Crows
Today was a day to get ready for the resumption of classes tomorrow (I’m not sure how regularly I will be able to post when classes are going, but I’ll try for at least once a day). This afternoon I needed to go to my office, so I decided to take a little bit of a break from grading papers and combine the trip to the office with a short walk down to the beach. The tide was going out and it looked like the herring fleet was getting ready to fish out in Middle Channel. They were too far away from shore to be able to see what was going on clearly, but the spotting planes were up in the air and the seiners were moving around to find a good place to set their nets.
The weather continued to be partly to mostly cloudy. The sun shown through on occasion, but it without its full intensity it was easy to get chilled in the light breeze.
On my way home I went up to the neighbor’s yard to look at the boats again and happened to see a Brown Creeper in one of the spruce trees on the hill going down to Lincoln Street. I heard kinglets as well and kept my eyes open for an opportunity to try getting a photograph. While I was down there, I saw and heard at least a couple of chickadees as well as a small flock of Juncos. I thought I might have seen a Fox Sparrow in the salmonberry thicket, but on further inspection, I concluded it was probably a song sparrow (though it was difficult to tell because it stayed in the dense salmonberries canes).
When I walked back up the hill I heard some crows cawing repeatedly and was able to spot a pair of them up in a tree behind our house. As I looked, I realized there were actually three pairs of crows in the tree. I am not sure whether the apparent pairings were meaningful or coincidental and as I watched a bird from the top pair flew down and started to interact with one of the other pairs.