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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:
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!
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