And Raindrops Fall Like Leaves

Where Rain-Drenched Blue Heron Stood

Soggy Horses

Road Spray & Hay Trucks

Blackberries

Raindrops on Rutabagas

Wait and Watch

Blue Heron stands like a cloaked stranger in the downpour. In the shadows cast by hunkering clouds, his feathers look almost dark steely-blue. If he were a comic-book character, he’d be a blue-clad Dick Tracy. All he needs is a feathered fedora. For a while—during preening—I thought what feathers he didn’t pluck would fade to stone-washed denim in the summer sun. Rain has darkened them to indigo.

Summer sun has baked the pasture to dust along the dog trails; the horses now forage a wider range; and watering has been an endless chore. It was too hot to work in my office during the day and garden harvesting has been sweaty duty. The sky has been blue, blue and blue.

September rumbles in the reminder that Elmira Pond exists because this is the Pacific Northwest. Thunder booms distantly, as if announcing the return of ocean water scudding across the skies. It has rained intermittently buckets and teaspoons for two days. Was I truly longing for rain, for something more than morning mist? Did I miss gray skies? Maybe, just a little. The soggy horses at the fence aren’t so sure.

Other regions measure fall by the turning of leaves. As a rookie to the Pacific Northwest, I’m beginning to believe fall is measured in cups of water, cloud density and the spray of passing hay trucks. For now, I am relieved that watering won’t consume my days, and grateful that Blue Heron still lurks upon his summer log. Although he left before I could wrap my camera in a plastic bag for rainy shots.

What next? Will the migratory birds vanish, taking with them their songs of summer? Will great flocks descend upon the pond to rest before continuing on? When do the ospreys head to Costa Rica? Who stays, who goes? Already geese are amassing in pointed flocks, honking across the evening skyline. I don’t know what to expect next--new sightings or silence.

Blackberries are a jumble of green, red and purple-black. Will the rain improve the harvest or stop it? The garden plants burst with fullness, sucking up all that moisture. Will they miss the sun? Is this the season that kale craves? I’ll pour a cup of coffee, sit on the fire-ring bench and watch.

Let the season of “surprise me, September” begin.

Loud and Dry

Hunting Hoppers in Dry Grass

Dry Under the Apple Tree

Noisy Neighbors

It's crisp enough to crack grass like bones. Bobo hunts for grasshoppers in the thicket of browning knapweed and grass, yet Elmira pond remains blue as ever.

Someone told me, "You know, they used to mine peat there." There meaning the pond. Yes, I know. Cut edges, too square to be natural, are obvious in the spring before the grass and reeds hide the scars of harvesting.

Even the grass edging the pond is looking like locks of hair bleached in the summer sun. Summer blond, my Elmira Pond. Mergansers still dive and wing the surface. I think two of the young ones are males as their coloring is different and their heads looked hooded.

It's been dry under my apple tree and the wasps are many. Too long and they begin bouncing off my ankles and head. August is not turning out to be a good birding month.

Yet the fledging of barn swallows is a raucous success. They party on the light-post line for nearly five days, loud and squawking for parents to bring more chips and dip. The neighbors--cat birds and king birds alike--have also fledged their nests and the ranks of chirping rises.

It is loud and dry, so I water yet again.

Creeper on the 4th of July

Dawn Arrives, Cooler

Cool Enough for 5 a.m. Mist

Patriotic Breakfast

The Ring-necked Female Shows Up

Blue Heron Puffing Wings

Nibbling Wings From Underneath

Who's That Peeking in the Window?

After Insects or Bullets?

July 4 Early Morning Pond Report:

Mist rises from the pond; the heat-wave has broken. When it got so hot this past week, it also turned dry. Shopping at Safeway in Sandpoint on Tuesday, the cashier says, "It nearly broke 100." The average summer high for this part of norther Idaho is 82. And mist says we have cooled off.

With a sigh of relief, I hop back in bed for a few more hours of cool sleep. No need to be up at 5 a.m. on the 4th of July. Ah, there is even a breeze, a cold breeze.

Morning Pond Report:

It's Independence Day and I'm celebrating with breakfast on the pond. My favorite light-hearted 4th of July quote is by Erma Bombeck. She writes:

"You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism."

