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faerye

@faerye@pie.gd

Nebula-nominated speculative fiction writer.
Eclectic reader, piemaker, enthusiast of dinosaurs both extinct (🦖) and extant (:sapsucker:).
Plays and runs TTRPGs with and without dice.
Co-protagonist of @yaypie.
Befriend your local ecosystem!

Pronoun: she
Languages: en-5, fr-3+, cym-2, lat-2, it-1
Location: Atfalati Land, #pdx, #Oregon, USA

Header: me at age 5 with a half-life-sized papier-mâché stegosaur I helped make, looking resolute.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. For a complete list of posts, browse on the original instance.

faerye , to random
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Trying to remember to post my photos when not out and about!

This is my great treasure from yesterday: I realized that sometimes the Hairy put its head out to meet the parent. Only once per feeding, and usually right when the parent landed, so my attempts took a lot of patience — from my mom as well as me!

I just love woodpeckers so much!

A mother Hairy Woodpecker perching at her nest hole in a large aspen trunk. Her baby (single as far as we can tell, sadly) has thrust its scraggly head out to meet her and get fed, and kindly left it out long enough for me to snap a picture! Judging by beak size — because the spiky feathers standing up are a little deceptive — the baby’s head is perhaps three quarters the size of its mother’s already! She is sleek in black and white feathers, with a big dark eye in a graceful slender head with a strong bill. The baby’s eye is wreathed in wrinkles of black skin, and its feathers, stripes of white and black and a startling tomato-colored mohawk, are sticking out, looking fluffy or crusty by turns. Mom, morsel given up, looks pensive with her head tilted. Baby looks eager and its bill is open for its near-continuous peeping!
ALT
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    • faerye OP ,
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    My mom has been back to visit the Hairy and his frazzled parents three times since I left. 6/12 and 6/14, the scamp was still demanding food. 6/15, our little beggar had flown!

    In honor of this, I’m posting a photo of the little one from last week. Photo is from 6/10, 2 days after the one I’m replying to, but you can see some differences in plumage already.

    Congratulations on fledging, little woodpecker! We love you.

    A baby Hairy Woodpecker sticking his head out of a big nest hole in a knot on an aspen trunk. He looks a little scrubby and wide-eyed, but no longer quite as obviously dinosaurian and unfinished. His size is similar to that in the previous photo (perhaps three quarters his mom’s size) but his feathers are smoother, and some colors have come in more fully in the plumage. His red Mohawk no longer has a clumpy, spiny look like fresh hair plugs, but lies down nicely. Juveniles of both sexes can have this red crown, but the extensiveness of his stripe makes him almost certainly male! The black in front of his eyes is tipped with white. And below the eye, where wrinkles of black, seemingly featherless skin were gathered before, the white stripe has enlarged and filled in to make a fine white mustache. Under his chin, also, the feathers have filled in nicely. He also never used to stick his head out except when his mom or dad was there! Getting bolder, little guy!
    ALT
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    • + loren
    faerye , to random
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    Me: Remember, Mom, we do not search for Western Meadowlarks. We are genuinely here for whatever birds we see. Hearing the fae bird’s songs will NOT sway us into following, searching, yearning, etc.

    Mom, obviously yearning: Of course!

    Western Meadowlarks, invisible, sing beautifully.

    Mom, searching obviously: I think you-know-who is right over there!

    Me, sanctimoniously: I am grateful just to hear them.

    Mom continues searching but not saying the name. An hour or so passes.

    1/2

    faerye OP ,
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    Mom, tired: Ugh, let’s give up and go home for lunch.

    We trudge.

    Me, pointing: MOM MOM MOM

    Western Meadowlark, flying and perching far off: Greetings!
    Western Meadowlark, slightly closer: You were patient!
    Western Meadowlark: I am sufficiently amused! Behold!

    We danced.

