Best Spectator Sport EVER

Uh-oh.  The housewrens are back, heard this morning for the first time this spring.  So---I take up my daily watch on behalf of the bluebird house.  I used to be a great fan of housewrens---for their bubbly song that accompanied every backyard day from April through October, and for their conspicuous nesting habits, which are easy to follow for an amateur birder.  They were one of the first species I paid close attention to when I began this blog.  Two springs ago I followed a housewren family in a daily nestwatch from the building of the nest to the fledging of the six young.  Thrilling it was to observe their maiden flights.  I had calculated, via some research, the exact day and hour of the first fledge, and sure enough, between 10 and 11 a.m. on their big day, as I had predicted, out they flew. My friend Barb and I had pulled up comfortable chaises and made a morning of it, each with a good book and a pair of binoculars  (see blogpost of July 22, 2009 titled The Thrill of the Fledge).

BUT---that was before the family bluebird came to this place.  Now my loyalties are divided. Twice the male housewren has run off the male bluebird, who had begun staking out the copper-roofed house.  And last year, even though the bluebirds got a head start before the return of the housewren, their nestlings never made it to fledge day.  We heard one day of tiny cheeping, then BAM! they were gone, way too early for them to have fledged without notice.

I can't really blame their disappearance on the housewrens (it was more likely a hawk, or a snake, or a cat), nonetheless I'm watching carefully.  Today marks Day 1 of Project Bluebird Protection.  Madam Bluebird is definitely tending eggs under the copper roof.  She peeks out often, for only a few seconds, then ducks back inside. Occasionally she leaves the house, but only for a minute or two, to bask in the sun on a nearby bare dogwood branch (dying tree).

Her beautiful blue-backed mate with proud orange chest is never far away.  I see him keeping watch, flying from perch to perch around the yard.  dkm

Bluebirds in the House

It's the height of spring in Atlanta.  Every day is flooded with extraordinary beauty about which to write.   From the early Yoshino cherry blossoms falling like snow on every warm breeze, through the daffodils and grape hyacinths, the magniflora camellias, the yellow carolina jasmine and the intoxicating starburst blooms of the evergreen clematis, to the extravagant bursting forth of the pink and white azaleas and flowering dogwoods the city over.  It's an intimidating state of affairs for an amateur nature writer.

That's not even to mention the ubiquitous mating behavior of every species of returning bird.  And the birdsong, my god, the birdsong.  The most joyful of all, for me, is that bluebirds are nesting again in the copper-roofed house.  I've taken up sentinel duty to prevent the tiny rapacious house wrens from chasing them off this year, as they have done the past two years. The wrens have not yet returned, but when they do, I'm ready for them.

The trouble with trying to capture this flood of spectacular beauty in print, aside from keeping me from writing for three weeks, is that it tends to make it sound ordinary.  There is positively nothing ordinary about spring in Atlanta.  The irony is that I'm more driven to write about the slow and the common.  An everyday kind of slow observation has the effect,  for me, of turning the ordinary into the extraordinary---like giving the voiceless a voice.  I'll just have to trust that the spring burst of Atlanta can speak for itself.

In the meantime, here's a shot of madam bluebird, speaking for herself in the azalea thicket.  Click once on the photo to see her and the azaleas more closely.  dkm

Goodbye Bradford Pear Tree

The Instance of Time

My general intention with this blog is to learn what I can learn from local backyard observations of nature---and to write only what I observe first hand.   I will continue in that vain---but must digress today to comment on the larger natural picture of recent earthquakes the world over that are shaking our very foundations----from Indonesia, to China, to Haiti, to New Zealand, and now the worst of the worst in northern Japan.

While I try to keep my ear on the comforting post-earthquake words of the Reverend Dean Peter Beck of Christchurch Cathedral, which bear repeating, ("It was not an act of God. It was the earth doing what the earth does. The act of God in this tragedy is the hand of the people reaching out in aid to each other." ) still, the toll of such disasters on life and human society as we know it, and the question of how to respond from safe and comfortable distances, sometimes become overwhelming.  These are some of those times.   It causes me to contemplate the "speck of dust" nature of all of our existences and how one instant of time can change everything.

One effect of that is to put into perspective the miniscule nature of the daily struggles with which we often concern ourselves---that is---the insignificance of the event about which I posted yesterday (a tree root cracking the brick wall that holds up our front yard) in the face of the total annihilation of a city by a tsunami wave.

