Northern Flickers at the front porch over the last two days. (Better than the news)

"I lived in the first century of world wars.

Most mornings I would be more or less insane,
The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
The news would pour out of various devices
Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen."

from Poem by Muriel Rukeyser

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47657/poem-i-lived-in-the-first-century-of-world-wars

Jan. 9th 2021

"The wax has melted

but the dream of flight

persists."

from This Heavy Craft

by P.K. Page

Winter Flicker

"He lived in the bush, the wilderness

but he made light of it

He was at home, sitting

with the small birds around him

gathering seeds, the bare 

earth showing through the snow"

A Garland for Milne

by D.G. Jones

Flicker at Suet Feeder

-24C/-11F W 34C-/-29  7:30 at  a.m. in Calgary today.

"Those in the vegetable rain retain 
an area behind their sprouting eyes 
held soft and rounded with the dream of snow 
precious and reminiscent as those globes – 

souvenir of some never nether land – 
which hold their snowstorms circular, complete, 
high in a tall and teakwood cabinet."

from Stories of Snow 

by P.K. Page

Despite the cold this flicker showed up Sunday morning for suet.

Flickers used to migrate further south in winter, but apparently the

introduction of suet feeders encourages them to over winter. My 

friends in south Calgary have no luck with suet feeders as they are 

stripped immediately by magpies. Fingers crossed.

You are here, alive in this place,

touching with sight

things that are smoke tomorrow

from Alive in the World

John Haines

I could not capture the motion but all day the vent on 

the neighbors garage has spun round beneath its little

cap of snow.

Two days of snow and the feeders and heated  bird bath

have been the centre of attention in a cold and windy world.

And for me this is always a welcome site seeing that they

are here and things are, in this moment as they should be.

So the song is becoming as the world

becomes, and it can never leave us;

 because we are the notice in its passages,

from Song of the Ocean of the World Becoming

Pattiann Rogers

“In the middle of work/we start longing fiercely 

for wide greenery/for the Wilderness itself, penetrated 

only/by the thin civilization of telephone wires.”

                                                         from On the Outskirts of Work
                                                                 Tomas Transtromer

 Saturday we were finishing walking 
the dogs when I heard the Crossbills 

again. They were across the street 

in an even taller tree than last week

and the tree was equally far from the alley 

and the street so the distance was a bit far

and the day overcast. The flock consisted 

of Red and White-winged Crossbills I did 

not see any Redpolls or Nuthatches but I only

had my camera no binoculars so they could

have been there.

Here you can compare the males of the two species.

  

Below a look at the crossed bill.

 

I saw the Flicker yesterday but did not get a 

good picture. But today the Red Shafted Flicker

appeared among our feeder birds. Thanks Kathie

"Seen from underneath everything is large,

As among gods.

The earthworm thinks it's thundering when you 

put your toe down.

From the dead's point of view, it's you who are in heaven."

from From Above, from Below and from the Side.

                      Rolf Jacobsen

"as north as north can go,
nothing beyond
but a pig-iron heave,
a sky clawed bare by the cold"

 

                    from The Last Lighthouse

                               Lynne Wycherley

 

After several frosty days we had  our

first long spell of  cold days.

 

 

But with the cold weather the birds

retuned to the feeders.

 

A Yellow Shafted Ficker

 

 

A handsome male House Finch

 

A peaceful scene?

 

Not really the House Sparrow will not share.

 

 

Not even with a beautiful Red Poll.

 

 

The poems quoted on this post were found at the

great poetry blog, fifty-two poets, a year of reading poetry.

 

"What I miss is gravel
crunching under foot or wheel,
wide sky above
the road straight into horizon.

I want to walk the crease
of a prairie book, lines of wheat
as even type, all one size
the word gold over and over."

