Nesting season
People on the bird watching email list I lurk on have been saying nesting activity is slow to start up. I enjoy watching nature in general but don’t have an avid enough interest in anything to learn, oh say, habits or Latin species names, etc.
During my 12-13 years down at Cubelandia, I was pretty familiar with the annual cycle of the Canada Goose although I was always a bit surprised (pleasantly) when the first goslings of the season appeared. Oh, it’s THAT time of year. We got sent home to telecommute before that started last year and of course we are not there this year and never going back. The closest I get to geese nowadays is when they honk their way across the sky during my 0-skunk-30.
Fortunately the yard at TeleCubelandia is popular with quite a few bird species, some I know and others are just Little Brown Birds. Wrens or sparrows or something. The GG calls them junk birds and has made the birdhouse openings too small for them.
Speculation on the birder list is that nesting activity is slow this year because of drought. Although I have noticed we aren’t getting a lot of precipitation, it doesn’t really look much like drought around here. That’s because at this time of year, there is NEVER a whole lot of lush greenery in the Great Lake State. Pretty darn gray and only a few things are beginning to bud. I have a few daffs and NO CROCUS! (note to self to plant some bulbs next fall!). Forsythia. One of our scrappy little flowering bushes has pink buds on it today. It’ll be a while before the oaks and things in “our” woods grow leaves.
The robins are probably the most fun. Mooma (or maybe daddy) Robin has been inspecting the usual locations and seems to be settling on the drain pipe. As of today, the GG saw her putting grass on it. Last year we had THREE robin families so maybe others will show up on our other popular locations. But here we go! Need rain!
Looooong day. Reconnected with a MacMu cousin I haven’t seen in a while. No particular reason for the lack of communication, just we’re both busy but I guessed correctly that he may not have heard our family’s bad news. I had bad [old] phone contact info for him but he was easy to find on the internet via his law firm. Emailed him and he almost immediately replied, “What’s your phone number?” A great convo ensued along with updated contact info. And then a DEEEEEP dive into a rabbit hole of some old-skool javascript that my old boss the LSCHP wrote back in the Jurassic Age and some new things on my plate or more like some old things on my plate that dropped off my radar screen🐽
And then, PS, a facetime convo with a couple other MacMu cousins, these on the west coast. 🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