Read more here: http://allisonkennedy.blogspot.com/2010/07/erma-bombeck-4th-of-july-quote.html#storylink=cpy

I've enhanced the patriotism level of breakfast by adding blueberries to strawberry short-cake and invoke my patriotic right to have potato salad in the morning, served with fried slices of ham. I pour Flathead cherry coffee into my reddest cup and haul it all out to my new spot under the apple tree.

The usual suspects are hanging out along the pond, too--the ring-neck ducks dive, the tree swallows swoop, the horses munch and Blue Heron is preening in the reeds. Over Independence Day breakfast I learn that Blue Heron is a contortionist. It must be that neck coiled above his body. He lifts his wing up and slightly out. Instead of flying off, he stretches his neck back and beaks beneath his feathers from underneath. It makes me think that this is a good spot to practice yoga, or not.

Todd and the two GSPs find me in the pasture. He tells me to load up, that we are finally going to take the Blue Goose into the mountains. We call our truck the Blue Goose because we once owned the Red Rooster. I guess we name our trucks according to avian color, although I admit to never seeing a goose this color of blue. Quickly I go inside to grab a few things, like iced cran-water and emergency t.p.

Before we leave Todd calls me to his gun room. I inhale a groan. It means he want to show me something, and that something is usually a gun for sale or a video of guys shooting long-range. The gun room is contained chaos; bullets, brass and gun-powder cover every inch of shelves, tables and even his desk. Books tumble from stacks--I'm the one who keeps re-stacking them--and boxes line the walls filled with stuff beyond my comprehension.

Red-Shafted Northern Flicker? No...

Western Kingbird? No...

HOURS Later and Look Who's Looking at Me

4th of July Creeper is a Catbird

Instead of looking at his computer monitor, he reclines in his chair and looks at the window across the room. With the cool breeze, he has the window blinds raised and the window open. We look at the thick pine just outside. "Watch," he says. Suddenly, a bird hovers at the window, pecking, dipping and flitting off. I run out and grab my camera, taking a seat on the floor.

"Is he after insects?" I ask. We agree that that's the most likely explanation. The bird returns--snap, snap, and I have captured slate gray blurs.

"Did you get a shot?" Todd asks, as if we were out shooting grouse. I show him my blurs. He hands me his camera and I see several shots of the bird. They'd be clear if the windows weren't so dirty. There's a definite red-color to the bird's rump and I say that it looks like a red-shafted northern flicker. We watch a few more times, then decide to hit the dirt roads.

In conclusion of today's blog, I'll post photos from the trip we took into the mountains behind Elmira Pond. We had trouble finding access to public lands, frustrating when wealthy home-owners build their mountain estates and cut off people who just want to go bang around in the hills, looking at wild-flowers, maybe fishing or picking berries. It doesn't feel like Independence Day, but we do find a road up and even over, but it abruptly ends before dropping down into the Pack River.

But there's more to this bird at the window story. We return late in the afternoon and I go into Todd's gun room to retrieve his camera. There in the tree is the bird, peering back at me. Then he hits the window. I don't think he's a northern flicker, eating insects from the window, he's a creeper. Suddenly, I realize this bird wants in. Five more times he hits the window and since this morning he's learned to hold onto the screen with his bird-toes. Definitely a creeper.

Turns out he is a catbird and he might be attacking the window if he sees his reflection. Or maybe he's another local gun nut. The best advice via Cornell Bird Lab is to simply draw the blinds. That's what I do anyways, to hide this male domain from the rest of the female-approved house. I think it's funny that our creeper is a catbird, because Todd also has Bootsy coming in to meow for him at night.

Here's a parting shot of our drive into the Selkirks behind our house.

How 4WD Adventures Begin

Hot-Wiring Our Own Truck

Indian Paintbrush

Mountain Raspberries & Ferns Cover the Forest Floor

Tiger Lilies

4th of July and Snow Remains

The Blue Goose

Brown GSP

Evidence of a Fire 80 or more Years Ago

Across the Bridge is th End of the Road

Unidentified Yellow Flowers

American Dipper (Nest in Mountain Streams)

View of the Valley Below (Elmira Pond is South)

Near the Tops

Pink Negligee

June 23 4:41 a.m. Pond Report:

Horse in Pink

Pond in Her Pink Negligee

Pink Mist in the Pines

Well, Hello Kingfisher

Power-line Dove

Birds or Punks?

