Jill Browne, from home and away

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Home: Calgary, Alberta, Canada

The robins have been here for at least a couple of weeks, but now I’m hearing them at least once a day.

I put 200 mealworms (dried) out for them to eat on Sunday afternoon. They were still untouched this morning. Need a more visible spot.

North American robins are big birds, compared to the cheery English robin red-breast of Christmas card fame. Our robins are a kind of thrush, with grey backs and orange-y breasts. The male is brighter than the female.

Baby robins have spotted breasts and look clumsy, which they are, but only briefly. Soon they leave the nest and learn to fly.

Robins are one of the most common birds we have. We tend to use them as one of the standard birds for describing the size of other birds. Bigger than a robin? That’s fairly big, for a city bird. Something like a gull or a crow. Smaller than a robin? That would be in the chick-a-dee or sparrow range.

Robins build round nests, using a lot of mud and straw and twigs. Two nests glued together could make a sphere.

Because they are reasonably unafraid of people, robins will build their nests close to houses. We had one in our Virginia creeper a couple of years ago, and everyone had to walk right by it (within inches) to get into the house. That particular nest was a little fancier than most because the birds had found some coloured yarn and worked it in.

Some people leave long bits of yarn lying around for birds to use in nesting, but this one was by luck, not design.

The eggs are a special shade of turquoise (robin’s egg blue). The babies are born with that prehistoric naked dinosaur look, but soon they grow feathers and put on weight.

If you hold your hand over the robin’s nest when the babies are in there (when the mother is away looking for worms and bugs to feed them), the babies, even though their eyes may be closed, will turn their heads up to the shadow you’re casting. They open their mouths wider than the size of their heads, and wait for dinner to drop in.

The year we had that nest in the Virginia creeper, I had the door open to get a breeze through the house one summer day. Later, after I’d been working up in my office for a while, I went downstairs to the ground level and there was a robin in the living room.

He was one of the babies, and the Mum was outside calling him, but he couldn’t figure out that he had to return the way he’d come.

I tried to shoo him out, but it was too complicated for him to follow my directions. Picking him up wasn’t my first choice, but that’s what I had to do. I guess robins are tough enough to survive a little handling, but the poor little guy’s heart was racing.

He joined his Mum, who scolded him, and then they flew away.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Away: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Drove back home to Calgary

It was one of those blue Alberta days, the high-pressure, semi-euphoric air mass finally giving us an uplift. The winter dust and grime didn’t look so thick today.

Best of all, the little gophers, aka prairie dogs, Richardson’s ground squirrels, were standing by the road here and there. I didn’t see many, but there were a few between Edmonton and Red Deer.

The prairie dog life cycle includes a lot of time spent underground: all winter, much of the summer and fall, and at night.

Dr. Gail Michener at the University of Lethbridge has studied them closely. One of her many interesting findings about these little guys is that the dates of starting and ending hibernation depend on age (juvenile or adult) and gender. The boys and girls are not all upstairs at the same time, though of course there is some overlap of they would be the Shakers of the animal kingdom.

Here’s a link to Dr. Michener’s explanation of the yearly cycle of the Richardson’s ground squirrel.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Home: Calgary, Alberta, Canada

How are robins supposed to deal with snow?

They aren’t exactly tiny, fragile birds, but still, there’s just not a lot of food around for them yet and I don’t think they enjoy being out in the snow.

Birds are such miraculous creatures. They can fly and they run on … chicken feed.

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Home: Calgary, Alberta, Canada

As the city limits expand, there are more opportunities for humans to move into the territory of the native wildlife.

A couple of years ago I was driving around to the southwest of town and saw a cougar up close and personal. It was chasing a coyote.

The cougar had an exaggerated jutting jaw, just like the Pink Panther.

It was also much more of an orange colour than I expected. In the zoo and in photos, cougars always looked tawny to me, more golden than orange.

The truly orange animal is the fox, though.

On another day, on that same road, I sat in my car and watched a curious, beautiful fox for ten minutes. They really are gorgeous creatures.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Home: Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Weather: Sunny, warmer, snowed a bit and it was actually quite bright and sunny and nice when I went out to shovel it.  The snow was light and fluffy, not sticky and wet.

We live in a desert.  We need all the water that comes from the sky, whether it’s falling as rain or snow.

When it gets too warm in mid-winter, the snow melts. If the snow would melt slowly enough to sink into the soil, it could replenish the invisible water supply in the ground.  However, it often melts so fast that instead of sinking into the ground, much of the melted snow (water, in other words) runs off.

This is made worse by the fact that much of our city’s actual surface area is paved and impermeable.  Water can’t sink in through sidewalks, roads, and rooftops.

So, the water flows off the street and down the culvert and eventually into the Bow River.

Then in the spring and summer, when we (the large-scale “we”, that is, including all the farmers) need it, there isn’t as much water stored in the soil as we would like.

Another way we lose water is by the dry Chinook wind picking it up and blowing it east.

We can do something about the city being covered in pavement (at least, theoretically we can), but we can’t change the Chinook.

Another bad thing about having the temperature go above freezing in winter is the wear and tear the freeze-thaw cycle puts on things like concrete bridges and roads. Freeze-thaw isn’t that good a thing to wish for. It is the mother of potholes.

Join me in hoping the temperature stays around minus 10 C with sun.