January 6: Birdwatching mystery

Yesterday I did a little birdwatching near the garden. The birds love the area -- there are flat open areas with castaway seeds, tall dried stems of tomato plants, okra, sunflowers, trellises of bean vines. And around the edge there are trees and a thicket of grape vines along the fence line. It's a good habitat.

The most abundant are sparrows, a type I'd never looked up before. They only live here in the winter. They're quite pretty, with black and white stripes on their heads and yellow patches above the bill. They have a pretty song, but I mostly heard their tcheeps while I was watching.



There were quite a few cardinals, more wary than the sparrows. and a downy woodpecker. The one bird I was most interested in was one I saw singing. He was in the black walnut tree above the grapevines, on a branch that was partially blocked from my view by another slender branch. I couldn't see him well, but I could hear him. He sat up there singing his heart out for a little while, and I know it was him because I could see his beak open and his throat bulging. I don't get to actually see a bird in song very often, so I really wanted to identify him. The only way I can pinpoint a song is to find the bird in my field guide software, then check to song to see if it's what I heard. He looked like nothing more than a Carolina wren, but the song just seemed wrong. I don't know. I'm not very good at this yet! And there may be more variation than I realize. Birds do have regional accents, after all!

I hope you come back, little buffy yellow brown bird with the pretty song. I would like to name you!

January 7: Resilient pines

A pretty big tornado came through about a year and a half ago. My parents' house wasn't damaged, thank goodness (many people lost their homes) but several large trees came down. One of them was a tall pine in the front yard, maybe 40 years old. With all the cleanup in the area, it was a few months before there was anyone available to come cut it up and haul it away, but now it's just a stump and some pulled-up roots. I've had plans to plant another tree there.

When I went to visit the spot again this winter, though, I discovered that Nature can take care of herself. Of course. There are already at least three young pines growing out of the mound of the former tree's roots.