Three Surprises

Every once in a while a year really stinks, like 2009 (and 2008), and 2017 was one of those, but nonetheless as the year ends, dusted off, back at the gym, weight normal, ambitious, I am actually joyous all morning as caffeine carols through my veins, and then I started looking at my Facebook friends' postings and at the Washington Post headlines and came to a dead stop.

I said, I'll cheer up after lunch with a close friend and then to the feed store, which I've always liked because it smells like hay, and stop by the town optometrist who online found parts for my damaged favorite specs, and I'd have them next week. Overjoyed. . .and then poof. . . I looked at my phone. . . so depressing. . .and I kept scrolling through the phone at the coffeehouse. Oh very low indeed although I sat next to the artificial fire and gulped two and a half cups of nice and hot, plus a scone.

At home, because I have to go there, an Amazon box is on the stoop. It's a gift from my sister, brother-in-law and niece: a brand-new, bright red wild-bird feeder. This replaces the green one rusted and peeling, bent from falls and obese raccoons, and it did not once occur to me to buy a new one and I am delighted. Surprise!

Two of the three surprises.

Then the phone rings. It's my niece. "I have kind of exciting news," she said: She is engaged! And I was excited, and she texted me a photo of her ring, and that was thrilling. Engaged at Christmas! What's more romantic?! That's surprise #2.

So I sit up and write two articles -- good ones. (I write four per week for my employer.) Takes until 10:30 p.m. I finish proudly. Because of coffee I'm still awake and thinking of all I must do. I make a list and start joyously checking off items.

Get off Facebook
Unsubscribe from Washington Post
Write four  articles by Sunday
Finish book and sell
Finish novel and sell
Update website
Update blog
Update website blog
Write a new research paper (this past year I wrote two)
Write a new book

What a relief to start on my to-do list (ain't nobody gonna do it for me).  Then there's the more important "to be" list:

happy
joyous
creative
contented
healthy
thriving
appreciative

This morning I lay in bed drinking coffee and couldn't see outside because of window insulation. But eventually I get up and the light in the kitchen looks awfully bright. And from the window I see: Surprise! An inch of snow! It's beautiful!

And I feel like a new person, happy all day! I'm rockin' those rose-colored glasses! All I need to thrive is good surprises!

Northward Migration

Lady Flicker, Wikimedia Commons

Yellow-Shafted Flickers stop here for suet in late January and early February, flying from southern Texas and northern Mexico to their summer breeding grounds in Canada. I watch them compete with the lordly Pileated Woodpecker for the same suet cake. The much larger Pileated who lives here year-round flaps his wings and waves them away, but the flickers are clever, and they simply wait beneath the suet cage for pieces that fly down to the leaf carpet while the bigger bird drills and gobbles his share. The Flicker is the only woodpecker who will eat from the ground.

Yellow-Shafted are the easterners, and Red-Shafted are the
westerners. They are in my view the most elegantly clothed of all the migrating birds. Wish they lived here all year round. The goldfinches at the seed feeder are still their winter olive green but now with a mention of yellow. The smaller picture shows a little Downy Woodpecker, in a flutter of striped wings, boldly trying to nip the suet while the male Pileated clings to the suet cage with his big crusty feet, and I decided after trying hard and getting no decent photos that this is the year (after 15 years) to set up a bird camera with remote shutter control to capture not only their individual beauty but their interactions.

From Soffit to Suet

Most people don't believe me--it's the single most unbelieved thing I say--when I tell them that the five species of woodpeckers I feed all know which room of the house I sleep in, and know my bed is right beneath the window, and if I'm not up yet, they drum and drill on the fascia above the window to wake me so I will bring out their suet. Which I usually do first thing each morning.

"But it's true," I tell the unbelievers. "I can show you."

If I turn over and go back to sleep, the birds will drum and drill on the other side of the bedroom, too. If they know I'm elsewhere in the house but they're not sure where, they jackhammer on the tall metal TV antenna, making the entire house resound. It sounds like the clanking of pipes in old steam-heated buildings, except rapid. It throbs like a headache. Because the antenna, unlike the roof, houses no termites or bugs and even the boldest woodpecker can't drill holes in it, I've asked a friend, "Why do they do that?"

"Because it's fun," she said.

It's also effective. Sometimes the birds are my alarm clock. Often in winter they guilt me out of bed: I'm thinking, "They're hungry, I've got to feed them." Sometimes I'll stay in bed an extra half-hour just to let fat lazy devious birds know who is the boss around here. Sometimes I'll slide open the window and yell, "I am not your slave."

