Nature and Birds in Southern Ontario, Canada
There is a mallard duck that has a nest in the dense flowery growth of our garden.
As a result, we have gone out and bought a manual lawnmower, (so as not to disturb her).
I’m taking exquisite pride in using it; like a grandmother tiptoeing around a baby sleeping in a nursery.
I’d have to say my favourite bird song is the chickadee’s “fee bee, fee bee.”
There is something about the touching simplicity of it that goes straight to the soul.
There is also the exquisite beauty of the cardinal’s rapturous song and I’ve heard that the nightingale is not bad….
The northern flicker showed up in the vegetable garden when I went to refill my watering can.
With his festive attire of grey hat with a beautiful splash of red in the back; speckled waistcoat and jacket and black cravat; I picture the northern flicker as the ringleader of a bird circus.
He is a very jolly bird to see first thing in the morning and for that I am grateful.
I saw a male cardinal feeding his wife a piece of suet that he found this morning for breakfast. And I saw a common grackle taking a piece of suet to the bird bath and eating it with water. He thought, “I don’t know what this junk is, but it is likely to get stuck in my throat and kill me if I don’t wash it down with water.”
The male cardinal wins for ‘best husband’ and the common grackle wins for ‘smartest bird I saw this morning’.
It was a lovely drenching rain all night. When I went to see the vegetable garden in the morning, the tomato plants looked up at me and said, “Now that was a real watering. What’s up with the watering can?”
I was out early watering the garden and heard the beautiful, plaintive, flute-like notes of the mourning doves.
It reminded me of how affectionate the mourning doves are with each other and that it is now June, the month of weddings.
I remembered a quote from ‘Abdu’l-Baha about marriage and about doves:
The baby robin stood on the edge of the birdbath hesitating. He knew that he wanted to go in the water, but he was scared because it was his first time.
It reminded me of the time I was in the second grade and my beloved school teacher pushed me into the pool during a field trip when I didn’t want to go in. I didn’t like her after that.
I went to my bedroom to get socks because the weather here had turned obscenely cold with a harsh rain coming down. (I hope my newly-planted vegetable plants don’t mind.)
Then I saw, to my complete joy, a hummingbird in the bushes outside my window. She was gently hovering around the delicate pink flowers that my mother had planted in front of the house and that had climbed up to the top of the window.
She reminded me of the song, “Hummingbird”, by Seals and Crofts.
In this song, they talk about all the Sacred Beings that God sends to us to educate us. They are so precious and are only here for a very short time, then they are gone. We don’t appreciate them while they are here, and when they are gone, it is too late.
At six in the morning, the geese are honking, the seagulls are laughing, and the squirrels are chasing each other in the treetops.
The annual late May beauty competition has begun. The weigela is trying to outdo the alliums.
Who knew onions could be so pretty.
My Wylde Lyfe 