birds – whereIwonder&why

That Autumn Air That Just Talks Back

I just filled the bird feeders. My goodness those sparrows can squabble. Mostly male I might add.

You may or may not notice two sparrows flapping around the left hand feeder about to shove in, claiming their turns–the four on the perches have had enough time. Two more are on the sunflower feeder on the right. Also, somewhere in this picture, in motion thus a blur, is a nuthatch fearlessly approaching the sparrows crowd

Nuthatch has landed, all sparrows are amiable for the moment.

It must, the sparrow dynamic din, have something to do with the verbose air, the chattering light, the clatter of drying and dried leaves. Not in these pictures, because I cropped it out is the dogwood tree. Oh, here, below:

I wish you could see how deep-dark the red of the leaves really is. iphone 12 mini doesn’t really offer the means (or maybe it’s the photographer)

You know, it’s funny, bright color, clear red, yellow, green, also seems loud, very distinctly present–they correlate, light and sound, and, for that matter, clarity and sound. Light is just plain louder. Clarity is just plain loud. Is it so? Is it something in my body, in my mind that makes it so? Is it so without me present? Is a bell louder than a gong? Or just to me?

Ah questions. They run my life.

I’ll be back. I have to take the clothes out of the dryer.

Lovely, all done. I’m back and watching a young bicyclist pedaling up and down the street in front of my house. It’s also funny, this street, after one block length then jogs _/- and continues along for three or four blocks until it dead ends in front of a middle school. Well, this street can get quite busy during certain hours associated with schoolday start and finish, and it can also be suddenly busy for no known reason. Most of the time, I guess, if you clock it for 24 hours, it is quite unbusy. Anyway, the jog which is one house west of me, busy or not, is a challenge, in particular when a driver comes east on the street at a speed worthy of an urban arterial. Yet, kids bicycle it centerline, little kids play on it maneuvering and running behind their remotely operated small vehicles, and the local driving school has brand new learners pull to the curb, back up, initiate a U-turn or K-turn, generally in front of my across the street neighbor’s and my house (have you ever seen a brand new learning driver execute this turn, it usually takes long enough to hardboil an egg with much of that span of time spanning the width of the street!) I’m just saying…

So, this is turning out to be a bit of a rant on — on what? things that I notice that are unpeaceful.

However! They are small, they are manageable, they have caught my attention this moment, and will now be forgotten, until the next time they capture me, which could be five minutes from now or weeks. Anyway, there you are, I have groused into your life for a few minutes.

Think Robert Frost again, good fences make good neighbors–or not. Something there is that doesn’t love a wall. (same poem, opening line).

Mending Walls

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

Robert Frost

From The Poetry of Robert Frost by Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1916, 1923, 1928, 1930, 1934, 1939, 1947, 1949, © 1969 by Holt Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Copyright 1936, 1942, 1944, 1945, 1947, 1948, 1951, 1953, 1954, © 1956, 1958, 1959, 1961, 1962 by Robert Frost. Copyright © 1962, 1967, 1970 by Leslie Frost Ballantine

August Crystal Clear Air

Have you ever thought about the myriad meanings attributed to the word air?

When I wrote the title above, I had just completed downloading several photographs I took yesterday at an estuary, marsh, beach on the north shore of Massachusetts. And just before downloading those photographs, I had been out in front of my house initially to bring in my recycling bin, which had just been emptied by the waste services, but stayed standing on the curb because the air was so weightless and light bearing (baring too!). In terms of weather, it is a beautiful morning.

yesterday morning, also beautiful, but bearing some weight and motion

Then as I came back in and opened my computer to begin this post, and proceeded to title this post, I was drawn to the thought of air. How many definitions for “air”. It is visual, it is actually, viewable sometimes and not to be seen other times. In fact Collins dictionary notes that it has 27 definitions. I will not list nor discuss them all. But after noting with my passing by neighbor that today is a beautiful day, the air is so clear, I, smiling, came back in and the thought that came to me when I raised my fingers to the keys of this laptop is that in addition air is audible; consider the definition (one of 27!!):

Air is a song-like vocal or instrumental composition. The term can also be applied to the interchangeable melodies of folk songs and ballads.

