We have a small nature preserve in town named The Helen Carlson Wildlife Sanctuary. I like to stop in for a quick look around whenever I’m in the area. During my last visit their was a Red-shouldered Hawk calling out keyeer keyeer keeyer from the top of a pine tree just as I was getting […]
Tag: tree swallows
Tree Swallows
Tree swallows spend most of their day flying in pursuit of small aerial insects, gliding swiftly through the air and twisting and turning artistically as their blue feathers flash in the sunlight. This haiku written in 1818 by Issa, one of Japan’s foremost poets, recognizes the aerial exploits of swallow-kind: Gliding through the cloudburst so […]
A Bestiary : Songbirds ~ Tree Swallow
The graceful aerial sweeper and sleek iridescent Tree Swallow (Tachycineta bicolor)has been a wondrous part of our life here at Flower Hill Farm for over thirty years. No matter what may be happening in the world, I can enter the garden and delight in watching the swallows diving and swirling about in the waves of […]
Either change the system or risk another “Silent Spring”
For years, I’ve been inspired by Rachel Carson and motivated to follow in her footsteps by highlighting and addressing the health effects of chemical exposures. But I didn’t think that I would ever be discussing issues that so closely mirror her own life’s work. More than fifty years have passed since her iconic Silent Spring, […]
Waxing and Waning ~ The World Around Us ~ Bluebird Broods
There is plenty of spinning, tilting and turning in our vast universe . . . as our world wobbles its way around the sun and our moon waxes and wanes . . . mirroring that center fiery sphere . . . while it sails along its own path marking our monthly ways. Luminosity of a […]
First Days of Summer Walkabout
Summer greets Western Massachusetts with a hot soup of humid heat. The rising sun casts a net of sweltering, swelling, sanguine rays piercing skin and leaf alike. Spreading landscape’s spring green evaporates into a darker coating . . . void of its former verdant glow. It is a great time for butterflies, except for all […]