COMPENSATION GIFT

A rather bedraggled squirrel—doubtless the very vandal who gnawed through my feeder lines last week—uses his bushy tail for an umbrella while he sits in the box elder where the well-stocked feeders once hung, and hungrily contemplates the error of his ways.    

Rain, rain, rain, heavy rain, possibly sunny, rain, rain. That's the weather prediction for the next seven days. Only worth quacking about if you're a duck. Otherwise, not exactly the sort of forecast that makes you want to bound out of bed in the morning.

Of course it rained this morning and afternoon. Most of the time not very hard, just passing bands of showers. The sun even popped out for a microsecond here and there. But after a week of similar weather already, we're getting decidedly soggy here on the riverbank. The river is up, but only a little since yesterday evening—when it was still up, but down from yesterday morning. That might only make sense to another riverbanker. During long periods of daily, or near-daily showers, the river level yo-yos by the hour—up, down, up, down, up, up, up, down, down, up. We seasoned water rats have established our personal river-level markers by which we watch to keep tabs on where we're at and which direction things are going. A glance is all it takes.   

At the moment I'm looking at a male downy woodpecker who's decided to join the chickadees and finches and eat sunflower seeds from the feeder hanging under the eave beyond my writing-room window. The poor little bird looks as though he's been whirled around in a blender—feathers either matted or sticking out every which way, like a punk-rock teenager with access to a new jar of hair gel. 


A few minutes ago a female rose-breasted grosbeak flew in for a meal. Grosbeaks are quite rare here along the river. I'm lucky if I see more than a couple per year. So on this rainy Monday, I may have just received my annual grosbeak allotment. 


Okay. I'll take that as a compensation gift for the lousy weather.

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