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2811. Macnas - 3/29/2005 9:01:57 AM I know this should be in the poetry thread, but it is one of my very favourites and, while worthy in its own right, is very topical: The Blackbird Of Derrycairn
Stop, stop and listen for the bough top
Is whistling and the sun is brighter
Than God's own shadow in the cup now
Forget the hour bell. Mournful matins
Will sound as well, Patric, at nightfall.
Faintly through mist of broken water
Fionn heard my melody in Norway,
He found the forest track he brought back
This beak to gild the branch and tell there
Why men must welcome in the daylight.
He loved the breeze that warns the black grouse,
The shout of gillies in the morning
When packs are counted and the swans cloud
Loch Erne, but more than all those voices,
My throat rejoicing from the hawthorn.
In little cells behind a cashel,
Patric, no handbell has a glad sound,
But knowledge is found among the branches.
Listen! The song that shakes my feathers
Will thong the leather of your satchels.
Stop, stop and listen for the bough top
Is whistling . . .
2812. Magoseph - 3/29/2005 3:34:44 PM Could be topical in Religion and Philosophy, Mac. 2813. ronski - 3/29/2005 5:22:11 PM There was a blackbird at one the feeders this morning. I have never seen one at a feeder before. 2814. wonkers2 - 3/29/2005 9:43:48 PM  Purple Grackle--elegant blackbird at my feeder yesterday
2815. thoughtful - 3/29/2005 10:08:34 PM i hate grackles and starlings....junkie birds in my book
2816. thoughtful - 3/29/2005 10:10:39 PM For a pretty black bird, you can't beat a red winged
 2817. Magoseph - 3/29/2005 10:19:57 PM Wonk, that is a great picture you took, my friend. thoughtful, we have this bird here. Flexy says we have these birds here because of the river and the swamps. 2818. wonkers2 - 3/29/2005 10:26:39 PM Thanks, Mago. Haven't seen any Redwing Blackbirds yet this spring. But saw a couple of Robins yesterday. Grackles can be nasty birds. According to the Cornell ornithology website they sometimes kill and eat small birds. The four or five I've seen in my yard seem to get along with the sparrows and wrens. 2819. thoughtful - 3/29/2005 10:26:44 PM but for striking color, i love the american goldfinch in summer plummage
 2820. thoughtful - 3/29/2005 10:33:59 PM yes i used to see the r-w black birds where i grew up a lot as we had a lot of ponds and brooks around. I've been surprised to hear them over the past few weeks on my a.m. walks.
It's very strange.
I walk down this back street, up the hill and back the other way on the main drag on my a.m. walks so the back yards of the houses on the back street meet the back yards of the houses on the main street. It's kinda wooded in that area, but not overly dense. Anyway, just in that one section, maybe 2 houses wide, it's always full of birds. Most of the time I'll see maybe a dozen crows or more. Then there was almost a week with a huge flock of starlings...easily a hundred or more...there with the crows, and it's in that section that I hear the r-w black bird too. I have no idea why the birds are so attracted to just that one narrow section, but there they are. This a.m when I walked past there I heard, though couldn't see, a number of gobbling turkeys too. 2821. thoughtful - 3/29/2005 10:36:24 PM In fact, as i recall it was in that same section that i saw three seagulls too. Go figure. We're probably 15 miles from salt water. 2822. arkymalarky - 3/30/2005 12:00:11 AM We went for a country drive yesterday and saw a beautiful gray heron. 2823. wonkers2 - 3/30/2005 12:05:44 AM  Squirrel portrait (last fall)
2824. jexster - 3/30/2005 5:09:15 AM Back in the Good Ole Daze, the High Life on Park Ave./Upper East Side, I took my dad to Le Bernardin. Now 81 he says he "will remember the evening the rest of his life"
Sent this NyT review
Still 4 stars after all these years 2825. Macnas - 3/30/2005 1:31:03 PM Birds in the garden at the moment:
A wren! Not often seen in my garden, in fact I cannot recall seeing one before.
Robins, always here, I think they are nesting in some ivy.
Black birds, always hopping in and out, nesting in the hedgerow behind our garden wall.
A Mistle thrush, a grand big fellow too, nearly as brazen as the robins.
Starlings, now and then will mob the back garden, you look out and there are 20 of them hopping and jumping around the place. 2826. Macnas - 3/30/2005 1:36:08 PM What did I see the other day but one of these:
Carrying a rabbit 5 times its own weight by the look of it too. Although stoats are common, it's rare you'd see one, as they are quick, furtive creatures who do not stand much observation. 2827. jayackroyd - 3/30/2005 2:45:35 PM Mac's robins aren't the same as the US variety.  2828. Magoseph - 3/30/2005 3:03:17 PM 
2829. arkymalarky - 3/30/2005 8:38:40 PM Oooh, Mac, how cool! I've seen a mink once around here, years ago, and a ferret in CO once when we were camping. They are so neat. To see one with a rabbit would really be wild.
We saw our first snake--a black one--on the road yesterday. I wish I could do a garden this spring, or at least spruce up the landscaping. We haven't done anything to the yard in a long while. 2830. arkymalarky - 3/30/2005 8:39:39 PM Those robins are really pretty. I'd have never guessed that's what that was.
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