Life Goes On (until it doesn't)

The magic is gone, the joy is gone, but some birds are still here.   This morning there was a black-chinned hummingbird sticking its darning needle-like bill into the ponciana blooms.

 Could have taken a pic if I hadn't used my D3100 in the dark on other settings that I could not change in time.   I use a 300mm Nikkor lens from the 1970s coupled with a 1.5X teleconverter on my late model digital camera.   This means all settings are manual including focus, and I have to guess at exposure.   Example, f/8 @ 1/640 @ ASA 1600.

In the last week or so I saw:

After hearing a strong-voiced call from the front yard I opened the door to find a cardinal, male, perched on a branch of the butterfly bush.   Quite gray on the back so that I thought at first it might be a female.   But there was a distinct though small black patch around and below the beak.   May have seen ths one before at the feeders in the back yard, but this was not the cardinal that repeatedly visited starting with the late December snow.

A little gray bird with no markings, smaller than a house sparrow, was high in a bush singing as I was in the alley.  Never heard the like.   Chirping, musical notes, churring, chirping.   No idea what it was.   I was under 15 feet away but my glasses were dirty and my eyes less than at their best.  Pretty sure there were no markings other than darker gray above, lighter gray below.

A female pyrrhuloxia dropped by very briefly at an empty feeder a couple of days after the other one was killed.    Did not see her or any pyrrhuloxiaa again.  

I'm going to rig up a bird bath from a plastic trash can lid on top of a plastic drum.      For years I've been furnishing water to birds, cats, stray dogs, whatever, in a gallon pan placed well away from cover in short clipped grass.   Safer that way, so birds can see a cat stalking them.  

gone

The magic is gone.   For four months my days were brightened by a female pyrrhuloxia that would beg for food outside and whose tiny chirp from unseen places made the days bearable.   Yesterday I found a pile of reddish feathers in the grass.  

I think I know the perpetrator, a black cat with white feet that showed up several weeks ago.   Haven't decided what I'm going to do.   There are other cats, semi-feral, that have hung around for upwards of 10 years, that are better fed and being white are more visible;  I don't think they were responsible.  

Still put feed out today but now it is an empty gesture like throwing bread crumbs out at an indifferent universe.    I must learn to embrce the indifference.

Update

Rich florid song from the top of a utility pole this morning and it wasn't a mockingbird. It was a curvebill thrasher. Hadn't seen them lately, but there it was. 

Two houses away there was some kind of medium size bird with red on it high in a tree. Went to get binoculars and found it gone. Possible robin. Did see a robin last week on Ave. Q.

Monday at 7:30 pm I saw a flock of those smallish black birds over University Ave at Broadway heading low to the Tech campus. They DO go east in the morning and west in the evening. Looked like they might be headed to roost in the TTU trees, as low as they were. This morning at 7 I was in the kitchen doors and windows closed and heard a ruckus outside. It was those birds flying over, headed east.

The female pyrrhuloxia is quite demanding about seed, flying over near me whereever I am and making her presence known.   I am not trying to make her a pet, but she is sometimes within 2 feet of my hand when I put the seed in the feeder.

The dove population is way down from the 25-30 birds that came around late summer and fall. Now there are fewer than 10 and rarely more than 5 at a time. about half white-wing doves.

Mysterious Sunrise Bird Flights

Observed -- or heard -- more of these strange flocks or flights in the days since my last post. Here's what I know:

1. Did not see them until March of this year.

2. The flocks or flights may be low at treetop level but are usually high, so high that the birds will be heard but not readily seen. This morning I was out at sunrise and twice heard but didn't see them.

3. They have been observed above my place flying pretty much due east. Never saw any flying back west at the end of the day or at any other time.   Could this be part of a vast migration?   I've been assuming the birds were resident.

4. The time is right before the sun comes up or very shortly after.

5. While the usual flight is a wave of birds extending north-south, last week I saw a north to south roiling wave heading east and then 10 minutes later, a roiling wave west to east in the eastward direction of flight.

6. The birds are small, dark and loud. Their individual flight is erratic and darting within the wave, and this causes that roiling appearance. They are spaced out some but are a definite flock or wave. Sounds like swallows, huh. Could they be Purple Martins? I didn't know we had Purple Martins at Lubbock.