See the Red Headed Bird Again, But It Looks Just Red Necked

March 25, 2010.  Thursday.

Situation:   This morning I have to do all the things Moi would normally do.  Make coffee, feed Squeak, turn on my computer and deal with the damn new search engine I was forced to download so I can use YouTube.  I let Mway out the door, and she sits on the porch for a while, just looking around, until she barks and I let her back in.  By the time I get ready to take her for a walk, it’s about 9:30.   I’ll have to take her for some sort of walk again later, but since I have to leave for work around 3:30, it probably will be a short one.

State of the Path:  Mway dashes out the door, runs to the old shed by the driveway, and scares a ground hog back into its hole inside the shed.  Near the walled garden, I see burdock shoots.  See a couple cardinals in the old orchard.  Just before the wigwams, I step on the red willow sapling along the path which I’ve been regularly stepping on on my walks, in the hope of keeping this shrub from growing into an impediment in the path this summer.  Down by the creek, I hear a bird among the oaks, and start looking for it, expecting the red headed bird that I still haven’t been able to satisfactorily identify.  I finally spot a bird in the oak on our side of the creek, but because it’s straight overhead, I can’t view it too well.  After a while it flies off, then comes back to perch on the oak on the other side of the creek, and I have a better view of it.  But looking at it today it seems to me that its head is not so red, that it’s mainly its neck that is red, and its head is black – and I wonder if this is a woodpecker why it’s not down at the trunk of the tree pecking for insects (one of the secondary trunks off the main trunk of the tree is rotted and has been broken off by the wind, with some of its pieces on the ground, and one piece lodged in the fork of another smaller tree, which I’ve noted before).  I keep looking at the bird to try to make it out better, but then I’m distracted when I hear Mway wade through one of the mucky ponds in bug land.  When I turn back to look at the bird, it has gone.  A little further on, as I’m walking along the ridge to bug land, Mway also decides to wade into the pond between the ridges – why do this? I shake my head.  Don’t hear the peepers today.

State of the Creek:  My eyes are in the trees today.

The Fetch:  3 fetches.  Back in the house, I get Mway her dog food, then go back out to check on the chickens, another task I have since neither Moi nor the Boy are here.  I scare a hen off her nest, and find 5 eggs, which I gather up to bring in the house.  I then let the chickens out, so they can “free range” a bit.  Later on, before I go to work, I’ll try to draw the chickens back in their cage with a handful of chicken feed.  I was able to do this successfully yesterday.