Monday, May 28, 2018

WELCOMING A NEW FRIEND

Barred Owl (Owlet)
Home 
Upstate South Carolina

These images of a young barred owlet
were made about fifteen minutes after it 
 emerged from its nest in an old sycamore cavity 
and experienced the outside world for the first time.
All of this occurred about forty feet from our veranda.







Thursday, May 3, 2018

OUR BIRDS, OUR COUNTRY

Yellow-breasted Chat
Fant's Grove Wildlife Management Area
Upstate South Carolina

Here is your country.
Cherish these natural wonders, 
cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage,
for your children and your children's children.
Do not let the selfish men or greedy interests
skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.

Theodore Roosevelt


Wednesday, May 2, 2018

PRAIRIE WARBLER

Prairie Warbler
Upstate South Carollina


This grand show is eternal.
It is always sunrise somewhere;
the dew is never dried all at once;
a shower is forever falling;
vapor is ever rising.
Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, 
eternal dawn and gloaming,
on sea and continents and islands,
each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.

John Muir


Tuesday, May 1, 2018

YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLER

Yellow-Rumped Warbler
Swan Lake
Furman University
Greenville, South Carolina

The world is greater than its words.

Wendell Berry

Monday, April 30, 2018

A RARE SIGHT

Brown Booby (Immature)
Swan Lake
Furman University
Greenville, South Carolina

The Brown Booty
is a large, tropical seabird
that is rarely seen near the land
 of the United States, with the exception
of the coastal areas
of southern Florida and southern California.

Nature is unpredictable, however, 
and one of these magnificent birds
has strayed out of its natural habitat and
taken refuge, at least temporarily, on a beautiful
lake at one of our South Carolina universities.

















Saturday, April 28, 2018

PROTHONOTARY

Prothonotary Warbler
Upstate South Carolina

The Prothonotary Warber,
as described in The Gravity of Birds,
by Tracy Guzeman:

A breeze stirred the branches, and she saw the brilliant yellow head and underparts standing out like petals of a sunflower against the backdrop of leaves; the under tail, a stark white. His beak was long, pointed and black; his shoulders a mossy green, a blend of the citron yellow of his head and the flat slate of his feathers.  He had a black dot of an eye, a bead of jet set in a field of sun.  Never had there ever been anything so perfect.  When she blinked he disappeared, the only evidence of his presence a gentle sway of the branch.  It was a sort of magic, unveiled to her.  He had been hers, even if only for a few seconds

Friday, April 27, 2018

WHITE-THROATED SPARROW


White-throated Sparrow
Home, Upstate South Carolina

                                             The goldfinches are back, or others like them,
                                             and the white-throated sparrow's five-note song,
                                             pleading and pleading, brings tears to the eyes.
                                             Nature repeats herself, or almost does;
                                             repeat, repeat, repeat, revise, revise, revise.

From the poem "North Haven"
by Elizabeth Bishop







Thursday, April 26, 2018

THE JOYS THAT ENDURE

American Goldfinch
Upstate South Carolina

One thing is certain, and I have always known it — the joys of my life have nothing to do with age.  They do not change.  Flowers, the morning and evening light, music, poetry, silence, the goldfinches darting about . . .
May Sarton 
At Seventy: A Journal

Wednesday, April 25, 2018

PEACE WHERE THE GREAT HERON FEEDS

Great Blue Heron
Upstate South Carolina

The Peace of Wild Things
By
Wendell Berry

                                        When despair for the world grows in me
                                        and I wake in the night at the least sound
                                        in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
                                        I go and lie down where the wood drake
                                        rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
                                        I come into the peace of wild things
                                        who do not tax their lives with forethought
                                        of grief.  I come into the presence of still water.
                                        And I feel above me the day-blind stars
                                        waiting with their light.  For a time
                                        I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

FIRST THOUGHTS AT FIRST LIGHT

Daybreak, Royster Road
Townville, South Carolina

Trees in Winter Series
Image 10

When you arise in the morning,
think of what a precious privilege it is
to be alive — to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.

Marcus Aurelius

Monday, April 23, 2018

ODE TO BIRD-WATCHING

White-throated Sparrow
Upstate South Carolina

Ode to Bird-Watching
By Pablo Neruda
(translation by Stephen Mitchell)

                                            Now
                                            to look for birds!
                                            The high iron branches
                                            in the forest,
                                            the dense
                                            fecundity of the soil
                                            the whole world
                                            is wet,
                                            rain or dew
                                            shines, a tiny
                                            star
                                            in the leaves:
                                            in the early morning
                                            mother earth is cool,
                                            the air
                                            is like a river
                                            that shakes
                                            the silence,
                                            it smells of rosemary,
                                            of space
                                            and roots.
                                            Above, 
                                            a wild song,
                                            a waterfall,
                                            it's a bird.   
                                            How
                                            from a throat
                                            smaller than a finger
                                            can the waters
                                            of this song fall?
                                            Luminous grace!
                                            Invisible
                                            power, 
                                            torrent 
                                            of music
                                            in the leaves,
                                            sacred conversation!