    2/2

    A Western meadowlark, at the top of a wind-gnarled tree but nicely near for a zoom! It faces away but turns its head so we may admire its profile. Its long beak holds a dead caterpillar and another insect. Bright cadmium yellow flirts from its stripey shaded belly and splashes on its throat and forehead. It does not look at all invisible! A large eye and strongly drawn eye stripe make it very striking. Its striped and scaled brown wings are folded but held slightly tense, and its long legs are ready to launch it the moment it decides our audience is over.
    ALT
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    loren , to random
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    life is all about give and crake

    faerye ,
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    @loren Umm I’m behind so I hope I didn’t miss the crakeposting window but:

    🎼You can’t hurry corn, noooo
    You’ve just got to wait!
    You know corn don’t come easy,
    It’s a game of give and crake!🎶

    faerye , to random
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    Apparently Oregon farms are growing fewer strawberries because California is elbowing them out of the processed market now (our lovely, very sweet berries don’t ship as well) so I, for one, am doing my part by eating many farm-stand strawberries! 🫡🍓

    https://www.opb.org/article/2024/05/28/oregon-farmers-strawberry-season-production-growth/

    faerye OP ,
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    @NanoBookReview INDEED. They are not fooling around!

    faerye , to random
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    I dunno, I really love this park, but do you think they could get some woodpeckers in? 🤣

    (These are just the picidae that I got photos of in the parking lot.)

    A male hairy woodpecker hanging onto the side of a pale aspen. We can’t see the nest hole at this angle, but he has a line of drool on his bill that I’m sure has to do with providing foods to the unseen (but heard) youngsters! He has a slightly dingy white breast and white-spotted black coat, with jaunty eye stripes and a tomato red blaze on the back of his head you can barely see here.
    The female hairy woodpecker at the same nest hole, seen in profile with a green caterpillar in her beak. Hairy woodpeckers have long bill that’s often compared to a nail or chisel, but this bird looks so slender, all her feathers lying down sleek to her gracile skeleton, that on her the long bill just accentuates the narrowness of her lines. Her black and white color scheme contribute, as if she’s been drawn with an ink pen. We see her tough knobby talons clinging to the rough wood of the edge of her nest hole. We don’t see the young, but we can imagine their insistence from a certain air of harried patience on the mother.
    A northern flicker on (you guessed it) an aspen trunk. It has a very thick pointed beak for loud hammering, a smooth set of feathers in gray and latte tones covered with wild black belly spots, and a bright red mustache, for it is a red-shafted northern flicker. The aspen trunk has large scars in its white surface, healed over but obviously raspy rough.

    faerye OP ,
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    Here are a couple of the dozen-ish Lewis’s Woodpeckers I saw once we got past the parking lot. 🤣

    A woodpecker climbing around on a big dead Ponderosa pine, mostly stripped of its bark. There’s a nest hole — this individual’s nest, apparently — a couple of feet away at the top of the photo. The light shows off the iridescent shadings in the Lewis’s dark green wings and back. Its forked tail, pressed against the pale dead wood for support, is the same shade. Its long, wide-toed foot is sticking far out to the side, so it has a broad stance. The head is sort of in profile, so we see a bit of the big eye and red face, but also the dark head with odd two-tone riffle of white at the nape and collar, as if it has a distinguished peppering of white hair.

    A Lewis’s woodpecker or ‘Christmas woodpecker’ as I wish the ornithologists would rename them, sitting on a big dead branch and posing in the golden-hour sun. It has a long sharp beak turned up, from which its weird woodpeckery tongue is slightly protruding! It has a velvety scarlet face and a big lambent eye that looks a little shocked. It has a dark green back and wings, and fancy pink breast feathers, a bit ruffled up. Behind it, cloudless blue desert sky.
    ALT
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    • + loren
    faerye , to random
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    Me: “Now, Felicity, you haven’t got all your bird photos processed and added to eBird reports from your LAST trip to Central Oregon. You need to take photos judiciously, mindfully, parsimoniously.”

    Woodpeckers: exist

    Me: frenzy of shutter noises

    faerye OP ,
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    @rodbotic That sounds like a FABULOUS day! Definitely worth it :) Mine was only 355 as I recall, but it was just an evening birding trip after driving here.

    faerye , to random
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    Today I checked out a heron rookery nearby! My conservative count (already possibly incremented by my photos) was 15 herons, probably all fledglings — NO verified responsible adults.