But the other more lasting effect, I hope, is to renew our commitments to each other in our daily affairs, and to resolve to make every human encounter one that improves the moment for the people involved---because that's all we can really be sure of---the moment---and we owe it to ourselves and to those within our sphere of influence to enhance those present moments.  dkm

Johnny Appleseed

If I didn't know better, I'd think the squirrels  understood our conversations about cutting down their tree. Its roots have buckled the driveway and are beginning to crack the brick wall that holds up our front yard.  It is an old tree in danger of splitting anyway, and our tree man tells us we need to cut it before the new spring root growth causes further damage to the wall.  While I understand the wall issue,  I was resistant to  losing the tree,  first because it is a beautiful tree, and second because of the squirrels' nest it harbors. I had hoped to witness the whole season of birth and caretaking by the family squirrel from my morning coffee window.

Then wonder of wonders, a few days before the scheduled felling of the tree, my brilliant squirrels up and moved!  One morning, not two but three squirrels worked together making multiple trips up and down the trunk of the pear tree carrying clumps of dry leaves in their mouths and leaping into the neighbor's magnolia tree across the driveway.  The magnolia leaves, being evergreen, dense, and opaque offer much better cover, so yay, the squirrels will be safer from hawks there, and it lessens the sting of losing the pear tree.

On the day Johnny Appleseed arrived with his trucks and saws and cranes and ropes, he said they would take great care with the nest in case it was still in use.   To my surprise and delight, the workmen were beyond careful.  They roped and cut and set the branch down gently in the yard, and seemed happy to do so.   They confirmed the nest was abandoned, but it did my heart good to see them so respect it.  Not to my credit is my surprise that men who operate such heavy equipment would exhibit enough tenderness of soul to preserve a pesky squirrels' nest.  But in a world so full of bravado and aggression, the tender moment uplifted me.

The tree was in full spring bloom on the day of its death.  I grieved its loss.  We filled the house with its stinky blossoms.  dkm

The Shuddering Earth

"It was not an act of God. It was the earth doing what the earth does. The act of God in this tragedy is the hand of the people reaching out in aid to each other."

As near as I can remember, those were the inspired words of the Reverend Dean Peter Beck of Christchurch Cathedral in a radio interview after yet another devastating earthquake shook the good people of New Zealand last week. With those simple and memorable words he ministered to the world, even as New Zealand recovers from a larger quake only five months earlier---though this one is the more tragic, for the loss of life it cost.

This morning, on new spring birdsong from the other side of the world, I send my most fervent hopes and well-wishes to the people of Christchurch, Canterbury, and Lyttelton Harbour in New Zealand. And a small donation to Christchurch Cathedral---not for its repair, but for its ministry to the people there. dkm

Shalom to Winter . . .

. . . and honor to the squirrels of the nest in the Bradford Pear outside my window---the same nest I wrote about on Dec 13 in "Hey, Hawk!" Usually the squirrels build their nests too high in the trees to observe closely on a regular basis, but this one is low and near enough to the window by which I drink my early morning coffee that I've observed it all winter. I didn't see it being built, and only first noticed it when the leaves of the pear tree fell away in November. Watching a squirrel's nest on any given day could never be considered a rewarding habit, but in the course of a winter of morning meditations over coffee, enough activity has accumulated in my memory to be worthy of comment.

First there was the Dec 13 invasion by the Cooper's hawk who stabbed at the nest and threw out dry leaves amid the outrage of the house finches. I wondered at the time if the nest was active or abandoned, because as far as I knew, the hawk only searched it, and did not find a meal there before the finches chased it off.

The next noticeable activity came on the morning of the third day of continuously below-freezing temperatures after our January ice storm, in an observation that touched my heart. Two house finches were clinging to the underside of the nest, apparently gleaning the warmth that leaked from the nest's interior. I assumed this was an indication that at least one warm-blooded squirrel was burrowed inside the nest, and I liked to think it hinted at a cooperative living arrangement whereby the squirrels lent warmth to the finches in January in exchange for the favor of chasing the hawk from their nest in December. Whether by agreement or random response to a need makes no difference. That it happened at all was a phenomenon I found sweet and paradoxical, given the otherwise brutal nature of life in the wild.

