Grey Squirrel

Three generations of family men went to the A's baseball game in Oakland today (OilMan and Peter, Tim and Owen.) leaving me to putter around aimlessly. It was perfect weather for sitting on the porch and reading the New York Times, but the news was so bad that I soon gave up on that and started watching the action around the bird feeders.

The thrushes spend a lot of time on the ground and the babies fledge before they can fly so the parents spend several days chasing predators away from the helpless chicks. One of them took some time off to take a vigorous bath in Ozzie's water dish, splattering water everywhere and then jumping out to fluff and preen for quite some time.

The woodpeckers usually seem to be at the top of the pecking order, but today a raven came swooping out of nowhere to chase one off. They are nesting in one of the oak trees although we're not quite sure where, but their attempts to get suet out of the hanging feeder are both determined and comical as the rise straight up from the ground, wings flapping madly.

The smallest birds, finches, chickadees, creepers and tits seem to work the seed feeders quite amicably, flying just out of reach into a tree when the bigger birds show up and returning again as soon as they leave.

We have just one pair of grey squirrels who are a constant presence, but not as numerous, aggressive and destructive as the red ones that had taken over Berkeley by the time we left there. They seem quite mild mannered but omnipresent, using the long branches of the oaks as a  'squirrel highway'. They spend most of their time on the ground, foraging for whole dropped seeds, but occasionally they crack us up with their attempts to jump to the umbrella shaped top of the bird feeder and somehow reach around for the seeds or shinny down the extremely thin arm that holds it up. This usually ends up with them hanging upside down by all four feet.

Today this fellow seemed perfectly aware of my presence but was keeping an eye on me as he waited for an opening to try and break into the large metal container of birdseed...metal, because he long ago figured out how to chew through the bags they come in. When he came out from under the barbecue, he very delicately drank some water out of Ozzie's dish and then set about rattling the top of the metal container. I put a picture in extras.

Thinks are pretty exciting around here. Pretty soon I'll be reduced to taking another picture of the blooming agave....