Cute critters

I spent a big chunk of this morning scrubbing our deck and otherwise cleaning up after the squirrels, chipmunks and various birds that like the casual al fresco dining experience we provide.  It wasn't too bad but it's a shame they won't use the facilities.

Anyway, I got to thinking about the cuteness of my woodland friends (I say friends, but I've no doubt they'd turn on me in a moment if the nut supply dried up...) and I think I've worked out a way to measure their cuteness based on how much food you are willing to let them steal.

Take the chipmunks, for example.  One of these, which we started calling Hoover, was particularly fond of nicking seed from the bird feeder.  I even mixed in some cayenne pepper with the seed, which is supposed to deter mammals while going unnoticed by the birds.  This kept another chipmunk away, but not Hoover who apparently had a taste for the hot stuff.  I say "had" because I now think it was he, and not the little chipmunk, that was eaten by a cat a few weeks ago.  No chipmunks have been stealing seed since then.

Anyway, my point is that Hoover made of with bags and bags of sunflower seeds - chipmunks hoard tremendous amounts of food in their underground larders, something like half a bushel which is about twenty litres - and I really didn't mind.  Yes, he was being a rascal, but he was just do darned cute I couldn't really get angry at him (and I certainly didn't want him disappeared by a cat).  So judging by how much food I was willing to tolerate him stealing, Hoover's cuteness would have had the needle tapping at the end of the scale.

At the other end of the scale we have, for example, the ants that were plaguing us for a while.  They didn't actually make off with any food as far as I know, but that was still too much for us to tolerate.  Not cute at all.

And in between we find everything else.  The blue jays have been getting on our nerves because they've started hovering all the time to eat the peanuts we put out for the squirrels.  They may look good but they're not as cute as my squirelly pals.  And the bunnies are lovely to have out on the lawn - but woe betide any rabbit that eats any of my plants.

It's not a very scientific measure but it works in most cases.  I'm not sure if it still works when one cute critter eats another one - I'm not feeling any love for that chipmunk-chewing cat right now, but that's because a tiny fuzzy life has been snuffed out, not because I'm thinking of all that seed going to waste (no, really).  So it still needs some work.  I guess I'll just have to study these cute little animals some more.

House finch

This week's bird is probably the most common visitor to our feeder, apart from the sparrows, but it is also very skittish so until now I didn't have a good picture of it.  Yesterday my luck changed and I caught a house finch in the act.

This one was so cooperative, in fact, that it even did a twirl for me so that I could show you that it is only red from the front with a much duller behind.

Of course I can't be sure that it was showing off just for the camera, but it was soon joined by another one, equally gregarious.

These were both males, the females aren't red at all but just brown with white bars, though they still have the characteristic finch beak.  In the late winter we would have many of these little birds vying for a place at our feeder, but as the weather has warmed up they've paired up and started hanging out in smaller groups.  Today a little finch family visited the feeder, a juvenile and its parent, and the juvenile begged for food by flapping its wings and squawking.  The parent obliged.  It's making a rod for its own back, if you ask me.  First the grackles, now the finches.  I know that human children are becoming more and more reluctant to move out of the parental home, I didn't know it had spread to birds.  What is the world coming to?

Lights in the sky

Last night we had an impressive thunderstorm pass quite close, though it didn't actually douse us (we had to wait until this morning for that).  Much more impressive than the lightning were the lightning bugs, though.

Fireflies are a (now) familiar sight to me here in the summer.  For about two or three weeks now we've been watched them lazily fire their little yellow lights off as they buzz over the grass around twilight.  But last night was something altogether more spectacular, with hundreds, maybe thousands of fireflies sparkling in the trees outside our house and around the neighbourhood.

It's hard to explain exactly what it looked like.  My best attempt was that it was like a Christmas tree covered in flashing lights.  But I think Mrs Walles hit it on the head, saying that it was like watching camera flashes going off at a concert.

The lights looked much whiter than the usual fireflies we see, and they flashed much faster, and they were in the trees, not the grass, so I wonder if these were a different species.  Or perhaps it was larvae, hatched from eggs laid in the trees and putting on a light show for want of anything better to do.  I'm not sure what the explanation is, and I'm definitely not an expert on the matter, but it was something quite different and extraordinary.  Very flash!

Groundhogs galore

Continuing the week's wildlife theme (and it's hard not to, the critters are so prevalent...even as I write this I'm watching a squirrel have a good old scratch on a tree bough in the back yard) here are some slightly better pictures of my neighbour the groundhog from early yesterday morning.