Later we had a week of unseasonably warm weather between our Jan & Feb snows, and during that week two squirrels busied themselves bringing leaves to the nest in an industrious display of homemaking activity that I observed on only one morning. I know not if they were fortifying for another possible cold spell, or preparing for an upcoming birth, but I'm committed to watching them throughout the spring season, which seems suddenly to have arrived, if today's warm air and returning orchestration of birdsong are any indication. dkm

p.s. The photo of the nest in question was taken on the day after the light snow of Feb 9 & 10.

A Winter to Remember . . .

. . . in more ways than one. First, for Georgia's mid-January storm that left us covered with a five inch layer of ice-glazed snow, beautiful to behold, impossible to navigate.

Next, for the early-February blizzard across upper mid-western North America that left a similar but thicker layer of ice over much deeper snow. We happened to be visiting family up north at the time of the storm. On one occasion it dumped us into a ditch on a county road nearBerlin, Ohio. That incident required us to abandon the car and trudge without boots through deep and blowing snow to get to warmth and safety. The ice on Ohio's snow was thicker and tougher and harder to break than Georgia's, and it sliced our ankles as our feet dropped through the surface. Even with a childhood in the blizzard state of Kansas, and later in the snowy winters of Pennsylvania, I can not remember ever experiencing ice of this kind on soft deep snow. It caused the sun to reflect from the rolling hillsides of Ohio farmland in a spectacular blinding glare that looked more like fire than ice.

And then there was the Disney filming that took place yesterday at the house across the street from our house. They put fake green leaves on the bare trees. They painted the grass in our front yard green. They installed over a dozen trees in front of our house, they brought truckloads of equipment, they floated a man in a giant crane and cherry-picker overhead, they parked a two-seater porta-potty in our driveway, they set up a "classroom" in my kitchen for the four child actors who will star in this movie called The Odd Life of Timothy Green, starring Jennifer Garner,,and it was the most astounding lot of unnatural activity seen on our street since it was first cut through the woods in the 1950's. It was beyond exciting for me to host the four charming child stars in my home, but, Pukeko G, I've been worried about the earthworms under the front yard since they sprayed our grass green. It can't possibly be good for them once it washes into the soil. More on that topic next post.

In the meantime, one more memorable winter shot. Last night a light soft snow fell on the fake trees that have not yet been removed from the yard. I'm not permitted to put photos of any of the filming activity on the internet, but this one is permissible, because it has no people in it. I took it to show the difference Hollywood can make---in contrast to another shot of the house after the first snow. Same house. Two snows. One month apart. dkm

p.s. You can google the name of the movie to learn more about the remarkable children that took their lessons in my humble kitchen all day yesterday.

Four Days After the Fall . . .

Snow makes whiteness where it falls.

The bushes look like popcorn balls.

And places where I always play,

Look like somewhere else today.

-Marie Louise Allen

PLACES

You can tell we don't get much snow in Georgia by all the amateur photos that have been brandished around on FB and local blogs. For the record, all that stuff that looks like snow is covered with a hard icy glaze, nearly impossible to walk on. I don't ever remember a snowfall like this in Decatur. These photos were taken today in the yard, a full four days after the storm. Some melt has begun, but it is still very icy. Tomorrow will mark the fifth day schools have been closed. Somehow, the ice didn't stick to the trees, so we've not lost electrical power. For us, it's been a quiet, warm, and cozy four days, though I know it's not been as easy for everyone. Good time to curl up with a good book, and I had one of the best. Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese. Luscious. dkm

To Makayla and Nickolas . . .

. . . after an hour of soaking up your joie de vivre in the simple act of chasing and catching leaves on a breeze:

I have but one request---that in the time it takes for me to grow old and you to grow up, we choose often to sit outside together giving heed to the things of beauty in the natural world---to the shape of a bird’s beak, for instance, or the pattern of its flight, the building and tending of its nest, the care of its young---to the slant of a sun’s ray, or the glint of its reflection on a pine needle, its blinding bounce from a bird’s copper roof, its flash in the birdbath, its dependable reach, its warmth on our knees---to the elasticity of the skin on the back of your hands, the wrinkle of mine---or as we did today, to the fall of one leaf, the single ride of its life, remembering its lime green tenderness when new, its deep green strength when mature, its powerful red seasoning as it nears death, its cleansing brown decay that nourishes the earth long after it is gone, metaphor for you and me---to the wind on our faces and the way it takes the shape of our lungs before it moves on, the breath of the universe. Love, Omi