Pine Siskins

We always have a lot of birds, but since the fire we have even more coming to our feeders. Now it seems that our enjoyment of watching them may be curtailed for awhile because of a birdie pandemic.
We are being told that the pine siskins are dying in large numbers of salmonella, and that much as we enjoy watching them and feel that we are helping them out, the best thing we can do for them is take down our bird feeders, forcing them to practice their version of social distancing. 

They have been going through two feeder's worth of seeds a day or a forty pound bag a month, so we'll save some money, but we'll miss them. And the lovely man at the bird store will miss us! Pine siskins are migratory, so once they have finished passing through we're told we can put the feeders back out again.

In other wildlife news, a squirrel knocked out the power to 3,500 PG&E customers in Santa rosa when it shorted out a transformer. I've lost track of the billions of dollars the utility has paid out in reparations to fire victims andrepairs and upgrades to  power lines, but I would think it must by now exceed the cost of putting these lines underground...I hope they don't decide to turn off our power 'for our safety' every time there is a squirrel sighting....

We went back to the nursery which was closed yesterday and bought  succulents...some feathery looking ones to replace the torched rosemary draping over the back wall and some to go in the rock garden Dana has developed. When we drove into the garage we were greeted by Spike who had bashed through the permanently closed cat door. At least he had sense enough to stay away from the car, since we had no reason to expect to see him there. As soon as John opened the back of the car to unload the plants Spike sprang in right on top of the plants. Bad words from John ensued. Spike has also been known to spring into the car (well, try to anyway) before  the back is opened bouncing off again. He knows the 'wait' command...we just have to remember to use it before we open the back of the car.

The plants should survive. Spike wouldn't get out of the car. See extra for the broken bits that I am rerooting on the kitchen windowsill . I'm going to have to rethink what I'm going to plant in the rock garden....