As I watched, I realized that there were about 15 to 20 birds wheeling in various circles in and out of the cloud mass. They seemed to be having a good time, and as the cloud moved off, they moved with it.
Had the clouds been lower, I almost would have thought them to be crows (since they took so much joy in flying) but they were too high and their glides too long and stable. I suspect that they are raptors of some type, red-tailed hawks, kestrels and Cooper's hawks are most common here, but I have never seen a group as large and so obviously playing with a cloud. I dropped a line to Laura Erickson who informed me that the swirling dance of a group of raptors is called a "kettle" ... a singularly appropriate and evocative name.
It was hard moving here and away from my Massachusetts garden, but there are compensations. The crows here are a rowdy crowd, and a group of them in a park by Lake Washington have made me an honorary member of their murder. (I do love my terms of venery.) I suspect that their motives have much to do with the fact that I have hands and a wallet and can provide them with an ongoing diet of snack foods.
I miss Pat and Pat The catbird pair, and the blueberry thieving bluejays ... but not those damn depressing mourning doves with their melancholic bubbling.
On the upside ... there is a Steller's jay that likes the evergreens in the postage stamp that they try to pass off as a backyard here. He comes visiting almost every day ... and a handsome chap he is too.
I am hoping that once construction stops in this area (houses are being built on three sides of my little plot) there will be more in the way of discernible avian neighbors.
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