I’m going to spend this evening visiting all those blogs that I’ve been neglecting the last few weeks. I’ve missed all of you and am anxious to get caught up with all that’s been going on in your lives. I offer in place of a nice photo today this *photoshopped* version of a pic I took the other day.

Cinnamon fern grows in wet woods and is good cover for small woodland creatures. Books say that hummingbirds sometimes use the fuzzy young fronds to line their nests. I found these growing on Saturday between visits to Dora at the vet’s in a quiet county park.

I like to visit this park because of the variety of habitats. The entrance, with its lined walkway of sycamores, attracts nesting Baltimore and Orchard Orioles. The scrubby fields used to be good for Blue-Winged Warblers, but Saturday I found only one singing his lazy “Beee-buzzzz” song. The dark, wet woods have Wood Thrush and Ovenbirds and many Common Yellowthroats. Most importantly, it is quiet there. No soccer fields, no playgrounds, no bike bath, no planned and managed *open space*. Just nature, without any amenities or improvements.

I spent today looking for things that would make me happy. This is what I found:

1. Many emails from my friends with kind words about Dora. Thanks friends!
2. My husband weeded the Rose of Sharon bed – that was long overdue and looks nice now.
3. Boomer was playing with his measuring cups this morning. Silly boy!
4. We went out and bought some new goldfish for the pond. My husband let me pick out the ones with the most freckles that he knows are my favorites (shubunkins and chubby ryunkins who swim funny). It’s great fun to add new fish to the pond because the others are so interested in the new guys! They always do this thing where all the fish swim around the perimeter of the shallow end in a long line with the new fish in tow. Fun to watch! We also bought a new waterlily called, “Colorado” that should have apricot-colored blooms. I need to get out and take some pics soon.
5. All of the black locust trees (also called yellow locusts) in the neighborhood are blooming beautifully and filling the air with their sweet fragrance. The flowers are white and hang in large clusters. There’s a nice pic at the link above.
6. A Merlin zoomed through a flock of starlings this afternoon while I was planting petunias in the front yard. I would not have spotted the Merlin if the starlings hadn’t given its presence away with their strange alarm squawks.
7. Our vegetable seedlings are doing well and haven’t been decimated by the critters yet. I need to take pics of the fortress my husband built around the veggie garden. My husband is so much like his dad, he has to do everything in a *big* way.
8. We had a fabulous thunderstorm in mid-afternoon . With huge white puffy clouds and the sun shining while it rained. Like a fool I stood in the rain looking for the rainbow – I know it was there just over the horizon.
9. I looked in the chickadee box expecting the babies to have fledged. Instead, I found at least five sleeping babies, all in a huddle. Very sweet!
10. As I write this Freckles is having her *play time* in the office. She doesn’t get out often enough, so she is kicking up her heels like a bunny fool. She makes me laugh.

As good a day after as I can ask for.

Beloved of children, bards and spring,
O birds, your prefect virtues bring,–
Your song, your forms, your rhythmic flight,
Your manners for the heart’s delight;
Nestle in hedge, or barn, or roof;
Here weave your chamber weather-proof.
Forgive our harms and condescend
To man, as to a lubber friend,
And, generous, teach his awkward race
Courage and probity and grace!
–Ralph Waldo Emerson, Birds, 1867

I was surprised to find this robin nesting right under my nose and wonder how many times I walked by without noticing her there. The babies have since fledged and I hear them begging to be fed from the low shrubs around the yard. I often see one of them in the vegetable garden, where the dirt is moist and full of worms.

“Other migrants come and go, but the catbird comes with the violets and stays for the late asters, and virtually all the time he is here he contributes to the gaiety of his neighbors. He is here now, and he is in fine form, celebrating the sunshine, jeering at the rain, demanding attention and deserving it.

He is our northern “mocker,” cousin of the brash mockingbird of the more southerly regions, and he has almost all the real mockingbird’s talents. He seldom uses them all, however, particularly the talent for sustained song. For he is a clown, an unregenerate mimic with what might be called a keen sense of the ridiculous. A phrase or two of sweet song and he must pause, as though to say, “Pretty, huh? But now listen!” And he will make a complete mockery of what he has just sung, finally jeering at it. He has an operatic voice, but he uses it for scat singing.

And he likes an audience. He picks a nesting site near a house, by preference, and he will offer all kinds of vocal inducements to get human attention. Once he has it, he opens his bag of tricks. A show-off, no less, an adolescent with no self-consciousness whatever; a bird who seems to have the character of a party cutup. He is as capricious as the weather, and that may be why we like him.

The robin is sedate, the oriole is a serious fellow, the blue jay is a blustering egocentric. But the catbird is a quick-witted entertainer who seems to find life a vastly amusing enterprise. Nothing completely dampens his spirit, and his world never seems to be going to pot. The only time we resent him is when we can’t rise to match his mood, and that, after all, is our fault, not his.” – Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons, 1964

A new yard bird today! I don’t keep a written yard list, but am happy to add a new one to the *list* anyway! Lots of people get grosbeaks at their feeders, but what a surprise it was for me to pull into the driveway from work and see this guy feeding on stray sunflower seeds beneath the feeders. I’ve never even spotted them in the neighborhood before, but guess I could easily have missed them because their song is so similar to a Robin’s. I called my husband on the cell phone and told him to come to the kitchen window to see it. I woke him from a nap, but he was excited to see it anyway. I love spring migration and its many surprises! I didn’t have a chance to take a pic, but found this pretty one on flickr.com originally uploaded by RicKarr.

“The evening was calm and beautiful, the sky sparkled with stars. Suddenly there burst on my soul the serenade of the Rose-breasted bird, so rich, so mellow, so loud in the stillness of the night, that sleep fled from my eyelids. Never did I enjoy music more.” – John James Audubon quoted in For the Birds: An Uncommon Guide by Laura Erickson.

Erickson describes the grosbeak’s song as “like a Robin who takes voice lessons. [The song] is a long, rich warble. Robins sing long sentences, the words often three syllables – Rose breasted Grosbeak sentences can’t be broken into distinct words as easily.” For the Birds 5-29

In Bird Lore (1901) Emily B. Pellet describes the grosbeak’s song as a musical, “You’re a pretty bird. Where are you?” I think of it like a Robin’s, but in a deeper, more tenor voice and listen for its sharp “kick” call note.

My brother calls this a *cheesecake* shot. I don’t know when or where it was taken, but love this pic of my mom long before she was a mother. She loved the beach so I imagine this was taken with the ocean or a lake nearby.

I was a little kid when my mom passed away and never had the chance to know her as anything other than my *mommy*. Sad really, when I see the friendships that my girlfriends have with their moms now that we’ve grown up. I rely on my brothers and old photos like this for glimpses into the person she was.

People tell me I look like her and my dad always said I had some of her mannerisms – one thing I know is that I could never look as good in a bathing suit!