On a bright sunny morning!

We had some thunderstorms move through last night, but mostly we just had rain. I was up and out on the porch early for a smoke. Five thirty early, just a little before sunrise, but the sky is getting increasingly blue by the minute.

The sounds of the birds at that time of the morning is almost deafening, they all seem to be calling to something. I don’t see much movement from the birds yet, but they sure are making their presence known. It always has amazed me that there can be a hundred birds in a tree, but you can not see any of them, even a bright red cardinal seems to disappear once it goes into the foliage of a large tree.

While sitting watching the activity on the streets, a bicyclist (Who I will talk about in a minute.) rode by. As he went under the large maple tree across the street, a small rain storm hit him, causing him to look up and exclaim “What the hell!” I laughed as he rode away.

Continuing to watch the trees I would see more of these little “rain showers” on and off and discovered that it was from the squirrels and the birds on the limbs. They are moving the branches enough to knock off the rain water from the night before. Watching, squirrels as I do, I think he timed hitting that branch to soak the bicyclist on purpose. Probably because the squirrel thought the bicyclist looked silly, in his bright blue and yellow skin-tight “Bike costume” with a matching helmet, and skinny sunglasses. He had mirrors on his helmet and on his handlebars, but he still did not see the “rain” coming! I’ve been riding bicycles since I was 6 years old when did you have to start wearing special clothes. Wearing helmets on a bicycle, I don’t know, my buddy Mike and I had some awesomely bad bike wrecks, and we never wore helmets, and were still there today. Hmmm, maybe we did have just a little brain damage.

Sorry, I got off track, I was talking about the birds and squirrels. I enjoy watching them, not enough to know exactly what kind they are, I know a Cardinal, Robin, Blue Jay, but all small brown birds are sparrows and all medium-sized black birds are Crows.

The squirrels in our yard, I can tell apart, there is Fatty, Stripe, the one I use to call Ninja, but now call Bruce. There is a new visitor to our yard, and the top of his head is coal black, so I named him Blacktop. I see several little new squirrels moving around, but I have not yet named them. I know if they don’t get smarter about the cars on the street, I’ll be calling them road pizza.

While sitting there, some movement in the neighbor's Ash tree caught my attention. The limbs would move then stop, then move again and stop, after watching closer, I could see one of the squirrels. Probably a female squirrel, because of the size and sturdiness of her nest, this nest is a strong lower fork in the tree. Male squirrels tend to make their nest high up in the smaller branches.

Anyway, she was going all the way out on a limb, as far as it would hold her and cut off a small branch with a few leaves and take it to the nest. She repeated this procedure several times, a few times cutting the limb off and dropping it to the ground, this would not slow her down. She would just cut another and head back home. I don’t know if she was fixing damage from the storm or patching leaks, but she was working hard at it.

Watching squirrels travel on the limbs of the trees, and jump from one tree to another is amazing, they know how far they can go out on a limb and what limbs will catch them. I did see a squirrel fall out of a tree once, on the way down he just flattened out his body, to catch the air like a parachute I guess, and when he hit the ground, he popped right up and ran back up the tree, it was about a thirty-foot fall. Hate to think what a fall like that would do to me.

I initially thought about the people that move around this neighborhood, but the animals were more interesting today, maybe next time, till then, Smile!!!