Tag: American Robin

Hannah and the CoalBear: Baby Bunny, Robins, and Chickens!! Oh, My!!

Hi. I’m Mateo the CoalBear.

Do you see that I’m being a good helper?

This has been kind of a busy week in Mother of Cats Land. We’ve been outside most mornings checking on how things are going in the yard. The plants in the pots on the catio all look good. The bugs have been hopping around and they are SO MUCH FUN to chase. There were a couple of huge developments in the yard that I want to report to you:

The adult bunnies that used to live in our backyard are now gone. We were little worried about them, and wondered if there would be any baby bunnies this year when a single tiny bunny suddenly appeared in the garden by the deck. So cute. Hannah and I spend as much time as we can watching this little guy, and we are happy to report that he is growing like a weed and cavorting around the yard like a big boy. He isn’t even a little afraid of me and I get to get right up within inches of him,,, if it wasn’t for the chicken wire we would be having a great time.

Hannah: knock it off, CoalBear. We all know that you want to eat the bunny…

Shut up, Hannah. I’m telling the story today! The other thing that happened this week is all the leaves popped out on the trees. The Mother of Cats says it is called budburst, and it means that it really is spring now. I think that the robins know this too, because they have been singing like crazy all day and night. Literally, all night. They go crazy at 3am for some reason. I try to get the Mother of Cats up to let me out, but for some reason she won’t get out of bed. Lazy, lazy, Mother of Cats! Be like a robin! Get up and let me outside to see my baby bunny!!! This is what the robins sound like!

Hannah: CoalBear! Get on with talking about all the knitting and the chickens!!!

All right, Hannah. Why are you being so mean to me? You should go convince the Mother of Cats to give you some tuna and then maybe you can take a nice little nap. Outside where you won’t bother me!!

Now that I’ve put Hannah in her place, let me get back to telling you about the week. The Mother of Cats totally snapped, put her La Prairie sweater into time out on Sleeve Island, parked her dragon book back on the bookshelf, started a different book, and cast on a new Emotional Support Chicken. She has been completely out of control!!!! While she has been knitting the new chicken, she has dreaming about more chickens made in different colors; she keeps dragging yarn out of the stash and winding it up into little kits for MORE CHICKENS!!!! This is so out of control. What should I do? I’m just a little cat and it looks like we are having a huge outbreak of Chickenitis. Help! Who should I report this to? Hannah is no help at all. The only phone number she knows is 1-800-SND-TUNA.

Mateo: I have to admit that I have been helping with the knitting. Maybe that will help her get through this crisis… actually, I just like to chase yarn.

This is the chicken that she is working on now, but there is a dusty rose chicken on the way right after this one… and a sparkly blue chicken, and a rainbow striped chicken, and a chicken in fall colors…

It’s another handspun, handknit chicken to go on the couch downstairs.

The new chicken is kind of cute, right? Anyway, that was the week.

This is Mateo the CoalBear, signing off.

>^..^<

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

So, I spun out of control with the reading and knitting this week in response to sudden challenges. I had borrowed an e-book from the library that had to be returned in a couple of days. Oops. Emergency reading time! I have a couple of friends who are struggling with medical nightmares at the moment: obviously, they need chickens!! My cousin contacted me asking to buy a chicken to give a friend whose husband was just diagnosed with a serious illness. My phone blew up Thursday with the news that a member of my family was back in the hospital. The sweater was immediately parked (I was struggling with all the purling on the sleeves anyway…) and I launched the beginning of a flock of new chickens.

What was the book I was on fire to read before it was snatched off my Kindle device by the library?

Holy Smokes! What a book this was!

This is a book that I kind of feel should be required reading for everyone, but on the other hand, it is so brutal and reality-altering I feel that it will be banned in as many school districts as the distraught (and completely misguided) Karens on Steroids Moms for Liberty can get to. If Charlotte’s Web, Harry Potter, and The Hunger Games are too much for these people, this book will make their heads explode. I hope that they read it anyway.

