I got up around 6:30 this morning to partly sunny skies. A huge storm with rain and wind went through Sacramento last night, knocking branches out of the trees everywhere. It kept blowing the doggie door open and then slamming it shut on and off all night and freaked out the dogs. Waukegan would hear it open, go to check on it, then run back into my bedroom when it slammed shut again. Needless to say that made for another night of sleep-us interrupt-us.
While it was nice out, I headed over to the Effie Yeaw Nature Preserve. I wanted to check on the Red-Shouldered Hawks that had been building a nest near the nature center there… and they were still there. Mama was sitting on her now-finished nest, and got up a few times to roll her eggs around (I think). Papa was sitting up in a nearby tree, and they screeched back and forth to one another. This must be the year for Red-Shoulders in the preserve. I found three other nests as I was walking along the trails. Amazing. One of them was being tended by a hawk who was rearranging all of the dead oak leaves around it. The wind storm may done a number of that nest and the hawk was cleaning up…
Before I got to the preserve, though, I stopped off along 65th Street in town where the annual wisteria is in bloom. There are plants all along a fence line that borders the street, and every year they’re just spectacularly ripe with thousands of blossoms. Such a pretty sight to see…
What wasn’t so pretty was the restroom at the preserve in the golf course area. I hardly ever use the public toilets, but nature was calling urgently, so I ducked inside the building… The restroom is basically brick walls with a metal roof on top attached to metal braces and posts. There are no windows, but there is a gap where the walls meet the roof. The wind storms last night must’ve really kicked up stuff, because the entire cubicle and toilet were covered in drenched leaves, twigs, and seed pods. It was ghastly looking. I bunched up some TP and used that to scrape the layer of crud off the toilet seat then used a seat cover before I sat down.
When I finally got out onto to the preserve itself, I was immediately met by a small flock of Wild Turkeys, including the oddly white leucistic one, and some of the males were “in strut”. I also found a small herd of mule deer who let me watch them for quite a while as they grazed in the long grass. The does and yearlings are so cute… I love their big dark eyes…
Then while I was trying to get photos of a wren bouncing around a blackberry thicket, I could hear a huge commotion at the small pond further up the trail: splashing and crashing. I left the wren and headed for the pond, not knowing what the clatter was all about, and I found two male Mallards doing a ducky-smack-down in the middle of the pond while a female tried to stay out of the scuffle. I’d seen male Mallard gang up on females before to mate, but I’d never seen a male fight to keep another male away from “his woman”. It was brutal. At one point both males were on top of the female – one male trying to drag the other male off of her – and I was worried that they were going to inadvertently frown the female! The top male finally dragged the usurper-male off of her, then shoved his head under the water until he finally rushed out and flew away. Wow. I got some of it on video…
Video of Mallards: CLICK HERE
I walked around for about 2 ½ hours and then headed home. On the way there, I stopped at BelAir and got all of my groceries for the next few weeks. When I got to the house, I unpacked the groceries, rebooted the dishwasher and did a load of laundry before quitting for the day. Phew!
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