Recently I visited the George C. Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary again. This time there were no sandhill cranes out and about to distract me from the wood ducks. Are these crazy-amazing birds to find outside the tropics, or what?
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Photo Memory of the Week
Posted: 2025 Feb 27
"I am smiling."
Blog Memory of the Week
Quote of the Week
The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning, but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life.
The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun, and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon.
It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. (paragraph breaks added)
Source: Orthodoxy, GK Chesterton
Music of the Week
Poetry of the Week
Never Again Would Birds' Song be The Same
- Robert FrostHe would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.
Admittedly an eloquence so soft
Could only have had an influence on birds
When call or laughter carried it aloft.
Be that as may be, she was in their song.
Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed
Had now persisted in the woods so long
That probably it never would be lost.
Never again would birds' song be the same.
And to do that to birds was why she came.Posted: 2025 Feb 27
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Or in the tropics. There is something counter-intuitive, counter-camouflage, and contradictory about the males’ plumage, its bold colours and sharp delineation of shapes. Or is that commentary on the male of this species the underlying logic of its evolution? This female invites every comparison, which is perhaps her protection in the wild that makes him the helpful distraction? If he insists on perching in trees, perhaps she needs the kaleidoscopic display to keep track of him?
Laurna – I often wonder what went into shaping bird plumage. These guys, like our northern cardinals, don’t seem to worry about being seen – or, maybe, they want to be sure the female does see them, as you suggest.
Colour scheme by Picasso.
Jim T
Jim T – I wonder if Picasso ever saw a wood duck?
Isabel – With respect to the brilliant coloring of male wood ducks, it helps to remember that animals, including those that might prey on wood ducks, don’t generally have the same range of color vision as human beings, i.e. a fox or a coyote might not see the same brilliant colors we do.