick up my soggy, plastic-wrapped newspaper.  As I walked, I began to notice bird song in the air -- something I hadn't heard in a long time.  I looked up and saw birds all round my little neighborhood.  There were tiny birds swarming in the bare branches of a mulberry tree, but they were so tiny and so fast I could not get a photo nor could I clearly identify them.   Doves were pecking beneath the bird feeder in my backyard, but I could not get a photo of them either because they attracted the notice of my little dog Luna, who raced out and barked at them in a very offended manner.

My neighbors' yard was filled with robins.  By leaving Luna in the house, I was able to get photos of a few of them using the zoom on my camera.

We live too far south for robins to be the first heralds of spring -- it's spring when they go back north.  I'm not sure where they spent the month of December, though.  We had a very icy, cold December -- the polar vortex reached all the way down to Texas -- and yesterday 40 degrees felt downright warm. 

I thought so anyway and so, apparently, did the birds.  This little fella is enjoying a puddle.

Winter is actually a pretty good time for us to see birds.  The usual winter birds of cardinals, chickadees, titmice, bluebirds and dark-eyed juncos are around, as well as lots of blue jays, crows, mockingbirds, starlings/grackles, doves, ducks and geese.  We also live on some kind of migratory highway.  Birds pass through on their way south to Mexico for the winter and then again when they go back north in the summer.  Every year for a few days we enjoy flocks of cedar waxwings, Mississippi kites, killdeer, and goldfinches.  More ominously, our entire town gets covered up in starlings/grackles (I'm never sure of their official name) at certain times of year, to the point you begin to feel you are personally inhabiting an Alfred Hitchcock movie.

 

Anyway, it was nice to see so many birds out cavorting around because this past month has been a month to hunker down in the house.  The Christmas season seemed very short, partly because  Thanksgiving was so late and then an ice storm hit my county and lasted through the first week of December.  School didn't finish until December 20th and then my mother arrived for an extended visit on the 19th.  Blogging had to fall by the wayside to make room for parental and filial duties.

This was the first time my mother had visited me in five years.  She got to spend Christmas with us and we had a great time making candy, thrift shopping, and generally just lounging about.  I took almost no photos of the holidays -- when I'm with other people I seldom think to stop and take photographs -- but sometimes that's okay.  While it's fun to have documentation, it's not always necessary.  It's okay just to live:)

I feel like I should have something more profound to say about the changing of the year from 2013 to 2014, but I'm past the point of thinking I know everything and I'm not yet to the point of feeling like I have a lot of wisdom to impart.  I will say this about 2013 -- I lived through it, with its good parts and its hard parts.  I hope to say the same about 2014.  Of course I cannot read the future, but from this vantage point it doesn't look to me that it will be an easier year.  In fact, it looks like a year of hard  work.

I have a friend who chooses -- or feels that God chooses -- a word for each new year.  I don't usually do that, but this year the word "diligent" keeps calling my name.  The Lord has helped and will continue to help me persevere, but at the same time He is calling me to be diligent:  that is, to keep doing faithfully those things that I know to do.  I will leave the results to Him.  I guess it's like the old song:  "Trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus, than to trust and obey."

I'm not trying to be gloomy and pessimistic.  Although many sad and hard things happened in 2013, many good things happened, too.  I'm sure the same will be true of 2014:)

In any case, I wish you all a belated Happy New Year!

A Deer Blessing

Before I go east to visit my and my husband's families, I have in my mind some things I would like to do if I get a chance.  One of them is just to drive around in the country and visit places that were important to me when I was growing up, and maybe even take some pictures.  Well, that has yet to happen.  When we visit, I am juggling so many people's schedules and trying to keep everybody (my teenagers plus all my relatives that live there) 'relatively' happy;).  And I am usually too busy talking and visiting to remember to take pictures.  Also, I don't have a car of my own or free time of my own to cavort around on any solo adventures.  That's okay, life has its different seasons, that time alone is for the future (and I'm afraid I may not like it when it comes;)

So after my week with my sister-in-laws, my husband and three youngest kids met me.  The three kids went to camp in North Carolina, and my husband and I spent a few days in South Carolina at some meetings he had to attend for work. We all eventually ended up back in Tennessee for some quick family visits before heading west again.  It was very busy, but we had a good time (although, no pictures).

The whole time we were in Tennessee our eyes feasted on the green and on the hills.  I get hungry for both out here in Texas.  We spotted this little white-tail deer family on the side of the road near my father-in-law's new assisted living home.  This is the only time we did remember to take some pictures.

