Skip to main content

Robins In Transit

    Hey, everyone. It is Sunday morning in the States. It is 60 degrees and overcast, with rain yesterday and last night plus the threat of more to come. The robins don't seem to care. There are dozens of them in some of my trees, flitting through the bushes and... just now flying headlong into my study's window. Ha, ha. I have seen birds literally break their necks like that. It brings to mind the bizarre Hitchcock movie called The Birds, in which our fine feathered friends get tired of human-related problems and start attacking people.
     Nothing like that with these birds. They are mild and well-behaved, other than their odd toilet habits. This morning being so unseasonably warm, I carried my coffee to the front porch and watched ...life happening.
    I have several Bradford Pears in the front yard. They are the trees that have become popular for their white blooms in the spring. Their pears stay tiny and unsuitable for human consumption, but birds think they are exquisite. I suppose that these robins may be traveling south for the winter, though I am no expert on the migratory habits of birds. They are just stopping for a fruit breakfast at the green retreat. (By the way, you'll notice the 'volunteers' in the picture above. The Bradfords have roots that like to run atop the ground. Sometimes these roots will sprout new trees that grow right into the past foliage.)
   Carley and I fed birds for years. I forget all the reasons we quit doing so. They tend to crap in unwonted places, for one thing. Then cats seemed to see the bird feeder as a prime hunting ground, which made me feel that I was contributing to their trap. Accessory to cat violence, or something.
     Talking about the Bradfords, these trees keep their leaves so late in the winter that they have become a favorite of mine. Here it is in mid November and they still offer a nice burgundy leaf color. They are full and pretty and make a good screening foliage. It will probably be sometime in December before all their leaves are gone. Reminds me of an old song by the Mamas and the Papas. All the leaves are gone, and the sky is grey...
     I wonder if the robins didn't stop as much for the scenery as well as just the food? I don't have a good feel for an animal's appreciation of beauty. I would like to think that they enjoy nature since they are such a charming part of it all. Except for the poop thing. Although that is just nature as well.
    It's funny. As I sit a while and just watch, the birds get ever closer to my chair. I am sitting here in my pajama bottoms and a tee-shirt, barefoot, enjoying a hot, tasty cup of coffee. They start to think, "Hey, that guy is okay, after all. We can continue to eat and preen and show off our tiny, dull-orange bellies. Then we can run a few hurried steps on the ground. Then pose, then run again. Because that is what we do, at the author's green retreat."

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Game Review: NFS, Hot Pursuit

    This game was one which I refused to download for a while, even though it was on sale for 99 cents. I thought that it looked boring and narrow. Boy, was I wrong! This game totally kicks butt. It is one of those rare games that will actually give you an adrenaline rush. It is that intense. The developers, EA Games, have recently updated the app to include two main avenues of play. You can either be the cops or the racers who are trying to evade the cops. As a racer you have to deal with cops trying to hit you and make you crash, cops buzzing you with helicopters, oncoming traffic, tack strips spread across the road and roadblocks. In the cop mode you are a cop and you are trying to stop a reckless racer by any means, fair or foul. As a racer you can use nitrous oxide for increased speed, overdrive capability and oil slicks. You also can jam the cops communication with a jamming unit. Like almost all games these days, it gets harder as you go along. I prefer my games to...
Post a Comment
Read more

Four Free Games

     Hey, everyone. If free games makes the start of a new week a little better, we're in luck. Check these out on your friendly, neighborhood app store. 1) Cowboys vs. Aliens vs. Ninjas- This is a dual stick shooter, much like Mini-Gore . You are an old-west cowboy with a vast array of weapons (earned gradually). You have to move and shoot, avoiding death, as you battle Ninjas and aliens. Some aliens are quite large. Some enemies are big Sumo Wrestlers. There are sword-wielding ninjas and these aliens that yield a mini-nuclear explosion when killed. When your enemies die they leave behind little stacks of money, or skulls. You collect these items because of a strange hobby of trophy grabbing for your macabre collection. Just kidding, the items can be spent or used as the game progresses. This is a good game and I played it for a while last night. 2) The Heist - A puzzle game with a twist. As you try to open a bank vault, you must face a series of different puz...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bottle On The Doorknob

      Hey, everyone. I took a day of vacation today and really enjoyed it. We went out and bought some flowers. Flowers don't do well up here as a rule so we buy some and have a couple of big pots of assorted flowers on the deck for the summer. This year we are going to set the pots out in the yard a bit. The reason for this is the moisture and dirt in the pots seems to attract ants, scorpions and perhaps gnats. Bloody drag, what?     This weekend there seemed to be a bad odor in the house in the area of the master bedroom and the master bath. We could not isolate what the problem was. We did a number of things, including pouring vinegar and baking soda down the drains, which boils them out in rather spectacular fashion. Put a handful small amount of baking soda down them first, then pour vinegar down them. Very cool.     We finally deduced that a mouse had crawled up between the floor and sub-floor underneath the jacuzzi, after ...
Post a Comment
Read more