Woodpecker Flies off Quickly

March 27, 2010.  Saturday.

Situation:  Moi is back, and we both work tonight.  I take Mway out about 3:30.  As soon as I step outside, the chickens strut up to the porch, looking for a hand-out.   Mway charges at them, but then goes off by the swimming pool to squat.  I realize that I’ve brought one wrong glove with me, so as the Boy steps outside (on his way to something or other), I step back inside to get the right glove.  When I get back outside, the Boy is pushing the chickens off the porch and scolding Mway for charging at them.  I realize I got the right glove for my one hand, but then that I exchanged my other glove for a wrong one, so I have to go back and make another exchange.  When I come back outside, Mway, anxious now with all the commotion, is barking at me to get on with the walk.

State of the Path:  Birds are chirping.  I see a redwing black bird flying through the field, a robin near the cedar by the old orchard.  As I’m coming down to the creek, I spy a blue jay in a tree across the creek, preening itself.  It flies off and then I immediately see a cardinal in the tree behind where the blue jay was.  Down by the big oaks, I look for the red-bellied woodpecker, and eventually do see it in its favorite oak, but it flies off up the field on the other side of the creek before I can observe it for long.  Rustling in the leaves on the ground across the creek is a little brown bird I can’t identify.  I carefully cross the feed channel to the skating pond, my boots making a sucking sound in the mud of the foot holds and immediately taking in water.  I don’t see any colt’s foot yet, but in front of a sumac hanging down from the ridge along the far feed channel, some tiny ferns are coming up, and next to them, the first green shoots of something or other.  In the trees down from the ridge, there’s a pretty gray bird roosting on a tree branch, which I can’t identify either.  The path is soggy and wet in the all spots it has been for the last week or so.  Too cold again for the peepers.

State of the Creek:  The rocks that I stepped across to look at the skunk cabbage are again dry on top.

The Fetch:  As she usually does, Mway greets me at the clearing, hopping and spinning around and following along at my feet until I take my stance at the far end near the briars.  There’s lots of space to toss the stick, so I throw it as far as I can, toward the cement rubble, toward the electric pole, toward a wild olive shrub that is now getting its leaves, and back down the path into the dead golden rod, and Mway dashes off after each toss, sometimes having to make a sharp turn when she realizes she’s miscalculated the direction it’s gone, throwing up dirt with her paws, skidding in dead weeds, then running back with the stick dangling in her mouth, pitching it at my feet, and sometimes spinning around on top of it as I’m trying to pick it up off the ground.  As I’m throwing the stick, I realize I’m counting the tosses, and I ask myself why I’m doing that, and as soon as I do so I lose an exact count.  6 or 7 fetches.