                                            Clean, washed, cool
                                            is this day,
                                            resonant
                                            like a green zither,
                                            I bury my shoes
                                            in the mud,
                                            I leap over springs,
                                            a thorn
                                            rips me and a gust
                                            of air like a crystal 
                                            wave
                                            separates on my chest.
                                            Where
                                            are the birds?
                                            Was that one, maybe,
                                            that
                                            whispering in the foliage
                                            of that fugitive ball
                                            of gray velvet
                                            or that sudden shift
                                            of perfume?  That leaf
                                            which the cinnamon tree let go,
                                            was it a bird?  That dust
                                            from the irritated magnolia
                                            or that fruit
                                            which fell resounding,
                                            was that a flight?
                                            O invisible little cretins, 
                                            fiendish birds,
                                            go
                                            to hell
                                            with your twittering,
                                            with your useless feathers!
                                            I just wanted
                                            to stroke them,
                                            to see them glisten,
                                            I don't want
                                            to see their lightning embalmed
                                            in a showcase,
                                            I want to see them alive,
                                            I want to touch their gloves
                                            of genuine leather,
                                            which they never forget in the branches,
                                            and to talk to them
                                            on my shoulders
                                            even if they leave me like certain statues
                                            undeservedly whitened.

                                            Impossible.
                                            They can't be touched,
                                            they can be heard
                                            like a heavenly
                                            whisper or movement,
                                            they talk
                                            precisely,
                                            repeat
                                            their observations,
                                            brag
                                            about whatever they're doing,
                                            comment
                                            on whatever exists,
                                            master
                                            certain sciences
                                            like hydrography
                                            and know for certain
                                            where all the grains
                                            are being harvested.

                                            Well then,
                                            invisible
                                            birds
                                            of the forest, of the woods,
                                            of the pure bower,
                                            birds of the acacia
                                            and of the oak,
                                            crazy, amorous, 
                                            astonishing birds, 
                                            conceited
                                            soloists,
                                            migratory musicians,
                                            one last
                                            word
                                            before
                                            I go back
                                            with wet shoes, thorns
                                            and dry leaves 
                                            to my home:
                                            vagabonds, 
                                            I love you
                                            free, 
                                            far from the shotgun and the cage,
                                            fugitive
                                            corollas, 
                                            this is the way
                                            I love you, 
                                            ungraspable,
                                            united and sonorous
                                            society of the heights,
                                            liberated
                                            leaves,
                                            champions
                                            of the air,
                                            petals
                                            of smoke,
                                            free,
                                            cheerful
                                            flyers and singers, 
                                            aerial, terrestrial,
                                            sailors of the wind,
                                            happy
                                            builders
                                            of the softest nests,
                                            unceasing
                                            messengers of pollen,
                                            matchmakers
                                            of the flower, uncles
                                            of the seed,
                                            I love you, 
                                            ingrates:
                                            I'm going home,
                                            happy to have lived with you
                                            a moment
                                            in the wind.


American Goldfinch

Sunday, April 22, 2018

RETURN OF THE PILEATED WOODPECKER

Pileated Woodpecker
Upstate South Carolina


The Woodpecker Keeps Returning
By Jane Hirshfield


                                            The woodpecker keeps returning
                                            to drill the house wall.
                                            Put a pie plate over one place, he chooses another.

                                            There is nothing good to eat there:
                                            he has found in the house
                                            a resonant billboard to post his intentions, 
                                            his voluble strength as provider.

                                            But where is the female he drums for?  Where?

                                            I ask this, who am myself the ruined siding,
                                            the handsome red-capped bird, the missing mate.

Saturday, April 21, 2018

RENEWAL

Morning Bath for a Field Sparrow
Upstate South Carolina


With Thanks to the Field Sparrow,
Whose Voice is So Delicate and Humble

By Mary Oliver

                                                     I do not live happily or comfortably
                                                     with the cleverness of our times.
                                                     The talk is all about computers, 
                                                     the news is all about bombs and blood.
                                                     This morning, in the fresh field,
                                                     I came upon a hidden nest.
                                                     It held four warm, speckled eggs.
                                                     I touched them.
                                                     Then went away softly,
                                                     having felt something more wonderful
                                                     than all the electricity of New York City.

Friday, April 20, 2018

TO SUN, FEAST, AND CONVERSE

Cedar Waxwings
Upstate South Carolina


Waxwings
By Robert Francis
(1901 - 1987)

                                                Four Tao philosophers as cedar waxwings
                                                chat on a February berry bush
                                                in sun, and I am one.

                                                Such merriment and such sobriety —
                                                the small wild fruit on the tall stalk —
                                                was this not always my true style?

                                                Above an elegance of snow, beneath
                                                a silk-blue sky a brotherhood of four
                                                birds.  Can you mistake us?

                                                To sun, to feast, and to converse
                                                and all together — for this I have abandoned
                                                all my other lives.