Following In My Footsteps

Day 91: This made me chuckle. As I walked out to the mailbox yesterday, I noticed that someone had been following in the footsteps I'd left on a previous trip. Five or six of my imprints each bore the same marks: two hops of a Dark-eyed Junco who had been travelling in the same direction. Perhaps the little feathered person tracking me had discovered that where the snow was already compressed meant that landing there kept their tummy drier and warmer. In any event, the hops seemed strategically placed, and deliberately so. Oh, to know how those little minds work, because it is obvious to me that there are thought processes going on, so far removed from those in our narrow, verbal human brains that we cannot comprehend the logic and concepts within them.

They Know Where I Live

Day 140: It is an acknowledged fact that my birds have me well trained. If I let the feeders go empty, they will perch on the shepherd's-hooks outside my windows and stare into the house until the sense of being watched compels me to look up. Failing that, they will knock on the windows (imagine, if you will, a hummingbird beak tapping on glass) or flutter against them to get my attention. Some come to the back porch, knowing that Food Bringer comes out through it with the can of seeds. It's not uncommon for me to have to ask juncos (in particular) to move over so I don't step on them when I go out. A few days ago, this was the sight that greeted me when I went out to fill the feeders for the first time that morning. Note that all the little toe prints are facing toward the house. The lineup had been waiting for me. They know where I live.

Who Goes There?

Day 129: Ah, what a story my yard tells, particularly beneath the bird feeders and on the sidewalk leading to my kitchen door! A fresh dusting of snow last night provided the page on which jays, juncos, towhees, thrushes and a rambling raccoon signed in as guests, their activities criss-crossing so densely that in places, the evidence of their comings and goings became too jumbled to read. Rocky tends to follow a regular beat: enters the yard beneath the crow board, checks for goodies beneath it (a hodgepodge of overlaid tracks), then follows my well-trodden rut through the snow to the clearer sidewalk, there to access the ground beneath the seed trays. I suspect he's making his second stop of the night, the first having been Clyde's back porch where the pickings are somewhat better. Then, ever hopeful that some circumstance has changed in the previous 24 hours, he investigates my recycling bin, the empty cat food cans deliciously odorous but securely out of reach. He exits the yard toward the road, a trench left in the remaining foot of snow showing evidence of repeated passage. The birds, on the other hand, are mostly hoppers, clear imprints of paired feet at regular intervals except for the towhees who give a backward hop to bring scattered seed to the surface. The record of my visitors' pursuits is as interesting to read as a good mystery or spy story: Who goes there, in the dark of night, and with what agenda?