animals in your life

[Tank]

Just read this no FaceBook. Fact or fiction?

"Do you know that...?  - Old bees don't return to the hive in the evening? They spnd the night on flowers, and if they have the chance to see another sunrise, they resume their activity by bringing pollen or nectar to the colony. They do this sensing that the end is near. No bee waits to die in the hive so as not to burden the others.

its true that bees sometimes end up spending the night out. ive seen bees wet down by fungicide rigs unable to fly back out of the flowers when they sprayed during the day. the grower was dismayed when i showed him and explained that daylight spraying meant no pollination that day. he had a limited number of rigs and couldnt spray everything at night. bees fly back and forth until their wings wear out, and there will always be a last flight. perhaps somebody found an old bee that couldnt make it back, and generated the story.

but the "sensing when theyre old," and "not to be a burden on the hive" stuff is expecting a lot of philosphy from a bug with a brain the size of a pinhead.

That's what I suspected but I thought I had better check before commenting. Thanks.

[billy rubin]

the season is turning. most of the insectivorous birds have moved south. theres still a cacaphony of crickets at night if the temperature is high enough. last night it was about 45, and when i got up at 0500 in the dark they were silent.

i look up at the planets in the morning, too, to check on their motion. mars is currently visible just east of castor and pollux, slowly moving along the ecliptic. a few months ago it was superimposed over jupiter every morning, but they have rapidly separated and jupiter is now much farther west, all by itself.

this morning there were song sparrows, red wing blackbirds, and i disturbed a northern mocking bird too.

i couldnt figure the mocking bird out when i first heard it. its late for them to be moving south, and i thought i was listening to a flock of starlings. but it was a mockingbird, one from so far north that i didnt recognize any of the songs it was mimicing. the hummingbirds are two weeks gone. no kingbirds or flycathcers, and i havent see a goldfinch for a week now.

but the coyotes sing every night and morning, and the vultures flock every day.

[Tank]

I see Squirrels, Blue Tits, Great Tits, Goldfinches, Sparrows, Blackbirds and Robins.

[Icarus]

Tank you knew very well that someone was going to make some cute remarks about birds with tits.

[Tank]

Of course 

[billy rubin]

spring

this morning i went out and listened. there were redwing black birds, cardinals, crows, song sparrows, great tailed grackles, some sort of woodpecker, in the distance a turkey and close by i could hear a robin. also a carolina wren i think and some shit bird ive been trying to identify for years and have never seen. 

hadnt seen any robins yet this year but i could hear them. then saw a sparrow hawk on the way back from town as well as two robins.

ravens are back too after being extinct around here for many years. theyre fussing with the turkey vultures right now over a dead goat i dragged out into the hayfield for them.

no serious insectivores yet.

[Tank]

Loveley

[billy rubin]

and peepers. three days ago, still not a full chorus.



these things are small, and can sit comfortably on a half crown, if anybody remembers those.

[billy rubin]

[Dark Lightning]

Cool! I lived in irrigated desert as a kid in the '50s and '60s. There was a slough at the end of a drainage ditch where storm drain water collected. Sewers drained elsewhere, into their own system. Before that, we had our own septic systems. Anyway, that slough was wet year-round, and thousands of frogs were gotten out of there. Too far from my house. We had crickets, thousands of crickets (not all in our yard, though). I'm guessing that the water was from runoff from watering lawns.

[billy rubin]

you get spadefoots out there too. were you in here?




^^^this is an old map. theyve lost a lot of habitata since then

[Dark Lightning]

Probably. I lived in rural Los Angeles County; a place called Saugus, but not the "downtown" part. That was less than a block long. 

[billy rubin]

cool animals. they stay underground where its moist until they hear thunder. then they come out, screw like crazy, and disappear again.

[billy rubin]

my wife takes the aged dog out for a walk at 0530,and normally refills the food dish on the porch.

today she neglected to fill the food dish, and the possum was forced to show itself on the kitchen porch at noon

spring marches on

[billy rubin]

marmot!



the bugger is death on your garden. basically a fat squirrel. lots of different kinds in the country, but this one is also called a woodchuck

wait, that was the equinox. heres the marmot:




about the size of a very fat cat.