[Regia-NA] Straw hats - OT

[rmhowe]

Hazel Uzzell wrote:
> We have a red squirrel and a grey squirrel who live in the very small area
> of woodland at the back of our house. We have lived here for 30+ years and
> it is only in the last 2 years that we have seen any squirrels at all.
> The red one comes for nuts in the morning and the grey one in the evening.
> Hazel

 From what I have read the more aggressive greys are
running the little reds out of their habitat area.

We do have the rare whites in some municipalities.

We put popcorn out in the yard several days a week
for everyone, particularly in baby season, and
the regular birdseed and suet feeders hang on
a pulley before the kitchen window. We have one
smart ass little grey squirrel who climbs the
brick wall on occaision and may get himself in
serious trouble. He won't listen to my wife.
I scared him bad enough one day he belly flopped
a stainless steel table at 17 feet. There were
pipes on it at the time.

Our county Court House is about eleven stories tall
and covered with a beige small tumbled stone finish in
concrete. The Squirrels downtown have few trees
except in the parks but that doesn't stop them at
all. They run up the front of the courthouse and
somewhere I have a news picture showing two of them
sitting atop the huge county seal on the front of the
building looking for all the world as if they are
discussing the goings on 45 feet below.

(I once saw a shootout in the middle of downtown
lunch there between various cops and a nutbar who
had grabbed a deputy's gun and shot him downward
through the belt buckle. Fat business men were
running about desperately. I'd have to say that
was not a shining day for the local cops, very
little regard was given for pedestrians at all.
(All their bullets missed, even the really fat
out-of-town visiting sheriff's shots who
was firing as he tried to run and keep his pants
from falling down). Did blow out a number of car
windows. One Raleigh cop on a tri-cycle motorcycle
was going in 20' circles trying to figure out what to
do. It occured in front of and behind the downtown
parking building I was running at the time and we
simply ran to the back to watch the chase below
us. He was captured and put in Dorothea Dix mental
hospital here for evaluation, subsequently escaped,
was recaptured months later out west, returned,
and hung himself in his cell. The deputy eventually
recovered.) So there is often something quite odd
for the courthouse squirrels to discuss you see.
Apparently we have lunatics with guns with badges.
We also have various music and new year festivals
on the mall there that used to be a city street.

We normally only have greys where I live.
They are quite tough things to eat, even when stewed.
The closest thing to a red squirrel I think we
have is the Kaibab squirrel out west.

I think the European Red Squirrels are beautiful.

On the alternate hand we have TONS of English House
Sparrows who reproduce at about four clutches per
year versus our indigenous birds who only have one
or two. We have many birds here at our house including
a number of long lived English House Sparrows. When
ours have gotten really old (like eight or more years)
the breast feathers get a darker grey than the children's
light grey/white. Their normal life span in the wild
is maybe two years. We have octagenarians producing
children at a slower rate. Our most favored pair lives
in a house on a pole that was a basket ball goal once.

We don't have sparrow hawks here. All of ours in the
city are quite large and every now and then they will
swoop our bird feeder which hangs 18" before the
kitchen sink window. Or plunge into the wild big pink
rose bush that they hide under.

We have three big to little sizes of woodpeckers and flickers
(a similar bird that eats ants as well), carolina wrens
(much like their English cousins, red Cardinals, Bluejays,
Bluebirds in the remote areas, goldfinches on
ocaision, purple finches, catbirds, mocking birds,
robins, boat-tailed grackles (black birds I love that
are excellent visitors and parents who can glide
more than a hundred feet and strut through the yard
like Fred Astaire), blackbirds and crows and starlings
who are just plain pests. Mourning doves (the stupidest
things on wings who will eat all your seed and go sit
on a tree waiting for a refill), and Pigeons downtown
and near the Vet School and the various shopping malls.
Watching the bigger woodpeckers bite the starlings who
dare to stay in their regal presence is quite amusing.

At the Garbage Landfills live vast flocks of seagulls
despite the fact that we are 120 miles inland.

At night we have what we call nighthawks (swifts?) that
hunt the bugs over the lawns and fields. It is quite
curious to watch the bugs rise over the trees at night.
The lightning bugs go up about twenty feet over them.

In the late falls sometimes the ladybugs (we have
red and yellowish/orange spotted varieties) try to invade
the houses en masse for warmth. We had an unused postal
box for notes on our front porch and we had about
a dozen who formed a semicircle by touching front
legs and spent the whole winter in apparent seance.
I tried making a lady bug house out of a holed
insulated water jug filled with loose leaves and hung
in the sun but they didn't take to it well.

My assistant manager used to get on our 6 bull horn
listening/announcement/intercom system in the eleven
floor parking garage and do guinea hen impressions.
You'd see folks for more than a block in either
direction stop in confusion. At night we could
pick up conversations a block away. I wish I had
kept that thing. It was wondrous. It was fun watching
the sun rise over the horizon some mornings when the
third shift wasn't present.

Magnus