Testing....1....2...

This platform seems to have undergone some changes in the seven years since I wrote here. I'm just checking in because yesterday I felt the urge for writing in a way I haven't in years, and I wanted to see if this blog was still an option, test out whatever features have changed, see if I like the format, figure out how to change the look, etc. Forgive me if this is a boring thing to read, or if you received a notification and what little I added is a disappointment. But maybe soon something interesting will happen here - it is springtime, after all. I may not be able to help myself. 

Close a door, open a window

Three years. I've just devoted three years of my life to something amazing -- the rest of my life and the rest of the world. As of 9:00 this morning, I hold an MA in Children's Literature and an MS in Library and Information Science. I have to say, I never thought I'd have an MS! I briefly considered ornithology, but that is some serious science. I love birds, but I couldn't make them my life's work. There are too many beautiful words to read and ideas to share and people to help. Librarianship is the way for me. I can't wait to start.

What am I going to do with my first few days? Well, not homework, that's for sure! I have a lot of neglected housework to catch up on, but what I'm really looking forward to is making the pie I've been planning for the last month. My freezer is full of hand-picked berries. Berry season was amazing this year. Juneberries - I must have picks two gallons! The juneberry season lasted so long that I had to switch to calling them saskatoons when July rolled around. Then the mulberries - oh, the mulberries! They were so sweet. And a friend of mine invited me to pick all of her black raspberries. So, basically, this pie is going to be incredible.

Since I'm moving away from all these free berry bushes before the next picking season, I'm trying to share their locations with as many people as possible. I wouldn't mind leaving a berry legacy. Let me know if you want the skinny on free berry locations around Watertown, MA!

accidental birding

Today was the first day that I went to my Tuesday class and it was still light out on my ride home, so I enjoyed my view of the river as we drove down Storrow Drive.  I was not even consciously looking for birds, but got a good glimpse of a male red-breasted merganser. What an unexpected and fleeting thrill, and in beautiful plumage, too. Nice hairdo, buddy.

Tomorrow's weather is supposed to be beautiful, so I am looking forward to taking Flash down to the river to look for signs of spring. Buds and shoots, here we come!

secret green space

Yesterday morning I got to take a walk by myself and check out a new neighborhood. I had brought my binoculars just in case, which turned out to be a great idea (and a habit I should adopt again). I walked up a big hill and meandered some streets until I found a secret golf course that I never noticed in my three years of living in Watertown. Not open to the public, of course, but a woman walking her dog told me they're pretty lax about the early mornings and the evenings. She also pointed out a grove of pine trees where I should look for a beautiful hawk's nest if I ever get in there. I haven't done any purposeful golf-course birding, but I was just excited by all those tall trees and open space. The air was loud with birdsong and truck rumblings, so it wasn't peaceful at that moment, but I expect it usually is. I'm not a trespasser, but I am tempted to take a look around from the inside. Maybe someday I'll get the chance.

sick day birding

My streak of perfect health has come to an abrupt end with this nasty head-cold. I felt so terrible today that I stayed home - never even went down for the mail (and I love getting the mail). This morning, Flash brought my binoculars in from the hallway and asked to use them. He's three and a half now, so a few conflicting things ran through my head:

1. My precious binoculars - if anything happens I can't afford to replace them!
2. Well, we're in the house - what can really happen? If he wears the neck strap and I tell him not to touch the glass parts, maybe I can teach him how to use them for real and wangle myself a birding buddy.

So #2 won out, and we practiced finding something to look at, raising the bins, and then finding the item through the lenses. He was particularly interested in making things look far away by using the binoculars backwards. I adjusted the spacing for the smaller distance between his eyes, but I have no way of knowing how clear the image was for him. It was just ten minutes of our morning but it would prove useful later in the day.

