some tweets from April

I'm on twitter (as metasilk). Sometimes I manage a relevant-to-small-measures post there, and sometimes I run out of time to update this blog as much as I'd like. So.... this post.

April 9: To chirps of woodpeckers dueling over suet, I finished a tedious bit of a small project.

April 14: A little brown bat is flying around over the road, in the shadow of the hillside. Sweet to see, but I worry he's not catching much.

April 23: Cool: purple finch on the black oil sunflower seed feeder today. Two Broadwinged* Hawks over the yard yesterday!

April 26: LittleBirder is making a mud puddle. I keep hearing happy noises from the front yard!

April 28: There's a white-throated sparrow singing LOUDLY in our woods, near our yard. Almost louder than the road grader! The birds are really delighting me recently. Wish I had time to write down all the observations, audio and otherwises. Heck, I wish I knew them well enough to ID them from said audio and visual... oh well. That's in the "someday when I have more time" daydream-pile, I suppose.

*I had originally, and mistakenly, ID'd these as Cooper's Hawks.

Handy-Dandy Notebook

LittleBirder went outside with his notebook and crayon. I asked, "Is that your 'handy-dandy notebook?"

He replied quite solemnly, "No, Mama. A 'handy-dandy notebook' is for Blue's Clues. I have another one."

scrap of journal, quick rough sketch of chickadee nape

One of the 7" chickadees has a little pale patch at the nape of its neck, in the black hood. Some other one has an irregular hood instead of a smooth.

I love seeing little differences like this.

small beginnings

The property--an acre or so--is roughly triangular, skinny on the upstream end, wider where it goes along an old fenceline. There's still some barbed wire. The dirt road is the second side, the nameless stream the third. It's overgrown ex-grazing and forested stream bank--which means mostly maples and yellow birch--with a couple of somewhat decrepit apple trees, a fabulous white pine that lost its top last fall, and hemlocks along the creek.

And I'm here because my heart is, all involuntarily-like. It's certainly not a useful piece of property, in most senses of the word. But I can sit stone or wander small, and I've got good neighbors, two-, four-, and no-legged ones. It's to talk about them that I'm making this blog. A record, a witness, a celebration.

Well, and maybe the development of ritual for me, too.

Welcome.