Flying Birds....Excellent Birds

With two days of thunderstorms rolling through, the lawn is getting lush and my squash plants are going crazy. I worry that my house will allow some water into the basement somewhere, as it did last summer during a white-out of a downpour, but that hasn't happened yet (cross fingers).

Yesterday my husband and I practically had to row the truck out of downtown Denver when the streets hosted a flash flood after a strong storm. I'll chalk that one up as an adventure, like driving through Iowa on a pitch black night through an intense thunderstorm.

But lush vegetation is unfortunately not the only blessing of lots of rain. Mosquitoes and other bugs are buzzing around like crazy, getting in the house and generally upsetting my appreciation of the weather following a severe storm.

As I was driving up to the house today, having picked my kids up from their day camp, I was greeted to what I at first thought I had seen before; a flock of birds wheeling and diving in the sky above the cul de sac. I looked for the hawk that must be disturbing them. Nothing. Then I noticed they were diving, rising, and diving again in circles, over and over, about twenty of them, way too low to the ground. I pulled slowly into the driveway and watched, fascinated, as they didn't scatter from the car. I opened my window, and the sun picked out for me what I had missed before....a ton of bugs rising from the grass. Most of them appeared to be mosquitoes. The birds were eating them. I even saw a dragonfly buzzing boldly among the birds busily eating his own fill of the smaller bugs.

Well hell, you could have knocked me over with a feather, as they say. I told the kids to be slow and quiet getting out of the car but I needn't have worried. The birds were feasting and wild cats wouldn't have driven them off.  I caught some of it on my camera video, but the flock had cleaned most of my front yard by then and were starting to disperse. Still, I've never seen them just swoop and dart in my front yard over and over before. Thanks for cleaning my yard, birdies! Come back any time!

So of course this scene reminded me of this song. I love Peter Gabriel and Laurie Anderson.