Of birds and bees

It's a Saturday morning, already warm but not yet hot, as I enjoy my coffee at a steel and tile table on the terra cotta patio. About a dozen bees move from flower to flower on a sprawling old multi-stemmed salvia. When they latch onto a flower and feed, the weight of a bee shakes the whole stem, and when the bee moves on to another flower, the stem rebounds like a spring. The mass of a bee's body hanging on the salvia stem must be like boys climbing trees in an orchard to pick apples, going out on a limb to grab the good stuff.

It's my idea of a good time just to sit out here and watch the yard come alive.

Last weekend I was sitting right here enjoying a quiet morning, and I heard a big bird swoop in past my left shoulder and land under a rose bush right beside me. All I could see was its black and white tail feathers for the minute that it rested under the roses. Then it took off and in two seconds was in the middle branches of a maple tree in the corner of the yard. I could just barely see the tail twitching under the branch that obscured its body. When I walked closer to get a better look, the hawk flew away, and for a second I could see its white belly shooting across the parking lot to another maple. Not a red tailed hawk, maybe a sparrow hawk, and whatever you are, you can see me a lot better than I can see you, so thanks for stopping by.

When Jessi was here in July working on the house, he made a number of trips to the hardware store to get tools and materials. A drill bit here, a section of PVC pipe there. On one of those trips down the bike trail from Summit to State Street, he was riding past the South High School baseball field, and he saw a hawk caught in the netting of the batting cage on the far end of the field. The big bird must have randomly flown in one end of this long, narrow net and gotten tangled up trying to find its way out of the 65-foot tunnel of rope.

Jessi being Jessi, he got off the bike and into the cage, trying to shake the net to free the bird. It took some doing, but finally the hawk got unsnagged from the net and flew out the open end.