Thursday, May 17, 2018

Who Likes Grape Jelly?

Last night I had an extremely busy schedule. I worked all day. I had an interview after work. I monitored two streams.  I went swimming.  I shopped for food. I picked up a pair of pants from an alterations shop. I went to the library. When I got home I grabbed some raspberries and Greek yogurt and sat down on the deck to relax.  This was about 7:30 in the beautiful evening.  My backyard looks like a fairy land because the crab apples are in bloom. The air is perfumed.  Pink and white blossoms look vivid against the summer blue sky with a couple white fluffy clouds for contrast.  I hear an ovenbird calling.  I see the baby chickadees come to my window feeder and clumsily land, take a seed, and fly off. Then I see my chipmunk come out of my rain gutter and skedaddle to it's home under the bird feeder post.  I have a bird feeder post stuck into the ground.  Around that I put a six inch diameter pvc pipe so the squirrels cannot climb the post.  The chipmunk home is part of the reason this bird feeder post is no longer straight up and down.  It leans at an angle to the southwest. At the top of the pvc pipe I have a metal baffle.  As I look at the baffle and contemplate straightening that post the chipmunk pokes it's head out of the baffle and crawls over to the oriole feeder.  The chipmunk eats grape jelly.  I say, "Hey, that is for the orioles," even though I have seen red bellied woodpeckers eat it too.  The chipmunk pays no attention to me. When the chipmunk had enough grape jelly it perched under the baffle on top of the pvc pipe to wash it's face which was now sticky with grape jelly. Lucky for the chipmunk I just bought more grape jelly. I guess I had better refill the oriole/woodpecker/chipmunk feeder.

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