Dear Rob,

Thanks for the delightful story about the toddler. She must be a special kid indeed.

When my daughter was that age, I used to take her up the hill from Concrete to see a Pygmy Owl that was reliable up there. She always called it the "Oink-oink Hoot-hoot," based on a joke she had made up at that age, about the "Pyg" part of the name. I still think of them as Oink-oink Hoot-hoots!

Yours truly,
Gary Bletsch

Rob Sandelin <floriferous at MSN.COM> wrote:
I have a young friend, not quite three, who comes over from time to time to watch birds out my window. She is just tall enough to see over the window sill into the area where our feeder is set up. She can talk, well sort of, and has her own delightful words for birds, which she can clearly discriminate between (which is way more than I was ever doing at her age) She loves the little birds that come to the feeder, which she calls dee dees, a variant on chickadee I assume. She calls varied thrushs, fairies and my favorite is her name for Stellars jays which she calls hop hops. Oh yeah, she also calls Pine Siskins, sisters, and gets very excited by the largish flocks of them that show up, yelling sisters, sisters, sisters. . When she sees a bird she does not know she asks, whazat? Her mother and I are both amazed at her attention span at the window as she can stand for 15 minutes at a time and just stare and call out delightedly to the birds.

Today I was washing dishes as she asked, whazat? and pointed to a weird lump in the arbor behind the feeder. I could not figure it out, it was big enough to be a small hawk but totally the wrong shape, kind of roundish. I thought for a minute maybe it was a grouse or something perched in an odd place. I got my binoculars (Bikenoolars) focused and it turned into a pygmy owl, in broad daylight, holding onto a chickadee in its talons, sort of turned sideways, which accounted for the odd profile. My toddler friend and I both jumped up and down and chanted owl, owl, owl together. What a cool surprise.


Rob Sandelin
South Snohomish County at the headwaters of Ricci Creek
Sky Valley Environments <http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm>
Field skills training for student naturalists
Floriferous at msn.com




Yours truly,

Gary Bletsch

near Lyman (Skagit County), Washington

garybletsch at yahoo.com


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