Search This Blog

Total Pageviews

Sunday, January 6, 2013

A DAY FOR BIRDS AND BOOKS

Sunday, 9:00 AM.  25 degrees F,  wind mostly W, light. The humidity is 76%, and the barometer stands at 30.16 in. There are low dark clouds on the eastern horizon, which the sun is valiantly struggling to get through, but so far it has only managed to produce a few silvery streaks.  The rest of the sky is darkly overcast.  It is a dull, gray, quiet morning. 
    Ice formation was obvious on the quiet waters of the channel yesterday, the ferries leaving a visible track in the otherwise difficult to discern skim coat of freezing water. There has been enough wind and current since to dissolve it all except for a few patches of white ice, floating at random like oyster crackers in a bowl of soup.
    Yesterday the feeders were visited by a male purple finch, a welcome addition to the grays and blacks of the chickadees and nuthatches.  The chickadees are constantly busy pecking a the branches of the big lilac bush on the corner of the deck.  I suspect they are eating scale insects… gray, flat,  crusty, immobile objects that are easy to overlook unless you are a small bird looking for a winter snack.
    I am well into historian David McCullough’s new biography of the young Theodore Roosevelt, Mornings On Horseback.  I have never been much of a fan of T R, considering him rather dangerous and imperious, although interesting indeed. It is a day for birds and books.

No comments:

Post a Comment