Walking the Rub

Took a walk up Mt. Rub today around noon. Cloudy and drizzly most of the time.

For weekday, there were more people walking that I had expected.

On the exercise front, I went pretty fast. Shaved about five minutes off my usual time. Probably because I wasn't talking. BUT don't take that to mean that I don't like walking and talking. That aspect of the walk has been therapeutic for me.

Scenery-wise, it was indeed cloudy and drizzly. The road was wet, as was the ground. Along the way, I saw a sweatsuit on the path. I kept I eye out for the former wearer, but saw no one. It will remain a mystery.

As I approached the top, I saw a couple of hawks just hovering in the sky, occasionally fluttering their wings so as to stay in one place. I wish I had taken my binoculars.

They played that game with me that birds of prey play when a human approaches their territory. I have seen this on my bicycle outings at the lake as well. As you approach, they act like they don't see you, but subtly shift out of your sight-range as you get closer.

I remember once in the desert, I could see a hawk hovering like this and then diving at its prey below. It moved so quickly that it looked like it had just disappeared.

As I started the downhill, I saw what looked like a dozen or so hawks cavorting lazily in the sky, much like the first two, except they were looping around one another. I have never seen anything like this. In fact, I always thought that hawks claimed territory in pairs and that you wouldn't normally see this many this close to one another. But there were about twelve of them.

I guess they could have been some other kind of bird, but they looked and behaved like hawks. Buzzards I have seen, and their wingspread always looks more raggedy. These birds had the even wingspan that you normally see in a hawks. They were not crows, as their feathers were multi-colored.

This group played the same game with me. As I walked down the Rub side of the mountain, they drifted over to the Riv side. As I turned the corner and started down the Riv side of the mountain, they drifted to the Rub side.

I could also see downtown Riv's tall office buildings, their top floors dissolving into the clouds.

On my right, grasping a branch of a shrub, a hummingbird twitched its head around, perhaps wondering if I saw it, its throat feathers shifted from emerald to ruby as it did so. Near the bottom of the hill, a couple of woodpeckers argued while clinging to a palm tree.

I saw two cats: one calico; the other almost white, with highlights of orange. This last cat approached me and I could see it had blue eyes.