Saturday, January 17, 2009

In Green-Wood

No wonder you’re cold. Put some damned clothes on, wrap those wings around yourself. The number of women I’ve seen in the last few days who refuse to wear hats, the woman on the 4th Avenue F-stop platform this afternoon in ballet slippers, with the tops of her feet bare, well, frankly, they all bow before the young man in short sleeves I saw last night.

Beat up bald-faced hornet nest hanging too far up. Man, there are quite a few conifers in Green-Wood. But I'm not looking for a pine, spruce, cedar, or cypress.

Sundog. Two red-tailed hawks circled near last year's nest at Atlantic & Linden Avenues. The light was absolutely perfect for them. However, with the low-sun, I had to be facing to the north to get any looks at trees.

Stained glass through a mausoleum. There were moments of perfect silence. What nice neighbors in the cemetery! Then the rustle of an oak tree that had refused to give up all its leaves. The calls of all four species of woodpeckers -- variations on neaps, quirrrs, & queeps. Also a nuthatch sounding like an alarm at a biohazard facility, and speaking of alarms, the Canada geese hooting it up.

Who who whoo whooo? Yellow-bellied woodpecker and red-breasted nuthatch were my year birds for the day; I'm running out of winter birds.

2 comments:

amy merrick said...

As a kid, I was forever mixing up sundogs and rainbows in my head and took to calling parhelions dogbows. I was the laughing stock of sleep away environmental science camp. I still get it wrong sometimes!

Matthew said...

Of course, just going to sleep away environmental science camp means you're a master of the universe to begin with. I love "dogbows." Not so long ago I saw a fogbow. Way cool. But damp.