So, this is the book: Chain-Gang All-Stars really made an impact on me. Imagine a system where convicted felons facing life in prison, or who received the death penalty can “volunteer” to join a system that is a reality show where the felons are on teams that compete against other teams and engage in gladiator to-the-death matches in arenas full of viewers. The teams, and individual players, are wildly popular; lots of merch is sold. Any player who survives three years will be freed, but it goes without saying that almost everyone will die. It probably shouldn’t surprise anyone that the members of these teams are more likely to be minority citizens or people who lived in poverty: that is the current prison population.

Everything about this book is crushing in its believability. I am crushed by the possibility. I can see that this could happen in a world where incarcerated people are seen as less than full citizens and without rights. Think of the wildly popular Survivor reality shows. Think of American football, where evidence of concussive brain injury in players was covered up for years. Think of the laws that strip felons of some of their citizenship rights like voting. Think of the wildly misbehaving attendees at some of our political rallies. Think of the horrendous deaths of minority population members (sometimes in public with citizens begging the police to stop) at the hands of law enforcement. Think of for-profit prisons that work their inmates as almost-slaves. Think.

I highly recommend this book.

I’ve returned to A Day of Fallen Night again and I’m quickly finishing it. It has dragons, after all.

The BioGeek Memoirs: American Robin

I’m sitting out in my back yard this late afternoon listening to the songs of robins. What do they sound like, you ask? Check out this link with American robins singing.

I have a lot of robins in the yard this year. I see them on the fence, running across the front yard, pulling up insects and worms from the lawn after I mow and water in the evenings, and splashing in the birdbath in my back yard.

I just love the robins! They are kind of intrepid, don’t you think? Lots of birds hop around, but no, not robins: robins are runners! I watch them run across the road almost every morning while I make my latte, and then across the lawn with a “you bunnies had better get out of my way” attitude. I mean, they are running chests out and leading with their beaks! What could be a better way to start the morning? Be like a robin, tackle each morning at a run! Be sure you get your latte first, however…

I almost never see robins over the winter, but they are kind of early arrivers in the spring. More than once, on a March snowy day, I have walked out to the car to find half a dozen male robins in the trees, heedless of any snow on the branches, carrying on and singing like crazy as they compete with the other birds. These first groups of robins are called waves, and they really are a first sign of spring.

Robins do migrate south in the winter and return to the north in the spring, but evidently it isn’t a strict north/south pattern. When I was back in the biology classroom the students and I would be on the watch for the first signs of spring in a number of categories, and the sign that I like the most was the first robin seen. The first robin of spring was a big deal for the students, and we were really on the watch starting about the first week of March each year. Students started carrying cameras with them hoping to grab a great photo.

Toy robin given to me by a student to use in the classroom. The first robin of spring!!

What? You can report the first robin seen somewhere? Yep. We made our reports to Journey North, which is an educational website where first sighting of spring in a number of categories are reported by students across the nation. Here’s the page for the American robins, and you can see the mapped data with animation here. As you might guess, the first robins are seen towards the south of the US, but then as the season progresses, they are seen further and further north. What I really love about this is that the data shows (and this is data from students all over the nation!) is that robin migration isn’t simple and clear because they tend to spread out to find food and don’t always move south. In the spring, the food becomes available as the sunlight, longer days, and earth warming moves north, and the robins follow the food.

Back to my robins in the yard this year. The fledglings left the nest this week and they have been hanging out in my yard with the bunnies and squirrels.

These little guys are hanging out hoping that one of their parents will come feed them.

I tried to snap a shot of the male feeding them, but there was so much baby-bird food-begging action and wing flapping I couldn’t get a good one before the parent flew off. Still, how cool is this? They are not all that afraid of me and seem to like hanging out with the occasional baby bunny in that side of the yard.

This summer’s baby bunny is doing great!

I have bunnies again this year! The cats are beside themselves!

I half-jokingly told a neighbor last night that I might let the backyard become a meadow. The grass is now taller than the baby bunnies and I am seeing more wildlife than usual. I’m torn, because I am making good progress weeding out my gardens this year and if I let the grass get too long, I will need some type of special mower if I change my mind down the road. What if the baby bunnies need more food? It is tempting…

Nope. As soon as I post this the mower is coming out. Run bunnies, and fledgling robins, you had better take to the wing.