I had been noticing a number of 

House Wrens (?) singing from one of 

the old granaries. Then one evening while

taking a walk I heard a real commotion

in a grove of trees and found a whole family

of Wrens. They are a lovely, elegant bird

and noisy little bird.

"All summer long that little wren
Would chatter like a saucy thing;
And in the bush attack the thrush
That on the hawthorn perched to sing.
Like many noisy little men,
Lived, bragged, and fought that little wren"

                                       The Wren

                                             Charles Sangster

 

"To feast on summer sounds; the jolted wains,

The thrasher humming from the farm near by,

The prattling cricket's intermittent cry,

The locust's rattle from the sultry lanes;

Or in the shadow of some oaken spray,

To watch, as through a mist of light and dreams,

The far-off hay-fields, where the dusty teams

Drive round and round the lessening squares of hay,

And hear upon the wind, now loud, now low,

With drowsy cadence half a summer's day,

The clatter of the reapers come and go."

                             The Comfort of the Fields

                                      Archibald Lampman

The approach to our cabin begins when you turn off a 

gravel road and travel along a gravel lane running through

a field farmed by my brother in law, the field is ringed 

with poplar and the lane has a line of waist high weeds in 

the ditches on either side. Vesper Sparrows run in front of

the vehicle luring you from the locations of their nests and

Goldfinches sway from the top of the thistles. You pass a 

small slough on the right ringed with brush and at the edge

of the field you enter a stand of poplar and begin to climb 

up a steep slope to the ridge where the cabin sits. It is in 

these poplars where we stationed the trail camera that supplied

the pictures of moose, deer and coyotes I posted earlier. The 

poplars also house large numbers of birds including Waxwings,

Red Eyed Vireos, Purple Finches and the Yellow Bellied Sapsucker 

whose young we could hear even over the engine noise for the first

week we were there. You then come to the top of the ridge

where the cabin sits on the edge of the meadow where it

overlooks the slough. It is all these niches with their varied

 plants and animals that I am really looking forward to exploring

when I can spend more time at the cabin. I would really like to

document the distribution of sparrows which is one of the reasons 

I purchased my larger camera lens. While I did not get shots of the 

Vesper Sparrows a stated goal, I did get some shots of the

Sapsucker. 

"I walk, all day, across the heaven-verging field."

                                                 from Upstream 

                                                    Mary Oliver

"And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists

of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money,

I don't even want to come in out of the rain."

from Black Oaks
Mary Oliver

I had planned to stick to posts about the

trip to the cabin for now. However there has been a

lot going on and I could not resist an entry.

 roses are as seen from our bedroom window

the day we got back. When we left only a few

hardy roses like Teresa Brunet had bloomed.

"Delight in the small

those that inhabit

only a corner of the mind,

the ones shaped by wind

and a season: a slip of

grass, the nameless flower

that offers its scent

to a small wind."

Delight in the Small, The Silent

From Lorne Crozier's The Garden 

Going on Without Us

The juvenile robins as seen from the living room

windows were also interesting. I have been

trying to figure out if the difference in marking

is age or sex based.

"In the square

there is a wall where the old men sit and watch 

the young go by; he is seated in a row with them.

Desires are already memories."  

                   Invisible Cities

                             Italo Calvino

All week a flock of young House Sparrows emptied the

feeders. The today a pair of Grackles with four or more

young showed up and things got loud.

Only one chick appeared to be begging and the

adult ignored the others and carried the cleaned 

seeds to the called chick. One can only imagine 

what it was like to feed all of them

In these shots we can see that the chick's feather colours

vary among the brood I assume that is because they hatch

at different times.

"Whosoever he is that shall hope to cure this malady 

in himself or any other, must first rectify these 

passions and perturbations of the mind:

 the chiefest cure consists in them. A quiet mind 

is that pleasure."

                          Anatomy of Melancholy

                           Robert Burton

Even though we are back in Calgary this week

my thoughts often return to our cabin especially 

as I have hundreds of photos to go through. 

We started the cabin last summer but it was only

at the end of this trip that we ( my wife and I ) spent 

one night there instead of returning to the farm. 

