{"id":2921,"date":"2005-06-10T13:35:55","date_gmt":"2005-06-10T18:35:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2005\/06\/10\/looking-out-my-back-door\/"},"modified":"2022-05-06T16:16:56","modified_gmt":"2022-05-06T21:16:56","slug":"looking-out-my-back-door","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2005\/06\/10\/looking-out-my-back-door\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking out my back door&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>John Fogarty nailed it; there&#8217;s a lot to be enjoyed in one&#8217;s backyard if you&#8217;ll take the time to observe it. One of the benefits of relocating my office to the game room in the back of the house is that I have an unobstructed view of the backyard through the glass storm door. Here&#8217;s what has caught my attention this week (yeah, it&#8217;s a slow newsday, but that&#8217;s not bad):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Just before lunch today, a hummingbird was working over the juniper &#8220;tree&#8221; in the back corner of the yard. I&#8217;ve never before seen a hummingbird attracted to a juniper &#8212; there aren&#8217;t any flowers &#8212; but this bird spent about a minute (which is like a week in hummingbird time) going up one side of the shrub and down the other. Anyone have an explanation?<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-top: 1em;\">I spent several minutes yesterday afternoon watching two squirrels groom each other in the fork of the pecan tree just off the patio. They would painstakingly go over each other&#8217;s back and sides with their sharp little front teeth. One even lifted up his (her? I wasn&#8217;t <em>that<\/em> close!) front leg for a little &#8220;armpit&#8221; grooming.<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-top: 1em;\">I decided that the praying mantis egg casing on the handle of the broom that stays on the back porch is a dud. I think it should have hatched by now, if it was going to at all. On a related note, the one documented in <a href=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2004\/10\/14\/sci-fi-creature-on-the-loose\/\">this post<\/a> fell victim to the painter&#8217;s putty knife. The urban wild kingdom can be tough.<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-top: 1em;\">I figured we were past nest-building season, but a pair of finches have renewed their efforts to develop the patio speakers into a housing addition. They can pile on the grass and twigs almost faster than I can knock it down.<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-top: 1em;\">And last, but certainly not least, below is a photo of the sky over our next door neighbor&#8217;s house, taken just a few minutes ago, around 1:00 p.m. local time. Those are clouds, but they bear a striking resemblance to the Northern Lights, don&#8217;t they? Or, to a scene out of <i>Poltergeist<\/i> or <i>Ghostbusters<\/i>, where the paranormal activity is reaching its climax.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/images\/fireant\/clouds.jpg\" alt=\"Photo - Strange cloud formation, Midland, Texas\" width=\"400\" height=\"221\" style=\"border: 1px solid #ccc;\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Random observations about nature from a backyard in west Texas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-midland-odessa","category-nature","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2921"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10245,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2921\/revisions\/10245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}