This afternoon I stood at the counter, looking out the kitchen window as I waited for my toast. Our driveway has several tall trees about 15 feet from our third-floor windows, so I always look to see who's around. Today it was a male downy woodpecker, and Flash got really excited about seeing it. We peeked at the bird together, and then ran for the binoculars to follow up on this morning's impromptu lesson. We watched the bird for about eight minutes and chatted about what it was doing.

Me: What do you think he's doing?
Flash: Looking for acorns.
Me: Why does he want acorns?
Flash: To eat.
Me: I don't think that kind of bird eats acorns. You know why he's called a woodpecker?
Flash: Why?
Me: Because he pecks the wood with his beak to find bugs and scare them out.
Flash: So he can eat them?
Me: Yeah, with his quick little tongue.

And so on. 

We also talked about the bird's markings, and the red patch that indicated that this one was a male. The best part, though, was that I could totally tell that he got to see the woodpecker through the binoculars. His face lit up as I imagine it all (how binoculars work, why people would ever look at birds) made sense to him in that instant. A happy first for both of us.

for the love of mushrooms

Hi, my name is Leah, and I'm a mycophile. I love mushrooms. Eating them is such a rich experience - sweet, earthy, umami. My new interest in eating mushrooms is accompanied by a new interest in foraging them as well. My whole life I've been taught not to eat anything I find, especially not mushrooms and red berries. But you know what? Now that I have all this librarian-training and these rad research skills, I feel confident that I can make informed decisions about found and foraged foods.

For Christmas I received a book called, The Complete Mushroom Hunter, by Gary Lincoff. Its size doesn't really fit the field-guide norm, but its beautiful color photographs and detailed mushroom profiles make it an invaluable resource. Written in a compulsively readable style, the book interweaves identification information, dangerous look-alikes, and seasonal mushroom-hunting guides with cultural attitudes towards mushrooms and anecdotes from around the world.

Having already combed my neighborhood for berries and fruits, foraging mushrooms seemed like the next logical step. I got interested in mushrooms last autumn after spending a semester working on a project that involved Jean Craighead George's excellent middle grade novel, My Side of the Mountain. The teenage protagonist, Sam Gribley, sets out to rough it on his family's forgotten land for a year, and giant puffballs are a staple of his diet. One afternoon I was walking the bike path near my house with Flash and noticed what looked like three white volleyballs off to the side of the path. I followed a hunch and checked them out, poked one with a stick, knocked it over to see how it connected to the ground, and stood back in awe of this crazy fungus. I was so excited that this might be the mushroom I had read so much about in Sam Gribley's adventure, so I looked it up as soon as I got home. Here's a picture of the one that caught my eye from the path you see in the background.

Now that the ground is relatively thawed and I'm equipped with this book, I'm looking forward to setting out in search of secret delicacies. When I became a birder, I started collecting books on that subject. Now that I'm a librarian, I realize I have my own personal reference collection, and The Complete Mushroom Hunter expands that collection in a direction I never expected. Happy hunting!

riverside changes

Last Saturday we took a walk down by the Charles River. Inspired by photos of snowdrops emerging in Brooklyn, I searched for signs of spring. No new green shoots yet - Brooklyn, in my experience, is usually two or three weeks ahead of Boston with snowdrops, crocuses, and daffodils. Changes are happening at the banks o' the Charles, just not green ones. The public walking paths have suffered recently due to the felling of large trees by strong stormwinds. So pedestrians have carved new paths around the deadfalls and through the woods, and the warming ground and recent rain makes these unofficial muddy paths excellent bootsuckers. Entire root systems of these fallen trees are exposed, leaving craters in the earth. Dozens of robins tossed about in the leaf litter, and a few braved the chilly puddles for a refreshing bath.

Here's my list for the half-hour walk:

red-breasted merganser
mallard
black-capped chickadee
Canada goose
brown creeper
downy woodpecker
American robin
mute swan

I can't wait to see green things growing again!

