Welcome to my first blog posting for 2018. Today is January first, and last night the figurine atop this entry rang in the new year. But he was hardly dressed for the occasion. It was ten degrees last night on New Year's Eve, and it is probably the first time in over seventeen years that I did not go to Central Park to watch portions of the Midnight Run and the annual fireworks display.
Instead, I rang in the new year with some friends at St. Bart's church in NYC, where "a concert to usher in the new year," was being offered.
As the promotion page for the New Year's event promised, we heard "St. Bartholomew’s grand Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ with its newly restored Celestial division in the dome, one of New York’s greatest musical treasures..."
The organist, William K. Trafka (pictured below in a copy of the promo's photograph), who is St. Bartholomew’s Director of Music and Organist, played "works of Bach, Guilmant, and Mendelssohn."
And "Trafka’s own transcription of Copland’s 'Fanfare for the Common Man'" was played soon after the stroke of midnight.
I confess that I'd never heard any rendition of Copland’s 'Fanfare for the Common Man, and have now found several on You Tube, which you can refer to by clicking here.
In any event, I hope you had a pleasant time of ringing in the new year, dear reader, and that you are now enjoying this first day of a new year, a day that is also known as The Octave of Christmas, and is sometimes referred to as the eighth day of Christmas, a day when someone's true love gave to them, eight maids a milking, seven swans a swimming, six geese a laying, five golden rings, four calling birds, three French hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree.
On another note, in bygone years, I honored January the first with my image of a snow a sculpture, which can be seen in the next picture.
The image was discussed in a radio interview which I had with Karen Lewis of WBAI a few years ago. It is also the image that I included in my very first entry here on Blogger, 12-31-2009.
As for this January the first, I'm preoccupied with trying to keep myself warm, and also to keep the bird baths in my urban garden thawed so that the avian creatures who visit me can have water, for as I discussed in one of yesterday's blog posts, water is crucial to a bird's survival.
I do not have have an electrical bird bath, and keeping up with thawing the ones I do have, has been extremely difficult these past several days, what with the record breaking cold temperatures.
Thankfully I was able to do some thawing, and some mourning doves, as well as sparrows, were able to drink some water. I was also able to tread across the thick sheet of ice on my rooftop garden's surface to replenish my suet-baskets (a type of bird feeder).
However, today it has been too dark and icy to take any photos of my visiting friends, so I must leave you with yet unseen images of them (which I took on December 30 and December 31 of 2017).
House sparrows dining with house finches atop my garden's floor:
 |
| THESE BIRD TYPES ARE FEATURED IN MY BOOKS |
 |
| THESE BIRD TYPES ARE FEATURED IN MY BOOKS |
 |
| THESE BIRD TYPES ARE FEATURED IN MY BOOKS |
 |
| THESE BIRD TYPES ARE FEATURED IN MY BOOKS |
Sparrows dining with a lone dark-eyed junco:
 |
| HOUSE SPARROWS ARE FEATURED IN MY BOOKS |
 |
| THESE BIRD TYPES ARE FEATURED IN MY BOOKS |
A couple of sparrows (first image below) and a peaceful looking mourning dove (seen in all four images below) seem to benefit from the burlap used when I winterized my garden:
 |
| MOURNING DOVES HAVE A STORY IN VOL ONE |
 | ||||
|
 | |
|
The branches from my Actinida kolomikta and Actimida (Kiwi Vines) provide a good perching spot, as evidenced by a lone mourning dove and the group of sparrows, seen in these next pictures:
 | |
|
 |
| HOUSE SPARROWS ARE FEATURED IN MY BOOKS |
 |
| HOUSE SPARROWS ARE FEATURED IN MY BOOKS |
And a Northern mocking bird appears to enjoy perching from a stand that supports my house style bird feeder (which is off camera in the image below):
 |
| A NORTHERN MOCKINGBIRD IS FEATURED IN VOL 3 |
But the dark-eyed juncoes like to confine themselves to the ground (or my garden's floor in this case):
 |
| DARK-EYED JUNCOES ARE IN MY BOOKS |
 |
| DARK-EYED JUNCOES ARE IN MY BOOKS |
Meanwhile, for those of you who may not know the details re Words In Our Beak Volume One, I'm posting them below.
HARDCOVER:
 |
| SEE PRESS RELEASE |
Amazon: http://amzn.to/2zxVujM
Barnes and Noble: http://bit.ly/2AAnB26
AND
Book Seller Info: http://bit.ly/2AFZDCz
SOFTCOVER:
DIGITAL:
ADDENDUM FALL 2018:
The digital versions of Volume One within the Words In Our Beak book series that are mentioned in this entry may only remain available for a limited time, but hardcover versions of Volume One, Two and Three can now be found wherever books are sold.
 |
| MY BOOK SERIES |
ADDENDUM SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER 2021:
When the third volume of the hard-cover version of Words In Our Beak was released, I withdrew from promoting my former versions of Words In Our Beak.
The very first one is an iBook and went into Apple's book store in 2015.
This was followed by an ePub version...
Subsequently, Words In Our Beak's digital versions were published as a soft-cover book (with slight variations) by MagCloud in 2017.
Its press release can be read by clicking here.
Now with the release of BIRD TALES....
As of this addendum, I do not intend to create digital or soft-cover versions of Words In Our Beak Volume Two or Words In Our Beak Volume Three.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.