this kind of bird flies backward

I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight

Greetings from here, where it's gone full October, abruptly as always. Tis the season of wearing socks again and making soup and remembering that corduroy pants are a thing and handing out blankets to visitors and closing the storm windows. I was in North Carolina for two weeks, frequently sweating, and then I was in Maine, sporting fingerless gloves for this brief fingerless glove season. We had birthdays, an anniversary, a fun visit from Stella! 

I've interrupted my regularly scheduled silence to bring a Nature Red in Tooth and Claw (and Talon) report, live from my back yard (of course). This morning we were heading out on a dog walk, pausing to admire all the fall cleanup work we'd accomplished over the weekend,* when a big brown hawk with a blue jay in its talons flew so low across the yard that it nearly hit Mark in the head. As we both looked up and saw what was transpiring, the jay extricated itself and flapped away, jeering loudly. The hawk pursued, screaming, but was unsuccessful as far as we could see. WHAT A THRILL. Also, I felt extremely guilty, like I'd set the blue jay up for the attack by training it to come over and eat peanuts every morning. Later, the blue jays were all back on the bird feeder, blithely helping themselves to peanuts.

I also had an exciting bird interaction yesterday: I saw a crow on a utility pole near the park and did my crow whistle™. The crow followed me down the street, block after block, moving from pole to pole as I whistled periodically, the Corvid Pied Piper. It followed me all the way home (1/2 mile??), across the intersection, up the driveway and into the back yard. I got a handful of peanuts from my stash** and threw them into the yard, and the crow noisily enjoyed them.*** He/she/they must have remembered me from previous years (the crows have been fickle for at least a year, maybe more). I hope this one will come back, and that my garden hasn't gotten a bad reputation in bird circles as a hunting ground for hungry hawks.

*I finally divided an enormous bunch of irises that have needed dividing for at least ten years; planted three big ferns, shared from a friend's yard; weeded behind the shed. And Mark cleaned moss off the sunroom roof and washed the dirty old vinyl siding!

**Ask me about my peanut budget.

***Like this: crow perches on fence, caws loudly about 30 times, swoops to ground, caws loudly 20 times, picks up peanut, picks up second peanut, attempts to fit third peanut in beak but drops all peanuts, caws 10 times, starts process again. Eventually, the crow flies off with three or four peanuts crammed in its beak, then comes back to do the whole thing all over again. When a crow is strutting around your lawn, it looks like it's wearing little black pantaloons. 

Rabbit rabbit

Summer? My memory flutters — had I — was there a summer?

 

the silence of a falling star lights up a purple sky

A couple of weekends ago M and I stayed with friends in Blue Hill, and it was such an idyllic day-and-a-half that it's been fueling our longstanding folie à deux about moving up there. Zillow is my most pernicious online habit. We have proed and conned it many times, and there are far more pros to staying where we are (walkability, closer to everyone we love, etc etc etc). But I do adore that peninsula with all my heart!

Down under the Deer Isle Bridge

I swam here in the clear, cold water, looking up at that pretty green suspension bridge from below. It was supposedly "where the teens hang out," but there was nary a scrap of trash to be seen, and only one demure graffiti scrawl. The next day Anna showed us another deserted beach, and I went for a second crisp, salty swim.

Inside the barn at Tinder Hearth

M and I went here for breakfast (to go, because they don't allow dogs, their only flaw); we took our breakfast sandwich, cinnamon roll, coffee, and Clover to Caterpillar Hill, our favorite scenic lookout over blueberry fields and forests down to the reach and the bay, dotted with islands, and the Camden hills in the distance. Later, we went back to Tinder Hearth with Matt and Anna for pizza night, which was almost a mystical experience. Pizza: sublime. Setting: huge vegetable and flower garden illuminated by a crackling fire pit and trailing fairy lights, picnic tables with candles flickering in the dusk. Absolutely perfect produce in the beds, artichokes exploding in purple blossoms, lettuces like illustrations in a glossy cookbook. Towering yellow oxeye sunflowers, marigolds everywhere. "Why don't the deer eat the vegetables?" we asked one server, who smiled and shrugged. An enchanted place. Oh, and I forgot to mention the sundae we shared at the end, with soft serve and chai caramel and local plums and cinnamon whipped cream.

