Sunday, January 1, 2017

Remember to look up

Sometimes it's interesting to look down.
It's the beginning of another year and, as often happens in this part of the world, we had quite a bit of snow over the holiday. Today I was out shovelling off the driveway when I heard the police helicopter overhead.  It circles our area fairly frequently and I usually look up to see how small the circles are and where the centre seems to be. As I watched the helicopter I saw a magpie fly towards a tree in the neighbour's yard. Nothing unusual there. What was unusual was another bird sitting near the top of the tree. It wasn't a magpie or a crow, or a pigeon. I think it may have been one of the flickers that seems to hang around all year.  As I watched, the magpie chased the flicker off its perch and they disappeared behind the roof of our house only to reappear heading north where they again disappeared.

I went back to my shovelling but with the thought that I spend a good deal of my life looking down.  I'm looking down at the screen as I type this.  I look down at my bench as I work with my hand plane or my saw. I look down when I carve spoons or carve signs. I wonder how many other interesting birds I miss by spending so much time looking down.

I'm not a big fan of New Year's resolutions but this year I'm going to try to look up a little more often. I'll keep you posted on what I see.

All the best for 2017.

1 comment:

LesTravels said...

We are surrounded by trees at our place and hedges. Both are alive with birds year round. In winter I have a feeder and I watch the literal pecking order there. The squirrels and the larger birds, magpies & jays cannot use my feeder but my very sweet neighbour puts out trays of peanuts and suet for them and I see them rocketing along the fence and chasing each other around the firs. A parallel universe to mine on which I eavesdrop from time to time. The birds seem to find me a benign presence as they come and start feeding as I cross the deck to hang the refilled feeder. I enjoyed your posting as always. Happy New Year!