Question from @castiron about animals and plants

[sonia]

Thanks for the thought-provoking question, castiron! I'd be interested in your answer, too.

What are your favorite local animals and plants? Are there any particular species that you miss from other places you've lived?
I've been really enjoying the song of the little house finches here in Oakland. They like to perch on the telephone wires and chat with each other around sunset. I haven't been hearing them lately - maybe they migrate for the winter. I didn't know which bird it was until someone told me recently, but I realized the sound was familiar from when I lived here before, and I had missed it.

I love the smell of eucalyptus in the warm sun when I'm biking up in the hills. There's less of that than there used to be, because those volatile oils make them go up like torches in a fire, so they've cut a lot of them down.

I used to whistle back to a bobwhite growing up in Virginia. Haven't heard those anywhere else I've lived. Just learned that it's all one word and a kind of quail when I looked up whether it's capitalized.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Eucalyptus is the only scent I can tolerate in soap &c, so I can fully appreciate the smell you enjoyed.

Round these parts it’s the pine trees—another complex tarry-oily fragrance, plus the extra tender dustiness of the needles on their journey to soil.

Three bird calls:

• oboe woot from the horned owl apartment in our yard’s spruce tree
• alto recorder of mourning doves
• unlubricated hinge of the sand hill cranes commuting between a local pond and the golf course

[sonia]

Interesting that you can tolerate eucalyptus scent! In Blake Garden there's an Australian section with lots of sharply aromatic plants that's wonderful in the warm sun.

I love the musical (and not) analogies for your local bird calls. How cool that you have sandhill cranes around!