I had hoped they would be even better than this, but at least you can see a bit more of the body than in the shots I posted earlier.  I might have missed it altogether, it was just chance that I was staring up the hill and spotted the movement against the brush.  It wasn't until it made its way over to the lawn, though, that it started standing out well against the background, so that's the shots I've posted.

Ultimately it preferred the low brush, though, you can see it's already pining for shelter here, and it soon returned to the dense undergrowth.  Not before I got this one in a standing pose, though.

It was in sight for a long time quite close to us and it didn't scurry off when I opened the door to get a better look.  It's quite a big critter as you can see, its body alone is about the same length as a squirrel including tail. And this one is quite small.

With any luck we'll see more of our groundhog friend as the summer goes on.  In the meantime I'll content myself with the squirrel, which is now having a nice wash.  Never a dull moment!

Wildlife update

I couldn't deliver any pictures of the Amish hard at work raising our deck, but I did get a great picture of our female cardinal this morning, perched atop the newly levelled bird feeder, all decked out in her finery.

The groundhog was closer to the house this morning so I took more photos of it too - that  was when Mrs Cardinal (as we call her) presented herself for this shot.  I still have to go through the groundhog shots and see how they came out.  The little critter was closer than usual but that might have been cancelled out by the mist that was hanging around this morning.  If there are any good ones I'll post them soon.

On the level

It occurred to me that I never posted an update on how the Amish were getting on with our deck, despite promising to do so.

The reason I forgot was that the two Amish fellows who did the job did it so quickly that they were off almost before I knew it.  They finished reattaching our deck to the house almost before I'd written the post announcing their arrival.  They also worked on a neighbouring deck, so they were in the vicinity for about another hour, but then they were off.

Mrs Walles tried to snap a photo of one of them while they were working but the opportunity never arose.  I had wanted to photograph the hat that one of them left on the ground while he worked, but I didn't even manage that.

I went out to inspect the results while they were working on the deck next door and they asked very cheerily if it was better, and we said yes - it was good to be able to walk out there without wondering if it was going to fall down under you.  That was the extent of our interaction, though.  The neighbours, native Pennsylvanians, just took it in their stride and were talking away trying to convince them to do extra work on the deck (which they did).  All in all it took them about 90 minutes to reattach two decks to the houses and replace the railings on one of them.  And then they were gone.  Raising a deck a few inches isn't quite in the same league as raising a barn, but it was still intriguing to watch.

Return of the groundhog

Mrs Walles and I were looking out the window the other day when we suddenly spotted something different in the trees at the top of our back yard - a groundhog! This is, amazingly, the first one that I've seen this season.  It's not as if they are uncommon, and we have even passed several on the side of the road in the car, with me missing them each time.  We've since seen this groundhog several times, though not as close as that first day.

It seems likely that it is the same one we saw last summer, since its feeding in the same places.  It is smaller than the one last year, but possibly that's because groundhogs hibernate, so they look smaller in the spring when they emerge compared to the autumn when they settle with a good supply of excess body mass to tide them over the winter.

Groundhogs are quiet little critters and they are built like tanks so that not much worries them.  Even so, they have a habit of keeping an eye out while feeding by rasing their head every few seconds to see what's going on around them.

This one wasn't too concerned by us even when we went outside to take its picture.  We were probably too far away to be perceived as a threat.

These are the best photos of our new neighbour that I have at the moment. I'm hoping it will come closer as time goes by and if I get some better pictures I'll post them here.

Common grackle

The bird of this week is the common grackle, common by name but certainly not by nature.  These birds really stand out because, although they are jet black in dull light, their feathers are iridescent in bright light making them look blue, green and bronze.  The vivid yellow eye helps, too.

The males are slightly more flashy in their colourings than the females.  They are quite large birds, about thirty centimetres long, but they are also quite shy.  They stalk our back yard in groups taking long strides looking for food in the grass.

Occasionally one will come up on the deck to take some seed or a nut that's dropped there.  For a while there was even one that would hang off our bird feeder, despite being far too big to use it effectively.  I think its strategy was to shake seed out of the feeder on to the ground below where it could eat at its leisure.  The cardinals do something similar.

Just recently we noticed a whole new aspect to grackle life.  They've been breeding and their young 'uns are out of the nest and almost as big as their parents.  But mum and dad haven't got the kids off their hands yet, instead they've been out showing them the ropes.  Males and females share the feeding responsibility, according to my references.  All week we have been watching adults with one or more dull-coloured offspring following them around.  Mrs Walles snapped these ones together last weekend.

Sometimes the little ones will find something on their own, but if the adult finds something the kids will chase after it, mouths wide open and squeaking like a baby bird to try and get their share.  It's quite hilarious to watch and hear because the "little" ones are not very little but the way they behave you'd think they'd just been hatched.