So air is music. Imagine a beautiful voice raised to praise a beautiful invisible yet not the least bit empty sensation. Sensations stand alone and yet they cannot be without having been noticed. Sensation, according to Collins dictionary, is a noun with five meanings.

Go where you want with these two words aka experiences aka actions aka recipients. (I had another connecting word that was not aka, but these days it is losing the meaning I intend for it, and I didn’t want to jar you with the more frequent associations that word currently brings; yet obviously I have by bringing this sentence into the text.)

Jar! think of that noun and verb. Ugh, I just looked it up. In addition to a created vessel and to a sudden poke (mental, physical, or emotional) it also is a computer file format that serves to aggregate, archive and compress a file and its associated metadata and formats.

Words are remarkably malleable. And think of a word in the myriad languages extant today, and in those that have disappeared. Why do we have so many languages? Why do we separate ourselves from one another? Why do we erect so many walls?

How did I get from the beauty of this day and its clear, musical air to heaving, burdening, disrupting walls? It seems, of late, it takes a conscious effort not to stumble down those descending stairs.

So, I am placing my hands, palms down on the concrete, and pushing me up. I am rising up to the light air that is what I breathe and is singing in my head right now. I am going to tell you that yesterday was such a day of beauty, as is today, and that I saw, count them, 47 types of shore and marsh and raptor birds in one perhaps two mile length of ocean back (these viewings, these soundings, these delights were not even while on an ocean beach, rather they were within the brackish waters that meet and converse with the ocean, river, reeds, muds and sand). Did I personally recognize them all without other voices speaking their names? No! I do not have that knowledge. Did I learn a few more things about these lovely, feathered, visiting and resident avians? Yes. Did I love being there with 14 other people, all of who knew far more than I? Yes. Did we have any moments of disagreement, distress, disregard? No. Yesterday was so lovely that even if I were standing out front this morning and it was 95 degrees farenheit and 95% humidity, I would have thought the air is so clear! It is a beautiful day! Beauty carries with it beauty.

Remarkable how much joy good can carry and convey and place before one.

I, as you who have been here before know, have not the finest “camera”, nor the most artistic “eye”, but here are more couple of photographs from yesterday. They include Greater Yellowlegs and/or Lesser Yellowlegs, Long-billed and/or Short-billed Dowitchers, Least and Semi-Palmated Sandpipers, and Greater and Lesser Egrets. I am not sure if the Yellowlegs I photographed are greater or lesser. I forget. I am not sure if I captured Long or Short-Billed Dowitchers. I believe I caught both Least and Semi-Palmated Sandpipers and Greater and Lesser Egrets. And among them a Herring Gull or two. But you will likely not be able to critique me anyway because the photographs are way too unsharp!!

Long- or Short-Billed Dowitchers, Semi-Palmated and/or Least Sandpipers,

Greater and Lesser Egrets, Herring Gulls, and someone else

I delight in the day.

Still July 2025

It would appear you can’t shut me up this month.

Yesterday I spent the day at the annual Folk Festival in Lowell, Massachusetts. I’ve been attending regularly for 21 years, so, since 2004. It has gone on since at least 10 maybe 15 years before than that. Parents have borne their newborns to the Folk Festival. White haireds move sibilantly to music they remember from their child-bearing, no, their child-selves lives every year, now, some, themselves, having begun as a thought, or a stroller rider at an earlier Festival; many having begun their lives not only not in Lowell, not in Massachusetts, and not in English. And the Lowell Folk Festival honors that, celebrates it–the music each year is different from the year before, with different artists, and different music traditions, different regions, and different nations. It’s always a musical adventure. Yesterday–note, the Festival is always on the last weekend in July, aka, it’s hot! and each year, the Festival putter-oners get better at providing shade in the four concurrent stage areas, yesterday, one act dressing in traditional clothing wore fur hats. Oh, I could feel their sweat rolling down their faces, necks, while they fingered on stringed instruments complex, complex tunes to which they added words. And each act, no matter how overdressed, how active–and salsa music does not allow static musicians, nor audience; nor does Quebecois; nor does Chicago blues; nor does cajun; nor, even, Irish folk, or klezmer, nor many I haven’t named. The audiences, the myriad visitors roaming the multi-national food stations strategically located near the four stages, sitting within the well covered (by a combination of trees and tree shade–So Valuable, those trees!!! and huge canvas roofs) audience spaces at each stage are all ages, and are all aware of and mindful of everyone else. And, this is a free event operated by volunteers, hundreds maybe a thousand of them (even though it, being an arts thing, non-profit funded both by donations-personal and from some sponsors, and by public funds as a non-profit art thing, got its approved public funding removed in May or June…) It is OMG my favorite place and time each year. If you have not been, consider it next year, make a trip of it from wherever you live.

