August 1st, 2007 |
The Giving Tree. (article title courtesy of Shel Silverstein)
Once upon a workday dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a silly and spurious request of clients' maddening bore,
While I nodded, email zapping, freaking loud there came a tapping,
'Holy crap!' I screamed, 'that bird just smacked on my window gore -
Not only his, but here come twenty more!'
Apologies to Poe. I know he's cool. Anyway, I am fortunate to have my desk right next to a corner of my office, on the second floor of a two story building. In this corner are two windows, and outside of these two windows is a single, large, black cherry tree. At least, we're about 80% sure it's a black cherry tree. We think it is. Regardless, it's pretty.
But even more importantly, or relevant to this article at least, is that for a span of three week or so in the summer this tree has large flavorful berries on it and they attract tons of wildlife. Many, many kinds of birds show up - more than I've ever seen in one location outside of a zoo. Also this year I've seen more mammals show up than any other year. Deer have always shown up but we also got groundhogs and raccoons too (and squirrels and chipmunks)!
So I wanted to show off some of the pictures I've been taking for the last couple weeks. Enjoy!
I'll start off with the birds and then get into the furry guys. There's a video down the page a bit so if you want to see a raccoon running around a tree, don't miss it!
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I love the above one. The shot on the left accidentally focused on the small crabapple tree in the background. It's a great little diptych, I think. Click on the image to see it much larger. And click the thumbnail below to get a 1600x1200 wallpaper if you really like it! :)
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One of the craziest things about all this is that towards the end of this two week feeding frenzy, the birds get so complacent about sitting around for long amounts of time, and the berries get so overripe and sugary, that the birds get a little wonky. When something startles them they take off haphazardly and can't really fly very well. Five birds may fwomp into my windows throughout the course of a week. I laugh but I feel awful. It's usually not bad, though - the tree is so close to the windows that they really can't get up much speed. In all the years I've worked here only one bird has died from hitting the glass.
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What usually happens when they hit the glass, however, is they're carrying a berry in their beak like the guy above. So of course it leaves a huge purple splatter and smear across the window, often with a wing-print and a couple feathers stuck to it. Thanks, guys.
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Cardinals are freakin' rad.
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Someone call Eric Draven. Or whatever.
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Someone call Batma-...ugh. yeah. Look, more birds!
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This red dude with the black wings is a Scarlet Tanager. I don't think I've ever seen one of these. Crazy!
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And whee a little woodpecker. heh.
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Enjoy a lovely little clip of a raccoon (in broad daylight, no less!) meandering around my tree in search of berries. No, she's not rabid. Her mate was with her and they came back over the span of several days - far too normal behavior for a rabid animal.
This tree was just too good a food source for them to pass up. They'd come over, eat a ton of berries, and then nap in the tree for hours.
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And here's the lil fuzzy groundhog, which is also known as a woodchuck, whistlepig, or land beaver. I'm not kidding.
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zomg SKRL. I mean look at the cute squirrel!
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Hahaha chipmunk butt.
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And the deer. Normally they bring a couple fawn with them but they weren't around this year - maybe the berries were late in the season. I don't know.
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The End
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Syndicated