On to 2011

It does not seem as long ago as Thanksgiving when I last posted a blog entry. The people of Eaton Hill (the Director and I) have succumbed to the oh-my-where-did-the-time-go syndrome. It is pretty common around December/January of each year...

We have had visitors--both regulars and travellers (I looked it up. Either way. You'll know why the older style soon enough)--and we have been gone some, mostly with family for holidays. Except for concern over cold weather issues such as filling bird feeders and keeping water valves from freezing, we basically let the Hill do what it always does--there are birds and animals and plants being birds and animals and plants. I can pretty much guarantee that if a deer poops in the forest and nobody's there to see it, the little pellets will be there when somebody finally does show up.

We've had some very cold weather--one night the temperature made it into the teens. Today it is beautiful--there is some moisture in the air and the day started rather grey but the temperature is now 55 degrees F and the sky is a pale blue with an occasional shredded cloud drifting along. Earlier today I was downhill at the Birding Hut. There's a sort of a water trough limestone and mortar water feature that needed to be topped off. I turned the water on a trickle so there would be critter-enticing water noise and sat on a log downwind from the tank, with my back to the sun, camera at the ready, hoping for photogenic birds or deer (I had just spooked some Axis deer on my way down the trail).

A long time ago, when I was in 7th or 8th grade (recall the earlier "traveller"), I had an Alfred Hitchcock short story book. I do not know if the stories were written by Hitchcock (he was still with us then), collected by him, or published with his name attached by agreement with some publishing house but I really enjoyed scaring myself (and sometimes, reading aloud, myself and others) with this book. Oddly, I only remember one story and I do not remember the whole story, just the really creepy parts.

There were, in this story, small, brown, dessicated creatures sneaking up on the hapless (they are always hapless) victims, the creatures' dried up little feet making scritchy noises in the pebbly desert sand as they approached, perfectly camoflaged and invisible except as movement on the outskirts of the victims' field of vision.

Whenever I hear a particular kind of a sound I think of that story, and that sound can still evoke a mental shudder.

That sound was straight behind me about 15 feet away from my log. After my initial start, I slowly turned my head, trying to minimize movement and maybe see what made the noise. Just on the edge of my field of vision (seriously) something small ran through live oak leaf litter. It stopped and became invisible, then ran a few feet before becoming invisible again. Lucky for me it was travelling the way my neck turns so I could pick up the movement and follow it a few feet to the next spot.

And I finally caught this picture:

Hermit thrush

 And all I can say is... Whew!