It seems that every day for weeks, the garden has been especially full of
robins. Every time I turn on a soaker hose, they pop out of the trees into
the yard. Even when I walk around with a hose, they follow me to see what
bugs & worms the moisture scares up. There might be other causes, but I
could swear my snail population has been extremely low this year compared
to past years, & I assume it's the doing of so many robins. The robins
increasingly ignore my being present, too; they used to dart away when
they saw me in their vicinity, but now all they seem to care about is the
sound of water running, & my gardening-presence doesn't weaken their
interest in hunting about.

A starling chick appeared under the huckleberries, almost fully adult but
not quite able to fly. No parents feeding it, but it would've been able to
feed itself. I watched it hopping about for two days. I made one failed
attempt to catch it just for the heck of it, but it knew to cross back &
forth under a fence to keep me on the wrong side of the fence from it.
Third morning it was gone. Cat might've got it. I hope it found out it
could fly though.

The merlin that sat on our birdfeeder last January has never been back. It
would've been sad to see it catching the birds, but kind of exciting too.
Nothing lately quite as exciting as a medium-sized hawk visiting, but
smaller surprises are always nice. Yesterday while holding a water hose, a
very tiny brown hummingbird came up to investigate the end of the hose in
my hand, then circled around me curiously. I stood as still as possible
not to scare it off, but turned my head a lot, & it didn't care, very tame
acting. Then it zipped up into a cherry tree & I wasn't wearing my glasses
so it disappeared. Penstemons are in full bloom all over the place so the
hummingbirds are about, but I only rarely get to be that close to one.

It's the increasing bird friendliness that amazes me presently. Many small
birds seem increasingly not to be scared off by my coming round a corner
or working in a yard they're pecking around in. When I'm working near
their feeding station, they keep an eye on me, but only rarely scatter to
the trees like they used to do immediately. One day this week three
teencytiny birds with a stripe through their eyes (nuthatches), hopped
down & down & down the limbs of a weeping beach tree until they were
inches from my face -- one came to within maybe eight inches of my nose,
it was such fun to look at the tiniest divisions of feathers, & peer right
into a bird's eye. I thought they might be hunting beech aphids, but I
couldn't spot any evidence of aphid-sugar. Maybe they were geting
spitbugs, which have been more numerous than usual this year. I got tired
of standing perfectly still so as not to scare them off, & when I went
back to gardening duties, the little birds remained unphased & continued
hopping about in the beech.

Birds are such a great aspect of gardening. Granny Artemis keeps track of
species that visit, & keeps opera glasses on the window sill to observe
them from indoors. I grabbed her observation book just now because I
couldn't remember the name "nuthatch" -- looking at the visitation
records, she lists the dates of visits by belted kingfisher, red-shafted
flicker, Williamson sapsucker, hairy woodpecker, ad infinitum. I lack her
ability to remember all their names except the most obvious, & the field
guide pictures don't ever seem to me to look quite like the birds do.

This season have had a couple of visits from goldfinches, the state bird,
unfortunately rare in our neighborhood so not often seen. They are NOT as
trusting as regular visitors & don't stay long where we could watch them.
But they're like spotting a canary in the garden.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/

A starling chick appeared under the huckleberries, almost fully adult but
not quite able to fly. No parents feeding it, but it would've been able to
feed itself. I watched it hopping about for two days. I made one failed
attempt to catch it just for the heck of it, but it knew to cross back &
forth under a fence to keep me on the wrong side of the fence from it.
Third morning it was gone. Cat might've got it. I hope it found out it
could fly though.

Robins and nuthatches are great to watch around the yard, but I hope
that cat got the starling. They are nasty, dirty, non-natives. They go
around killing the native birds in the area.

-David