Darkoshi

Qiao has four framed prints of birds (ducks, turkey, etc.) painted by Raymond Stokes Soubeyroux.

They've been hanging on the wall in my current bedroom for at least ten years, I think. I was the one who hung them up there.

One of the four prints depicts a pair of bobwhite quail. The female painted quail looks just like the one I saw in my yard last week (though I had no recollection of the painting then). So it was with surprise and amusement that I noticed it on the wall the other day. If it were not for the word "Quail" written at the bottom of the print catching my eye, I probably still would be oblivious to it.

Aaah, so many things I want to do today.. couldn't fall back asleep for thinking of them.

Then I get up and spy an unusual bird in my yard, and spend the next 2+ hours taking photos and looking up what it could be.

I first noticed it from a lot of bird chirping. It was on the ground while many birds were flying into and away from the little tree it was under. I couldn't figure out if they felt endangered by it and were trying to scare it away, or if they were likewise curious about it like me. In the meantime, I saw mockingbirds, brown thrashers, and cardinals all nearby taking interest in it.

My first thought was grouse! Looking up online, I thought maybe also a quail. I've never seen either of those in person that I can recall. But also the possibility of some kind of juvenile heirloom chicken, since I have or had a neighbor a few houses down from where I used to hear a rooster crowing.

I managed to go outside without scaring it off, and got more photos. It kept walking quickly back and forth along my fence. I began to feel sorry for it. It wants to go somewhere but can't get through the fence. If it is a juvenile, where are its parents? How did it get in my yard!???

Now I've determined it looks exactly like a female bobwhite quail, so it must be one. I also got a short recording of its call, also matching what I found online for a bobwhite quail song.

It also started thundering. So I likely won't be cleaning out my gutters today. But where will the quail go if it storms?

From my daily notes today:

That woodpecker is intermittently pecking on the sunroom windows again. It goes from one spot to another, not angrily pecking, just a peck peck here and a peck peck there. Here a peck, there a peck, everywhere a peck peck.

I plan to hang up some strips of what they call "bird scare tape" to see if that will deter the woodpecker. This pecking noise isn't very loud or bothersome (unlike the rapid banging on the other side of the house which sometimes wakes me up), but the pecking itself is damaging my window screens. Today I managed to take a video of the bird when it flew to a nearby tree.

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Last night in bed, I tried to remember names of stuffed animals I had as a child. It bothers me that I can't remember some of their names anymore. I may have written the names down long ago when I remembered them better, but I don't remember where.

The name "Buttercup" came to me as a possibility for the bunny with the wind-up lullabye music box. I don't think that's the right name though, as the rabbit was pink, not yellow. It doesn't feel right either.

Then I imagined Westley from The Princess Bride saying the following (I turned the light back on to write it down as it amused me):
"Oh Princess Buttercup, you're my cup of butter in the morning, my cup of butter in the evening; multiple cups of butter at night! Oh how I love your cups of butter more than a cup of tea!"

All this time, and I never knew the Princess Bride movie was based on an actual book. I thought the book part of it was just part of the movie! Have any of you read the book? If so, how does it compare to the movie?

Random thought:
It could be argued that humans aren't the pinnacle of evolution on earth, but rather the one branch of evolution here which so far has turned out very very badly.

(in terms of damaging the planet and wiping out other species, causing destruction, pain, and death, etc.)

Context of thought:
Bright yellow sun setting towards the far end of the street as I walk back from the mailbox,
a small airplane flying from that direction, catching my eye so that I follow it as it slowly curves towards the north,
a small flock of birds also flying by overheard, chirping, towards the north,
(me thinking of how carefree the birds seem).

Why the birds flew north, I don't know. Probably not going far in that direction.

Yesterday I found our little dog Serena in the back yard chewing on a bird. Not enough of it left to tell, but probably a fledgling.

While carrying the remainder on a shovel to the front yard for burial, I found a dead frog by the gate, its skin dried out. The dogs probably killed it too.

Per my notes, the last bird killed was actually 2 weeks ago, not a month as I had previously guessed. The squirrel was this Wednesday.

Me: She's turned into a murder machine.

Qiao, later: I have a new nickname for her: Villanelle.

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I will get a bell to put on her collar.

I'm also considering one of these bright-colored collar attachments, though I'm not sure it will help: https://www.birdsbesafe.com/

In the meantime, she's on restriction. She gets hooked up to the tie-out cable when the doggy door is open.

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Last week I cut down some of the saplings growing in the dry lakebed by the pier. Today I cut down a bunch more. They were turning into a thicket.

