Their Repose Will Ruin Mine

The birds have arrived.  I watched most of the day Tuesday, staring out the window during calls, mid email.  Has anyone noticed?  The second full day with this new apparatus came and went without a single visitor.  I showered the ground with seeds and sprinkled some on the railing.  It made no difference.  There were plenty of birds off in the cedars, and the brush, fifty-feet from the house.  But no one was interested in my new feeder.

I looked up midday and saw a sparrow standing on the railing.  He was eyeing the feeder. stopped what I was doing to eye him.  He stared for a while longer and then darted off, but soon he and another finch-like bird with a chest were back.  One and then the other fluttered at the feeder base and then made off with seeds.  They returned a number of times as did another sparrow-seeming critter with a blue chest.  Very glad to welcome them all. 

Last month, going through books in the basement I came across a North American Field Guide to Birds.  I brought it out with my stepdad the ornithologist and mentioning how glad I was to have found it.  And he mentioned it should prove very useful were I to venture over the Continental Divide, in the Rockies and do some birding in the western watershed.  I’d found the guide to western birds which someone, perhaps he, likely gave me when we'd moved to San Francisco back in 2000. 

Prokofiev today.  “Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1 in F Minor,” (It’s rather tedious writing out the names to classical songs,) comes along for the ride up towards Rosendale.  When I get to approach the bridge, where I’d intended to stop, an older guy with long hair passes me going the other direction and he’s also cranking something vaguely piano-sonata-esque on his phone.  I wonder if he was processing my tunes as well.  There are two older guys sitting on the bridge starting off into space.  Their repose will ruin mine and so I bike on and take a left on Route 7 and go by a few of the different Riverside homes and imagine who lives inside them.                 

Thursday 10/24/19