How to Render Raw Suet for Bird Feeding

Reeve keeps cattle and gave me 13 lbs. of suet, or the fat from around a cow's kidneys, raw. I froze it but knew I'd eventually have to "render" it, or cook it down to pure lard the way store-bought suet is. Never done this before. Put on an apron expecting grease as I cut room-temperature hunks into one-inch pieces and tore off the "silver skin" or membrane, but it was more like handling cooked chicken breast. Cooked first batch on low flame (45 minutes), second batch on medium flame (20 minutes) until I got a golden liquid, then scooped the "cracklins" out of it...the cracklins are edible but don't taste or smell good. I was afraid rendering beef fat would stink, the way they say sheep fat stinks, but it wasn't unpleasant. Poured the liquid into disposable pans and put it on the porch to cool, and within an hour it was perfectly white hardened clean LARD, aka beef tallow, which because it's purified will stay fresh for my bird friends even in summer. Cleanup was the greasy part, because when that stuff cools -- fast -- it's hard as flint. Will I do this again? Probably not; easier to buy. But I'm proud to have done it for my birds. Finished product at right.

Father Feeds Son!

Caught in action so quick that it blurred even during the half a second of one shutter snap: The adult Pileated Woodpecker (right), having lunched on some suet -- always available here -- feeds his adolescent son by regurgitating. The parents come for suet each year during nesting, vanishing until around August 1 when they bring and feed the kids and then patiently wait on the tree while Junior and/or Missy practice flying at and pecking at the suet basket. Mastery takes about a month of practice. If the young one continues pestering the grownup for food by getting close and opening its beak, Mom or Dad will give them a sharp peck, meaning "Get your own!" By September the kids have flown and the parents go "on vacation" until frost, not coming by, even for suet, but calling when they see me come out of the house. They resume suet-eating around Thanksgiving.

The female Pileateds have red caps; males have red "mustaches" as well. The younger ones can be distinguished because the head feathers are whiter; the older the bird, the more yellow. The stripes and mustaches on different Pileateds are all unique. Most often Dad feeds a son and Mom feeds a daughter, but I have seen it vice versa also.

Stolen Goods Retrieved

Raccoons grab and steal the wire suet cage that I fill and hang outside for my birds -- that is, if I don't fetch it in at dusk every day. And they drag the cages up to 30 feet away, chop-shop 'em, and gobble the suet meant for my woodpeckers. Of course the little thieves don't return the empties. When the grass is tall, and the ticks, thorns and poison ivy are full blast there is no way I'm going to march through several hundred square feet of that to look for a dark-green suet cage. I buy a replacement for $1.

But today, just before everything goes green (we hope), I tromped through the brushy slope of rugged land just south of the cabin for the first time in a couple of years, looked hard, and retrieved three missing suet cages in various stages of decay. I plan on marking them with neon-orange tape so that when raccoons make off with them they won't take four years for me to find. Needless to say they were all very very suet-free.

Times of the Signs, Part 3

Nothing heartens me like the sign "Live Bait," and the Eureka Feed Station has that sign up all year. Another sign too, seasonal, mentions Christmas; the only one like it in town! Divine purchases there include birdseed by the sack, bales of straw, cases of suet, deerskin leather work gloves (8 years and grubby-lookin but still good!), mousetraps and poison, salt blocks, tools & fishing license. Run by a father and son. Used to be closed on Sunday and Monday also. One time Demetrius left his wallet on the counter on a Saturday and it was in the same place when he returned on Tuesday. The Feed Station now, somewhat reluctantly, has Sunday hours. Posted on the door:

Sunday:
8:30-10 Church
Open 11 a.m. - 3 p.m.

Her Ladyship

Lady Pileated Woodpecker now takes her daily brunch at my suet cake. An honor to have her, after several months without seeing her. She winters here but did not dine here. Yet she did "call" me from the treetops every day. Lord Woodpecker must be nearby. Photographed this through the screen because it'll be a while before I can slowly regain the confidence of Her Ladyship, get closer, and photograph her without barriers between us. She has an enviable cap and great feet.

His Lordship

"A spectacular crow-sized woodpecker," says the Peterson Guide. It's rare to see pileated woodpeckers on suet, but pairs live here year-round and come to dine and entertain me from December to May, and again from July (when they train their sons and daughters to eat suet) to September (when the parents take a much-deserved vacation). They live for up to 12 years, and dwell in "singles" apartments in hollowed-out trees. The male has a red "mustache." They all scream for joy. The well-known cartoon woodpecker was modeled on a pileated woodpecker. Photo taken today!