Church
Sparrows come in the first light, and the cardinal next, before the cats get out. I go out and pour warm water to make small pools in the ice and scatter seed. The birds peck on the ground, then drink. A little more light, and the cardinal and mourning dove arrive. A black neighbor's cat with white chest mirrors my cat, who is indoors, looking out. Then, attracted by the peanuts, blue jay lands, scaring off the cardinal. Later the cardinal returns with his mate. She feeds on the ground while he sits on the birdbath and drinks. Finally, the sun streams above the hemlocks.
Some keep the Sabbath going to church --
I keep it staying Home --
With a Bobolink for a Chorister --
And an Orchard, for a Dome --
E.D.
I've never seen a bobolink, but the blue jay is enough for me.
Here are a few sentences from The Nova Scotia Public School Speller, 1917:
"The kingdom is to a great extent inaccessible and unexplored. Mountains run east and west, parallel to the straits. The almost perpendicular cliffs present a complex problem to the professional mountaineer."
3 comments:
Lovely photos!
I am moonlighting at the RISD Nature Laboratory; I just got home for the night, and enjoyed more nature in your post. Thank you.
There's a nice little library at the Nature Lab. I borrowed three books. One is called Sensitive Chaos and inside it I found an "enlarged detail of the bony structure in the nose of a deer." I think this wonderful squiggly image is soon going to grace the front of my annual homemade Christmas card.
Love your post. I always love all of yoru posts. I get particularly wistful with the post that show such edenic spots as your front yard. (your front porch is one of my favorite places.)
So, is the neighbor black, or is the neighbor's cat black?
The CAT is black, with a white spot on its chest, just like Sweet Pea. And oh, Bri, just wait till you see the wonderful plates from my copy of "Animal Life Underwater." It has photos of things like "the contents of a herring gull's stomach," laid out in rows by size. I need a scanner.
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