7:28 a.m. 23 degrees, wind S 3 mph. Sky: moon, a chip off full, setting platinum in the west. A flotilla of pink infused clouds drifts eastward across a sea of blue—a fine start to 2021. Permanent streams: upper, more of the same, an aquatic photocopy. Lower, transformed into a woodwind, notes rising out of cavities in the ice. Wetlands: frosted reeds and somber pines. The chatter of passing crossbills. Pond: a desolate oval, a gelid body of water, hemmed in skeletal trees, cold as iron. Feeder stream sealed, hushed . . . the secrecy of ice.
Raven, very high over the marsh, calls attention to himself. Far below, red-breasted nuthatch answers, muffled toots from deep within the pines, a vague afterthought. Tick, ticking off the sunrise metronome, chickadees, everywhere, congregating in alders, maples, hemlocks, cherry, passing from feeder to forest. Ferrying seeds, one per trip. An outpouring of dee, dee, dee. Chickadees look alike to me . . . black bib, black cap, immaculately white cheeks, grayish, whiteish, beige-ish everywhere else. But where we see white cheeks, they see ultraviolet, the color beyond purple, beyond our detection. To a female, each male looks different, bears his own ultraviolet signature.
No matter how much I want a crossbill or an owl to be my first bird of 2021, on the threshold of sunrise, standing in the kitchen, opening a can of dog food, out of the corner of my eye, I see chickadees against the dawning sky. Back and forth. Already indulging the day, chickadees take me with them—prisoner of their disposition.
Time to change the year from 2020 to 2021! :-)
Happy New Year!