January thaw and ramblings

We were meeting some friends at the park on this glorious 60-degree day. They hadn't arrived yet, so I told Flash we'd do a little nature walk and see what we could notice. We gingerly skirted 1000x goose poops and found the last patch of unmelted snow. Then he ran over to me holding a stick, saying, "Look, Mama, I found some nature!" 

Later in that park I saw a blue jay with no trace of blue. He was a dull off-white with the telltale chinstrap, crest, and strong beak, but no blue on front, sides, or wings. I didn't get to see the back. I may go back to get a better view. I kick myself every time I leave my third floor apartment without binoculars, because with a three-year-old, I am not going back up for them!

On the way home, we saw a great blue heron flying leisurely overhead. It had one primary feather missing from each wing.

the most wonderful time of the year? almost.

It's that special time of year in a college town like Boston and its environs when everybody is moving into their new dorms and apartments. A lot of stuff gets left behind in these moves as people begin to realize they just can't take it all with them. That's where I shine. I thrill at the combination of free and useful, so I'm keeping my eyes on the Freecycle boards and Craigslist free section for curb alerts in my area. As I mostly get around by bike during the week, I'm limited to what I can fit in a poorly-secured basket on the front of my bike, and it has to be light enough not to upset the delicate balance I have perfected with my toddler in the seat behind me. And of course I don't want to take things just for the thrill, either. I have plenty of stuff sitting around in my home that never gets used; I'm actively trying to Freecycle things away. But there's a certain magic in the air for me right now because not only am I getting something free (ask me about the queen-size bed I cobbled together from three different people totally free when I was pregnant in Brooklyn), but I am doing my part to recycle and reuse perfectly good items that would likely end up in the landfill long before they outlived their usefulness. I'll let you know if I find anything fantastic this time around - happy hunting!

far from the beach

I was just completely unprepared for beach plums this year. I am usually on top of the ripenings of the plants on my radar, but beach plums are new to me, just as serviceberries were earlier this year. Those sneaky town landscapers hid some beach plum plants along the bike path, and I found some bushes heavy with the dime-sized fruits dotting the parking lot near a supermarket I like. I picked a bunch, but just didn't know what to do with them. I found some recipes but they all called for much more than I had harvested. So I ate some fresh, spitting out the tiny stones.

Beach plums are a tasty sweet snack, but I find the skin to be very bitter. I imagine it's delicious sweetened and  in jam form. Now if I can just figure out a simple way to take out the pits and salvage most of the fruit...I will be prepared next year!

berry explosion

It's the most wonderful time of the year - when free foods hang heavy in the breeze, ripe for the picking. In 2010, I lived in Rhode Island and our mulberries were out about three weeks earlier than they are around here. The branches on the tree I've been stalking and calling 'the motherlode' are weighed down so heavily by mulberries that I could never hope to pick all the ones I can reach. I don't have big mulberry dreams this year; last year I made mulberry muffins, granola, yogurt, ice cream, and fruit sauce. I just want to pick enough to take home and eat later in the day. The motherlode tree produces by far the sweetest-tasting mulberries of any tree I've found in the past three years. Mulberries can sometimes taste tart or even watery-bland, but these have a sweet zing to them, especially when they're still warm from the sunshine.

This year's foraging discovery is the serviceberry. The new Watertown Community Path has several serviceberry trees planted along the edges. I've been watching them for about three months. I wouldn't have looked at them twice except for the fact that whoever planted them left the nursery tags on. When I read "serviceberry - edible fruit," I rushed home to do some research and find out how to tell when the fruit would be ripe. Now that the blueberry-like fruits are darkening from purple to blue, I make sure to take a container with me every day. They are sort of hard to pick, because the stem comes off with the berry a lot of the time, and they don't really grow in clusters but are scattered all over the bush. It takes some nimble twisting to get the berries and not the stems, but it's totally worth it. Serviceberries taste sweet and full, like they might be distant, wilder cousins of the blueberry.  Because serviceberries have seeds that seem large proportional to the size of the berries themselves, it makes for a chewier eating experience, and I find myself spitting out seeds that separate easily. I truly enjoyed watching the green bushes ripen this spring, because each one had just a few leaves that burst into oranges and yellows, and because the berries themselves progress through a magnificent spectrum of colors on their way to ripeness. I have never seen a lovelier or more insistent magenta in nature than I have witnessed of late on the serviceberry bushes.

