For the Birds...

Anyone who is friends with me on Facebook knows that I’m—well, a bit of a bird nut.

How bird-nutty am I? I’ve got multiple bird-feeders strung up around my house, have a small pair of binoculars on my writing desk in the spring and fall to keep an eye on what migrating feathery friend might be hanging out in the crab-apple tree by my office window, and of course, maintain a list of birds we’ve seen anywhere around the house. Favorite visitors? Eastern bluebirds—just saw one yesterday on one of the suet feeders—cedar waxwings, flocks of wild turkeys, a tiny sharp-shinned hawk that we often see in winter watching the bird-feeders hopefully (they, ahem, like to eat smaller birds), and of course, the feisty ruby-throated hummingbirds that arrive as soon as my bleeding-hearts start to bloom. When I’m outside I talk to the chickadees; I do a good chickadee whistle, and can always bring at least one over to investigate.

It’s not just me; I’ve managed to infect my entire family with my rampant aviphilia. So I was hardly surprised when my husband announced a few weeks back, “I’m going to build an owl house.”

“That’s nice, dear,” I said.

So, we think owls are awesome. They’re fascinating creatures; their feathers have evolved so that they can fly pretty much silently (kind of important when you’re a night-time predator), and they can turn their heads through 270°—that’s three-quarters of a circle (a necessity, because they can’t move their eyes to track moving objects.) We listen at night for owls in the woods around our house (the record is three different owl species calling in one evening.) I’m personally predisposed to like them because they’re the emblem of my college (Athena and her owls, of course.) My husband is predisposed to like them because they eat squirrels and chipmunks—with which we are, unfortunately, well-supplied (I’ve asked the sharp-shinned hawk to step up and polish off a few chipmunks, but he hasn't obliged.)

The owl call we hear most often around these parts is that of the barred owl, so DH did some research on the type of nesting boxes that barred owls like, and came up with a hybrid design from a couple of different websites. He built it out of exterior grade plywood (it's a little over two feet high) stained to keep it from rotting, roofed it with leftover shingles, and installed a hinged bottom to make cleaning it out easier between tenants. Then he filled the bottom with wood shavings and some hay, and hung it in a tree out in the woods behind our house last weekend, about 12 feet up.

I'm not expecting guests quite yet; barred owls usually start nesting in March, but male barred owls are already scouting the woods, looking for likely nesting sites which they will claim and try to entice a lady barred owl to move in to. We'll be watching, though; evidently, the males decorate the areas around their nests with the corpses of prey to show females that they’re good daddy material, because nothing says “I love you” like a dead squirrel or two.

We’ll keep you posted! I made DH promise that if we get owls to nest in it this year, he will put in a webcam in next year, because owls tend to come back to the same nesting place year after year. How cool would that be?

Sir Saffron Goes A-wooing: Happy at Last

When we left our handsome friend Sir Saffron back in March, he was hoping to find a new companion to lighten his existence (insofar as a spoiled rotten bunny’s existence needs lightening!) He met with some very handsome young ladies, as we saw in part one; though each of them was charming, none was quite right. It was time to go forth and meet some more damsels.

So Sir Saffron decided to hold an afternoon reception and invite all the fairest young bunny maidens to attend…well, really, foster bunny mom Terry from the House Rabbit Network actually brought three young ladies to meet Saffron at our house. With two of them, it was clear that a relationship would not work. But with the third…

Well, it was quite a different story. Sir Saffron and Miss Beans were clearly interested from the start. Picture Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle eyeing each other across the Meryton Assembly Rooms in Pride and Prejudice and you’ll get the idea. There was a great deal of sniffing and a lot of Saffron following the lovely girl bunny with amazing ears (she can let them flop down, or hold them almost upright) around the room as she explored…and then it started: the binkying. For those of you who do not speak Rabbit, I’ll explain: when a rabbit is very happy, it dances, leaps vertically up and does mid-air twists, shakes its head, and otherwise gambols about. This is called binkying…and when both Saffron and Beans started doing little jetés as they lolloped about the room, we knew this was it.

Miss Beans, who now goes by the name Beatrice (though we can’t help sometimes calling her the Beanie Baby!) moved in a few days later. According to her foster mom she was very, very grumpy during the interval, and Saffron himself seemed a little off. When we brought her in and set her in the temporary pen in the living room that she would stay in till she got used to the house (and until we were sure she and Saffron would be friends), she sniffed about nervously at first…until Saffron came into the room. For the next hour and a half he ran in circles around her pen, binkying…and when we let her out to interact with him, this happened: That's Beatrice presenting to Saffron...basically saying, "Take me, I'm yours!" And that's Saffron grooming the top of her head, basically saying, "Oh! Okay."

