Sunday's Sentiment (11-7-2021 Q.O.T.D.

 "Have you ever found yourself spending time in a garden but so preoccupied with your own worries and your ongoing concerns for those you love; that you almost miss noticing a bird watching you?" 

This question is posed in IT'S THE LITTLE THINGS, my newest book which is available in Apple's Bookstore.

Sunday's Sentiment: Remembering my Grandfather's Appreciating Trees

My maternal grandfather, Albert Elmer Herman Lewis Melahn, can be seen in an unndated snapshot (directly above) with a tree he had just planted. He died in the mid to late 1970's on this day of January 24th.

A Reminder from Pigeons + Emily Dickinson (On this World Poetry Day 2019)

PIGEONS ARE FEATURED IN MY BOOKS

It's World Poetry Day and a poem that I'm thinking of is one by the poet Emily Dickinson:

 “Hope is the thing with feathers, That perches in the soul, And sings the tune--Without the words, And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm, That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm. I've heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.”

Yesterday I read a mediation by Dr. James Campbell ("In Praise of Pigeons") on Dickinson's poem and part of it stated: "When I imagine that 'little bird' of which Dickinson wrote, I automatically think of the starlings and the sparrows of my Indiana childhood.  I might even imagine the colorful and aggressive blue jays or cardinals that I still enjoy watching.  But when I think of hope and birds and bird songs, I never ever think of a pigeon...."

FLOWERS & FOLIAGE ARE FOR THE BIRDS! (Wednesday's Wisdom)

HOUSE FINCHES ARE  FEATURED IN "WORDS IN OUR BEAK"

EMILY'S STORY IS IN VOLUME THREE

It is rather common knowledge that "birders who hope to see hummingbirds often plant nectar-bearing flowers to attract them, but hummers aren't the only birds attracted to flowers."

This truism (or wisdom) is certainly evidenced by the photos directly above (taken in my garden a few years ago) where a male house finch seems to be enamored by my blooming Crabapple Tree while a female Baltimore Oriole is spending her time in the midst of my roses.

Birds & Baseball

According to the FB Home Page for the Charles M. Schulz Museum, where the PEANUTS comic strip atop this entry is from, Spring Training (for baseball) began yesterday. I confess I don't follow the sport now since Julia V has died in 2002 (seven years before my first post here on Blogger) Julia was a homebound woman who lived on the UWS and I visited her on a regular basis through a program sponsored by The Church of the Blessed Sacrament.

Julia was a baseball fan (understatement), therefore, in order to have something to talk about a topic she would enjoy I listened to coverage of the sport on the radio, followed the newspaper headlines and watch a few games with her. I didn't keep with the the sport after she passed, but, I do know that a few teams have a bird as their mascot.

It's Feed the Birds day!

Today is truly for the birds because it's Feed the Birds Day, a holiday that I wrote about in at least one prior post here on Blogger. In any event, according to an entry on a garden related web-page (as well as other sources), "Every February 3rd is known as Feed the Birds Day."

Within the posting of the aforementioned garden-themed web-page, they have included a chart on what various song birds enjoy eating and in honor of this holiday, I've posted a screenshot of it atop this entry.

Friday Follow-Up

A SLIDE FROM MY PRESENTATION

A SLIDE FROM MY PRESENTATION

At the presentation that I made at Iona Prep (Lower) School this past Tuesday, I included a total of two hundred and three slides. These slides featured a number of views of nineteen different bird types who have visited my rooftop garden, as well as a few slides that showed a Red-Tailed Hawk.

She is one who kept her eyes on the comings and goings of creatures visiting my place from either the vantage point of an Ailanthus Tree in a nearby courtyard or from atop an air-conditioner that is in the window of a building which is across that courtyard (as seen in the images of my slides that are posted atop this entry).

As you can see in the first slide above, I included the common and scientific name of the hawk, which is something I did for each bird type (along with giving the students interesting facts re a given bird variety within the featured birds).

There was a student in the audience who was very good at pronouncing the Latin (scientific) names of the birds and there was also a staff member who had an interesting point upon seeing the image (below) on my slide,

A SLIDE FROM MY PRESENTATION

of a lone Northern mockingbird in my garden.

Feed the Birds Day 2018

I've posted a You Tube video atop this entry in honor of one of today's (February 3rd) holidays, which  is known as Feed the Birds Day (according to Holiday Insights who states the following):

"Date When Celebrated: Always February 3: Help the wild birds in your backyard to survive the long, cold winter by feeding them. That's exactly why this special day was created. Mid and late winter are especially hard on all outdoor animals. By mid winter, food sources become scarcer and scarcer for the wild birds that over-winter in your backyard..."

I featured this quote from Holiday Insights along with the Mary Poppins film clip that's included here in my 2017 blog entry for Feed the Birds Day,

In terms of the many photographs of wild birds eating that I used in the aforementioned entry, most of them are different than the ones I am using today.

This Thursday's Tale is FROM the birds! (Sparrows Speak out about Spring Training)

THESE BIRD TYPES ARE FEATURED IN MY BOOKS

THESE BIRD TYPES ARE FEATURED IN MY BOOKS

While walking in Central Park, this past Tuesday, January the thirtieth, I came upon a lone blue jay who was leaning a sympathetic ear to a couple of house house sparrows (as evidenced in the photograph atop this entry).

Oh, Avellana corylus! Oh, Avellana corylus! How lovely are your branches!

Seeing the leaves of my Avellana corylus AKA Contorted Hazelnut (a shrub which grows in my rooftop garden) all covered with snow (as evidenced in the photo atop this entry) and clinging to their branches, caused me to think of the song, On Top of Spaghetti, which is associated with a nursery rhyme.