All this talk, and I took no photographs this year. Ugh. Go to their website: lowellfolkfestival.org. Treat yourself. I meet friends there I haven’t seen in months, once I met someone I had lost touch with years ago, very nice experience among all the other that come to mind.

Onto the smaller local, my back yard. I am pretty sure I mentioned the plethora of fledglings who graced the space at various times these past two-three months. The last were, a bit to my dismay, grackle and starling youngsters. Usually these bigger, not so nice, neighbors visit for a few days, harrass the songbirds and then move along. Their year they nested (most likely in robbed or otherwise pillaged spaces) and fledged right here. Again, I took NO photos. I was too frustrated on behalf of the finches (gold, purple, and house), the titmice, woodpeckers (downy, hairy, redbellied + flickers), chickadees, nuthatches, robins, cardinals, sparrows, warblers, vireos, wrens, mockingbirds, catbirds — some of whom, admittedly, can be less than kind neighbors, and on behalf of me, because all I got to hear was the rather ratchedy screeching of insistent young grackles and starlings, plus the one teenage bluejay who seems to refuse to move house. I think, as of maybe yesterday, they may have moved on. Teenage bluejay is still here. As is, I think, teenage female downy woodpecker, as every single day I witness dueling downys (sp?) out back.

Upper left, adult downy, bottom right child? or unhappy mate at the turned back

It’s been on and off hot, and on and off humid. Saturday was perfect, hot, not humid, after two days of lie on the floor under the ceiling fan with the cats and pant humid. So there was nothing, nothing to spoil that Festival.

Today it rained. The Festival continues until this evening. Attendees are hardy, they will come, and, besides, the rain was only for the first hour, and, also besides, the tent-roof coverings protect from rain as much as from sun.

So here is where I stepped today:

A friend of mine recently taught me something about hy in hydrangea, that I think was mnemonically focused, but I forget what she said! And her information also included the lo in lobelia. I hope when she reads this, she calls me to remind me of the wisdom I have already let slip.

________________________________

So, as I am sitting here typing this, a “heat advisory” popped up in my computer’s information line down below. Starts tomorrow. Lasts for, looks like (yes, I just popped over to the site) it hangs on for three days.

Take cover.

It’s July 2025

My intent was, perhaps still is, subsequent words will tell, to offer one of my “places” of observation, a vague meander into what surrounds us where and a curiosity about why.

But I am kind of keening today. I am feeling a lament surging. It is hot in so many places on earth right now, increasingly HOT hot. And sources of relief–water, trees, breezes even, are increasingly being commandeered (or razed) for too rapid, unnecessarily abundant, personal and corporate and governmental storage in search of additional profit, in service to the desire for more. I am sad today.

I am stepping away right now for a bit, in hopes that my mind travels elsewhere before I continue this day’s blogpost. It is 12:13PM EDT right now. I’ll be back.

Returned. The bicycle is a ruse today. Not the day for pushing pedals nevermind in shorts and tank tops, not in, as my shadow indicates, full length jeans and long sleeves.

This, below, is from my backyard just about 15 minutes ago.

I am most appreciative that I cannot see the junk littering the skies above those fast moving clouds.

Here is a good statistic that I report from the backyard this year. There have fledged: two blue jays, a male downy woodpecker, two chickadees, a titmouse, a nuthatch, two female and one male house finch, a female house sparrow, a mockingbird, and a grackle. Most have proceeded through fledgling to immature to mature, and children then away. The nuthatch and blue jay immatures look to be a day, no more, from moving out. This morning I saw my first brown headed cowbirds of the season, happily, after the nests have hatched and mostly flown.

