Baby's first steps...

So, the baby falcons are learning to fly. First steps, leaping tall buildings...

And massively overshooting old chimneys, only to land on slanted tiles.

I know that Peregrines are supposed to be this fearsome predator, fastest animal, etc, etc. But watching the kids learn to fly is a really poignant reminder that even the fastest, fiercest hunters are awkward when they're first starting out.

On a separate note, the word is out, apparently... we regularly have a small gaggle of bird watchers in the parking lot. But I still feel better than they are. You know, because I'm 6 stories up, and I get to watch these critters all year long.

A good day

First thing this morning, I got my clamp racks installed. I wasnt' able to get all of the clamps under the bench, but I moved enough of them that the ones remaining on the old table don't bother me as much... a few days ago they were wrapped all the way around 3 of the 4 sides of the table. Now most of them are at either end of my workbench, with some of the larger ones at the ends of the table. That's good enough for me.

For another hour or two I put away small things, and swept, and cleaned. And just as I was running out of things to do, Don yelled over to me that we should work on the doors that we built a month and more ago to separate the machine room from the bench room. Really, we'd planned to have the doors from the beginning, but here, 9 months later, we still hadn't gotten them into place. They've been leaning against the door jambs since we made them, and that's been pretty much it. So, Don had the right idea.

Being slow on the uptake, I resisted at first, since I knew that it meant taking them apart to work on the hinges, but once that was done, we proceeded to trim them down and mount them.. .and the difference was amazing. The space looks done, in a way that it hadn't before. We've been most of the way for a long time... but this felt really good. It looks like it was supposed to, way back when.

Last but not least, there is good news... there are new falcons. I don't know how old they are, but when I looked over at the building where they normally perch, I counted three. I don't know if it's two new ones and the male, or three new ones... but since we only had two before, and the female wasn't there, we have at least two new peregrine falcons in the world. I looked through my binoculars for a minute or two, and saw one of them walking around with his wings in the air, looking intently at something through a cloud of what must have been flies over a not so recent meal... so I'm guessing he was hungry, but not that hungry. Or maybe he's just the goofy one of the clutch, I don't know.

I wound down the afternoon by looking through a book on Nakashima furniture with Don, while we had a beer and tried to come up with a few ideas for new projects.

All in all, a good day... and my work space is officially cleaned out and organized, and ready to get back to work.

The falcons are back!

Chris looked up from the bench this afternoon and said "Is that the falcon?"

I looked over to the roof peak where Harvey (or whoever the other one is) would normally perch, and sure enough, there was a peregrine falcon sitting there. And then we noticed that the other one was perched on a ledge on our building. We grabbed binoculars (I've had them in the shop for a while, becuase of the falcons) and went to go look at the birds. We opened a grimy window to get a better look, and these birds are incredible. I'm pretty happy to see that they're either back, or still here, becuase we haven't seen them in a while.

Later on in the afternoon, we got to see one of them fighting with a crow. We have massive numbers of crows in the area. They settle on the rooftop of the adjacent building in the evenings, in numbers that bring terrifying, Stephen-King-esque visions. to mind. So seeing one of them hunted by a peregrine was pretty cool. There were also a couple of close fly-bys, right in front of our window... so I expect there will be more stories of peregrine glee in the future.

Fits and Starts and Harvey

The truth is, the new place has been moving forward in fits and starts. i think the original idea was first spawned sometime in July, and the lease didn't finally happen until this month.

For the past 2 weeks, we (Chris, Don, and I) have been building a dividing wall to separate the space into two areas, one will be the bench room, one will house the machines. The basic idea is that the noisy dusty stuff will happen in one room, and the quieter stuff will happen in the bench room, where we'll be free to breathe without dust masks on.

By "the past 2 weeks," I mean, a few days last week, and a few days this week. Chris and Don both live in the area, and they have had other things to do for the latter half of each week so far. So it took us basically a week and a half to get the wall put together. But it's up. Mostly... it still needs doors to fully separate the space.

One side note about the shop... there's a peregrine falcon that lives on the side of the mill building on the other side of the parking lot. For no apparent reason, I've decided his name should be Harvey. We heard about him from Jimmy, who takes care of the building maintenance, and is also doing our electrical work. He said that he found the next on the other building.

Jimmy also had a recent story that happened in our space shortly after we started negotiating with the building management. He was working with his assistant, and the pigeon was perched up near the ceiling on something. Jimmy told his assistant to watch, as he poked a stick at the bird. Jimmy said that if the bird got onto the stick, that would mean that he's tame. Well, sure enough, the bird was tame, and had a band around his ankle, and Jimmy's pretty sure it was a homing pigeon. So, he took the bird in hand, walked over to the window, and let it go. Around this time, he realized "Oh, shit... the falcon!" He's pretty sure that's why the pigeon decided to hide indoors in the first place.

We have no idea if the pigeon actually made it home or not. But it's a pretty cool story.