(Sorry, I can never resist the lure of mildly risque humor.)
While my hobby book editing project crashes and crunches to a close with all the usual deadline jitters and horrors, I have had little time for my poor garden.
Recently I was feeling just a little overwhelmed and just stood outside the house for ten minutes to breathe and calm down. Glory be to mother nature for dappled things - the little bushtits were all over the toyon and coyote brush and manzanita, happily conversing with each other in soft, comforting little cheeps.
"Hey have you tried this branch here - just loaded with aphids. If you can hang upside down to reach them."
"Well, you know the spiders over here are yummy too."
"OK, be right over, Say did you hear the one about..."
"Can't talk, my mouth is full of berry - it's good to eat a varied diet you know."
"Hullo friend Junco!" (A couple Dark Eyed Junco were visiting the flock it seemed.)
On and on they chatter and whisper to each other, in a flock of thirty or more, and slowly they move across the chaparral slope in a progressive breakfast feast. I'm generally not around in the early evening but I think they pass through then also.
They move so quickly, so softly and silently - the camera's eye was just not fast enough to get a sharp image. I got much better shots a couple years ago - if you want to look, please see this post: And More Birds.
And now for the eggs part -- Lizard eggs in our driveway!
I found these at the gravelly place where my dad's cottage garden doesn't quite meet the asphalt of the driveway, of all places. I put a slight covering of dead clippings over them to shelter them from Duncan's view. When I went back later, the hole had been covered over, it seems. Or raided. I'm not sure. I never saw them again. I can only hope for the best.
In my rush to get my camera to photograph the eggs, I almost stumbled over a lizard that scuttled under the deck outside our front door. It waddled and waggled on its belly and I'm almost sure it was an alligator lizard - I just caught a flash of it from the corner of my eye. (Fence lizards scuttle way more quickly and nimbly.) I've looked up both types of eggs, and they look pretty much the same to my untrained eye.
Well, like many things -- I'll never know...
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