Immature/nearly mature blue jay, chasing through dogwood tree leaves after just ducked-out parent blue-jay.

Here is a bad statistic. In my town, about five streets away, they tore down four trees in deference to granite curbs and repaving, along a quiet, two lane, unmarked, headed nowhere major four block long street, and, based on the “grass” they have seeded in the earth edge between granite curbstone and asphalt sidewalk, these maples and lindens will not be replaced with new shade providing, nicely cooling trees. It will be another asphalt, granite, asphalt alley, inducing residents to install yet another air conditioner or whatever the latest multipurpose “energy saving” inhome unit combination may be, “efficiently using” piped in fuel sources rather than shade-giving, cooling, pleasing to the eye and body-temperature, trees. I stop at the top of the street, mid-street and look down its length and I am sad.

Around the corner and along a street one block from me, three homeowners have blacktopped the majority of their properties so to make room for parking their electric vehicles, their hybrid vehicles, and their low-riding audibly evident otherwise intended compact cars and ___-Tough pickups. What are we thinking?!

___________________

It’s July. It’s hot. The air weighs more than I do. What is wrong with our heads?

Here, cool down.

As I typed, the air has gained weight. I am ready to dive into this lovely, spring day Concord River, were it still this height.

I’m stopping. You are free to go, if, indeed, you stayed through to here.

Delight! Earlier this morning it rained some

I woke to clouds, grey, without shape, just overhead mass, those harbingers of rain, which have been not present much in two or three months. I thought, “I only wish.” And, lo an hour later, it rained!! Not a lot, not loudly, not at any windblown angle, not, in fact so that I’d notice even though I was sitting, having breakfast in front of the kitchen window, looking out at bird feeders, back porch, azalea bushes, dogwood tree, plum tree. I did not see the rain falling. I saw, when I opened the back door to bring the cats’ food can to the recycle barrel, that the ground was wet, the porch steps hosting drops in pleasant array. Ahh, good, I thought.

And it is. And then the clouds, emptied of their gift, slowly slid away, staging shifted for the next act, and the sun in full gold lit the drops of rain, dried surface after surface. I took my bicycle out of the shed and away I rode. (Ahead, I hoped, of the predicted “winds with gusts up to 17 mph”. I don’t fare well pedaling against neither gusts nor steady winds.)

It was a perfect morning to early afternoon ride. Sunlight not only bright, but sparkled off leaves, pebbles, slender branches, and the small, disparate but hope-inducing puddles and ponds gracing the asphalt, and bejeweling the forest floor. (Well, forest is a bit of an overstatement, but poetically it works, don’t you think?).

I am taking delight in all that I can.

White oak leaf bejeweled. Off the rail trail, I walked a short, .4mile path through a wood almost all oak and pine, with a couple of big tooth aspens inserting themselves.

and this, I believe a flaw, but it is a textural wonder, fallen with its host, a small tree, into a new receiving host–a ground covered by more textures than my eyes can understand

And closer. The depth, the girth, the tautness, the layer-after-layer-after-layer of this red pine bark! And who knows what or who I have photographed here in the recesses of the, essentially, the surface of this tree. (Oh what a camera that is not of an iphone12mini could have seen!)

And, another gift, two miles from home, I ran into (not literally) a friend I haven’t seen in a couple of months, also on his bicycle, which was good for so many reasons!

And you know, I almost accomplished my home-ahead-of-the-headwinds goal. Only the last five minutes, that last 1/2 mile push UP to my “Highlands” (the name of my neighborhood) home, did I need (and boy did I need to!) to stand on my pedals and PUSHPUSHPUSHPUSH.

Got in and treated myself to a peanut butter sandwich on my friend E’s homebaked bread. So many pleasures.

Here’s an I-was-there proof shot.

I do wish you could see the brilliance of the colors that covered this rolling path. I can only attest, they were scintillating. And can you see the rolling terrain of the path? And, if you look closely on the ground, you will notice that at least one maple is in this woods, there is leaf just left of the shadow of my hand in front of my face

Whose woods these are, I think I know, his house is in the village though…. Thank you Robert Frost.

Actually these woods are a gift to the town in which they are, by a couple, last name Valentine, who gifted it for wildness into perpetuity. I thank them.

Peace to you and yours.