Of all the lovely things to find at the beach, I think the prettiest by far, even prettier than shells, are sheets of transparent green seaweed. Like living panes of glass, one feels that if one could see through them, one could see right into the heart of the ocean.
These jays are probably one of my favourite birds with their gorgeous blue colouring and inquisitive bold behaviour. We have a couple of Steller's Jays who habitually come to visit for their peanut hand-out. (Just don't tell the neighbours across the alley, not that the neighbours want the peanuts, what I mean is, that they don't like having birds around their vegetable garden.)
The jays choose their peanuts with care. No hasty dashing and grabbing peanuts willy-nilly. Oh no. They carefully go through the pile of peanuts and shake each one and weigh them up in their beaks to decide whether the meat in the shell is worth the energy expenditure of caching. They fly away, sometimes only ten feet or so, and hide them in the lawn by pushing them into the ground and then covering the cache with a leaf or a clump of grass clippings. Sneaky! When they are really feeling lazy they will cache the peanuts in the geranium window box right next to where they are sitting. Then I dig them out and offer them back to the jays when they aren't looking. Oh yes, it is nonstop with crazy good times here.
Hiding in the bushes as they do, this catbird was mewing up a storm. At first I thought it might be a juvenile towhee begging for food so I was very pleased to see this smart slate grey fella come into view and hang out on the weigela shrub. The last time I saw a catbird was a few years ago in the underbrush in the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, Florida.
Another amazing day. Sunny and bright. A little cool for sandals and shorts but great gardening weather. I decided the weeds could wait for another day and decided to paint these orange tulips. They are in a tub by the steps and every time I go past they brighten my day. Orange tulips are definitely the thing to have in your life. If you don't have any, I do recommend getting some bulbs next fall. There's nothing like sunlight on orange tulips, except maybe for sunlight on deep red tulips...and then there's those yellow ones...hmmm...
It is still chilly and snowy today. The yard is peeping through with green patches in places, but overall, it is still white. The mountain view out of my living room window is very wintry. From my angle, I can see both of the ski cuts on the mountain and if I train my binoculars on the cuts, I can see tiny specs zigzagging their way down.
Grouse Mountain is one of the many mountains on the North Shore. Their steepness prevents the neighbourhood from outright dominating the landscape, though you can make out new subdivisions crawling up their flanks. (Then the tears come when there is a windstorm and trees crash onto roofs and let us not forget the moral outrage when bears show up in the backyard. The local newspaper is a-flutter I tell you.)
The North Shore Mountain range is a bit deceiving. It is heavily forested and because it isn't extremely high, it looks capable of "doing". From a distance, the mountains have a soft, rolling look and they hide the gorges, sheer drops, ravines and sudden cliffs.
The famous bit, apart from the ski runs, is the Grouse Grind, a vertical hike of 2,800 feet. I can appreciate exercise, but that's just not for me. Folks have told me that it is like hiking in a mall, but vertical; it is that busy and that boring. According to their website, 100 000 people hike that trail each year. Yep, so not for me.
...127..128..129!
So there I was sitting on the beach watching the gulls doing their gull stuff on the shore when I noticed that one of the group was doing his own thang. He was doing that foot vibration motion in the sand that you used to do as a kid on the mudflats to make you sink deeper (and oh yes, we used to get in trouble). It looked so amusing; the other gulls milling about, preening or napping and here is this one, head bent over in earnest, jiggling his feet.
He must have been finding some pretty tasty stuff, because he was repeatedly dipping his head to eat until a bigger gull came over and scared him off. Funny, the larger gull didn't do the foot jiggle, just stood around in a bossy, big-gull way. Hmph.
Awoke to a thin layer of snowfall and these delicate, light caperings of the Steller's Jay.