On a biking adventure to Fresh Pond with a friend yesterday, Flash and friend and I found some likely black raspberry plants to which we shall certainly return upon their ripening. We also found a wildflower meadow thrumming with the wingbeats of birds and bugs alike -- I can't wait to return with my binoculars. Well, that's the berry-roundup for June 2011 - thanks for stopping by!

leaf out!

A few years ago I learned that the term for when the leaves start coming out is the "leaf-out." That simple little name tickles me every spring now. If  you want to know more about the leaf-out, check out Signs of the Seasons - they're conducting a leaf-out study and you can participate.

I've been watching this tree outside my bedroom window sprout little green flower-clusters for about four days now. I think it's an oak, but I'm not sure. It was the last tree around our driveway to lose its leaves last year, and now it's the first one to show some spring initiative! A few trees are in flower around here, but most are still ramping up their buds. I saw some honest-to-goodness baby leaves spilling out of their bud-casings today, on a different tree right in my own driveway. Pretty soon we will lose our great view of Boston, but it is totally worth it to see green everywhere for a few months!

Norumbega Park

We've been eager to check out more parks in the area, and Norumbega Park was high on the list due to Chrissy's finding out about the legend of Norumbega from the book Weird New England. Apparently some crazy amateur archaeologist thought (and thought he could prove) that at one point, Vikings lived in Watertown. We had to see for ourselves.

Not a lot of Viking artifacts left in Norumbega Park these days. In fact, there are more artifacts from the time during which it was a popular amusement park, such as lamps growing out of tree-trunks and the foundations of old rides. It's a lovely place to explore, even on such a cold spring day as Saturday was. I enjoyed the chance to witness nature making its progress toward the verdant time of year. Here are some small things I noticed.

 Buds spilling forth into beauty.

 Brown giving way to green.

 An eager tree in bloom.

 An evergreen past its prime.

I mean, look at those folds!

                                                          An obese tree.

 A flower so blue that it's white.












Norumbega Park is a great place to look at stuff. I brought along my binoculars and saw some pretty great things. Here's the day's list:

European starling
American robin
black-capped chickadee
downy woodpecker
red-winged blackbird
wood duck - male and female for the win!
mallard
Canada goose
tree swallow
white-throated sparrow
great blue heron - I saw this guy swoop in, snatch a snake or an eel out of the river, and bide its time with the creature in its beak until it was still enough to choke down. Very cool.
mute swan
chipmunk
squirrel

I also saw some awesome fungi, one of which I really wanted to share with you, but I couldn't get a good photo. What was neat about it was its position: it hung from a nearly-horizontal birch that stretched out over the Charles River. I never saw a mushroom grow down before.

Can't wait to explore more places in the area - got any suggestions?

winnahs and champeens

Today was the Second Annual Johnston Town Scavenger Hunt, in Johnston, RI, where we lived before we came to Watertown. As we are explorers at heart, and since we won the first hunt, we had to go back and defend our title this year. The weather was great - 60 degrees, sunny, a slight breeze. This year Team 41 consisted of Chris, his mom Joanne, his cousin Eric, and me. A dream team if ever there was one. Flash stayed with Auntie Julie and had a great time, which is good because a toddler would definitely have slowed us down. The first year we played, I was nine months pregnant with Flash and had my pregnant belly on the front page of the Johnston Sunrise, so I think it will be romantic when he can really participate in the hunt with us. He already enjoys hiking and general outdoorsiness, so I think it will be an easy transition. On to the hunt!

I'm not sure I like the look on that frog's face.

Zeppoles, get yer zeppoles!

