Yesterday in Port Townsend was interesting, if not all that fun for me personally. My guts were in an uproar, and I hadn't slept all night and into the morning.
Yep, it was as if my digestive tract was like Gotham City on a bad day, in one of those old Batman comics. First of all the Joker, let off a big bomb (it may have been some bad food) and somehow destroyed many valuable members of my intestinal microbe community. That led to an opening for Cat Woman to show up, and start clawing around in there, causing an inner burning that kept me from sleeping. Add some other stresses to all that - and just about no sleep in 24 hours - and I was a total basket case. The wheels were definitely falling off my personal Batmobile.
Finally, in my misery, I just gave up on sleeping, and got out of bed at 4am - with the notion of "walking it off", as they say, and staggered out into the dark fog here in the neighborhood.It's a good place to walk around, and it being so early allowed me the privacy and cover of darkness as I expectorated and barfed my way down the road.
Despite being in such a sorry state, I couldn't help but notice hearing birds starting to sing, at 4am in the fog. First ones were Violet- green swallows, which in my past experiences, are often one of the earliest dawn (or pre-dawn) callers where they're found.
Soon the Robins piled on, and within a few minutes really filled the airwaves with loud song. Towhees start pretty early, and White - crowned Sparrows. Many other birds contributed - by 4:30 the chorus was really going. I was amused to get back to the house and find that Rob Sandelin had posted his observations of the bird chorus, over there in Snohomish county, of about the same time period of that morning, since a lot of what he saw and heard matched what I experienced here. Of course this spot has it's differences, which due to my miserable condition, I didn't tally up too completely. Definitely a loud chorus here also.
The favorite part of my sort of crappy walk, was seeing Bat's! While walking around here in the dark a fair amount, these were the first bat's I've noted around here this year. I guess I'd had a preconceived notion that it's more likely to see bats in clearer conditions (since mostly I have) but the fog wasn't slowing down these one's much. I saw many bats on my trudge, not just one or two, and on one section of hedgerow - lined road here, they were really testing my flinch responses as they kept skimming very close to my head as I walked along in the darkness.
There were at least two species of bat's; one was the Larger Little Bat, the other was the Smaller Little Bat. The larger ones had a faster and more direct flight, and the smaller ones had a more fluttery mothy flight style. Based on past time tweeters correspondence, and reading on my own, I imagine these were The Big Brown Bat, and the Little Brown bat. Maybe.
While I'm One Bad Mother, I'm an even worse Batter. Not really hitting them out of ID Park, if you know what I mean. "Hey, you ain't no Batman!" people have told me.
Jeff Gibsonnot Batman, inPort Townsend Wa