Find the Binoculars

March 29, 2010.  Monday.

Situation:  Work late morning, early afternoon. When I come home Moi has left for Jazz’s, and I take Mway out about 3:30.  A couple days ago Moi and I were discussing birds, and she brought up the jazz bird, which she associated, not with the chickadee, but with the yellow-bellied sapsucker.  So I thought that I must have been wrong all this time.  But I looked today in the book, and Auduobon describes the sapsucker, a kind of woodpecker, as a very quiet bird, which makes at best a mewing sound – so I believe that I am right, and that Moi must be wrong about this.  Today, Moi having found them for me, I bring along the binoculars.

State of the Path:  The chickens strut up to me, Mway ignores them.  Between the outbuilding and the coop, the path is wet, meaning that the spring in the coop has filled up.  In the old orchard, there is a little water streaming down, which eventually gathers together down by the maples and flows into bug land.  Along the orchard, I find a squirrel or mouse skull on the ground and stick it in a tree.  Then in the hedgerow, I see a bird that’s not one of the kind that I know well, so I try to look at it through the binoculars.  But to hold up the binoculars, I have to drop my sticks, and when I do they thump on the ground, and the bird flies away.  Down by the creek, I look for my red-bellied woodpeckers in the oaks, but I don’t see them.  Then I spot another bird on a smaller tree, but by the time I pick up the binoculars, it has flown away.  I then think I hear mallards farther down the creek (in past years, Mway and I have often disturbed a pair of mallards on our walks in the early spring).  So I get my feet soaked crossing the feed channel to the skating pond, thinking maybe I’ll see the ducks down there, but no such luck.  It’s warm enough to hear the peepers, although they’re not as loud as on some days; a little bit too warm to being wearing a jacket.

State of the Creek:  The water is low enough today that the water behind the log jam is placid enough for the water striders to be skipping across it.  All along the walk, I’ve been seeing little shoots coming up, but down here I see one that I can identify: the distinctive speckled leaves of the trout lily.  I also see a little white flower, but I have no idea what this is.  I’ll have to check out the leaves on this on my next walk.  I notice that the leaves are coming out on the multiflora.

The Fetch:  Up at the clearing, on my second toss of the stick, I see a couple birds perched on a bush beyond the electric pole, so I bring my binoculars up to my face to try to view them.  Before I can even get my bearings through the glasses, Mway drops the stick at my feet, and starts her usual barking to coax me to throw it again.  I try to ignore her barking, but I can only stand it for a couple seconds, and when I lower the binoculars, I see Mway looking off in the direction I was looking.  Then when she sees I’ve lowered the binoculars, she starts barking again -- I give up on trying to look at the birds and continue tossing the stick.  About 6 or 7 fetches.   Back in the back yard, I draw the chickens into the cage with a handful of feed, and inside the house I give Mway her supper.