Hard time falling asleep last night. Let us confine our coffee consumption to Sunday morning breakfasts from now on, shall we? And so groggy today, emotionally hungover--what did I blog about yesterday? Ohhhh--I must be crazy after all. Well, so be it, then.
My fencepost-hose suspension idea wasn't thunk through clearly. Now I've decided to take a 20-foot corral rail and lay it across the creekbed and sort of wind the hose on it to keep it from sagging into the water. No male would come up with such solutions, probably, but then I lack benefit of (or am unencumbered by) that conditioning.
My email inbox was filled with spam this morning, and it continues to arrive every three minutes or so, a couple at a time--mortgages, stocks, pharmaceuticals, Russian software, and sex stuff so foul I have to hold my hand over the subject lines as I press the Delete key. What is happening at the spam factory? This is most discouraging.
Shortcake: Here's the recipe. When the dough turns into a big sticky glop in the bowl, turn it out onto a heap of flour. Flip the glop over to flour the other side. Divide the glop in half. Flour the exposed sides of the dough without working any flour into it and lightly press half onto a buttered pan until it is an inch or so thick. Smear with melted butter and press the other half on top. Smear with butter again and bake as in recipe. Superb. At dessert time you can spread whipped cream on the split halves in a dish and top that with spoonfuls of preserves or marmalade, if you can't have fresh strawberries and cream. Fine stuff.
The Pacific Nighthawks returned a week or two ago, or I just noticed them then. They winter in South America and arrive here in early summer. They come out at bug time and their angular silhouettes razoring the amethyst twilight can take your breath away. I haven't heard it yet this year, but when I first moved here last summer I noticed a loud distinctive thrum in very late afternoon. I thought it must be the bray of some weird mule loose in the hills; it was so loud it actually echoed down the ridge. Investigation though led to the nighthawk spiraling vertically downward at great speed, veering horizontal at the last millisecond like a trick pilot at an air show, and it was the vibration of its wings, like a bullroarer spun on a string, that made the sound.
From Bird Neighbors by Neltje Blanchan:
Too often it is mistaken for the whippoorwill. The night hawk does not have the weird and woful cry of that more dismal bird, but gives instead a harsh, whistling note while on the wing, followed by a vibrating, booming, whirring sound that Nuttall likens to "the rapid turning of a spinning wheel, or a strong blowing into the bung-hole of an empty hogshead." This peculiar sound is responsible for the name nightjar, frequently given to this curious bird. It is said to be made as the bird drops suddenly through the air, creating a sort of stringed instrument of its outstretched wings and tail. When these wings are spread, their large white spots running through the feathers to the under side should be noted to further distinguish the nighthawk from the whippoorwill, which has none, but which it otherwise closely resembles. This booming sound, coming from such a height that the bird itself is often unseen, was said by the Indians to be made by the shad spirits to warn the scholes of shad about to ascend the rivers to spawn in the spring, of their impending fate.
The flight of the nighthawk is free and graceful in the extreme. Soaring through space without any apparent motion of its wings, suddenly it darts with amazing swiftness like an erratic bat after the fly, mosquito, beetle, or moth that falls within the range of its truly hawk-like eye.
Usually the nighthawks hunt in little companies in the most sociable fashion. Late in the summer they seem to be almost gregarious. They fly in the early morning or late afternoon with beak wide open, hawking for insects, but except when the moon is full they are not known to go a-hunting after sunset. During the heat of the day and at night they rest on limbs of trees, fence-rails, stone walls, lichen-covered rocks or old logs -- wherever Nature has provided suitable mimicry of their plumage to help conceal them. Called also Nightjar; Bull-bat; Mosquito Hawk; Will-o'-the-wisp; Pisk; Piramidig; Longwinged Goatsucker.
They're numerous here because of the ponds, I think. I never had seen them so close up nor in such numbers until I came to this place.
Rumi TK.
11:55:18 AM 
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