Yesterday morning brought a red-tailed hawk close to the bird feeders. Only when her head swiveled to and fro and when she repositioned herself on the sapling was she brought to life. It seemed she was willing to risk detection at a chance to eat a warm meal. Perhaps she preferred an unsuccessful hunt to quiet starvation through giving up.
The other birds visiting the feeder played oblivious to her presence. It seemed they preferred a quick death to one of slow starvation in the bitter cold.
Warm behind glass
The watcher reads bird brains while
Life and death play
This morning, sitting in my same watching perch, I saw the usual queue in the tree, waiting their revolving turns at the feeders. The temperature must have been low; the snow made just the right brightness in the sky. The male cardinals were puffed out and their plumage was glowing with a vibrance akin to neon.
At first I thought of constructing a poem where the birds were bright ornaments in a Christmas tree. The realization that the tree I see them sit in from my perch is an apple tree shifted the plan.
White flaked suns fall on
Winter’s fruit, red feathered dots –
Bright fluff, bare branches.
Do the girl birds have less color than the males?
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Yes, Jim. They are a drab sage color with a few tinges of pink. Still pretty but they don’t stand out.
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choices, even birds have to make them -the serenity in your words reaches out to me today
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Good way of putting it, Gina. It is a serene day, sitting here and watching the blizzard.
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you know i love snow, so this was a most beautiful scene.
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Beautiful!
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Than you, Na’ama.
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Great images, and words to match both.
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Thank you, Ken, glad you liked them.
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LOVE the picture of the birds…that red really stands out so well.
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I wish I could have gotten a pic of how they were glowing this morning. Glad you like the one I found and posted.
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Both lovely poem. Enviable vista in front of you. 👍👌
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Thank you, Sadje. We got quite the accumulation today and it’s still coming down. It is a winter wonderland for sure.
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February is fickle, weather wise. You’re welcome 😉
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We get a hawk once in awhile, and he catches a sparrow or something. He’s very fast. Those cardinals are so pretty. We don’t see them much around here, so it was wonderful to see these in the winter tree. 🙂
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Glad you enjoyed the poems and pics, Barbara. I nabbed the pics off of the internet but tried to find ones as close as what was going on as I could.
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stunning photo and the poem to boot
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Thanks Jude 🙂
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Beautiful piece of writing, really enjoyed it!
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Thank you!
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