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The landscape is changing rapidly and I can’t say I’m a fan of the in-between, which is neither one thing nor the other, but it’s all part of the natural process.
Unlike the time change coming up on Sunday morning which is a piece of human nonsense.
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One of the problems I have with my eyesight is that I am not able to focus quickly, even on large items when I’m in motion.
So I was pleased that I noticed the little black shapes in this field – wild turkeys.
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Focusing the camera a separate issue.
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There’s a large bird in this picture too…
As we got closer, Grant spotted it and I had but seconds as we rolled up, to capture the red-tailed hawk.
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They don’t hang around for you.
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Slightly better luck yesterday morning, which was grey and wet and otherwise most uninspiring as we set out for Clifton Park.
The scene had not improved 3 hours later, but we had to pause our journey long enough to capture a flock of some thousand Canada geese.
WH man hasn’t yet put a tariff on them, it seems.
Probably because he’s never heard of them.
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Here are some more cheerful images to go with my – I won’t call it a poem, just thoughts that tumbled out after a sad encounter the other day.
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Few things are more poignant than a dead bird.
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One recent, frigid afternoon,
There was a thud against a nearby window.
Alarmed, I went outside,
There finding beneath a yucca plant,
A female cardinal shivering.
Gently, I picked her up
And held her in my hand.
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With a slightly chipped beak,
She was otherwise intact.
Praying she was only stunned,
I sheltered her against the bitter wind, to observe
And saw she was gasping.
Shock, I hoped. She’d fly off soon,
The way they often do.
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Sadly not.
She expired in my hand, short minutes after.
Leaving me with her slight corpse and much regret.
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Birds are so special. I adore them. I pick up feathers and keep them, like talismans.
To me, birds have always represented good luck and I’ve admired them since I was old enough to understand what they were.
My parent’s budgies were allowed out of their cage and it delighted me when they perched on a finger or shoulder, especially when they biffed me with their beaks and when they were naughty, pushing things off shelves.
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One such budgie was called Pippy. We thought it was a male until it began climbing down into my mother’s cleavage and one day laid an egg down there, which was quite a surprise.
Pippy was on Mum’s shoulder once when she went outside, but she didn’t fly away. Clearly, she was happy to be an indoor bird. Wise, considering we lived in London.
Her seed was kept in a Bournvita cocoa tin, on a shelf by her cage. She even managed to push it off, nearly onto my brother’s head, never mind that it must have been ten times her own weight.
Poor Pippy was one of the problems Mum was left to sort out when my father decided to take work overseas.
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Mum had six months to sort out finding a school for my brother and pack up all our stuff.
And what to do with Pippy.
Pippy was the single problem she could not solve, but one afternoon providence took over.
In mid-flight that day, Pippy suddenly plummeted into Mum’s hands and could not be revived.
Returning from a cricket match, my brother saw the budgie book on a table and said, glumly:
“I suppose the Pippy problem is solved.”
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My hamster Tim supposedly went upstairs to live with a little boy of the same name.
But I have my doubts about that.
It’s another of those questions I should have asked my mother but never did.
Not sure I’d have believed her anyway.
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My parents almost always had a budgie and when my father decided to come back to live in America, once again it was a problem, but that one was easily solved.
I suggested he draw the its picture and write an adoption request, as if from the bird itself.
We walked into town and asked the pet shop owner if he’d post it. By the time we got home, someone had called up in response.
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That budgie didn’t seem to have a name. Dad got it after they lost the previous one, but in the year before Mum died, she seemed to have gone off the idea of budgies.
When that last bird she cared for met its end, Mum put it on a shelf in the conservatory. I arrived the following night and noticing the cage was empty, was confronted with dealing with a dead bird, which was a poignant way to be greeted.
Holding a deceased bird in my hand always makes me sad.
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Birds hit windows all the time and all too often it is fatal, but not always. At my home in Washington I had occasion a couple of times to pick one up off the patio and both times it sat recovering for about 15 minutes, then deposited a poop in my hand and flew off. I’ve read that sometimes even when they do fly away, they don’t survive long.
In an attempt to deal with the problem, I do my best to bird-proof my windows, but nothing works perfectly, even the expensive screens I hung in Washington.
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Thank you, Carolyn, for your interesting but also sad memories of dead birds and upsetting changes during your childhood. Moving to a different country while you have pets is difficult but I think the experience of the solution your mother thought sensible must have affected you for life. As always, I love your photographic study of the sky, trees, and various creatures!
Joanna
We had new double glazed windows fitted to the whole house in 2018. They came with a ‘coating’ that allowed heat to pass through the glass, but reflected light that would otherwise fade the furniture and make it uncomfortably bright in the rooms. Not long after, birds began flying into the windows at full speed, and I doon discovered that from outside the windows seemed to be invisible to them. We could not afford to replace it, unfortunately, and since then I have found six large Wood pigeons dead on the ground with broken necks, one dead Starling, and another Wood Pigeon with a badly broken wing that was living under a hedge. I used to put food and water out for it as it could not fly. One day it was gone, and I hoped that was because its wing had healed.
Best wishes, Pete.