Confused robin, other unseasonal notes, and engineers studying how squirrels do their thing

[Joel Geier]

This morning an AMERICAN ROBIN is singing away from up in the tall conifers on top of Tampico Ridge. He's going on and on as if it's morning in May, not the day before Thanksgiving.

We've only had a couple of light frosts here so far, and still getting a few raspberries per day from our "ever-bearing" bushes. A few DOUGLAS ASTERS are still blooming in our front prairie/pasture, and last night I saw several MOTHS in the headlights when I drove down Adair Frontage Road to give Gawain a ride home from the bus stop in Adair Village.

It feels more like November in northern California than in Oregon. And on that topic, I found this article about EASTERN FOX SQUIRRELS in an alumni magazine from my alma mater:
https://engineering.berkeley.edu/news/2021/11/leaps-and-bounds/

When I was a student on the Berkeley campus in the 1980s, I spent hours watching the native Western Gray Squirrels and California Towhees rummaging around in the surviving patches of live-oak woodland, but it seems that Fox Squirrels have moved in since then. I'm wondering where all of this leads -- robotic squirrels?

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Joel Geier

Camp Adair area north of Corvallis