Spring Update

It's been a sad few weeks for us. First, I learned that a close friend of mine is going through a very troubled time and then Becky's friend Beth was found in her apartment last Friday, having died from a grand mal seizure. The funeral is Monday and so we've decided to cancel our plans to go up north to our cabin. Apart from this, I've been working on a few other non-bird related projects that need to get completed by early June. Whether positive or negative stress, I tend to internalize to the point that I begin to suffer from maladies of my own – it's my nature and the way I've always been. During such times, maintaining a birding blog gets relegated to a pretty low priority. I did get a chance to go birding yesterday for about an hour and was pleased to find a couple Philadelphia Vireos at Pheasant Branch. There were only a half dozen or so warbler species and mostly songs of birds on territory fill the corridor now. Forest canopies are quickly filling in, increasing the level of photographic difficulty to the point I won't even bother. If I conduct any bird photography at all in June, I'm likely to visit prairies – it's easy, plus there are wildflowers and butterflies as nature subjects. When I first began digiscoping, I approached the hobby with much more fervor than I do today. At the beginning of each spring, I imagine I'll be a digiscoping machine and come away with tons of new photographs for my website. For the past few years, though, I've had to be content with just a few new images by the end of May. These days, merely watching migratory birds with friends has become my passion and escape.

Wild Geese - Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Canada Geese © 2008 Mike McDowell