White-Crowned Sparrows?

October 22, 2010.  Friday.

Situation:  Moi tells me that last night Woody slept with her, Mway looking with “whites showing all around her eyes” at the new cat daring to lie down near Moi’s head.  Mway then eventually crept up as close to Moi’s head as she could get herself.  Squeak, who had been sleeping with Moi, spent the whole night outside, which she’d never done before.  Right now, Squeak is on my lap, her purring head butt against my arms.  I worked today, got home about 4.  While I was putting on my walking clothes, Mway jumped off Moi’s bed (Moi’s not home) and stood in the doorway looking at me, first grinning, then snorting, then yawning and stretching her legs.

State of the Path:  I don’t remember what color the maples down by the wigwams turned last year – this year some leaves are turning yellow and falling before the whole crown of the tree turns an autumn color, and this seem typical of most of the other kinds of trees too. On a leafless “chokeberry” right at the start of bug land perch a number of the birds I’ve been thinking of as black capped chickadees.  I get an almost perfect 3-second view of one of them.  Leafing through the Aududon now, I realize these weren’t chickadees; maybe white-crowned sparrows – these had brown and white wings – god an awful lot of birds have a white stripe on their heads.  I take note of an oak sapling coming up right at the bank of the creek – don’t know if it’s black or pin.  I walk across the plank – I’m not sure if I’m spotting new cracks on it or not.  Lot of the same gnat-like insects – I actually remember these from previous years, this late insect.   Actually they’re only like gnats in that they dance and swirl in the sun.  They have rather large wings for their thin brown bodies – they seem like all wing.

State of the Creek:   Water murky from the dying weeds it swept over in the last big rain, a faint scum at some places.  On the crest of the skating pond, while I’m stooping beneath the pin oak, Mway startles me by plopping into the pool of water there.  I see her as she breaks through an almost solid mass of pin oak leaves lying on top of the water and stirs up a black cloud from the creek bottom.

The Fetch:  Up at the clearing, the all-wing insects flit above the fuzzy tops of the goldenrod – they look like the fuzz taking flight.  I stand where I’ve been standing the past few days, toss the crooked stick where I’ve been tossing it.  After a while I begin twirling it like a lasso like I did yesterday.  Sometimes Mway stands gawking at it with her tongue hanging out, other times she starts barking and hopping, one time she dashes off before I throw it, then dashes back when she realizes I’m still twirling it.  This is certainly the most fun stick we’ve had this year – I’m not sure what kind of wood it is.  It looks kind of like a monkey vine – I bet it’s part of the trumpet vine Moi had to cut down when Ezra was fixing up the front porch.  I’ll have to ask her.