I don't see any outside right now.  It is Fathers Day in the US today, so maybe the adult grackles are taking it easy while their offspring bring them breakfast in nest. Then again, maybe it's just the neighbour's lawnmower scaring them away.  A grackle can dream, though...

Freshly minted

Mrs Walles came in the door at lunch time today with a big grin on her face carrying an envelope that contained - drum roll please - my green card!  I am now (and have been for over a week, it seems, though I didn't know it) officially a permanent resident of the United States.  Phew!

Right now I'm most excited because it means I don't have to worry about immigration forms and the inevitable anxiety they produce in me for another two years, when it needs to be renewed.  It's taken thirteen months to get to this point from when we first began the official immigration process.  We haven't had any problems along the way, it all went smoothly and often faster than we anticipated, but it is just a long, involved and expensive process so it is good to have it over and done with.

More importantly, though, it means that Mrs Walles and I can get on with things without any niggling fears in the back of our minds about the permanence of my residence here.  I've got the certificate to prove it now.  It also means that I can leave the country again (or rather get back in if I leave), which is a relief.  Not that I was getting cabin fever, or anything, but it's good to know you can leave if you want to.

I won't put up a picture of my new card, I'm sure that's against the rules, and I wouldn't want anyone to take my nice shiny new toy away after I worked so hard to get it.  I will say that, although "green card" is just informal slang for it, it is in fact green.  Green, and shiny, and mine!  Yay!

The circle of life

Remember the chipmunks?  These little guys.

We have had two different regular visitors, including the pesky little varmint that eats from our feeder.  In the last couple of weeks we also had a new regular, very small and pale coloured which we took to be a young one.  He's been very cute, coming up and exploring our deck and eating the occasional peanut (unlike the bigger chipmunks, he has to shell them before he can fit them in his mouth).

But this morning there was a cat.  A black cat that has been hanging around.  A few moments before I spotted the cat, I spotted the little chipmunk down by our basement doors.  I guess the cat spotted it too.  It hid in the hollow beneath our basement steps, but I guess it must have incautiously stuck its head out to see if the coast was clear and the cat was waiting and pounced.  Last I saw was a limp little chipmunk being carried away in the cat's jaws.

I feel guilty because I should have thrown something at the cat to scare it away when I saw it prowling.  I will in future.

Gray catbird

Time for the second bird of the week for this week, and this one is a multimedia extravaganza.  Not because it looks particularly exciting; like its name declares, it's pretty much grey.

No, the interesting bit is in the other part of its name, the reason it's called a catbird, and that is because the call it makes does sound remarkably like a cat meowing.  You can listen here.

They are around a lot in the spring, and a couple of weeks ago were just everywhere.  Now they've settled down a little, though we have one out front that we think is nesting.  We're happy for it to be there because they love to eat ants and we've been having problems with them (maybe that's why it's set up house there, it's like living above a restaurant).

Their call sounds like the cat's meow, but their song really is the cats pyjamas.  They're the jazz musicians of the avian world, apparently, improvising long songs on the spot from a variety of different sounds, occasionally throwing the meow in there as a bonus.  I think that mates may judge each other based on the variety of sounds in the songs, and there are a few species that do that.

So they may not be very colourful to look at, but they certainly are interesting to hear, and the keep the bugs at bay to boot!  Definitely worth having around.

In my cups

Just as I listen to British radio to quell pangs of homesickness for a country I have never visited, so I read the British papers and as I was reading this recently I came across a surprise.  Nothing serious, of the lawks-gawd-help-us variety, but the piece piqued my interest when it alluded in passing to the cup measure being an American thing.

A quick visit to my dictionary confirmed that, according to the people at the OED, the word "cup" as a baking measure is primarily a North American thing.  I can only assume that they haven't a typical Kiwi kitchen on baking day.

Now I was well aware that there was an American cup, and that it was slightly different to the metric cup that I grew up with.  The difference had lulled me into the misconception that the metric cup was therefore of English origin.  But it seems that the cup crept into New Zealand from America and was metricated (if that's the word I want) some time later.

Incidentally the American cup is half an American pint, which is quite a bit smaller than the old English pint.  It's actually very close to the metric cup, close enough that I have had no problem just using American cups where my recipes call for the metric kind.

The cup isn't the only American export that has been embraced by Kiwis but not Britons.  To name just one, in Britain pants are underwear, whereas in the US and New Zealand they are trousers.  And I'm sure there are plenty more where those two came from.

Delaware Water Gap

So last weekend Mrs Walles and I went to New York (the state, not the city...well, actually we did pass through the city...it's complicated and I'll get to that another day).  Our favourite spot to stop on the way is just on the other side of the border with New Jersey, at the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, or the DWG as we usually call it.

