Backyard and Beyond

I hope everybody staying inside as much as possible has something to look at outside.

If I may say so, the view from here is one of the best damn ones in the city, especially considering its price. I recently wrote about hawk-watching from the living room for the Clapper Rail. But there are also more mundane species to be seen every day, mundane in the non-pejorative sense.

Across the street, two-and-a-half story rowhouses with gentle bow-fronts face us. The mouldings on these are runways for Grey Squirrels. The roofs themselves are their highways. They may be nesting underneath the roof deck over there, or inside the curiously plastic filled air-conditioner cage a few houses over. The mammals invariably jump onto a garden tree, leap from that to a street tree, and hit the sidewalk running.

The air-conditioner cage — a metal frame to contain the A/C unit, currently absent — also seems to have House Sparrow nests on both sides. When a squirrel arrives, the sparrows fly off, but they soon return. An abandoned window box also seems to sport a House Sparrow nest underneath or behind it. Squirrels will also perch on that, eating. A few houses over, there’s a window air conditioner that provides some cover for Mourning Doves below, but I see no evidence yet of a nest. Not that Mourning Doves leave much evidence; their stick nests are absolutely minimal.

Our fire-escape, meanwhile, hosts cooing Mourning Doves mostly, but also the occasional Starling, feral pigeon, and House Sparrow will show up. Once we had an escaped POW parakeet. Interestingly, the Kestrels have rarely used this perch, even though the view is excellent. Once, though, the male left some prey there, returning later to take it.