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Life on the Deckle Edge

Poetry Friday - House Finch Update & Emily D.

 

Greetings, Poetry Lovers! 

 

Just a wee birdie update here this week. Two weeks ago, I shared a photo of the house finch nest in the hanging fern on our front porch.  All FIVE babies hatched, and they're all still here.  I had feared we had a single mom doing all the work, but when Morgan and her human baby chicks were here last weekend, she spotted the male.  No deadbeat dad after all!

 

Audubon tells me they will fledge between 12-15 days, which should be any time now.  They barely fit in the nest!!

 

Here are a few lines from Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) about bird nests, and social "climbing," perhaps?

 

 

For every bird a nest (79)

By Emily Dickinson

 


For every bird a nest,

 

Wherefore in timid quest

 

Some little wren goes seeking round.

 

Wherefore where boughs are free,

 

Households in every tree,

 

Pilgrim be found ?

 

Perhaps a home too high —

 

Ah, aristocracy ! —

 

The little wren desires.

 

The lark is not ashamed

 

To build upon the ground

 

Her modest house.

 

Yet who of all the throng

 

Dancing around the sun

 

Does so rejoice?

 

 

Wing your way over to see Karen for this week's Roundup! Thanks, Karen.  :0) & Congrats on the recent family wedding!  

Next week we'll be on the road to celebrate our first baby grand's THIRD birthday.  How did that happen so fast?  Will catch up when we return.  Happy SOON-to-be-JUNE!

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Poetry Friday: Home's a Nest

 

Greetings, Poetry Lovers!  Greetings from "Travelers Nest," to be precise.  We live in Travelers Rest, but when we bought this house a few years ago, I had a little sign made for the front porch that says, "Travelers Nest."

 

I'm always excited when birds nest near us.  (Though I've had to stop putting a spring wreath on the front door; we need to use the door!) 

 

This year we replaced an old bird house with a new nesting box for bluebirds.  Two, actually.  I've seen activity at both (one out front and one in the back), but know the back one was definitely used, with a mom and dad going in and out over recent weeks.  It's quiet now; curiosity got me today, so I lifted the little side door which has a hard plastic "wall" to peek through.  Definitely a lot of nesting material going on (I'd seen pine straw through cracks in the bottom), but also remnants of, well, birds living there - so much that I couldn't see through.  So I slid my cell phone through the opening at the top and took some pictures.  Honestly, I can't make heads or tails of the messy situation in there, but I hope it led to baby birds which fledged while we were gone (maybe during the wedding week or such).  I'll have to clean it out for the next time!

 

At the front of the house, I did see cardinals going in and out of the Chinese Fringe bushes we have at the front porch, maybe a month or so ago.  I haven't been able to tell if they've really used the nest they built, as it's hard to see without making a ruckus, and I haven't wanted to encourage the dog to bark at them through the railing! 

 

But one nest has for sure resulted in eggs.  No sooner had I brought home a couple of hanging ferns for the front porch than I started seeing a small brown blur when I'd go out there. So small and so fast; I haven't been able to 100 percent identify it. It's not a Carolina wren; we used to host a pair every year back in Georgia. I was thinking sparrow (there are several kinds, of course!) but now I'm pretty convinced this little mama is a house finch. Yesterday after she'd flown off for a minute, I grabbed my phone and held it above the hanging basket, and I discovered the picture above - four eggs with one very brand new hatchling! 

 

So now I'm keeping the dog mostly away fom the porch and trying to give Little Bird Mama a wide berth if I have to open the door. I can see the silhouette of her wee brown head looking at me when I do! She's literally too fast for me to properly i.d. when she takes off. 

 

As the amazing David Sibley says:

 

Birders often struggle to distinguish the streaky brown birds, lumping them together with nicknames like "LBJs" (for "Little Brown Jobs"). Click here for more from BirdwatchingDaily.com. 

 

I haven't seen Dad; that would help. But the eggs look like house finch eggs. 

 

**FRIDAY MoRNiNG NEST UPDATE!** - ALL the eggs have hatched!  I snapped a quick (blind) pic on my phone when Mama briefly flew off this morning, and the nest is full of very fluffy babies!  I think there are four. :0)

 

Any bird nests in your realm?

 

Here's a little tribute to all of our feathered families, as a metaphor for our human ones, from British poet William Barnes (1801-1866):

 

 

HOME'S A NEST

 

O Home is a nest of the spring,

Where children may grow to take wing.

 

A nest where the young folk are bred

Up, to take on the work of the dead.

 

Where babes may grow women and men,

For the rearing of children again.

 

Where our children grow up to take on

Our own places, when we are all gone.

 

All forsaken, when children have flown,

Like a nest in the bush-top alone.

 

Where our children are bred to fulfil,

Not our own, but our Father's good will.

 

O, Home is a Nest!

 

 

The Home Book of Poetry, compiled by Dana Estes, Estes & Lauriat, Boston, 1882.

 

We have so many wonderful books of bird poetry, several by talented members in our Poetry Friday community!  And, if haiku is for you, here's a little shout-out for the 2023 collection from bottle rockets press, Bird Whistle: A contemporary Anthology of Bird Haiku, Senryu & Short Poems, edited by Stanford M. Forrester/sekiro & Johnette Downing. I have a couple-few poems in there.  Here's the link! 

