June 19: Unripe berries

Over the next day, as this hemisphere officially shifts into summer, a heat wave is supposed to kick the temperature up about 20 degrees, into the 80s. Summer is truly upon us at last, thankfully, and the fruits of the season are getting ready. Outside my office the high-bush blueberries are laden with unripe fruit, funky, pale green globes creating their own clustered galaxies in the universe of our lawn. Within the month we should be enjoying our berries--or at least, those that the crows, jays, squirrels, and random passers-by don't eat first. But right now, on summer's cusp, the eve of Midsummer's Eve, those hard berries in first blush hold pure promise of things to come. 

Already a crow
eyes the unripe blueberries--
it, too, has to wait.

Gratuitous lupine shot, also taken in office yard

June 18: New Moon

At an inexplicable low point in the biorhythms cycle today. Maybe I can blame it on tomorrow's new moon. But when I returned home, my day was salvaged by the explosion of fragrant peonies in my garden and the call of a loon in the distance, wending its way upriver back to the nest for the night.

Impending new moon.
If not for these peonies,
I'd own that darkness.

June 17: Damselfly

We spent this beautiful almost-summer day with my family at my sister and brother-in-law's camp on Crawford Lake.

Hanging out on the dock, my husband spotted a couple of damselflies that had just emerged, still-damp, from their nymph cases. One flew off by the time I came to look at them, but the other still clung to the boat bumper. Since the boat was about to head out for a cruise, I worried the baby damselfly wouldn't be ready to fly in time. I encouraged it to crawl onto my finger, then moved it to a nearby leaf out of the way of people and dog. The next time I passed the leaf, it was gone. I never even saw it open its wings. By the end of the summer, its life will be over. I wish it many more days like this one before that time comes.

So short a lifespan--
damselfly is blessed to hatch
on this perfect day.

June 16: Chick

My friend Janet recently incubated some fertile eggs from her own chickens. Two of the chicks--Barred Rock and Brahma crosses--are big enough now to have their own room out in the coop, but one just hatched a few days ago and still resides in a box in the house, under a heat lamp. Janet has become quite attached to this little chick and hopes that it's female so that it can eventually join her flock (which cannot sustain two roosters). Her affection for it is understandable--it's just a warm little ball of fluff with feathery feet (inherited from her Brahma father).

I was at Janet's house today working on a project in the room next to the one where the chick was being kept. Along with food and water, Janet had hung a bunch of dandelion greens in the box to pique the chick's interest in natural food (as opposed to its tiny tray of chick feed). As we worked away nearby, we could hear the chick's occasional quiet peeps.

At one point Janet checked on it and removed the wilting greens. She also put the cover over the chick's box. Shortly thereafter, we could hear the chick peeping loudly in apparent distress. Thinking that the chick didn't like the cover, she rushed in to remove it. But it continued to chirp anxiously. Then Janet thought to dig the wilted bunch of greens out of the trash and hang them back in the box. The chick immediately settled down. It had missed the dandelion greens! Apparently, it had imprinted on the greenery in its box, even if it didn't yet consider it food.

Chick in a box, gazing adoringly at its dandelion greens

All-natural chick--
box-coddled, yet already
comforted by greens.

A woman and her chick

June 15: Bird on lupine

This morning I chuckled to see a great-crested flycatcher swoop across the lawn to perch on a tall blue spike of lupine, which of course immediately fell over under the bird's weight. But the flycatcher kept its balance and hung on, swaying atop the flower as if it meant all along to make a pretty perch out of it.
 
Flycatcher sputters--
a flower isn't the most
secure of perches.

June 14: Peonies

What better way to enjoy a summer evening after work than to have a drink with a friend on the outside deck at the Waterfront Restaurant, watching the sailboats cruising in for the evening while ospreys cry overhead? And later, back home, it's still light enough to stay outside a little longer to watch a gregarious flock of waxwings fly-catching in an oak tree, and pick the huge, fragrant peonies that had collapsed onto the lawn under their own weight.

Something of the sun
lingers now inside the house--
peony perfume.

June 13: Oriole

I experienced a strange synchronicity today--speaking on the phone with a friend, she told me that after the last time we talked, she hung up the phone and saw an oriole outside her window. It made her think of me. I couldn't respond right away because I was a bit freaked out. "Had we spoken of orioles last time we talked?" I asked. No, she'd just made a bird connection because of my interest. Then I explained that on the wall in front of my desk I have a big poster, "Sibley's Backyard Birds." When I talk on the phone, the bird I'm staring at, the one right at eye-level, is the Baltimore Oriole. In fact, I was absently looking right at it when she told me this.

From my eyes to yours--
an oriole's quantum leap,
vivid to us both.