    I mean, would you not trust these faces to take care of themselves?

    Three juvenile great blue herons in a conifer tree. Two are sitting on a twig nest and the other, on a branch on the other side of the trunk, is holding its wings very wide as if saying ‘not them, look at ME!’ All have ridiculous dark blue soft feather crests, like the hairstyle on Beaker from the Muppets. The two whose eyes we clearly see have bright yellow, very dinosaurian eyes. Their beaks, top mandible blue instead of yellow, look sort of dusty and doughy, as if formed but not yet finished. Their necks are streaky mauve, white and blue, which makes them look even messier. The attention-seeking one has his neck at full extension, which looks ridiculous.
    ALT
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    • + loren
    faerye OP ,
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    @loren They can eat anything they find in the kitchen, and I’m not locking the liquor cabinet.

    faerye OP ,
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    @loren They can have friends over!

    A photo showing the bottom of the previous nest, the two homebody fledglings still sitting in it but half-seen. The attention-getter heron now has his head and neck feathers fluffed but his neck fully contracted into a deep S-curve, doing a classic heron pose. Maybe this is how they look cool? Anyway, the neighbor kid from the next nest down is visible on the lower right, doing the same poofed-feather S-curve pose right back.
    ALT
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    • + loren
    faerye OP ,
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    @loren Very! They’re also very quiet. (Until anyone flies. Because anyone who flew could POSSIBLY have a fish, even if they aren’t your parent. Or are your sibling.)

    faerye , to random
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    Looking at last Friday’s bird photos, and I’d love an external opinion. I managed to take a few photos of these elusive little ~sparrow-sized jobbers we kept seeing in the underbrush of a scrubwood margin on Sauvie Island. The only good match I’ve found for them is female or immature Lazuli Buntings, which would be a lifer for me. Anyone with more experience have an opinion?

    (Sauvie Island, Columbia River, NW , May 24)

    The right bird has stuck its head curiously out beyond its intrepidly grasped plant stem, while the left bird is more fully hidden. The head is a dusty taupe, with a slight white stripe through the upper part of the dark eye, and a medium-shade line continuing from the eye toward the back of the head. The beak is grey. Under the beak, two fairly distinct white jowl-stripes. Of such doctor’s-office drab markings are potential lifer identifications made!

    Two small birds clinging to the green stalks of weeds or grasses. Their body plan is similar to a sparrow’s, but their beaks have more of a finch’s broadness at the base. Their legs seem to be gray, and all their plumage has a soft, pastel, 90s designer-color feel. The belly is white, which gives way to pale beige nearer the wing. The upper breast is an anemic orange. The left one is showing the underside of its tail: dingy shite coverts and a medium gray tail. The folded wings are also medium gray, with two white wingbars, fairly distinct.
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    • + loren
    faerye OP ,
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    @loren Thank you! Yes, the jowl stripes do look like Indigo (they’re on the same page in my Sibley, hehe) but it looks like ours have ‘em too, just less distinct.

    I inveigh against the prevalence of adult male birds in photos and reference, but I admit they’re usually…easier to definitively ID than this! ;)

    faerye OP ,
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    @loren Ooh, congrats!

    loren , to random
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    why must shows have uncomfortable situations. can't just nothing happen so i don't have to keep pausing??

    faerye ,
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    @loren Wait. This isn’t just me? For me it’s specifically embarrassment. There are shows I can only watch with my co-protagonist bc I need someone else to hold the remote so I don’t just pause it instinctively five times a minute and look at my phone until I forget I was watching TV.

    faerye ,
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    @loren INDEED. How did people watch The Office without a remote-spotter? No idea.

    faerye ,
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    @loren Yup, I only really saw the seasons I watched with my co-protagonist and had to give up after that!

    loren , to random
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    Indigo goddamn bunting!!

    faerye ,
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    @loren Whoa! Grats!!!!

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