Another in an occasional series on the neighborhood fauna

I’ve been gathering these observations over the last couple of weeks: some are in the ‘awwww’ and ‘awe’ categories, some are amusingly curious, and then there’s the irony of the interface between two legged and the rest of the walking-running-flying-crawling world.

Awwww

• Sitting at my desk in my office, looking out the window, I noticed a fair-sized mule-deer doe come up onto the yard from the arroyo. Right behind her were one – and then two – fawns. Still spotted. About the size of a medium-sized german shepherd dog. When mom stopped to nibble on the weeds, one twin positioned itself to nurse. I jumped up to go and get my camera – when will I learn to keep binocs and camera on the table next to my window – and when I got back, both mom and twins were gone. Another “when will I learn” lesson: to just sit, look and take in as living memory, rather than try to pixilate everything!
• Visiting our newly-purchased property to show friends, we saw a doe and her fawn right off the side of the road. This baby was smaller than Nutmeg (our standard-sized lab) so must have been no more than a couple of weeks old. Our driver stopped without scaring off the pair. So we watched the baby chasing its lunch, while mom casually and repeatedly stepped over the poised nose to move to a choicer bunch of grass. Another sales point for Toyota Prius: it runs quietly enough not to scare away the neighborhood fauna.

Awe-ful

• I went for a hike with two friends on Thursday morning (no I wasn’t playing hooky! I was on official leave…a micro-vacation.) We went to Bear Mountain Lodge, a property of The Nature Conservancy. As many wild-focused properties do, this had a veritable forest of bird feeders hung around the lodge. Including several hummingbird feeders from the eaves of the east porch. The feeders were swarmed with hummers; it sounded more like a busy bee-hive. There were as many as 15 birds around each feeder; it’s possible there were up to 75 or 100 hummers all told. We took seats in the Adirondacks to watch the activity and try to identify all the species present. Anyone who uses binocs knows that you can’t focus under a certain number of feet. And my distance vision is just off enough not to crisply focus on the little birds. So I got up, put on my glasses and moved toward one feeder. Closer. And closer until my face was not two feet from the feeder. The birds were not intimidated – perhaps I should have been by the dive-bombing of the aggressive male Rufous hummers. I could see every little bird in its finest detail. I could identify female of one species from female of another, not always easy to do because the differences can be subtle. I watched as Caliope throat patches changed from almost-black to brilliant, iridescent ruby or Black-chinned to deep purple as birds turned toward the sun. But what was so awesome was to stand with a dozen or more whirling around my head, to feel the energy of their small-but-furious engines, and not just to hear, but to feel the hum and vibration of their wing-beats pass inches by my ears.

Amusingly curious

• Another deer story: last night, I took Nutmeg for a long walk through the neighborhood. By now, you get that we have lots of deer who are very acclimated to the comings and goings of two- and four-legged, as well as two- and four-wheeled. We were walking down a nearby street, and saw two dogs running up the street toward us. Looking just beyond the dogs, I saw a large doe running up the street right after them. Was she chasing them? Or was it pure coincidence? When one of the dogs looked back over its shoulder and the other, smaller dog redoubled its pace, I was convinced. For whatever reason, this doe was the pursuer, and the dogs, the pursued. Whatever happened to reverse the normal course of events I don’t know. Suddenly, the doe saw me and veered down a driveway. Both dogs were so hell-bent-for-leather, they almost ran right by Nutmeg and might have indeed, had Nutmeg not done her usual bark-and-lunge routine. After a brief encounter, the dogs trotted on and we continued down the street to see the doe standing in the driveway watching us go by.
• And another bird story from Bear Mountain Lodge and our hike there. Up on a ridge along one of the trails in the middle of the Conservancy property, we saw a golf ball. There is a golf course in Silver City, but way the other side of town, quite a number of miles away. And the idea of any one person carrying a club, some balls and a couple of tees up-and-down a trail to get into a clearing on a ridge to hit a few…well that’s just silly. So how would a single white golf ball come to be resting there on the ground? Raven. Yep, that big, black, noisy bird with a big, curious and inventive mind. Ravens collect things that interest them. Their nests are often full of odd, shiny and unexpected treasures found and picked up along their aerial journeys. Apparently they are known to mistake all sorts of small round white objects as eggs, eggs being a favorite snack. Small round white objects like golf balls. So a Raven had passed over the golf course miles away, picked up this egg-like object, flown off, and somewhere over Bear Mountain Lodge property decided this egg-like object wasn’t an egg and dropped it. Glad I wasn’t hiking just underneath at the least opportune moment.

The interface

• I have had to walk Nutmeg especially early a few mornings lately, going out at the waning of dawn when the stalked and the stalkers are heading to den for the day. We know there are coyotes in the hills and arroyos that make up this neighborhood, but of all the critters seen, we have not seen these. One morning, Nutmeg and I were on the last block of our walk and we both heard a howling start up, joined and joined again. I wondered – I’m always wishing to hear the wild rather than the domesticated canines singing – and when Nutmeg literally froze with a paw still half-way to the next step, I knew for sure. She stood without moving, except for the quiver in her flanks, listening until the last howl died away. And I was in no hurry, being just as mesmerized as her. When even the echo was gone, we both mentally and physically shook ourselves and came on home – touched for the day by a bit of wild magic.
• Likewise on these early walks, I have encountered neighbors not met before. These are not the dog-walkers. These are the couples our age and older who go out to walk for exercise. The peculiar thing: several of the men in these couples carry clubs. Golf clubs. Which they swing like swagger sticks. But why? What good does a swagger stick – nine iron, sand wedge, whatever – do walking these neighborhood streets? It occured to me that these golf clubs are intended as protection. Mmmm…protection from…? I ran down the list of possibilities in my mind as Nutmeg and I passed the third-such armed couple. The idea of using a golf club as protection against the deer is ludicrous. Although who knows how vicious that doe was chasing those two poor innocent canines up the street! They are certainly not – at least I hope not – thinking they would use a club on one of the community skunks (another story in itself). Besides, any skunk presenting itself during the daylight to be golf-clubbed has more of a problem than a wedge-wielding two-legged; rabies is a real concern in this area. I would hasten in the opposite direction rather than attack a day-lit skunk full-on with a nine-iron (sand-wedge, whatever). If these brave souls think that they are carrying a sand-wedge (nine-iron, whatever) as protection from the occasional mountain lion that follows the deer into town, they need to go back to whatever tamed city they came from! (Sorry, a little judgment creeping in there.) Even trickster Coyote would not be cowed by a golf-club – there are alternatives to avoid unwanted contact with those four-legged folks. And finally, if they are carrying their weapons against the few dogs that do run loose through the community, they obviously don’t know much about dogs. If a dog gets close enough to get whopped by a golf club and the dog means business, the clubber is already too late. Unless they are VERY good with martial defense. If the dog is out of reach of the club but is menacing, just what good will the club do? Better a handful of pebbles to toss at legs or nose and eyes, depending upon the degree of menacing behavior, to yell loudly, to wave arms and of all things, to avoid eye contact. Well, maybe in that context, a wild-ass swing of the club might help after all. Just pretend they’re on a driving range…
  

Well, as the saying goes, “I got a million of’em.” But I’ll save the rest for another in my occasional series on neighborhood fauna. Hope you are out there swinging.