Sunday, April 14, 2013
The purple martins are back! One of my neighbors was hoping they would have arrived a week ago, fittingly during the memorial for Dave Fouts, but here they are today, a week later, and just as he would say, "the scouts arrive mid-April..."
I already re-love hearing their sweet chirp. There are two males and a female (I think) and they look bedraggled -- coming from South America. I felt bedraggled just paddling six miles in the wind and rain on Saturday.
They are checking out the gourds and claiming their spots on the poles. Mid-day when they were gone I took the opportunity to lower the pole and add cedar chips and diatomaceous earth that a neighbor had offered to people at Dave's memorial. He had given her that advice, although not said anything about it to me. The cedar chips are a soft beginning to a nest and the diatomaceous earth keeps insects away.
I am never going to lower (or raise) the pole sleeve again by myself. It is heavy and when I got to the end of the figure 8 around the clamp it got away from me. The pole careened down and banged me in the head. My hand -- fortunately gloved -- got trapped where the sleeve slides over the rest of the pole. Afterwards I looked up "concussion" "symptoms" and didn't have any, although I've got scraped-off skin and some swollen and black-and-blue marks on my hand. It was a bit scary.
But I won't do that again, and I'm delighted to have the purple martins back home.
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