It's amazing how differently you look at things when you're looking for things. I have driven by this funky mural a hundred times, and never noticed it.












Of course, Johnston is has a strong Italian-American heritage, and the Italian bakeries to prove it.

An honest-to-goodness outhouse. Historic, of course.

Four hours of driving, searching, running, and taking pictures really doesn't leave time for bathroom breaks. Luckily, this was on the list!

Hint: He's wearing a red tie.

We almost went crazy trying to get this ten-point item - a picture of a team member with Johnston's mayor, Joseph Polisena. After a false start and wasted trip to his house, we tracked him down at the grand opening of the new Mohr Library (which I intend to...check out...in the near future - a little librarian humor for you, there).

My favorite flavor - chocomint! Oh, and my favorite man.

This was the pinnacle of a decision we had to make: would we trust my father-in-law's internet search skills to pursue a ten-point Indian soapstone quarry, or pick up five or six 1-2 pointers in the last twenty minutes of the hunt? We opted for the latter, and it paid off. Eric and I hopped out of the car, ran into the bowling alley for a photo of a duckpin bowling ball, got that mural photo, ran to Stop and Shop for a picture of Kenyon's Corn Meal, and hoofed it over to Newport Creamery where Joanne and Chris awaited us with this refreshing Awful-Awful, one of two delicious list items we consumed today. The other, a hot weiner!

I've always wanted to ride one of these! While playing a theremin!

Last year (and I'm talking scavenger-hunt years, not chronological actual years - it got rained out last actual year), we got tricked pretty badly by some list items that were very close to the starting site, so we got back a few minutes early to check out the area. I found this old-timey bicycle inside the Johnston Historical Society building. Apparently, it's called a penny-farthing bicycle.






Eleven teams competed, but only one could win it all. With a total of 223 points, Team 41 walked away with a basket of Italian foods, some gift cards, and a nice coffee-table book about Boston (which no other team would appreciate the way Chrissy will, I'm sure). We only won by 11 points this year, as opposed to the forty or so we won by previously, so either we are slipping or others are upping their games. If we had taken my father-in-law's erroneous advice, we would have tied for first. This must not happen. We'll be back next year, with a renewed drive to win. I hope they update the list with new items, because some were repeats from last (scavenger-hunt) year and we didn't have as many chances to learn weird or new or cool things about local history. But as they say after every Johnston Town Scavenger Hunt (so far): Team 41! Team 41! Team 41!

signs of spring

A lot has changed since I was a regular updater of this blog. Here's the skinny: I'm in grad school pursuing master's degrees in library and information science and children's literature. I have a toddler. I don't live in Brooklyn anymore and I really miss Prospect Park. Here in Watertown, MA, I find little natural moments to tide me over while I introduce my son to the great big world.

Here are some ways today proved springy:
1. The air that hit me as I left the house this morning was warm and humid.
2. The air smelled of damp earth.
3. I saw my first earthworm of 2011 at the running track this morning. Actually, it was more like my first 75 worms of the year. They were all over the track - I really had to watch my step. But the air was so delicious and fresh, who could blame them for coming out in droves? Not I.
4. When the temperature hit 60 degrees I opened my office window and played audience to a robin's lovely serenade.
5. When the wind picked up and the temperature dropped 15 degrees in as many minutes, I closed that window right back up!

Spring is my favorite season. I love the transitional times. I saw a honeybee about two months ago on a fluke of a warm February day and I started to get excited for spring. About a month after that I heard the first white-throated sparrow announcing spring's impending arrival. I can't wait to be driving on the highway and notice that the grey hillsides look faintly greenish when the trees begin to bud. And then way later, the leaf-out! Don't get me started! I haven't yet experienced spring as both a Boston-area resident and a nature-observer - my earlier Boston days were pre-birding. This year, instead of Green-Wood, I will walk through Mount Auburn Cemetery. Instead of Prospect Park, I'll travel along the Charles when I'm near home and explore the Fens when I'm near school. I don't carry my binoculars everywhere anymore, now that I'm always laden either with books or a diaper bag. But my eyes and ears are always open.

winter in Watertown

We took Flash for a winter walk by the Charles River this afternoon. Lovely weather for it, too - overcast, but almost 40 degrees. Now that I have a pair of real snow-pants, I am so happy to go out and frolic in the snow. Flash is getting the hang of walking on snow, but he mostly wants to lie on it and look up at the trees against the sky.