June 12: Morning catbird

Unusual for me, I woke at dawn, the light bright under the bedroom blind. Instead of falling back asleep, I lay there for a while listening to the rush of the river and the early birdsong. It seemed like such a luxury, to know I didn't have to get up for a few hours, to just stay in my warm, comfortable bed and enjoy the natural music outside.
 
Catbird's song at dawn--
how long can I lie in bed
simply listening?

June 11: Nuthatches

The pair of White-breasted Nuthatches have multiplied into three. It's that time of year. The geese graze on the lawn with fuzzy grey goslings. Robins carry bills full of grubs to hidden nests. And the nuthatches spiral the trunk of the ash tree as a trio, teaching their fledgling the secrets of bark, of unseen insects, of how to forage with that tiny, pointed beak while perched downward. The bill of a nuthatch has evolved over the millennia into a tool perfectly suited for the task of picking insects off a tree trunk (as well as eating seeds). If only we humans could so easily determine what we are best suited for in life and make use of it exactly as we should.

Nuthatch is learning
how perfect its bill is for
getting what it wants.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

June 10: Awareness

Our cat has been especially restless today. I don't know if it's the warm weather, the sunny, open windows (she's an indoor cat, so sitting on the sill is as close as she gets to being outside), or the birds and insects that keep buzzing past the windows and glass door. Rather than curling up on her pillow for hours at a time--her usual habit, despite being a young cat--she's been wandering from window to window, or sitting in one spot that gives her a view of the bird feeders, alert to any and every motion outside. Just now, up on my desk, she's spasmodically following the path of a bumblebee on the other side of the screen. Her ears perk up at the sound of a crow whining down by the river. Seems this clear, sunny weather and the movement of air through the house has brought new sights and smells into her world, made her more aware of what's outside.

This morning I finished a great new book about how to start developing a deeper awareness of the world outside: What the Robin Knows by Jon Young (I include a link to the book so you can learn more about it, not to encourage you to purchase it from Amazon. I hope that if the book interests you, you'll get it at your local, independent bookstore.) Young's premise, put very broadly and simply, is that by developing an intense familiarity with the creatures that inhabit our world, especially species like robins that can give us learnable cues about what's happening around us, we can better understand the natural world and how we can become a less intrusive presence within it. The key is developing one's awareness through intimate, repeated observations. 

The book made me realize how much I have to work on in this regard, yet also that I've been following some of its tenets already. The other day, for example, I heard jays and crows making a racket out back that I was certain indicated a strange cat was passing through. I looked out the window and sure enough, there it was--an orange-and-white cat I'd never seen before, scuttling down the riverbank on the "cat trail" that the neighborhood cats all follow through our yard (usually without the corvid fanfare). Apparently I'd been unconsciously absorbing a little bit of bird language just by paying attention to my back yard.

This very afternoon, I heard the chip of a woodpecker in the willow over the driveway. Before I heard its complete call a few seconds later, I knew this was the local downy woodpecker that likes to hang out in that tree on his way to another tree in our back yard. So, I've gotten a little bit of a start on Young's teachings all on my own, but his book has opened my eyes to how much I haven't been paying attention to, focused as I usually am on seeing and hearing all the birds I can when out on the trail. His point is that it's not just a matter of knowing the names and songs of birds and what habitat they each live in, but of learning so much about them that when the robin in your yard makes a particular alarm call, you know to look up for the sharp-shinned hawk flying overhead. And, like learning a language spoken in more than one country, this knowledge then travels with you, enhancing your awareness of the natural world wherever you are and enabling you to interpret the behavior of the "robins" everywhere.

I recognize my

neighbors--robins, crows, sparrow--

but do I know them?

June 9: Getting grounded

Today was the first day after a full month+ of birding weekends that I could 1) sleep in--which I might have actually done if the cat hadn't been so physically aggressive about getting me out of bed to feed her at an early hour; and 2) work in my garden.

With all the rain we've had and my complete lack of attention, the flower beds were out of control. Thankfully, the sun has finally reappeared. I pruned and trimmed a whole wheelbarrow full of leaves and weeds, and then, after the season's first trip to the local plant nursery, filled in some gaps. Now the sedum can see the light again, out from under the lady's mantle. The lilies aren't hidden under the monster hosta. And my herb garden has another year's round of lavender, cilantro, and catnip. Also, marigolds for color. A new "black" fuschia hangs by the front door, a bright blue verbena on the fence. The clematis is trained with string to begin climbing the porch rail. The lawn is mowed. Blue irises which my dad and I planted several years ago bloom once more against the white walls of the shed. Clumps of ferns burst up here and there in the backyard, which I generally let grow at will for most of the summer except for a path to the shed. My hands are covered with dirt despite wearing gardening gloves, and the soles of my bare feet need a scrub.

And I feel like I've regained some balance, grounded myself, quite literally, once again.

Pregnant peonies
tower over my garden.
I feel an odd pride.