Cranes, golden cottonwoods and fairies

The sharp cobalt sky is filled with the churble of sandhill cranes, heading down to the Bosque del Apache as the high country peaks are showing white.

Our best season lazes on: frost clips the late blossoms, while afternoons warm south walls. The house is downright toasty, thanks to the sun. Furnace still not needed.

A western screech owl has been roosting in the summer house for several weeks, and the resulting owl pellets have been of interest to me and my five-year old grandson. Mouse bones are so tiny.

We recently spent a magical afternoon as he built a house for the fairies, tearing tiny placemats and a tablecloth from rags and carefully hanging mistletoe from the roof.

He assures me fairies like mistletoe.

Tiny stone seats were placed with care around a rock table. Periwinkle petals provided exquisite decor, and a good sheet metal roof supported a rag flag, on which he had drawn a flower and bumblebee.

We're certain the fairies approved.

Spotted Towhees and Robins

This morning the season officially changed with the arrival of several spotted towhees at the feeder. One of the most colorful winter residents, these little orange, black and white sparrows are never so plentiful as to be a problem (as the robins can be) so they are always welcome.

During a dry winter, flocks of robins crowd our small pond and befoul it, endangering the goldfish. One February we arrived home after leaving our house with a sitter for ten days. The pond water was purple, and two dozen dead fish floated like fall aspen leaves. The robins were so thick that it was hard to think of them as symbols of spring cheer!

As a kid I raised a robin fledgling that had been caught by our cat. I will always recognize the call. Named Cheep-cheep by my little brother, she grew quickly and learned to fly, but always had one wing feather that went at an odd angle due to the cat's claws. She would swoop down and land on my head, then poop. When she was grown we took her with us on a week-long vacation to a nearby state park. Every day we would let her out, then let her into the cabin at night if she would come to us. By the time we left she had taken up with some other robins.

That was in the misty Blue Ridge mountains; this is the Southwest high desert. A very different life for a robin, where life depends on finding water. And since I choose to provide it, guess I can't blame them for showing up in excess.

Kinda like our own species: always able to recognize a good thing, then overusing it to the point of destruction.