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Sabbath
Wendell Berry has a whole series of poems called Sabbaths. Accumulated over several decades, they represent his forays into the woods on Sundays — not every Sunday, but a portion of them. Usually we’re in church, but today we went into the woods instead. There is a particular kind of rest, a particular settling and composure, in the solitude of a walk in that setting.The first “wildlife” sighting happened before we even got out of the house: this Carolina wren, who had apparently spent the night in our garage. It was a confident little bird. Maybe it enjoyed the warmth, and whatever bugs it found on the window sills. But when we opened the doors, it paused only to give us a considering glance before flying gracefully away.
Off to the woods, on a morning blanketed in mist.
The moisture in the air made certain usually hidden things visible.
We saw a few deer, but for the most part, it was a time to look closely at the microworlds of mosses and bracket fungus, ferns in their fall stripes, woodpecker work and chipmunks.
My husband was surrounded at one point by small, alarmed rodents, filling the woods with their squeaking.
We were near this stream, a favorite spot, when the sun came out.
It’s interesting to me that although our bird feeding station at home was swarming with birds, the ones in the woods take longer to get up and moving. Maybe they wait for their prey to wake up — not being a welfare state, like our back yard. There were quite a few cardinals, chickadees, robins, nuthatches, hairy woodpeckers, cedar waxwings, Eastern towhees and other birds coming alive and chattering in the trees as we came back out. The gnats were certainly awake as well.
At last — all things come to her who waits — I saw a Tennessee warbler, who scolded me roundly and flew away.
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Backyard Birds of Early Fall
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Signs of fall
Leaves are beginning to crackle underfoot. There is still a green canopy overhead, but the smell of fall is in the air, and there was a freeze warning last night.
The girls and I descended into this lovely gorge for a new perspective on a familiar walk yesterday. We saw this fellow literally “chilling out,” along with several of his friends.
His landlubber pals, tiny toads, were everywhere along the trail, too.
It seems like the summer flew by. I hope to drink in the autumn more fully before it slips away.
There are always surprises if we’re looking.
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Incomparable Artist
I have stood in the mist of Iguacu Falls in Brazil as gorgeous tropical butterflies, winged bearers of abstract art, landed on my arms to lap up the moisture. I have crouched beside a bay in Alaska as a pod of feeding beluga whales made shiny crescents of silver in unison against the dark green water. I have sat under a baobab tree in Kenya as giraffes loped effortlessly under sunset clouds and a line of half a million wildebeest marched single file across a plain. Above the Arctic Circle, I have watched a herd of musk oxen gather in a circle like Conestoga wagons to protect the mothers and their young (who in wintertime must adjust to a 130 degree drop in temperature at birth). I have also sat in hot classrooms and listened to theology professors drone on about the defining qualities of the deity — omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, etc. Can the One who created this glorious world be reduced to such abstractions? Should we not start with the most obvious fact of existence, that whoever is responsible is a fierce and incomparable artist beside whom all human achievement and creativity dwindle as child’s play? (Philip Yancey, Soul Survivor: How My Faith Survived the Church)
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Redstarts
We’ve had what I believe to be a female redstart around our yard this summer. Recently she was traveling up the trees beside the driveway with a whole band of others. I never did see a male, but I assume the birds with her were juvies. They certainly acted like it — including the one who seriously considered landing on my head.
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Ferd’s Bog
The walk into Ferd’s Bog, where I heard the winter wren, has a primeval feel. It was very quiet, though as we approached the bog itself, we heard a few bush-dwellers rustling about. This one, a hermit thrush (I think), posed so nicely my photo should be better than it is.
On to the bog, traversed by a boardwalk. Earlier in the summer, the grass is red with pitcher plants. Not so much so in August.
Cedar waxwings were everywhere, making their high-pitched noises that, I’ve read, are sometimes too high for the human ear to pick up.
The walk out is equally beautiful, of course, though it seemed all new because we were moving in a different direction.
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Mystery solved
In 2011, I heard a bird song in the Adirondacks that I couldn’t identify. This year I heard it again. Finally it occurred to me to ask the folks over at Cornell Lab. I sent them a link to some video clips I posted of the song on my other blog, and they identified the bird for me. It’s a winter wren!
Here is some video of a singing winter wren over at YouTube. I’m so glad that next time I hear the bird, I’ll know what to look for!
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Give us this day…
…our daily bread.
Our neighbors often throw their stale bread out for the birds, but this time it was snatched up in a huge mouthful by a gray fox. Off to feed young — or just addicted to carbs?
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Fawn in the ferns
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Blackburnian warbler
This was my first sighting of a blackburnian warbler. We spent a few days in the Adirondacks, and this fellow was part of a crowd of warblers making their way through the yard.
Most of the others were, I think, black-throated greens, though the only ones I got pictures of were in their non-breeding plumage…
…or perhaps, in some cases, juveniles.
On a hike up Bald Mountain, flocks of golden-crowned kinglets were working the treetops. It’s amazing to me how many caterpillars there are for them up there!
