Birds and stuff

*laughing* So it turns out my cats' absence from the back yard has very little to do with the plethora of birds out there. My neighbors hung a birdfeeder! It's right by the fence, almost hanging in my yard. So that explains the flocks of doves and cardinals and sparrows (14 vying for baths in the birdbath the other day) and bluejays. I've also been seeing birds I don't usually see around here like junkos and black-capped chikadees. Or they could be Mexican chikadees. My bird book doesn't show either species as wintering here, but the cap is pretty distinctive. It has to be one or the other. If I see it again, I'll try to figure it out.

Zoe is just mesmerized by the birds ... when she's brave enough to go outside. Luckily she's way too fat to catch anything. She just lays and watches them with her tail twitching. When the mockingbirds are here, they taunt her. They'll strut around the yard catching bugs while she stalks them for hours. Then when she rushes, they fly up to the fence then back down to the other end of the yard, and she stalks them again for another hour. They're definitely not worried about her.

I also have barn swallows that come around every year. They used to nest over my front porch, but when I had siding put on the house the guys doing the work closed off the little space the swallows were building in. I put some fake ledges up there, but they haven't nested there again. At the end of the nesting season last year, a pair of them were checking it out though, so maybe they'll come back there this year. We'll see.

Birds are interesting creatures. Last summer in Utah my friend and I were lucky enough to spot California Condors. Too bad we didn't realize what they were at the time or we would have taken pictures. They drifted close overhead while we were on the Angel's Landing trail in Zion. Instead we just stood and watched them circle (who takes pictures of buzzards?) and wondered why they were radio-tagging buzzards. It wasn't until a day or so later that she found a book on the condors and the release program in Utah. We freaked. Interestingly, my bird book talks about how they're gone from the wild, and only a few are left in zoos. (copyright 1990!) It may be time to buy a new bird book. The ones we saw were juveniles, so they didn't have the distinctive white underwings yet.

We've seen a lot of interesting wildlife out in Utah. The baby Horny Toad in this blog is an example from this year. One year we came across a small herd of bighorn sheep. I have lots of pictures of those but of course no digital photos. I'll have to scan some of them. I've seen turkeys while out there hiking, and wild turkeys are BIG. The adults stood nearly thigh-high on me. And of course there are always the usual animals, deer, rabbits, chipmunks, squirrels and lots-o-lizards. I've only once come across a rattlesnake.

Utah's got some magnificent places for hiking. I keep going back to my favorite places there, Zion, Bryce, Capital Reef and Arches National Parks. I may not go this year though, depending on a lot of things. Maybe I'll just go to Colorado instead and be lazy for awhile at my sister's place. It's too soon to decide. I've got too much happening between now and then.

I'm thinking about vacation right now because I'm borderline over-whelmed at work. One of these days I'm really going to learn to say 'no' when people ask me to do stuff .... maybe. I'm just really feeling the need to escape .... but instead I'll just suck it up and get everything done somehow. And my stress will manifest as weird dreams. Last night I dreamed I was helping someone move, which morphed into cleaning out my closet, which morphed into trying to find the right dress to wear to a formal ball, which morphed into being at the ball, which morphed into one of my recurring (re-occurring?) dreams ... that I'm fighting a guerrilla war, setting explosives. Most often I'm blowing up either munitions dumps or bridges. I guess it's my subconscious' way of handling problems in my path. Generally I'm not wearing a formal ball gown in the guerrilla war dreams though. I remember being amazed in my dream at how easy that dress was to move and run in. I must not have been wearing heels.