But, fortunately, unlike the doomed meatball in that nursery rhyme, I didn't lose any my shrub's leaves that were covered in snow, because NOBODY sneezed!

Wednesday's Wisdom + Thursday's Testimony (It's The Little Things)

This past Friday, June 2nd 2017, I came upon some people who were hanging out upon a stoop  of a one family brownstone that is located on the UWS of NYC.

They were engaged in conversation, enjoying pizza. Seeing them take such pleasure in the activity of eating pizza, while hanging out on a stoop during a Friday evening in NYC, gave me pleasure; and, I told them so.

I rarely take photos of people, but regretted not having my camera with me. Upon my telling them this, one of the stoop sitters, who referred to himself as Josiah Kargbo, took a picture with his cell phone, and emailed it to me. Kargbo's image is featured atop this blog entry.

The couple (N&J) who owns the brownstone are folks who I know on a little more than a "hi-how-you-fine-thanks" status; and in all the years I've passed their building, I've never seen them sitting on their stoop to watch passersby. However, I have seen a number of persons of all shapes and sizes, of all genders, of all races, and, of all ages, hanging out on this stoop.

Today, May 4th, IS FOR THE BIRDS!

Many of you might recognize the cardinal featured in the photograph atop this blog entry, for this creature is Cam, the author of Words In Our Beak Volume One, a book which I helped her to write.

In any event, the image that is atop-this posting is included in her story, and it was taken in my rooftop garden, located in NYC, and where the story takes place. Cam is with me in honor of the holiday, which is Bird Day. According to Holiday Insights (HI), Bird Day is aways celebrated on May 4th.

HI explains that "Bird Day is the oldest of the days set aside to recognize birds. According to the U.S. Library of Congress, Bird Day was first observed  on May 4, 1894. It was started by Charles Almanzo Babcock, superintendent of schools in Oil City, Pennsylvania. By 1910, Bird Day was widely celebrated, often in conjunction with Arbor Day. Bird Day and Arbor Day events are focused upon conservation training and awareness."

Therefore, in honor of this event, Cam and I are featuring images of all the bird types who have visited my urban garden, as of this posting. We are doing this in order of the appearance of a given fauna type in my place.

Cam is the first bird I saw in my garden, however, others have seen hummingbirds her. But since I have not, we'll begin with her. Cam has been here with her husband, Mac, as well as couple of her children as seen in the next set of images.

The second bird type who I noticed in my garden is male and female house finches who can be seen getting intimate while perching on the string lights which hang over my garden.

Mourning doves were the third bird variety to spend time here and they also used my place to get intimate as evidenced below.

All three of the aforementioned bird types are discussed in detail (accompanied by an array of images) in Words In Our Beak Volume One.  

The  other birds which have visited here will be featured in subsequent volume. These include (in order of appearance in my garden.

Blue jays:

House sparrows:

Tufted titmouses:

Chickadees:

Downy Woodpeckers:

Common Grackles:

White-Breasted Nuthatch:

Rose-Breasted Grosbeak:

Pigeons:

Baltimore oriole:

European starlings:

Northern mockingbird:

American Goldfinch:

American robin:

A Leutistic House Finch:

And an American kestrel:

The American kestrel's arrival brought the total amount of bird types who have visited my garden to twenty.

Of these twenty varieties who have come here, I have seen seven of them represented in Central Park, including American robins, blue jays, cardinals, common grackles, European starlings, mourning doves, pigeons, sparrows and tufted titmouses.

I've also encountered other types of fauna in the park.

No April Fools Day Prank OR Fake News: Dandelion has been retired!

On this April Fool's Day, I'm sorry to report that the announcement made by Crayola yesterday, regarding their retiring the crayon color known as dandelion; was not a pre-April Fool's Day prank!

And it was not fake news either!

The crayon known as dandelion (pictured above) will no longer be a part of any of their crayon collections. It is my understanding that some type of blue color will be replacing dandelion, which seems problematic to me given Vincent van Gogh's philosophy on the color yellow. He is known to have claimed, "There is no blue without yellow and orange," which is something I wrote about here on Blogger in 2011!

Yellow has been an important color in my urban garden, as evidenced by the members of the fauna community who visit my place; as well as by the flora which has grown here.

....and the winner IS...?

Cam, "my" cardinal whose familiar to many because of the success of her book, Words In Our Beak Volume One

can be seen in the image atop this entry, where she is in my urban garden, the setting for her book.

A copy of this  particular picture is included in her book, where she confesses facts about what truly makes her flap her wings! One of the confessions that Cam did not admit to is something I will share here — if you promise not to tell her — is this: she gets very excited about award ceremonies such as The Academy Awards, which will take place this evening.

Cam was featured (exclusively) in my first bird-themed mini movie, Words in my Beak, which can be viewed on Vimeo. Cam liked the title very much and modified it for her book, which is something that she did admit to doing in her note to the reader.

In any event, because The Oscars are tonight, I though I should give some recognition to those who have been featured in my movies; starting with the ones which are bird-themed. These include, in alphabetical order: Cam’s Wisdom: Time Flies, Enjoy Those Near and Dear to You While You Can;

Emily's Antics;

Harper’s Bizzarre Antics During GBBC 2015;

“Hollywood Finches” Honoring Bragging Rights;

Meet the Finches;

Preview for Words In Our Beak Volume One;

and, as mentioned earlier in this post; Words in my Beak. By the way you can read more about the birds included in the aforementioned movies, here on blogger, by clicking on the following links:

Baltimore oriole, Cardinals, House Finches and Northern mockingbird. Note that one of the images of house finches seen above (the seventh image) is included in my fauna-flora-insect-themed postcard collection.