They were mildly interested in us, but not too afraid.

It was a pleasure to see these twin fawns that still had their spots.

We pulled off to the side of the road and just watched them until they finally bounded off through the tall grass and we couldn't see them anymore.

It's easy for me to get caught up in the hecticness and the perceived pressure of everything that needs to get done.  Sometimes I'm like a mole, tunneling forward steadily but feeling suffocated.  God makes room for us to breathe and to remember what (and who) is important through  gifts like these deer.  Just the stopping and taking pleasure in these little fawns helped put life back in perspective.

"Be still, and know that I am God:  I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.  The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah." -- Psalm 46:10-11 KJV  

The Hawks Return

Last year we had a great deal of enjoyment watching a pair of red-shouldered hawks raise a family. (You can see those posts starting here and following the links).  At the time I wondered if they would return to the same nest, and I am happy to report they did!

This year they seem to have fewer babies, which is probably for the best since last year one got pushed out of the overcrowded nest.  So far we have only spotted two babies.  (They are easier to hear than to spot because they are very, very vocal when they are hungry!)

Their nest is in a pine tree in my neighbor's yard, right across from our driveway.  This is a bit unusual because there are not many pine trees where I live.  Most of the native trees are some variety of oak (primarily post oak) or mesquite.

This pine tree is probably appealing because it is so much taller than any of the other trees around, giving the hawks a great view of the neighborhood.  They appear to be totally unbothered by all the activity taking place underneath their tree.  If these babies are like last year's, when they get bigger they will peer curiously over the side of the nest at any basketball games going on in our driveway.

Here you can see the beautiful markings on the mother bird as well as some of the materials used to make the nest.

Taking pictures of them from the ground is always a challenge.  I have to zoom my camera as far as it will go and aim in the general direction of the nest.  I can't tell what I've gotten until I download the photos onto the computer and blow them up a bit.  I did manage to get one good one of mother and baby:)

Hawk Review

For this month's Note Card Party hosted by Vee I had to choose some pictures from our hawk family (featured here, here, here and here).  We still see (and hear) the young hawks around the neighborhood.

Mama watching over her babies.

Oops -- one fell out!

Almost grown up -- "Who, me?"

Ready to fly!

The Note Card Party is hosted every month by Vee at A Haven for Vee.  Go here to see lots more entries, or to enter yourself :)

Another Snake!

Sorry for the bad picture, but I found this snake (in motion, that's why his tail is ablur) on my kitchen COUNTER today!!  I barely had time to snap a picture because he had to be CAUGHT ASAP.

I was cleaning the counter after lunch and from the corner of my eye saw some motion behind a water bottle, which I assumed was a fly.  I got my fly swatter from its hook in the pantry and returned, moved the water bottle, and instead of a fly I saw a snake!!  I uttered a very weird scream of surprise, which did not disturb my teenage boy who was napping on the couch.  My daughter promptly woke him up because I wanted him to catch the snake.  Thankfully, he did.

The snake was 8 inches long or so and was a harmless earth snake, so my son let him loose out in the front yard.  I do not know what the snake was doing on my counter.  I would not like to find one in the floor, but on my counter??  That goes beyond the pale.  The only thing we can figure out is that there was a bucket of produce from the garden on the counter.  Maybe my husband had inadvertently picked up a hitchhiker along with the cucumbers when he was out in the garden.  HOPEFULLY that is how the snake got in.  Otherwise.......

What is it with me and snakes?  I've had enough snake encounters to do me for a very long time.

Hawks Again

(A continuation of the hawk story, which was first blogged about here, here and here)

The three remaining hawk babies have made it successfully to young adulthood.  It took longer than I expected for them to learn to fly, but eventually they began getting brave and venturing out of the nest.

 

We would see them on various limbs of the pine trees testing their wings --

and making little tiny flights from branch to branch.

There was a little mishap where one fledgling got a little too brave and ended up on the ground -- much to his surprise:

My neighbor had to get him out of the street, and he also put a ladder up against the tree to help the little fellow get back up.  The little hawk hopped around the yard for awhile and we went to bed not knowing what had happened, but the next morning all three hawks were back in the nest so somehow he figured it out.











They were screeching all the time -- I could hear them first thing in the morning, and I thought the momma had quit feeding them (maybe her way of motivating them to learn to fly and get their own breakfast), but my son saw her do a drive-by feed where she flew over and dropped a snake into the nest and kept going.  So she was still keeping an eye on them.

