This is my version of twitter: a few vignettes of nature that touched or tickled me in recent days...
1) Black fuzzy Spider innocently poised on sunny railing 12mm from black buzzy Fly who is the same size
Spider 'sneaks' towards Fly in micrometer advances, hoping Fly won't notice in broad daylight
Fly toys with Spider in jittery stillness, I'm laughing
in a subtle flash fuzzy pounces and Fly, not surprisingly, flies! Spider, fuzzy on the railing, wonders how to improve his subtle strategy.
2) Chickadee and chickadee flutter onto two sides of a circle feeder
And as two strangers struck with the same thought, they suddenly twitter lustily... in perfect unison!
chickadee shook to clear his head and flew off, not sure what just happened. chickadee stayed and beaked black sunflower seeds.
3) Light was gently rolling up and into the morning, the sun was on its way.
and mourning dove cooed in the locust tree like warm coconut pudding. From a few trunks away, came a luring reply of the same tenor... and without an breath of hesitation, the dove in the locust came again...and back...and again, almost overlapping, they cooed and wooed so sweetly. I looked up from the garden bed to a flutter of wings in branches and two doves fly away.
4) I glanced out to the deck where our wedding ribbons flutter and birds thought no one was watching. First a tufted titmouse hopped off the garland and onto the ledge in his playful disheveled pose. Soon, in for a landing came black-capped chickadee. Checking and pecking for seeds and bits, they hopped and chirruped and discovered new treasures, unhurried to leave the other's company and following the other's nose. Fun little friends of different feathers!
5) Murmuration* is an amazing experience. I witnessed one on the way home from a funeral last week at dusk. The show had already begun when I pulled off the road and I stood spellbound for 25 minutes.
Hundreds upon hundreds of birds had taken the air above me by storm as in formation they welled and swelled and exploded and spilled liked fish schools in water. As one, the beating of their wings pounded my ears and dropped my jaw.
Then, almost imperceptibly, the tide went out as each rank gracefully dove into the same shrubbery- easily a thousand birds in company and chittering! The passing farm tractor could not drown them out. Insatiably curious (would they keep this up all night? what was going on at this gathering??), I stayed until I noticed that they were simmering down and drove home breathless.
*Murmuration is just the name for a grouping of Starlings according to wikipedia, so I'm not sure if I've got the right term for this phenomenon that I watched.
5)
A poem from 16 feb 2012
That bird made a fool of me--
warbling at the top of an empty tree,
pulling out all of february's stops
and I, legging across grounds, craining,
bumping passersby,
could not lay my gloomy-lifted eyes on
its fluffy little boom box!
--a happy fool
