Big Storm Last night!

Was at Trudy's with the boys (Omid, Tim, Brian) when the big storm of ought 6 hit. Okay, it wasn't big enough for the old-timer lingo, but it did knock out power at the bar and give the trees a good lashing. My car was in a 8 inch pool when I got to it. Drove very carefully back up Speedway wary of trees in the street and sure enough, one had fallen to block the north-bound half of Speedway between 42nd and 43rd. When I got Avenue G, the damage was less severe, just limbs. But one was in the street at 46th and a few were on the curb.

Creeping up the street I scanned right and left for damage, and the worst was on my block. 4803 has a large exotic in the front yard and it lost 3 limbs, two pretty high up so I wonder how the tree will respond. But the worst damage was across the street from me. An old elm that had crotched at about 5 and half feet into 3 massive limbs sits in the middle of the front yard. The north most branch cracked at about 10 feet and was lost. One of the southerly branches lost a sub branch at about 20 feet or so. The front duplex was spared, through the ends of the big limb is tangled in the cable company lines to the back duplex. But the canopy of that elm is forever changed.

This had to happen, because the crotch was showing serious splitting last summer. The owner had cabled the three branches together with half inch steel cable, but it did no good in the storm as the branch that fell was about at least 28 inched in diameter and weighed several tons.

Amazingly, none of my 5 Pecan trees had anything more that dead branch windfall. I lost a big branch off my largest three last year so maybe the branches were better balanced.

Anyway, the trees were loud with bird song today. Much more than usual. I wonder if the birds do this to announce they are still alive to others in their species.

My favorite dove, the Inca was grazing in a group of four under my generalized bird feeder this morning. The feeder is empty and the aggressive parakeets, White-Winged Doves and grackles were not around, so these smaller, gentler birds could search in peace for some seed. Here's a couple of Inca I got a good shot of May 6th when I got home from the Wildflower Center.