In a couple of days, we had this: So I think it's safe to say that for this little story, there is a very definite ending: and they lived happily (and hoppily) ever after.

Sir Saffron Goes A-wooing

I’m about to embark on another non-19th century, non-historical, personal post…but I can’t resist putting a historical spin on it, just for fun.

Sir Saffron Bunny Doyle, a beautiful French lop, is resident lagomorph in the Doyle household. Poor Sir Saffron lost his sister and dear companion, Miss Asuka Bunny Doyle, last year to a sudden infection and has been alone ever since, with no one to snuggle or nibble his parsley with. (That's Asuka giving Saffron nuzzles above.) And so the human members of the Doyle household thought that it might be time to find Sir Saffron a new companion.

It started out with a visit to the House Rabbit Network, a New England foster-home based shelter for rabbits. Might they have a young lady bunny looking for her happily-ever-after in the form of a handsome lop-eared boy and a bunny-crazy family? Well, it seems there just might be…

The first young lady we met was Carlotta, a charming, buxom miss…Then there was the lovely Dallas, definitely Miss Personality...And then there were Powder and Cloud, a pair of adorable fluffy white spinsters… What to do? Well, obviously, introduce our diffident young bachelor to these eligible ladies. Since Almack’s is not yet open for the season, we opted for meetings at the home of the HRN’s president, who is a noted bunny matchmaker. And the results?

Alas, Miss Dallas was a complete non-starter, as sparks flew between her and Sir Saffron…and not of the romance novel, destined-to-be-together kind. Miss Carlotta definitely seemed interested in him, though his interest was less clear. By the time we came to introducing Misses Powder and Cloud, poor Sir Saffron was not in the best of moods…but that didn’t stop these misses from taking a very marked interest in him, as you can see!

The results? Inconclusive…but these affairs of the heart take time. Another meeting is definitely indicated, perhaps over tea and carrot cake, and then we shall see if Sir Saffron might find a new companion to snuggle with. Or maybe two. Stay tuned...

Off Topic: Field Trip!

I'm taking a break this Tuesday from our usual historical fare because I've got something wicked neat to show you...so if you don't mind...

The weekend before this past one the Doyle family took a road trip to western New York to visit Doyle Child #1 at his college on lovely Seneca Lake, one of the famed Finger Lakes. In addition to our usual activities when we're out there, like visiting wineries like Hermann J. Weimer and Red Tail Ridge--it's fascinating to see the hillsides covered with grapevines and have a chance to chat with the chief winemaker while he's sorting late-harvest riesling grapes for a special dessert wine...and buying the world’s best cider and juices at Red Jacket Orchard--we paid a visit to the town at the very bottom (southern) end of the lake, Watkins Glen, to visit the amazing Watkins Glen State Park.

Have I ever mentioned that we’re geology buffs? Well, Watkins Glen State Park was sheer heaven…but you don’t have to be interested in rocks to appreciate what a beautiful place it is!

So here's the background story. A pretty huge part of New York state was, for millions of years in the Paleozoic Era, at the bottom of the ocean. Which means that the rock that we see there now is made up of former ocean bottom sediment, layers of siltstone and shale and other sedimentary rocks hundreds of feet thick and hundreds of millions of years old. If you've ever driven down Interstate 90/the New York Throughway, you've seen it by the sides of the road and in the deep road cuts--it's pretty interesting rock!

Seneca and the other Finger Lakes of New York are more recent in origin--they were left behind after the retreat of the last glacier about ten thousand years ago. Now what does water generally do? Run downhill, of course. For the last ten thousand years, Glen Creek has been flowing downhill toward Seneca Lake, and in the process, it's worn down through all those ancient layers of shale and siltstone, to create the amazing gorge of Watkins Glen.

Even the parking lot is cool--the 200 ft. cliffs here gave us a hint of what was to come: And almost immediately, you meet the first waterfall. There are 19 of them all together: There were stairs...lots of stairs. But that was neat, because it meant that sometimes you were up high near the top of the gorge, and at others, down at water level, giving you both perspectives.

Walking behind waterfalls...very cool! Doyle Child #2 thought so, anyway:Eddies in the creek have carved circular potholes in the riverbed. That's looking straight down about 70 feet up on a bridge crossing the gorge: And it just gets cooler...
And cooler:
And cooler: And cooler still (that's another waterfall, Rainbow Falls, that you can walk behind--it flows right off the top of the gorge): We loved it and will certainly be going back in the spring--if you ever get a chance to visit, I highly recommend it! Now, how could I work this place into a story some day...?