Red-Bellied Woodpecker

Geometry

I found a heronry today near my home.

Birds froze to things last night: utility lines, branches, feeders. They left feathers behind when they flew away.

Geometry: two northern flickers—one on the utility pole, one in the sweetgum—and me, below, standing between them.

A European starling found a white feather and dropped it in the birdbath.

A blue jay used a peanut shell to bully other blue jays. He wielded it like a little sword.

Overhead, a single herring gull flew behind several ring-billed gulls.

I am as fussy as an American goldfinch.

I don’t know where the birds go at night, but I want to go there, too.

Songbirds slid off iced branches this morning.

The correct image is always a seed—it contains its own explanation, and defines itself. — Charles Wright

The ground has thawed. Squirrels play in the wet grass.

Morning: A squirrel drags a dried hydrangea blossom to his nest in the silver maple.

The grackles arrived this morning. In the near distance, hundreds of Canada geese are moving north. Only a handful of juncos remain. One sings from the back fence.

I hear tapping on a nearby tree. Two red-bellied woodpeckers jag through the air. They needle the sweetgums then disappear.

I am mildly interested in leaving the house but only to go watch birds somewhere else.

Sunny and warm. Clear skies. Two geese fly past the tornado siren tower.

I live knowing there is a Turin horse in my future, a suffering so great it will finally break me.

Erratics

I love the maple more because of the cardinal, and I love the cardinal more because of the maple.

Black cattle rise from the ground like basalt erratics in a limestone world.

You do feel alive. You just don’t like how that feels.

What is an extra hour in sky-time?

It’s as if the entire red maple has become the female cardinal, a form of reverse camouflage.

Dropping conditioning is, in itself, a form of conditioning.

Shhh. The squirrels are napping.

Water that reflects the sky is full of sky.

The juncos are wonderful company this time of year.

My love of birds started years ago when I released a starling from my father’s trap.

I came home to a Cooper’s hawk perched on my fence.

I think it was a sharp-shinned hawk. And I think a blue jay imitated the alarm cry of a Cooper’s hawk when the sharp-shinned hawk arrived. (Update: This accipiter was later identified as a very young female Cooper’s hawk, so the blue jay used the right call after all.)

Two great horned owls appear to be competing for territory in our neighborhood.

These days with birds are magical.

I woke to ice in the birdbath and a mantle of apricot leaves in the still-green lawn.

I topped the birdbath off with water that wasn’t frozen. Within minutes, dozens of birds came to get a drink or take a bath.

I live between two flyways, so there is a lot of interesting stuff going on here birdwise.

I just saw a yellow-bellied sapsucker in our backyard. A downy woodpecker and a red-bellied woodpecker were back there, too.

I’m ready for my arms to serve as branches.

My neighbor is walking down the street with a large shamanic drum.

Every night, the sky turns into a stigmatic, bleeding from sudden wounds.

The birds have entered my dreams, pale and wandering.

Ordinary Birds

I am fascinated by ordinary birds.

All afternoon, two downy woodpeckers danced up and down the sweet gum tree.

Sprinklers have dressed the trees in dark skirts.

Jealousy: when the red-bellied woodpecker is in my neighbor’s yard, not mine.

Killdeers alight between two partially constructed mansions. For now, this land is still theirs.

Like the blind raccoon, I am afraid of wind, high grass, birds, and snow.

As I turned toward it, the light seemed to be a solid.

A squirrel and I startle one another.

I’ll watch the birds you ignore.

An American kestrel sits alone on a power line. It begins to rain.

Symmetry: six mourning doves evenly spaced on a neighbor’s cable line.

Dirt is my personal stylist.

Grebes float on the man-made lake as the sky drifts into night.

We all have to love something. Why not the cecropia moth?

Overhead, birds break like pool balls.

Poor vision turns fall leaves into cardinals.

Above, the turkey vulture looks like a scalloped black slip.