We have made

some vague plans about what we would do with

the 80 acres but we have concentrated largely on

the cabin. The night we stayed there we sat in the 

screened porch constructed by my brother in law 

Brian ( thanks Brian without you and Ralph this would 

not have been possible). As it was not yet screened

we had a mosquito coil however we shared it with

a family of Barn Swallows so that was just as well.

One conclusion I came to was since the area directly

to the side of the porch had housed large number

of Garter Snakes the first year,  all sitting on the rocks

pushed up by the construction I would build a large

rock garden there. The area in front and to the right

of the cabin actually has a large meadow which is

one reason we picked this spot. It was covered with

wildflowers, Bee balm, Roses, Thistles, Vetch and 

Daises among others and with the flowers came birds

often in pairs either perched around the edges on the
poplars or perched on the flowers themselves. It was 

then we agreed that with the exception of a path/firebreak

right by the cabin the meadow and hopefully the 

flowers and birds would remain with no interference

from us. Okay I might add feeders. The following 

pictures we taken that evening or early the next morning.

If I misidentify someone please let me know.

" In all the world no place was mine

because I was driven like the other things.

But then I found the tumbleweed secret,

bounding along saying, "Where is my home?"

And the voices began to come at night,

warning. "We're lost-don't be like us."

                          Arrival

                                                 William Stafford

Eastern Phoebe

Savannah Sparrow

While I did not see any brown streaking I think

these are Yellow Warblers

Cedar Waxwing

American Goldfinch

Add caption

Purple Finch

" I waited for my life to start

for years, standing at bus stops

looking into the curved distance

thinking each bus was the wrong bus;"

                                Waiting for My Life

                                           Linda Pastan

The farm is an interesting place

you can see many animals living on the

edges of the fields and woodlots, sharing

the space with a plethora of machinery

some active and some kept for parts.

The animals are not wholly wild or wholly

tame, some like the birds, foxes and skunks

occupy the old buildings. It is the life we

have left them, a life on the margins. and an

evening stroll might lead to an encounter

with a piece of New Holland farm equipment

( shades of Swiss Family Robinson )

or a young buck.

The remnants of the old farm machinery

also fascinate me as I mentioned before.

I loved Ayn Rand's novel, Atlas Shrugged

when younger and even thought I am well

past any romantic view of the wonders

of industrialization I still read the old

trade names on the fading metal and

remember the images of industrialization and  

mechanization and it's attendant machines

running down as the world slides towards

John Galt's new Utopia.

" Cocked in that land tactile as leaves

wild things wait crouched in those valleys

west of your city outside your lives

in the ultimate wind, the whole land's wave.

Come west and see: touch these leaves."

                             Midwest

                                                 William Stafford

"Paddled in the bright grass, the old farm

Warm as a sack about me, feel the cold

Winds of the world blowing. The patched gate

You left open will never be shut again."

                                       Invasion on the Farm

                                                       R.S. Thomas

But the mother and child reunion

We are working on the cabin but 

the other evening we took the canoe out on

the slough in front of the cabin. Thanks Ralph

"But the mother and child reunion 

Is only a motion away"

             Paul Simon

The female Bufflehead seems to have acquired

two broods as there is a size difference. There were

at least 17 chicks.

The always melodious Song Sparrow. 

A Spotted Sandpiper I last saw one a few

weeks ago in downtown Calgary quite a

change of pace.

The yellow flower was a Small Bladderwort

waiting to pounce on insects, go figure.

 "I allow myself eddies of meaning:   

yield to a direction of significance

running

like a stream through the geography of my work:   

   you can find

in my sayings

                         swerves of action

                         like the inlet’s cutting edge:

               there are dunes of motion,

organizations of grass, white sandy paths of remembrance   

in the overall wandering of mirroring mind:

but Overall is beyond me: is the sum of these events

I cannot draw, the ledger I cannot keep, the accounting

beyond the account:"

                                        Corsons Inlet

                                                      R.A. Ammons

Oh 

Little darling of mine. "