Bird By Bird

 

BIG BIRDS:  Thousands sandhill crates rested at the Monte Vista refuge in March during their annual migration north.

 

 

Canada geese, crane in background

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SONG BIRDS: I went to a Crestonian poetry show where Diane Barstow and Matthew Crowley among others performed. I said, Oh I get it now (after 47 years). Poetry is performance! So I rushed home to become a poet and all I could find for instructions was Anne Lamott’s book “Bird by Bird.”

Wherein: “Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write [it] was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'”

So, therefore, here:

Pinyon Jay
Downey Woodpecker
Red Shafted Flicker
Stellars Jay
Black Hooded Chickadee

Bird Watcher

Scroll to Top