Pasture Flockers

Red-shafted Northern Flicker

Imagine a Hummingbird Here

Pink as a Negligee

There Goes the Sun

Evening Falls Across Still Waters

No Super Moon for This Place

Truly I have cause to be up at 4:41 a.m. At one time in my life, that hour signaled rise-and-shine to load up in my Dad's logging truck to drive over Ebbett's Pass and arrive at his logging camp in Pacific Valley. I cleaned an entire valley of limbs and logging debris. That's what I got for telling Mom I didn't want to work in the store that summer.

Thus I still think of 4 a.m. as the logging hour.

So it makes me giggle to find Elmira contained in pink mist. Pink is not a color I associate with logging. But pink it is, colored by the early dawn. The pond looks as if I caught her early out of bed wearing nothing but a pink negligee, one of those gossamer see-thru nighties for intimate occasions.

Does anyone (but the pond) even wear pink negligees any more? At one time I had a stellar collection of wispy nighties that must have been so fantastical to my three children that they absconded with my sheer wardrobe, turning the collection into dress-up princess clothes.

It marked my fall from sexy-woman. However, I fell squarely into motherhood which fit me better, anyways.

Not much more to say than a pink tangent. The setting of the super moon was my reason to rise, but the mist and thin clouds hide it from view. Dawn is pretty to see, one of those unexpected surprises. The horses bed down in the mist, the birds chatter and the pond parades in pink.

June 23 Afternoon Pond Report:

A new orchestra arrives. Today, the sounds shift, even for one such as me. I can't carry a tune and my listening skills can be weak (psst...don't tell my husband that I might admit to having impaired-listening). I'm often so excited to feel the music or capture the story that I miss the individual details like notes or names. So for me to say that I notice a shift in sound, the shift must be significant.

It's like going to hear the symphony. You know how the musicians warm up before a performance, and all you hear are disconnected blasts of notes? You can tell the clarinets from the flutes from the trombones, but you can't catch a song. That's what it sounds like around the pond today. Like a greater number of different birds are tuning their instruments.

So today I turn the binoculars on the the trees and fence-lines surrounding Elmira. At first, all the birds look alike, just as everyone in the orchestra dresses in black. But I start to capture nuances, subtleties. I'm surprised to find the belted kingfisher sitting in a shrub on the south side of the pond. He seems decaffeinated today, less fluttery.

Movement catches my eye and I follow it to the power-line. Turns out to be a dove. Another flies past and the dove on the power-line flies off with it. On the far fence-line sits a group of birds like teenagers hanging out at the soda shop. Grayish, blackish, I'm not sure what they are. Another flock of birds is rising and settling like locust in the grass. Actually, if there were locusts, these birds would be feasting. As it is, they are either munching seeds or insects. They continue to rise and settle in the far pasture.

Robins poke at the ground and some unnamed nut-knocker whistles abruptly from the pine tree by the porch without ever revealing his presence. Tree swallows continue to dance but I distinctly hear a chickadee, one bird call I do know. Chickadees are also fly-catchers and may flock with the swallows. Or, not. Then, I see another bird perched on a fence-line and as it darts away, its salmon-red underwings tells me its a red-shafted northern flicker.

Then a hummingbird flits up to the mass of wild Nae Roses for a nectar kiss. I try to follow his retreat but he is so tiny and fast. I learn that the tiniest bird north of Mexico is the Calliope hummingbird and it actually nests in the extreme cold of high mountains, including northern Idaho. I'll have to look for distinguishing marks next time. If I can look that fast.

So many birds in a single day. Like the roses, did they suddenly bud? The music is different, the late afternoon smells of roses and meadow grass and the birds seem to sing of it. Another Lady Rose unfurls.

June 23 Super Moon Report:

The sun glows behind thin gray clouds and prepares to dip behind the tallest peak west. As evening falls I anxiously await the super moon. Last night, through binoculars, it looked like a navel orange. Tonight I want to capture its fullest rise in the east. Several times I step outside, hoping to see the clouds clear as they did last night. Alas, the moon never shows. The only glow for miles around is that of my own windows.

Guess it's time to go to bed and put on my own pink negligee...who am I kidding? I wear t-shirts and flannel and pink is not a common color to a logger's daughter. But orange is a close cousin.