The Delaware river is an important landmark in the northeast US. It marks the borders of several states, including the one that shares its name.  It is a very old river, pre-dating the already old geological ructions that produced the stubby mountains known as the Appalachians (I'm happy to describe them as stubby, since they are compared to, say, the Rockies or the Southern Alps, but it's all relative - they wouldn't look so stubby if I had to walk up one).

Anyway, because the river is older than the mountains it cuts through them as it pleases, its channel having carved out a place for itself as the mountains rose around it.  This creates what is called a water gap in this part of the world, which is basically a river gorge cutting through a mountain range.  It's lucky for us, too, because it provides a convenient breach in the mountains which the interstate highway takes advantage of, along with the railroad.

Apart from the convenience the DWG is spectacularly beautiful, and I highly recommend a visit.  Although the Delaware is an important river it is still relatively small at this point (and relative to other American rivers it is also small, similar in flow to the Waikato River).

At the DWG the river cuts through a ridge, called Blue Mountain on the Pennsylvania side and Kittatinny Mountain on the New Jersey side, and the walls are almost vertical, yet still heavily wooded, like the whole region.  Here's Kittatinny, seen from Turtle Beach, a little sandy spot beside the river.

The river bends to the right once it reaches Kittatinny, so that's the side of Blue Mountain to the right of the frame, with an equally spectacular vertical wall facing Kittatinny across the river.  I only managed to get a snap of the face of Blue Mountain from the road a couple of days later, on the way back towards Pennsylvania.

Incidentally, since the river forms the border, all of these photos show two states, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

My favourite of the photos we took (which required a return visit to the car to swap cameras after mine ran down - but it was worth it) is of Kittatinny framed by the lush vegetation at the side of the river.

Doesn't it make you want to go there?  It makes me want to go back.

Female northern cardinal

This bird of the week entry is unusual in two ways.  First, because I didn't get a chance to post one last week, this will be the first of two birds this week.  Second, it's actually a bird we've seen before, the northern cardinal, but this time it is the dramatically different female.

Completely different colours, apart from the beak, from the male.

The scarlet male is much more flashy than the female.  Alas it is usually the way in the bird world.  Still, the beak does make the female cardinal stand out.  If it is facing you there is no mistaking what kind it is.

Both of these cardinals (plus another male) have been constant visitors to our deck since the late winter.  They are delightful to watch, because part of their courtship routine involves the male taking the female little pieces of food and putting them in her beak, which makes them look very much like they are kissing.  They were at it this afternoon, the female sitting on our bird feeder pecking away and the male scratching in the ground underneath, every so often flitting up to give her some tasty morsel he had found.  Meanwhile in the trees the other male was lurking ominously...love is never simple, eh?

Damned immigrants

Mrs Walles and I have been travelling again, and I haven't had time to update the blog much.  Fortunately, though, all this gadding about has given me plenty of material for future posts.  Today just a brief entry, but one that packs quite a punch if you ask me.

In many US states, including Pennsylvania, only the back of a car carries a number plate, leaving the front free for something else like an affiliation or a humorous bumper-sticker style message.  Like this one which we spotted recently.

"WELCOME TO AMERICA NOW EITHER SPEAK ENGLISH OR LEAVE".  How pleasant.

Good thing I speak something that passes for English here.  Although the kind of person who puts that on the front of their car for all to see may have more stringent standards of English than the average American.  I'd better watch who I talk to...

The Amish are here!

I had just got out of the shower when I thought I heard voices emanating from below (outside, I mean, I haven't lost my marbles).  And indeed the Amish contractors have arrived to fix our back deck, complete with straw hats, braces and all.  I can already hear industrious sounds accompanying the voices (which is amazing, given that the humidity is near 100% and the temperature is rapidly climbing to another lofty high.

Looking out the front window I see that there is a closed trailer, kind of like a horse float, in which they have all their equipment and supplies, and that's been dropped off in the driveway.  That partly explains something Mrs Walles and I had been pondering - how do they get here?  It's well known that the Amish don't drive cars, but it's not so well known that they can accept rides if someone else is driving.  I guess the  same applies to their tools.  Or perhaps these blokes are from one of the less stringent sects (there are quite a few) that are more liberal about things like horseless carriages.

I think I can hear power tools (I can't quite see them from where I'm writing this) but that doesn't clinch it: even the rigorous Amish sects are allowed to use electricity and other mod cons in businesses, apparently.

Anyway, I'll keep you posted on their progress - they can't be planning to take long, since there's a big storm coming this afternoon. Although I suppose they might not know that...after all, I only know because I saw it on TV...