May 14: Primary Colors

This morning I led a bird walk at the Ducktrap River Preserve. The birds were relatively quiet, which is understandable given how chilly it was--I wore my fleece gloves almost the entire time. A highlight for everyone was a pair of scarlet tanagers. We heard the male's husky, robin-like warbler off in the forest and crossed our fingers that he'd cross our path. The bird gods heard us, and eventually the bird flew close enough so everyone could enjoy good looks at his brilliant red coloring. He posed and sang. But we soon realized he wasn't putting on a show for us. Teed up on a tall pine nearby was a lemony-green female tanager. For a while the two birds perched together, giving us a field guide view of the plumage differences between genders: bright red male, bright yellow-green female. Probably a mated pair at that. As we admired them, a blue jay flew into a nearby tree, rounding out the color wheel and thoroughly brightening an overcast morning.

Red bird, yellow bird,
blue jay: primary colors
on forest's palette.

May 13: A Few Quiet Hours

It's a rare evening when I get out of work early enough to enjoy a few hours of sunlight with no household chores or other tasks filling up the precious time before dark. Tonight I was able to sit on the back step and read a book while basking in rays of the slowly sinking sun, the carpet of the lawn spreading before me in soothing green, the river sparkling beyond. As the sun sank lower, I had to move to a new perch next to our young quince bush bursting with ruffled peach-colored blossoms. In the same garden patch some irises were budding for the first time. Everything around me was lush, green, flourishing. My husband was fishing down river, out of sight. All was right in the world. I read my book to the end and went inside feeling a rare peace.

Sun filtered by leaves
shines on this calm green temple:
back yard, this evening.

May 12: Blueberry Milk

Sometimes a day's pleasures are simple ones: my first chestnut-sided warbler singing as I walked into my office; a Cooper's hawk chasing a flock of pigeons; a big patch of baby blue forget-me-nots blooming in my back yard.

And blueberry milk with my lunch today at Farmer's Fare. I love blueberries. Blueberry milk makes regular milk more palatable. The glass pint bottle that it comes in is pretty cool to drink from, too. Somehow blueberry milk seems slightly more grown-up than chocolate milk. I wish it had been around when I was a kid, though. I drank a whole pint with my lunch and barely forebore drinking another one with my dinner. Maybe if there'd been blueberry milk when I was a kid I'd be taller now--good for the bones and all that. As it is, at my age, hopefully it will at least help prevent me from shrinking with osteoporosis.  

Blueberry milk and
ghost stories shared with a friend
make for a good lunch.

May 11: White Violets

When I was a kid I loved to pick the little white violets on the front lawn before my grandfather mowed. They were ephemeral and therefore all the more valued. According to my grandmother's birthday book, violets are the flower corresponding to my birth month, February. So I felt an affinity for them and saw it as my duty to save as many as I could from the mower's blade. My grandmother had a special, miniature vase that held my violet bouquet perfectly. I would take my 10x hand lens from its handmade suede case and closely examine the violets' tiny purple faces as if they were secret flower fairies that only I knew about.

This time of year, though I mow my front lawn regularly, I hesitate to mow in back where the patchy green is sprinkled with dainty constellations of those same white violets. By the time they're gone by, my lawn is about eight inches high and sprouting frilly clumps of ferns and other interesting flora. Last year I ended up not mowing till fall.

In my unkempt lawn
sprays of small white violets grow
beautifully wild.

May 10: Appetizer

Thanks to being completely slammed by pollen allergies this spring, I've had a slow start with my birding season. As we head into the peak of spring migration and birders are seeing more than a dozen warblers an outing, my high point to date has been the ten minutes before work this morning. During a brief tour of my back yard, I enjoyed a little bird sampler of things to come: a great blue heron sailed through and landed in the river, five different warblers sang amid the leaves, a male downy woodpecker flew into a tree right next to me, and goldfinches mewed from the birch tree in the driveway.

Given that the air was a raw 40 degrees and I was running late to work, I wasn't intending to devote any time to birding this morning. But as I was getting ready to leave, I could hear the song of a redstart out back. I had to heed the call. So I grabbed my binocs just to get a quick look at this striking black and red little bird. Before I could successfully locate him, a parula sang, then a black-throated green warbler and a black-and-white warbler. I thought I had him in my neighbor's oak tree, but that bird turned out to be a Nashville warbler. Finally I picked him out in a nearby arborvitae. I'm sure there were other warblers back there, too, but alas, duty called.

Happy to have experienced that old thrill of a birding a warbler wave, small as it was, I left for work regretful that I didn't have more time to bird. As I walked into the office, I heard my first great-crested flycatcher of the season calling down by the river. This good start to my work day whetted my appetite for what I hope will become a gourmet banquet of birds in the month ahead.

Redstart sang to me
of sunny, bird-filled mornings,
fanned his pretty tail.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

May 9: Numbers

5    maximum hours I estimate I slept last night
7    blueberry muffins my niece and I baked this morning for Mother's Day brunch at Nanny's / Mom's house
2    warbler species heard singing today
17  trout caught by my husband in the river behind our house this afternoon
1,642   ranking of Paul's book on Amazon as I type
1.5  hours I think I just napped after being unable to keep my eyes open any longer
6    channel on which the soothing golf match was televised
2    songbird species heard on t.v. while falling asleep to golf
1    warm, loudly purring cat napping with me

And thus I summarize the highlights (excepting the first item) of my day. Not very poetic, granted, but some days are like that.

Napping with my cat
while Paul fishes, with golf on--
some much-needed calm.

May 8: Black-throated Green Warbler

This morning my husband came in from fishing on the river behind our house to report that not only had he caught an auspicious seven trout, but he had also heard his first black-throated green warbler of the season. These portents put him in good spirits, because, as he puts it, today is the second biggest day of his life after our wedding day: this afternoon sees the launching of his first novel at a book party being held for him at the home of a best-selling novelist here in Camden.

But I'll leave the topic of his novel's publication for his blog. In addition to being excited for him today, I was happy to hear about the black-throated green warbler. And even happier when about an hour later I heard its languorous, buzzy song from within the shining green cave of leaves and lawn that has become our back yard: "Zee zee zoo zee."

I love to teach people the song of the black-throated green warbler, because it's easy to learn and during the spring and summer the birds are commonly heard around here. Also, for those who don't realize it's a common bird, its name sounds very exotic. The warbler is eye-catching, as well, though small enough that you have to do a bit of looking. You won't recognize it as a visitor to your backyard feeder. Its bright yellow face is framed at the neck by a black throat that contrasts strikingly with its white underparts.

Photo by John Harrison 

The BT green sings long and loudly throughout the day, well into the summer. The variant of its song heard via the link above is often transcribed as, "Trees, trees, murmuring trees." For me, that song conveys the essence of walking in the local woods on a summer day amid the murmuring trees, an image I embrace on this rainy spring morning.

On this rainy day
warbler sings, "Zee zee zoo zee"--
promise of summer.