I don’t wonder where the birdies is, because they’ze right heyah. I wish I had pictures! Walking down my street there is a small pond that is a designated wetland habitat. These ponds are scattered throughout suburbia as a means to abate some of the drainage problems that occur in overdeveloped areas that get excessive rainfall. Anyhoo, a great blue heron took wing as I walked past. I’m not sure that it was a great blue heron, but it was a heron, it was blue, and it was huge. Therefore, I shall call it a great blue heron. He flapped his wings in an awkward but graceful way and as he flew by the house the perspective was such that he appeared to be as wide as the house! Of course, a great blue heron with wings spread might very well be nearly as wide as a house, if one’s house was of the single-wide variety. What a sight to see. I think of pteradactyls whenever I see these giant timid birds. Sharing the pond was a family of ducks. It makes me smile, when an awful piece of suburbia can be transformed into something pleasant by the presence of wildlife. Later in the summer it will be a cacophany of chirps from frogs or crickets or who knows what wiggly squiggly slimy hoppy sorts of things. Even so, it will make me smile.
Chickies of unknown origin abound as well. The trees are full of tiny finch-like creatures, flitting and chirping and tweeting from branch to branch. Oh, what a joyful sound! I can’t help but smile.
At the office, there is a river and a trail behind my building.
They pulled a body from that river, right by my office, around the time I began working there. I suppose it’s not such a stretch that sinister things would happen in places like this. It is, after all, industrial and seedy in general. Not a bit upscale urban, except for my shiny new office building, which is hardly shiny and new any more. We do have a nice walking trail. There’s a bridge that crosses the river, and carved boulders along the path.
I sometimes see herons there, in the shallows, and the ducks and geese are plenteous, as are the seagulls. Bald eagles, however, are not my normal sighting, but yesterday as I ventured forth on my afternoon walk, a pair of giant birds swooshed by, just over my head, and the white heads and tails were unmistakeable. I was still considering my fortune for witnessing such regality at so close a vantage (ignoring the fact that they are actually scavengers/predators, and perhaps not quite so majestic as one is led to imagine), when I realized that the sky was practically full of bald eagles! I counted eight. Eight bald eagles, soaring in the sky. Higher and higher and round and round. It was quite something. It must be an amazing thing, to soar above the clouds.
As such, I lift my face to the sky, and if by chance it’s blue and filled with fluffy white clouds, I am stricken with joy and delight.
Ahhh. It’s the best of all possible worlds.
Miscellania Says: