Feathered Friends
I'm glad spring isn't silent
I took my first—and last—photography class in high school, circa 1979-80, where I developed my own black and white photos in a dark room. I really enjoyed that class. Anyhow, I still take photos occasionally, usually of nature, and birds are some of my favorite subjects. Kingfishers are common on Cape Cod, and a few years ago I caught this one hunting for fish—successfully, I might add.
A sure sign of spring is hearing an oriole. Who doesn’t love these birds?
In these parts, I usually hear the first oriole late in April. Osprey usually arrive in early April. Humble robins are now here year-round. My dad would say spring is here after he saw his first robin—that’s a saying that no longer applies in these parts.
When I was a kid, I never saw turkey vultures. Now seeing them tilting and circling in the sky is routine. When we lived in California in Monterey, my wife and I were lucky enough to see condors gliding over the Pacific coast.
I’m glad spring is not “silent,” as in the Rachel Carson sense of the word. We need to do what we can to preserve nature. Our lives (and sanity) depend on it more than we know.
In our years in the northern Chihuahuan desert of west Texas, we enjoyed so much the daily song of the curved bill thrashers, the chirps of the ever-curious cactus wrens (who would come right in if offered the opportunity), the road runners peering through our patio doors, and the many hours of free entertainment watching the barn swallows swooping all around. Once our house was completed, those swallows had the notion that the light by our front door needed a nest just above it. They built their little mud hut and raised their young’ns there—pooping all over our light. The first winter, I knocked it down when they headed to Mexico. In the spring, they were right back reconstructing in the exact same spot! I decided we could live with a little bird shit for the joy they provided on the summer days in the desert. Nature’s symbiosis taught to us by the birds. Lesson to humans: don’t screw with the cosmos!
Hackensack, North Central Mn., Friday, 3/14, 67 degrees; Saturday, 3/15, Blizzard, 7” snow, 14 degrees…. Love it !