They have since learned to fly, but they haven't ventured too far from home base yet.  We see (and hear) them all around the neighborhood.

Sometimes they are flying low and haphazardly, like teenagers learning to drive.  My husband saw them practice their hunting skills today, playing with a worm.

I will miss seeing them in the trees --

sometimes lurking --

sometimes pondering --

sometimes looking quizzical.

Hope to see you around, little hawks!

The Hawk Saga Continues

The hawks are continuing to grow.  They have grown from babies to teenagers in just a week's time it seems.  They have been getting braver and will walk out on the branches a little way.

"What are you looking at?"

Their grownup feathers are coming in.....

although not all at the same rate.  This bird is still quite white.

The nest is getting smaller by the day.

Yesterday a combination of crowded nest plus maybe a little foolhardy bravery resulted in this little guy falling to the ground, which he was not too happy about.

He looked smaller on the ground than when he was up in the tree.  And you can see that it's too early for him to be flying -- all his good feathers are not in yet.

After consulting with some bird experts, my neighbor (who does know about the nest) took this little guy to a raptor center where they are equipped to take good care of him.  There was no way to put the bird back in the nest and the bird guy said that it was possible the other birds had pushed him out to start with, since he seemed a little smaller than the others.

They are red-shouldered hawks.  And we were wrong about the number of babies:  instead of three, there were four.  NOW there are three.  Yesterday evening the mama brought them a pretty good sized snake to eat.  I think she did notice that someone was missing, and in the wild that probably would have been the end of this little guy, but now he's being well taken care of.

Let's hope the rest of them make it out of the nest with no more drama.

More Hawk Nest Pics

When my husband went outside this morning to water the garden, he saw that mama hawk was in the nest  and he quickly ran inside for the camera.  

When they are all in the nest together, I really don't see how they fit.

Here's a closer look at the feathers.  The markings on the mama are beautiful.  You can see where the baby's adult feathers are coming in.  You can also get a good look at the mama's beak.

Another view.  The babies are not much smaller than the mama now.

Mama stays alert.

Back side of mama.  For some reason this photo turned out sharper than the others.

This is my favorite.  Don't you love the look on little sister's (or brother's) face?

Hawk Nest

Weeks ago we noticed that a pair of red-shouldered hawks had made a nest in the crook of a pine tree on the edge of my neighbor's yard.  This is directly across the road from our garage entrance -- the driveway on the side of our house that has a basketball hoop -- so it's easy for us to keep an eye on things.  There are lots of hawks around here, as well as owls, because there are lots of little animals for them to eat:  squirrels, rabbits, mice, snakes, lizards, etc.  Usually we see red-tailed hawks, which are very large.  Red-shouldered hawks are slightly smaller, but still on the large side.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago we became aware that the hawk babies had hatched because they were loudly peeping all the time.  Son Number Two was the one who discovered them first.  He climbed a tree and looked over and there they were!  There are three of them in the nest.  How they all fit without falling out I don't know because they are LARGE.  They are so cute (in a creepy bird way, those sharp beaks are a little ominous).  They still have their white fluffy baby feathers, although even in the past week the feathers appear to have gotten a little darker. If they see us outside they start peeping louder and peer over the edge to see what we are doing.  It's kind of like they are asking us "Don't you have something for us to eat?"

A little before it gets dark they lay their little heads down and go to sleep.  So sweet!  I don't know how they are going to learn to fly from so high up in that tree.  But we don't want to miss that so we're being vigilant about checking on them.

I have been unable to get a photo of all three at once.  I also would like to get a photo of the mama bird feeding them, but so far we have not had the camera ready at the right time.  I am having to use the zoom on my camera and I can't really tell what's on the picture until I download it and blow it up.  Anyway, here are some pictures of our hawk babies.

Here are some shots of two of them:

You can kind of see all three of them here:

I don't know if wildlife is particularly attracted to our family or we are just more aware of it (I don't know if my neighbor even realizes this hawk's nest is in his yard).  I do know that the natural world has been a blessing to us, almost like a balm to soothe the soul, if you'll pardon the cliche.  Somehow the stress and tensions of human relationships and everyday troubles is easier to bear once you've spent some time with baby hawks or listened to geese fly overhead or examined the underside of a gecko as it climbs your window.  It's a reminder that the world is far bigger and mysterious than our troubles. The God who created such interesting creatures and weather and plants and landscapes and skies is so gracious to let us be a part of it and glimpse a tiny bit of wonder.