And then walking to the car afterward I looked up at the sky — moonless — and saw more stars than I've seen in years. The Milky Way was so obvious (like it was saying "I've been right here this whole time!"), the sky was just thick with stars, there was so much depth to it. It's like when you can see enough of the horizon over the ocean that you imagine you can see a hint  of the earth's curve. I could just feel that we were standing on a planet, in a universe. Stunning night sky, I counted two satellites and one shooting star. And I kind of yearned to live somewhere with so much sky, so much silence, and so many places where you can just pull your car over and jump in the ocean. 

What a prize you are. What a lucky sack of stars.

On September first, both backyard rabbits appeared in honor of rabbit rabbit day. I wish I could accurately describe how wacky these two are when they're together. Ninety percent of the time it's just one or the other, soberly going about their rabbit business of ingesting as many greens as possible. This time, the smaller one was zooming in circles like a hyper puppy, and both of them were doing superfluous hops, and little kicks in the air. They also took turns jumping on a tree stump and just sitting up there, watching the other one be goofy.

May I highly recommend the Wikipedia page STEW.

Do you know about booyah? Burgoo? CROW STEW??

I would also like to recommend Trader Joe's Baladi Egyptian Sourdough Pocket Bread, which is so much more delicious than pita! One of my favorite lunches currently is leftover salad inside one of these, along with whatever else I have on hand, like a slice of farmer's market tomato or avocado or cheese etc etc. And a dollop of mayo if warranted.

Fun fact: my high school French teacher drove a Le Car. I want to add that she definitely also wrote with a Le Pen, but I would be lying. 

The latest from our robot overlords.

I may have shared that one before, but if so it's a good reminder that this response cost approximately one bottle of water. 

Rabbit rabbit

Oh the days dwindle down to a precious few

 

You want to run — I'll run with you

Be cunning, and full of tricks

First a note to any remaining loyal reader(s): it was brought to my attention that you can make a comment here, but then it seems to vanish into the ether. "Do you moderate comments?" my brother Adam asked me, after leaving one on my most recent post. "Um," I thought to myself. And then I checked and yes, I do, although I seem to have neglected my moderating duties for the last...eight years? Oh readers and former readers who are not reading this: I'm so sorry, I wasn't ignoring you, I was just blissfully blogging into the dark. If you leave me a comment now, in 2026, I will (theoretically) see it!

News of the yard: we've expanded from our resident one butterfly, one bunny, and one hummingbird. Now there are two bunnies, occasionally adjacent to each other, kind of playful, hopping in concert, big and little, the big one seeming subtly irritated with the small one. When it's business as usual, they just inhale clover and dandelion, packing it away for the colder months, little eating machines with shiny black eyes and twitchy soft ears. Clover occasionally has a staring contest with one of them, but she doesn't chase them.*

A dream in which I worked at Whole Foods and was answering a customer's question about when we would be getting a fancy new locally made jam. I told her there would be an event that very evening, and then they would start rolling it out. And then I said, because in my dreams I am a standup comedian: "But very carefully, because most of it is in glass jars."

*best girl.

We were looking at the ceiling and then we saw the sky

"Ohoho what's this?" my three readers are no doubt exclaiming, at the sight of a post that is not a monthly rabbit. I have clearly been uninspired to write here for some time, in part because this blorg had mainly become a litany of things I see in my back yard. Birds and rabbits, birds and rabbits! Which was making me think sadly about the photos Mark's dad took toward the end of his life, all of them capturing only what he could see from his La-Z-Boy (the TV, mostly).

Nevertheless, onto the birds I saw today while walking Clover: SO MANY DOVES. Maybe 20? Flying and landing on a roof, clearly doves, not their streetwise pigeon cousins. I held the thought in my head all the way home: look up terms of venery for doves. I had to remember rather than search on the go* because I've been deliberately leaving my phone at home more often, to prove to myself it's not a remote control required for my normal functioning. Also because I was wearing lightweight summery clown pants that become more clownish when I put items in my pockets.

As usual, there are many collective nouns to choose from when it comes to doves. I like dole and pitying. Also bevy. A dole of doves. A bevy of doves. 

*related: no photographic evidence