A song to remember

Our lovely Carolina Wren visited often this endless winter.  S/he sings, "Tea kettle Tea kettle Tea kettle Tea" in a voice so loud you can't believe it's coming from a bird this small (5 3/4").  I hear in her song, "You have things to be grateful for during these long cold days, like me!" So true.

One more thing

Same day.  Harry our squirrel sees these snowflakes and thinks, "This is what's coming.  Oh, brother." And she's maybe uh oh right.

Yes, it's snowing again

I looked up just now (3:05 p.m.) and there they were: snowflakes. It was 3 degrees fahrenheit this morning as I headed to meet Tony Toledo to journey 90 miles to teach storytelling at a wonderful high school in Worcester. Came home midday to sunshine and the lovely Carolina Wren eating her sunflower seeds and now, as David naps upstairs, I look out on the life I might be leading were we in Presque Isle, Maine, or Minnesota or hey, New York! They've had nearly as much fun this winter as we have had here in Massachusetts. Our Song Sparrow from a few weeks ago tells the story.

A favorite photo of Phoe

When Phoenix died of avian pneumonia she was much bigger than this. But this is how she lives on in my heart as a sweet young eagle I happened to discover because I typed in "bird webcams" on google. The webcam was on Hornby Island, near Vancouver. The thing of it was, it had sound. So early on the USA east coast I'd "fly" over to Hornby Island and watch the dawn three hours after I'd gotten up. You'd see the light on Hornby Island (while it was 8:30 already here) and then Mom Hornby's white eagle head feathers, then Phoe peeping. Dad Hornby would show up with a fish for everybody's breakfast. And little Phoe would be fed with great gentleness by Mom and Dad.

A picture of Phoenix, the Hornby Island Eaglet

Ok so here's Phoenix with her never-to-be-hatched nestmate aptly named by some unknown FB scholar as "Dudley."

Updates from a pretty place

I have long since pulled the suet cage, but all of a sudden, summer is over and soon (hopefully not TOO soon) it'll be freezing here again and time for suet. So I'm going to recap winter and spring. Spring was not a spring here but rather for me spring was Hornby Island, BC where a lovely, endearing eaglet brought over 11,000 people together on Facebook and then died just before fledging on July 14. She broke hearts across the world. I had taken many "baby" pics of her so some of them will appear here.

But this is a photo I took from our kitchen window in Gloucester, MA during the long, snowy winter of 2010.

Hanging out

This is the Russell Orchards cat. I had kept my eye out for him, looked up as we were leaving, and there he was.

For some reason I am seeing blissed out animals lately even as I bite my nails over the economic downtown.

What would be nice is to simply trust that when push comes to shove we'll all still land on our (two or four) feet.