Twelve days from this:
To this:
Wishing you the grace to see the miracles around you today!
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birds
Running: by the birds
Goodness, I love spring. I love the tulip bulbs blooming and the trees budding. Most of all, I love that the birds are back.
I had a lapse in my running. You know: illness and darkness and vacation… it added up to a few weeks with no miles on my feet. As I age, I lose fitness so much faster (and regain it so much more slowly), and these last few runs have been hard. The ease I felt in my long January runs was absent. I am slowly clawing my way back to running. To function.
But the birds are back, and each time I see one, I am inspired to go a little further.
- a house finch singing from the peak of my neighbor’s roof.
- the pair of robins flirting in a budding apple tree.
- a flock of redwing blackbirds in the reeds and cattails.
- a hawk, sitting completely still on a stone wall. Over my music, I could hear a frantic, repetitive keening that I thought was from him, but it was from the terrified prairie dogs he was watching.
- a flicker, so pretty I tried to snap a photo, but he was long gone by the time I had untangled my phone from my pocket.
“Hope” is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul/And sings the tune without the words/And never stops- at all-
And sweetest – in the Gale- is heard/And sore must be the storm/That could abash the little Bird/That kept so many warm-
I’ve heard it in the chilliest land/And on the strangest Sea/Yet- never- in Extremity/It asked a crumb- of me. –Emily Dickinson
The Great Backyard Bird Count
Just a reminder to put the Great Backyard Bird Count on your calendars for Feburary 15-18, 2013.
It’s a fantastic opportunity to participate in Citizen Science (more on that here).
Just hoping he’ll drop by…
A Few of our Neighbors
This little fellow has been hopping around a lot lately. His mama stays near but hides better, until he calls out for her, “Cheep!” and then she comes flying over.
We try to sit very, very still so he’ll stay longer.
And there are lots of this family around:
They, too, are waiting for the raspberries to ripen.
Can anyone identify this little lady? She’s very well hidden, nesting on last year’s robins’ nest. I think she’s a mourning dove. She’s so much smaller than the rock pigeons, though…
