More Birds and Bears

Summer 2008

The sun is hotter now, so our doors are usually wide open (unless we get one of our sudden 50 mph gusts of wind).  We have had a number of bird visitors in the house.  The inevitable hummingbird came to feed on a piece of bright red cloth in the sun-room and needed persuading to leave.  A female Western Tanager with bright eye and neat olive coloring made a flying visit in one door and out the other.  Her mate, the male Tanager, is often around near the pond with his startlingly bright yellow body and rosy head.   

The Dusky Flycatcher came last and stayed longest.  It exhausted itself flying against the skylights until I caught it in a butterfly net.  Then it sat panting in Marisha’s hand as it recovered.  Eventually, it sat up and perched on her finger, gripping tight with its sharp claws - she made a face but held still.  We had time to examine the “whiskers” around it’s beak and admire the eye ring and pale breast before it flew off. 

Last weekend, I went to visit Violet who was hosting a Boulder Gardener’s meeting at her magnificent mountain garden in Cold Creek Canyon.  The air was thick with humming birds and Tree Swallows, swooping after insects and resting on the wires.  She has a number of nesting boxes so I could see little swallow heads peeking out as they sat on their eggs.  Also on the wires and flashing brilliant azure blue were a number of Mountain Bluebirds.  They are often hard to spot as their plumage looks drab gray but in the sun they sparkle.

Eating breakfast this morning in our “Secret Garden”, Orianne pointed out a young “cinnamon” bear ambling up the mountainside, probably one of the pair that raided our compost.  It looked rather thin and lonely to me, and I wondered what had happened to its sibling.  Probably, as the pickings get thinner during the summer, the bears have to make it on their own.  

Do bears experience adolescent trauma as they are wrenched from their family by the imperative to get food?  How do they find all those thousands of calories each day to feed that big body?  It cannot be an easy life, alone and often hungry, but at least they are free of our demanding human schedules.