February 17: Winter sun

Head cold finally licked.

Courtship songs of chickadees

all along the path. 

February 15: Allegiance

Reciting the Pledge.
Chickadees gleaning insects
along the eaves.

April 15: Bird in the kitchen

open kitchen window
briefly trapped chickadee
outside, sound of singing

February 19: CSI: Mount Battie

Alarm calls of songbirds,
downy feathers drifting—
hunger satisfied.

November 16: Fallen tree

After the tree falls
chickadees return to perch,
a new perspective.

May 20: Apple blossoms

Hungry for this:
depths of pink blossoms,
small birds feeding among them.

May 9: Love songs

While I fill my tank

two chickadees singing--

nature's radio.

Posted with Blogsy

May 2: Sweeping away the cobwebs

Chickadee perches

on the open window,

plucks off a cobweb.

Posted with Blogsy

May 1: May begins with rain

I want to shelter it
in my cupped hands--
rain-bedraggled chickadee.

June 26: Rest

Chickadee pauses
in the feeder, not eating.
Rain drips off the eaves.

February 25: Morning shoveling

The weekend's snow storm did not extinguish the ardor of some birds, as I heard this morning while shoveling out the path to my office. A strange contrast, to be standing in shin-deep snow while chickadees are singing songs more appropriate to spring. The blue sky perhaps served as an aphrodisiac.

Chickadee's love song
as I begin to shovel
through deep snow.

February 15: Lengthening days

Daylight lingering now
as I leave work.
Last chickadees feeding.

February 13: Inside/outside

After an afternoon of closed-door committee meetings, the air in the conference room at work was  over-warm and a bit stale. So by the time I joined the day's last meeting at 4:00, a window was cracked open. (After all, it was above freezing outside--virtually tropical compared to last week.) Sitting there, I picked up an odd sound behind the chatter of lively discussion going on around me. It took me a minute or so to realize it was chickadees, queuing up outside in the bushes that run along the front of the building to where my bird feeders are. This was their usual late afternoon final pass at the feeders, but it's been so long since there's been a window open, it was almost surprising to hear how noisy they were--audible even over all the noisy humans gabbing away inside.

Gossipers around
the water cooler--chickadees
outside, us inside.

February 2: Setting moon

Again, woke up much too early, but at least had the pleasure of watching the waning moon (last quarter) setting behind the neighbor's spruce trees, and, as the sky lightened, chickadees making their first darting run through those trees to the feeders.

Even as the sky lightens
setting moon remains bright,
night carried into day.

January 14: Thaw

The usual January Thaw is upon us, but it's difficult not to read into the melting snow, oozing mud, and prematurely budding shrubbery something more ominous. Global climate change is the giant elephant sitting in the middle of the room that is our planet. So we can't simply enjoy this brief reprieve from the bitter cold of last week, because we've lost our sense of what's normal anymore. Our climate compass needle is spinning wildly, even as the North Star poises above my house just as it always has. Even the simple love song of the chickadee gives me pause. I know chickadees sometimes sing in winter, but I couldn't help but feel anxious for some reason when I heard one sing today.

Chickadee's premature song--
is it the thought of love
or bad timing that concerns me?

January 1, 2013: First birds

At the start of each new year, I like to keep track of the first birds I see. When I got up, a crow flew through the backyard, sweeping past like a shadow against the snow. Nothing new there. Later, on a long snowshoe hike at the Ducktrap River Preserve, through sheltering hemlocks whose snowy boughs filtered sunlight onto snow patterned with snowshoe hare tracks, we only had one new species: Black-capped Chickadee. Back home, a swirl of Herring Gulls. And one goldfinch singing unseen in the neighbor's arbor vitae. And that was all. (It probably didn't help that my little window feeders were soaking in the sink, awaiting a cleaning and refill.)

If I'd really been trying, I'd have headed for the harbor or some other open water. Several birders posted observations of ducks on the Maine birding list-serv today. But I like to see what comes to me for the first day of the year, as some kind of portent. To see/hear those familiar birds might be auspicious for a year ahead full of good friends, for example. Or perhaps sustained pleasure of what I enjoyed in the year newly past.

Year's first birds appear
in stark black and white:
crows against snow, chickadees.

Ducktrap River from the Backcountry Ski Trail

December 27: Riders on the storm

A nor'easter sent snow and freezing rain gusting around my office today. I live too close to work for the weather to be an excuse not to show up, and we didn't lose power, so I put in a full day there. I was, however, pleasantly distracted for much of that time by the birds flocking my tiny window feeders. The regulars--chickadees and titmice--showed up, of course, and what I think is a solitary White-breasted Nuthatch. And then some finches I hadn't seen in a while made an unexpected appearance: goldfinches, their yellow throats looking positively sunny against the snow, Pine Siskins, and at least three redpolls--a boreal visitor I've only had at my feeders a couple times before. The finches chattered away as they chowed down; I could hear them through the window despite the roar of the wind.

Redpolls peck seed from snow.
I catch myself thinking
of raspberries.

Redpoll visitor from last year (window too splattered with snow to get a photograph today!)

December 10: Snow and rain

Living only a mile from the ocean, we often experience rain here while just ten miles further inland they're getting snowed on. I was reminded of that this morning when I pulled in to work, windshield wipers sweeping away the rain pouring onto my windshield. The car of my co-worker from Hope had at least an inch of snow still piled on its roof. And another co-worker from Appleton, even further inland, was hosting his six-year-old daughter in his office for a few hours because of a delayed start to the school day. We each arrived from our own little microclimates.

Remnant of snow wash away.
All day long chickadees
mob the feeders.

June 30: Youngsters

The other day a very motley-looking titmouse alit on my feeder. Instead of the smooth, plain gray that most titmice sport, this bird was patchy, with brown streaking on its belly and odd feathers sticking out here and there. It took me a few seconds to realize this was a fledgling, recently out of the nest. Already it has learned what a bird feeder is and how to make good use of it. Young-looking chickadees have been appearing at my feeder, as well.

This morning a catbird fledgling was perched on a post at the end of the driveway, whining to another bird waiting in a nearby tree. While the size of a mature bird, it too was a bit ragged around the edges, its sleek adult plumage not yet fully grown in. I've been hearing a catbird singing fragments of song outside my window the past week or so, and now wonder if that bird was a youngster--this one or a nest-mate--practicing its new singing voice.

Meanwhile, at river's edge, a young crow caws with an insistent, whiny pitch that any parent around the world would recognize as begging. On the river, a flotilla of geese, a few smaller and less distinctly patterned than the rest, heads upstream in a tight bunch.

And earlier this week, my two nieces, age three and six, returned to Maine with my sister and brother-in-law to spend the summer at their camp on a nearby lake.

Encouraged by warmth,
young birds try out new feathers,
children learn to swim. 

May 1: May apple

One big apple tree outside our office has leafed out, and soon it will have uncurled its tight pink petals into blossoms. When the tree is in full bloom, it's a glorious thing, humming with bees, crawling with birds. Today I was happy just to look at its healthy, leafy-green fullness and imagine what it will soon become during this merry month of May.
 
Did a chickadee
or raindrops rustle those leaves,
stir the greenery?