Fifth Street Fauna

 

 

I have decided to catch up on seventeen years of back reading and that the front porch is the perfect place for it.  There is no television out here so no newscast or press briefing about the exquisite manner in which the COVID 19 coronavirus kills you or the myriad ways in which you catch it or worse yet the daily blather from the White House.

The rest of Sonoma has apparently decided to employ our street for outdoor exercise, and why not?  As the walkers and joggers and bikers plod or cruise along they get to watch some exciting stuff.  Jean’s sheep snoozing in their pasture.  Sarah’s miniature horse discussing world affairs with the goat.  Bobby’s heifers chewing cud.  California golden poppies spangling the ditches.  The indigenous oak trees stirring from their winter slumbers.  Bud break in the vineyard.  Big fun.  Slow motion fun, I’ll grant you, but that seems to be the point.  Breathe.  Watch.  Listen.  Only one of the planet’s gozillion species experiences media mania and madness just now.  For everything else, life goes on.

For instance, birds.

The mockingbird shows off his dance steps and singing skills in the oak tree, outperforming the rest of the birds in their own song books while flitting and strutting and fluttering around on the branches.  I suppose a female mockingbird crouches shyly in the hedge, or someplace, otherwise why all the fuss?  Any chance he is up there trying to entertain me?  More likely he’s playing to the chair.

The woodpecker couple conducts their courtship in close proximity, circling around the branches and the telephone pole never more than a yard apart.  No love song that I can hear but the twitchy, fluttery minuet is as horny as teenagers at the drive in.  Shy.  Animated.  Amazed.  And that scarlet cap on his head . . . jeez, how could she resist that?

The geese neck with their necks and honk.

Fifty yards south of our mailbox a giant eucalyptus tree looms over the street.  A century ago citrus growers imported them from Australia to serve as wind breaks in the orange groves.  Great idea, guys.  Yes, they grew fast and they grew gigantic and they did exactly what you wanted them to do.  They also proliferated throughout California like Brobdingnagian weeds to shed their bark and their Chrysler-sized limbs on motor vehicles and pedestrians and roofs alike.  But.  Hawks like to build their nests in eucalyptus trees . . . their redeeming virtue.  

For the better part of a decade a pair of red-shouldered hawks has nested in the tree down the street.  Their nest looks very much like my burn pile before its annual ignition — a big thatch of twigs and branches and stuff up there where the limbs come together, but they seem to like it because they keep coming back to wheel and scream and dance in our springtime sky.  When I’m out pruning or weeding I hear their wild cries and lift my eyes to watch them pirouette and court in three dimensions.  I truly hope their bird brains know how lucky they are to be able to spread their beautiful wings and . . . fly.  Man.  If only.

Last week Mr. and Mrs. Shoulders got down to business.  They can’t actually neck while flying circles in the ether, but boy can they flirt.  After some minutes of randy acrobatics, including upside-down showoff flying, she dove into the mess they regard as their boudoir.  He then hurtled up into the ionosphere, tucked his wings to stoop down like a bolt from heaven, circled the eucalyptus three times at the speed of sound, and dove right in there after her.  Eminent raptorologists call this combination of aerial maneuvers the Oboy-I’m-about-to-get-lucky behavior.  

In a few weeks we’ll un-case the binoculars to start looking for chicks.