 I am pretty sure the path along the river is a full foot above the real path - you just walk on a foot of packed-down snow. It's slippery in places, too. I lost my footing a few times, which Flash found hilarious.

When you step off the path, your foot sinks pretty deep into the white stuff. We spent as much time lying in the snow as we did walking. Flash seems to notice tiny details, like I do. He found some seed-cone things and plucked them carefully out of the snow.




Here's the bird list for the day - not bad for half a mile in a downtown area with a toddler:

mallard
Canada goose
American black duck
white-breasted nuthatch
northern mockingbird
house sparrow
white-throated sparrow
common merganser
black-capped chickadee

the next wave

I went for a quick walk before lunch today, and chose to walk in a direction I usually don't go. Lucky me, I found a berry bush on the corner a few blocks away. And the black raspberries are ripening! I don't think they're as delicious as the mulberries, because sometimes they taste like ham or aren't very sweet. Perhaps out in the countryside and not by a busy road they'd taste better. Someday I will find secret stands of berries in the forest and visit them at the right times each year to reap the harvest. I did a lot with mulberries this year - I may try my hand at jelly next year. The black raspberries aren't plentiful here, so I probably won't cook with them, but they're a great trail snack for my suburban walks. Doesn't hurt that baby Flash loves them too!

here we go a-berrying

Well, it's that time of year again. The streets are bruised with mulberry juice. I've been visiting one tree in my neighborhood frequently with plastic containers, old sneakers, and rubber gloves. Those berries stain like mad and I learned my lesson after the first day of picking. Out of the last 12 days, I have picked half a gallon or more of mulberries on eight of those days. It's been wonderful eating them right off the tree. I take my nine-month-old son with me and he sits in the stroller watching me pick mulberries, waiting for me to put a big purple berry in his little red mouth. He smushes it with his gums and smiles really wide. I hope he will enjoy the berry hunt as much as I do someday.

With the mulberries I have done quite a bit. The first day I made a dessert sauce for an ice cream topping (we recently started making our own frozen desserts - yum!) Later, I made mulberry muffins, peanut butter and mulberry milkshakes, dehydrated mulberries for snacking, mulberry fruit-on-the-bottom (well, fruit-on-the-top because they float) yogurt, mulberry granola, and mulberry frozen yogurt. We are almost mulberried out. I was able to freeze a whole gallon bag of them for use later in the year as well.

As mulberry season fades, the black raspberries in our neighborhood are beginning to ripen. I learned my lesson last year, when I thought there was a chance they might be red raspberries. Wait til they're black!

I got a book from Amazon called The New England Berry Book. It's a great little book with descriptions, anecdotes, photographs, hunting tips, and recipes for 8-10 kinds of berries in this region. Unlike with field guides on birds, I prefer photos to illustrations for wild edibles. I want to reap nature's bounty but I have to be sure of something before I eat it! I'd like to learn more about the berries I see in my neighborhood and where I can go to find others. If you know a great book or resource, please share it!

