The blackbird plants were in bloom this morning
with a fine crop of birds.
Bodies inflated with air
wings out
they loosed their urgent songs
in the morning air.
https://www.bird-sounds.net/red-winged-blackbird/
After powering through all that snow without a sight of any wildlife other than small birds, I headed back towards where my van was parked. Crossing the dam, I looked down the river to my left and saw what appeared to be large grey spot quite a distance away in the snow by the water. But I wondered whether it might be a heron, as I’d seen one some weeks earlier.
Taking out my camera with the telephoto, I focused. Yes! It was a heron, hunched over, balancing on one leg while looking cold despite his nice and puffy down coat. I guess he must have been ice fishing. It was the view that made me morning complete.
(Anyone else having issues with WP formatting some of the words differently in the final post, even though they don’t show up that way in the original? I didn’t change “nice and puffy down coat” above, but there it is.)
This week’s theme is “Growth”. Although Jen’s lovely shot of spring makes me happy, real happiness at this time of year would be temperatures above zero degrees Fahrenheit, both the actual temperature and with wind chill! As I said to her, “Simple joys!” I think our furnace would rejoice as well.
A strange phenomenon is winter is the growth in the circumference of birds. As you can see, this fellow has puffed up much larger than his original self, just trying to keep warm. His expression says it all: “I’m SO ready for spring.” 🙂
Besides frost, there were lots of geese in the park. You know that goose down works well as an insulator or these guys would all be very, very cold! For whatever reason, all the geese congregate here early in the morning, then take off at intervals, for all the world as if they’re taking off from an airport. They make no noise while on the water, but as soon as they take off, the honking begins. By the time I get back from my walk, they’re all gone. But the next time I arrive, they’re back.
“Oh, listen. Listen!’ A sound like a big crowd a good way off, excited and shouting, getting closer. We stand up and scan the empty sky. Suddenly there they are (the geese), a wavering V headed directly over the hilltop, quite low, beating southward down the central flyway and talking as they pass. We stay quiet suspending our human conversation until their garrulity fades and their wavering lines are invisible in the sky.
They have passed over us like an eraser over a blackboard, wiping away whatever was there before they came.”
~Wallace Stegner
The early morning light illuminated the undersides of the geese as they flew overhead, distracting my from my search for frost photos. Because people feed them and because there are places they can get food, not all geese go south for the winter. I don’t mind them at the park, but when they’re at the nearby lake, their propensity for decorating the sidewalk with poop is distinctly off-putting.
I’ve mentioned this bush outside our house in a previous post, likening it to an avian Starbucks where birds gather to spend time with their friends. Usually they perch on top as they chat, but in this video, although they’re shy, they’re definitely not quiet! They’re online, using Twitter extensively. Not sure they meet the character quota, though, and hopefully they’re not stealing our internet!! :-)
Nancy, you’ve put up a challenge I can’t resist today: “Birds.” Since you’ve posted a hummingbird shot, I won’t. Instead, I’ll share a photo of a belted kingfisher that I took several years ago. On my way back from watching some fishing birds, egrets and herons, I happened to look up. There at the end of a bare branch surrounded by green was a bird. I had my telephoto and snapped the picture with no idea what bird it was. For some reason, I had an idea that a kingfisher was much larger, but this little guy looks as if he has enough attitude for any bird of any size.