 

                 from Maze

                            Nancy Mattson

 

As I trundled thru the house getting ready for work

I heard the sound of the finches up and singing  with

the dawn. It is for me a happy sound

Later I read an article that appeared as a link on aldaily.com

from the New Republic, Happyism The creepy new economics 

of pleasure by Deirdre N. McCloskey. She touched all

the basics pleasure vs happiness, the hedonic treadmill,

economic theory, surveys etc. and while I found it

interesting if long I was also distracted more and more by the

thoughts of what make me happy. I also realized that one thing
that I enjoy when I read is the authors attempts to capture the

moment when they are overwhelmed by joy, revelation,
fuifillment, what ever you choose to call it.

One of my favorite descriptions of this experience follows.

“I feel as though I stand at the foot of an infinitely

high staircase, down which some exuberant spirit

is flinging tennis ball after tennis ball, eternally,

and the one thing I want in the world is a tennis ball.”

from

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Annie Dillard

-----------------

A rare visitor to the yard.

We have been in this house close to twenty years.

After we had been here a few years we heard

the beautiful song of the male House Finch a

bird we were not familiar with here. He would

(we assumed it was the same bird) appear every

Spring but never seemed to get an answer. Eventually,

I can not tell if it was in time for our lone swain more

finches appeared. Now they outnumber house sparrows

at our feeder. And at present they are both bringing their

young to feed and the food is disappearing from the new

Squirrel proof feeders at an alarming rate.



"In trees still dripping night some nameless birds
Woke, shook out their arrowy wings, and sang,
Slowly, like finches sifting through a dream."

From

Morning in a new land
Mary Oliver



The House Finches do seem to spill enough

food that the squirrels while in danger of

frustration are not in danger of starvation.

Leopard's Bane the first non-bulb to flower in our

garden each year.

"Suddenly I realize

That if I stepped out of my body I would break

Into blossom."

from

A Blessing

   Jame Wright

A few more shots of the flicker who has been coming

to my suet feeder. When it was finished with the suet

it began eating snow I assume for the moisture this

despite the fact there was a heated birdbath next to the

feeders. Then it rooted through the leaf litter, I suspect

it was looking for bugs.The number of magpies increased

and the flicker left. I did not get a good photo but I noticed

one magpie having found some shelled peanuts did not

gulp them down like a jay but held them against the ground

with it's feet and broke them like a small bird with sunflower

seeds.

"The trees, along their bare limbs,

contemplate green.

A flicker, rising, flashes rust and white

before vanishing into stillness,

and raked leaves crumble imperceptibly

to dirt."

                   Winter into Spring

                            Lynn Ungar

  

I have seen sparrows and the occasional Magpie

at my suet, but I was not expecting such an elegant

visitor when I looked out today.

"There is a thing in me that dreamed of trees,
A quiet house, some green and modest acres
A little way from every troubling town,
A little way from factories, schools, laments.
I would have time, I thought, and time to spare,
With only streams and birds for company,
To build out of my life a few wild stanzas.
And then it came to me, that so was death,
A little way away from everywhere."

                                      A Dream of Trees

                                                    Mary Oliver

Monday was a nice day, mostly without rain.

But it has taken me a long time to get to my photos.

On a trip to the pond at lunch I found that

the Mallard ducklings were out and about.

People were of course feeding them bread.

The American Widgeon pair were still around

they have also learned to eat bread.

Sharing it with others is still a work in progress.

My wife and I decided on supper at the

University of Calgary. For some reason the

university has developed a tilt.

Once there we meet the usual suspects.

The young white-Tailed Jackrabbits appeared

about two weeks ago once they were big

enough that the magpies would leave them alone.

My wife pointed out this flicker which has decided

that a drainage pipe makes a great home.

   

"Let us be much with Nature; not as they
That labour without seeing, that employ
Her unloved forces, blindly without joy;
Nor those whose hands and crude delights obey
The old brute passion to hunt down and slay;
But rather as children of one common birth,
Discerning in each natural fruit of earth
Kinship and bond with this diviner clay.
Let us be with her wholly at all hours,
With the fond lover's zest, who is content
If his ear hears, and if his eye but sees;
So shall we grow like her in mould and bent,
Our bodies stately as her blessèd trees,
Our thoughts as sweet and sumptuous as her flowers."

On the Companionship with Nature

Archibald Lampman