 

Thanks for coming by, and be sure to wing your way over to see Ramona at Pleasures from the Page for the Poetry Friday Roundup!

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Poetry Friday - When Life is Overwhelming, Look for Birds....

 

Greetings, Poetry Lovers!  I've missed you as I've ducked in and out these couple-few weeks.  In the midst of all the stress in the news, we've had happy family events to look forward to - a baby shower for daughter Morgan & family last weekend, and a little celebratory lunch for Son Seth & his love that we're hosting on Saturday, after they get married at the courthouse TODAY/Friday!  (They'll have a ceremony and reception in the Spring.) 

 

I was among those who met late Tuesday evening and early Wednesday morning with numbness and a bit of despair.  I texted with a few friends, and there were lots of messages with hubby Jeff's sibling group.  What struck me was that it seemed to be the impulse of several folks to respond to this state of overwhelm with... poetry.  Tuesday night as results started rolling in, my sister-in-law Patti shared "Holding Vigil" by Alison Luterman, written in response to the experience, I believe.  Among the poems ending up in text messages the next morning were "The Peace of Wild Things" by Wendell Berry, a favorite among our PF folks. Jeff shared a post on social media by Chelan Harkin that started with, "It's when the earth shakes...." Other folks sent spiritual passages that read as a mix of poetry and prose. 

 

I wanted to post something on Facebook, but nothing I could come up with myself seemed right, or appropriate. Then I ran across Janet Wong's post, where she shared her wonderful poem, "Looking for Birds," and it resonated with the feelings and tone I wanted to share.  So I shared the post and asked if I could share the poem again here today.  It's from the wonderful Pomelo Books collection, HOP TO IT. Janet and Syliva Vardell are the power team behind that publishing venture, and several of us are lucky to have poems in those anthologies.  I love how a poem, originally conjured up with a certain topic or sensibility in mind, can also meet another experience not dreamed of when it was originally penned. 

 

 

Look for Birds

 

It could be worse. 

It is worse 

somewhere

for someone.

 

Today will blend into tomorrow.

Tomorrow will become next week.

Everything happening now

will become just one page

 

in a history book

in a hundred years.

 

Let's look out the window.

Come, let's look for birds.

 

 

©Janet Wong

 

I suppose one reason I took this poem to heart on this occasion was that Wednesday morning, I took my dog Rookie on his usual walk.  I realized that for him, nothing had changed.  He was immersed in whatever smells, sounds, sights and tracks caught his attention in the moment. It was okay for me to just be on a walk for a few minutes, noticing the natural world.  (And Rookie's used to my stopping now and then to try to see some woodpecker I've just heard, or to try to suss out what bird made some unusual call.) 

 

In a few lines, Janet's poem helped me take a breath and a brief big-picture break.  But more importantly, it helped me remember that implications from this election might have a much more dire impact on people more vulnerable than myself, particularly those who weren't born here, those whose gender identities bother or frighten some people, and my daughter, daughter-in-law, and soon-to-be-born granddaughter, and all women in those generations. All younger folks, of course, when one thinks of the climate crisis. And then we must think about the rest of the world - those in Ukraine, Gaza, Taiwan ... and all countries, really.

 

Back to the poem. Take comfort from the woods and from birdsong, we must.  Simply noticing can make us grateful and more calm.  But we can't stay on our wooded paths, or behind a window, indefinitely.  Others need us to look out for them, too.

 

 At Merely Day by Day, you'll find a powerful original poem by Cathy on this topic, and you'll find the whole Roundup.  Thank you, Cathy, for hosting this week. And many thanks to Janet for letting me share her poem! 

 

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Poetry Friday - Haiku and Birdsong

 

Greetings, Poetry Lovers!  I'm still catching up after "losing" a month-plus of work/outside life (see last week's post), but I look forward to catching up on Poetry Friday rounding, and here's a muster of a short post for this week. 

 

You know I'm a big fan of Stanford Forrester and his journal of short verse, bottle rockets. I'm always delighted when a poem of mine appears in its pages.  Here's my haiku in the latest issue, bottle rockets #43:

 

 

 

solitary walk

the rhyming couplets

of a brown thrasher

 

 

©Robyn Hood Black.  All rights reserved.

bottle rockets, Vol. 22, No. 1, August 2020.

 

 

(I just love the cover of this current issue!)

 

I also love birds, and am particularly fond of the glorious music provided by the Brown Thrasher, state bird of our former digs in Georgia.  One game I play on walks is to see how quickly I can determine if the notes I'm hearing are from a Northern Mockingbird or a Brown Thrasher.  The lovely gray Mockingbirds are easier to spot, as they perch out in the open and frequently engage in flashy chases.  Brown Thrashers, with their speckled russet garb and striking yellow eyes, are more likely to be kicking around in the scrub or tucked behind leaves in a treetop.  But ther songs - Oh!  Listen for complex imitations of other birds, but usually with each line repeated once.  So, two lines of this song, two lines of that.... :0)

 

Current affairs can feel overwhelming.  Maybe a walk to listen to birds would be good medicine for us all. 

 

Wishing you birdsong among the din this week! The lovely Ramona is rounding up lots of poetic sounds for us at Pleasures From the Page.  (Thanks, Ramona!)

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