Feathering the Nest

Some friends of my parents, people I’ve never met, spent time designing, building, and painting a good, solid birdhouse as a family project. When they heard about my personal connection to the bird world, they kindly gave it to my parents to pass along to me. When I received this gift, I didn’t have a home of my own or a yard in which to stake a claim for birds. I was touched by the generosity of these strangers, but couldn’t imagine where I’d be able to use the birdhouse. At that time, we lived in a big apartment building in Brooklyn, a block from Prospect Park, the lesser-known but equally magnificent sister of Manhattan’s Central Park. In Prospect’s hidden, leafy walks I stalked birds, hunted berries, and photographed fungi; in its rambling, open meadows I frolicked in sunlight. Our three-year stint in Brooklyn ended last July in a transition that took my husband, me, and our yet unborn baby to live with family in our native Rhode Island. Now hundreds of miles from that fantastic greensward, I find joy in the backyards and hidden greenspaces of suburban Johnston. Our quiet neighborhood is home to a small brook and a few patches of woodland, dwindling rapidly thanks to the human touch. But there is much life in these parts -- many familiar birds and mammals, and some elusive and surprising creatures as well.

Back in the waning of the summer and the waxing of my pregnancy, I felt lonely for birds; heavy with child, I found my stamina for hiking and birding greatly diminished. So I perched the little wooden birdhouse in the front yard in a small tree about eight feet from the front bay window. With a few nails strategically placed by my mother-in-law for stability, the little wooden structure seemed a perfect hideaway. It sat empty for ages, as I knew it would, the year being far past nesting season. Many birds frequented the tree in autumn, however, for its abundance of red berries. In winter, though I was considerably lighter, it was now too cold to take an infant outdoors. In my impatience, I began to wonder if the ledge near the birdhouse's entrance hole was wrong for bird-use, or whether I should change the direction the birdhouse faced. As with all things, only time would tell.

Now it is deep February, with skies like ice, clear and cold. Just a few afternoons ago, I spotted a house sparrow casing the joint, checking for safety from predators, proximity to cover, quality of visibility for mating displays. I peek at the house for a few minutes every day now. He seems to have deemed the little brown and blue house worthy of his nest, for he has begun bringing choice bits of grass in for his building project. It is a sweet process, one to which I can recently relate. I took great joy in seeking out safe, stylish, affordable necessities for my own baby's room; why should a bird do less? But all may not be well on the sparrow's home front. Just yesterday when the sparrow was out, I saw a tufted titmouse announce his presence at the house and barge in. He didn't stay long, but I wonder whether there will be a territory battle. I'd put my money on the sparrow - stocky and already brown, he seems like the sort of fellow who's not afraid to fight dirty. And as much as I'd like to witness the growth of tiny titmice, the sparrow was there first and I'll help him however I can.

We've got a suet feeder in the back, but the sparrows only eat the crumbs dropped from it by the chickadees and woodpeckers. I think I will clean out my hairbrush and the lint trap in the dryer today; I have a mesh bag just waiting to be hung from the clothesline and stuffed with bird-nest potential. And I know I have some fabric ribbon left over from decorating our nursery. It's romantic to think that some of my hair may end up as part of a bird's nest, but somehow I find an even sweeter satisfaction in the thought that shreds of the very same green ribbon that holds back the curtains in our son's room may help form a safe place for another sort of baby altogether.

Spring will arrive with a flutter of wings soon enough. I look forward to teaching my son about birds and trees and rocks and clouds, for these things are as thrilling to me as texture, sound, and color are to him now. He will grow along with sparrow chicks this year, gaining strength and independence in small ways every day. We must cherish the small things, like first steps, first teeth, and rolling over, or like bugs and sticks and feathers; we must actively seek them out, for these are the rudiments of adventure, and what is the world for if not for exploring?

bird bomb

Our backyard neighbor has cleared most of the wilderness behind our yard, so there's not much shelter left for birds and other creatures. I took my 5-month-old son out back today to check on the suet feeder. As soon as I knelt down to his level for a kiss, I saw a beautiful redtail swirling over our yard. Any birds back there now would be easy targets. Anyway, I narrated to the baby what the bird was doing. "Look, he's flying in circles over the yard to get higher. Oh, his legs are hanging down..." And then the hawk evacuated its bowels 50 feet in the air and I watched it all splatter down onto one of the trees in our yard. I guess that is one way to get a kid interested in nature!