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

YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLER

Yellow-Rumped Warbler

Swan Lake

Furman University

Greenville, South Carolina

The world is greater than its words.

Wendell Berry

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