We are enjoying a spate of warm weather this week. Warm enough that I might be tempted to run the air conditioner today, but I’ll try to hold off. It is warm enough now that I’ve switched back to shorts, eschewing big-boy pants for a while. The leaves are turning, so it looks like fall, even if it feels still like summer. It might hit ninety today. We had a frost warning yesterday morning, but the heat island effect easily overcame that. It is also very dry here. Not California dry, but still dry none the less. Because it is so dry there has been a marked absence of insects and with them gone so too are many of the birds.

On Monday, we heard a Bard owl calling, “Who cooks for you?” It was 11 AM on the first Monday of the month and the sirens had just rung out and must of triggered its midday revelry, because once they subsided so did the owl. Later, we saw this other mystery bird. It could just be an immature starling. That would explain the white dots and the gray head could just be a trick of light, but it was much larger than a starling should be, let alone an immature one. It was visibly larger than the flicker that rooster near it. I don’t know, it’s a mystery, but I’m pretty sure now that it is a European Starling in white-speckled winter plumage, with a black bill. Alas, much to do about nothing or at least not much. 

Yesterday, we participated in a two and a half-hour Zoom meeting. Crab was the main feature, but there were tons of other Eeganstreets (or current residents) present too. By way of a warmup, Anne had pawed through David and Maren’s Instagram catalogs and she was especially taken by one of Dave, who was holding an infant, Maren’s newest relative. David was tagged as “Uncle Dave.”