Saturday, July 26, 2008

Quiet Pools and Lizards


It's been an embarrassingly long time since we've posted, yours truly had social and work obligations to attend to for the last two weekends and The Dinosaur was at Dryad Ranch alone. Although pictures were taken and activities were undertaken, alas, no posting.

Today we took our usual walk to the river, up around the Northwest Territory and thence to the Upper Spring. Our picnic lunch took place under our favorite Oregon Ash tree above a small pool of the Chowchilla, a tree the Dinosaur believes has familial ties to the bodhi tree, although neither one of us claims more than semi-enlightenment at best.

At the Upper Spring, when not meditating, er snoozing, we were rewarded by sightings of nuthatches, bushtits and this lovely couple: an oak titmouse and a sun-lazy lizard.

We walked to the tree that houses the Cooper's Hawk nest but it appears the hawks themselves have moved on. They were there two weeks ago but not since. However, the area around the nest tree is nicely coated with with a circle of splatterings that serve as a reminder of their presence. Now that we know that area is being used by these hawks, we will certainly remember to go back next year to see if the nest is reused.

Dino did some tidying up last week, removing some nasty mud wasp nests from behind the cushions of our favorite Adirondack chairs on the front porch and did a manly-man job of (how shall we say nicely) removing the threat of an inordinate number of black widows that had taken up residence in the garage. Praying Horse was extremely pleased that said chairs also received a nice coating of wood stain.

The Saurus also cleaned out the house finch nest in this lantern. We believe they raised two broods in it this year, although we are still stumped as to how they actually managed to get inside. There were actually three other nests, two under the front porch eaves and the other on a big oak tree not far away.
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