If I think about it, it seems like a useless endeavor. Unless the dam gets fixed and the lake becomes a lake again, they'll keep growing back. It seems even less likely now that the dam will get fixed anytime soon.

Three years ago when it was still a lake, there were a bunch of tall plants growing near our edge of it, growing high out of the water. When the lake level was lowered, I endeavored to pull a bunch of them out, thinking they would keep taking over otherwise. I suppose that ended up being useless, what with the lake being mostly gone now, and those plants as well as others still trying to take over.

If I let myself think about it, I feel bad for cutting down saplings, pulling out plants, killing things. But if I don't do it, the area will turn into a dense shaded wilderness.

If I don't let myself think about it, it is just another task to be done. Maybe that is what it is like for people who work in slaughterhouses.

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It's probably not safe what I was doing, traipsing through the undergrowth. It seems a likely place for poisonous snakes to live. I only saw a snake skin though, nothing more. And I startled a cat, black and white.

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This evening, Serena started barking at something from inside, so I hooked her up and opened the doggy door. A while later, Zorro started barking at something outside in her excited voice. I went to look. There was an opossum on the other side of the fence on the lake side, scared and unmoving.

I coaxed the dogs back inside and shut the door.

The day after we found the little gosling, I saw that it was still with those 2 adult geese in the lake area behind Q's house. The next day, I saw 2 adult geese in that area, also in the afternoon, but no little one. That made me worry, as I had read that Canada geese are very habitual, hanging out at the same places at the same times each day. But the next couple of days, I didn't see any geese in that area at all. I keep thinking about that little one, worrying about what happened to it. Thinking things like: maybe it hatched late and/or couldn't keep up with it's original family and got left behind by them, and maybe then it also ended up being left behind by the new foster parents I thought we'd found for it... the poor little thing...

On Monday, I saw the first batch of goslings by the ponds near my work.

Today, I saw a goose nesting in a landscaped terrace area behind our building at work; an area which is only accessible from the ground after going up about 20 stairs. If the goose has babies up there, how will they get down all those stairs? They'd have to be brave enough to jump down them all, one at a time. Or they might be stuck up there, if no one helps them down. Later it occurred to me that even adult geese don't go up and down stairs. They'd have to fly up & down.

But apparently goslings can survive large jumps:

Geese nesting on a rooftop : "Generally newly hatched goslings can fall about 2 storeys without hurting themselves, because they are so small and fluffy."

Baby Steps? : "Waterfowl have occasionally been known to nest in high places. Fortunately the babies weigh almost nothing so when they jump they float more than fall to the ground. "

So depending on which way the parent goose leaves, maybe the goslings would jump right off the top of the wall by the nest, skipping all the stairs.

But after watching a few videos like the below, I thing that goslings would have no trouble going down a bunch of stairs, though going up them might be more difficult:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwaHVtr72X8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIQCfwE1dEs

A little bird, soft-looking yellow and grey feathers, dead on the ground. Apparently having hit the glass windows of the building at work. Its friends and family must be sad.

Headless carcasses in body-tight white plastic suits. No one else in the grocery store seems to think there's anything wrong with that. Glumness, walking through the aisles.

Baby don't walk yet but she sure crawls fast.

These dogs need a bath.

There are skies I've never seen, in the Southern hemisphere. Stars I've never seen.

"You sound like your mother." Ooh, insulting two people with one stone.

Someone in the neighborhood has a rooster again. Today was the first time I heard it crowing in the morning/daytime. For the last few weeks, I'd only heard it very late at night. (It's not very loud and doesn't bother me.) I'd wondered if it was crowing in response to seeing me turn the bathroom light on, or at the train that passes by around 2am.

Why Do Roosters Crow?

it’s important for us to point out that roosters will crow at all times and in response to a range of seemingly innocuous stimuli, like the sound of a car or someone walking into their coop. ... Along with being used as a warning of sorts to let other roosters known the boundaries of its territory, the crow can be used to communicate with other birds and sometimes to celebrate getting lucky; roosters really aren’t picky when it comes to excuses for crowing.

That said, although roosters have been observed crowing at all times of day and in response to even the most mundane of stimuli, they will indeed typically crow just before or at the crack of dawn.

Before writing this, I was trying to remember what a rooster's call was called... calling? cawing? Crowing!

But wait. Roosters crow, but crows caw?

https://www.reddit.com/r/asklinguistics/comments/6bljeh/why_do_we_say_that_roosters_crow_and_that_crows/

Turkey vultures hanging out by the pond, with Canadian geese swimming in the background.
The quality of the video isn't good, I know. I had to use zoom to take this, because if I go too near to the vultures or if they even notice I'm watching them, that usually scares them away.



URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUDEbIo3o7Q

Yesterday after work, I drove to Congaree Park with my mom. From the status updates posted by the park, the peak firefly activity might have already been over. But even if so, I thought it would still be neat to be in a wilderness area after nightfall. Most other parks around here close at dusk. The forecast was for clear skies, so maybe there would also be a nice starry sky - here in town there is too much ambient light to see more than the brightest ones.

I looked up directions on how to drive there. I found that the Google Maps app has an option for downloading a zoomable map of a selected area. You can download maps of where you are planning to go using WiFi, and later on use them to navigate with GPS, without using any cellular data.

But my car also has a built-in navigator. So once I reached the outskirts of town, I turned it on and entered the address. I just wanted to be sure that I didn't miss the turn-off way down on Bluff Road. The expected route displayed on the screen, but once I started driving, it told me to turn right when I was certain that I should turn left. I stopped to verify on Google Maps that my memory was correct. Then I turned left and drove on. It started nagging "Turn left... recalculating", "Turn left ... recalculating", "Make a U-turn!" and so on and so on. I have no idea where it was trying to take me to. I wanted to turn it off, but neither my mom nor I could figure out how. Finally, after parking the car again and pressing a bunch of things on the screen, I turned it off.

The park's website had said that only flashlights with red filters or covers should be used, to avoid disturbing the fireflies. I happened to have a flashlight, plus a small BugLit flashlight, plus a headlamp, all with red LEDs. As my mom was coming too, I also brought 2 other flashlights, with red/pink cellophane covering the lights. But they weren't necessary. I only needed a flashlight on the way out. My mom only used the BugLit. The ones with the cellophane covers were still really way too bright anyway.

The parking lot was full already at the park, so I parked behind another car on the side of the road. It was already dusk. On the boardwalk, we walked past a lot of other people. We finally stopped at what seemed a good spot. (Beset by thoughts of "Maybe there are more fireflies further down. Or maybe there are fewer. Maybe that would only take us closer to that crying baby.") There were a lot of people noises. In the beginning, people were also constantly walking past behind us in both directions. Later on, much of that subsided and it was more peaceful. Surely there are places in the park where one could see fireflies too, without the crowds of people. But you'd need to be familiar with the park to know where to go.

There were a lot of fireflies, but not as many as I had hopefully envisioned. The peak activity must already be past. I didn't notice much synchronicity going on, although there were moments when a small group of them would flash at nearly the same time, and then go dark, and then do that again a few times. But there were also other fireflies around them doing their own thing, so it wasn't very obvious. The status posted by the park today said "Fireflies were again active last night (Friday, May 26). Visitors reported that separate groups of fireflies were synchronized (as opposed to all of them being synchronized together)." Maybe it was more obvious in other spots, than where we were standing.

When I see fireflies in my yard, the color of their flash is bright yellow. But the flash of the ones in the park was more white, like moonlight. (Maybe that was only because they were further away - the ones that were closer did have more color). But that white light made them look like twinkling stars in amongst the trees. Very magical. Twinkling moving stars. The kind of thing which might make you believe in fairies. In the moments when people were being quiet, you could hear the nighttime insect noises all around. There were occasional owl (I assume) calls. (Not hoot-hoot sounds. Though now checking YouTube for owl calls, it didn't sound like those, so maybe they weren't owls after all.)

We stayed after most other people had left. It was nicer then, without all the distractions, even though the twinkling fireflies seemed fainter by then, more misty and dreamlike. As we were on the way out, a few other people arrived. Perhaps they wanted to avoid the crowds too.

Other than the fireflies and the flashlights of people walking by, at ground-level it was quite dark. But looking up, you could see the sky a lighter blue between the dark outlines of trees. Even when we left, around 11pm, the sky still was that color. Not pitch black pierced by white stars, as I'd expect. Although the stars themselves were plentiful and beautiful. Does the night sky never really get black, even in the countryside? The moon was almost new, so the light wasn't from it. Maybe it was still ambient light from town; the park is only about half an hour away. Or do the stars always make the night sky seem a lighter color?

On the way out, I stopped at another small parking lot to get a better view of the sky. It was beautiful. I wasn't able to see the milky way (would it be overhead? I don't even know where to look). I think there was a pond nearby, but it was too dark to tell. There were some weird animal noises coming from the other side. I have no idea what it was. My mom guessed it might be a male deer. Maybe, based on this - the sound was sort of like that, though it's hard to remember now.