Bird Highlight: Redhead

Botany Highlight: Bur Oak

Species list: red-necked grebe, mute swan, mallard, American black duck, gadwall, American wigeon, redhead, bufflehead, common merganser, red-breasted merganser, ring-billed gull, rock pigeon, downy woodpecker, white-breasted nuthatch, black-capped chickadee, golden-crowned kinglet, European starling, house sparrow,  northern cardinal, American goldfinch.  (20 species)

Miles Hearn

WINTER POETRY

Hush:

Breathe stillness:

inhale the fresh purity of this white world,

the crisp air of the northern noon.

 

Here in the woods,

here in the utter quietness

the pristine silence of the calm forest

(spruce trees pointing upwards searchingly to a serene heaven)

our snowshoe tracks

cross the trigrams

of the rabbit trail

where the tiny footprints of the frisky field mice

make arabesques on the crystalline crust.

 

Here is a peace so deep

so encompassing

that a chickadee’s sudden note

startles the squirrel

perched pensively on a pine bough.

He jumps – –

but into the engulfing stillness

into the silence of this white and muted world.

Rest here. Feel the quietude.

• Doris Huestis Mills Speirs