Flying High with Bird Poems

I wouldn't describe myself as a birder. That to me implies owning high-end binoculars, planning vacations around migratory patterns, trying to find that one bird that eludes me with a persistence that baffles other humans. Having recently watched "The Residence" with the wonderful Uzo Aduba as a consulting detective who applies the skills of a passionate birder to her examination of human nature, I know I'm not that.

I don't have to be a birder to enjoy looking for, listening to, watching birds. (Just as you don't have to be a self-described "avid cyclist" to enjoy a bike ride!) I've always thought they were amazing and beautiful, always looked up when I caught a glimpse of winged shapes overhead out of the corner of my eye. Seems to me there's something in all of us that wants to soar.

In 2013 living for a while in a house that had a tree right outside the front window led to purchase of a bird feeder and a bird book for identification. Sweet Hubs entered fully into this new activity, looking up birds when he saw them and marking the date seen. We were both thrilled a while back to spot a kingfisher in the Budd Bay inlet we walk along as we head toward downtown and the farmers' market, love seeing a blue heron standing in the shallows, a patient fisher. 

He started calling crows my "corvid escorts" at some point because of course we see them on every walk. I do love crows, and pre-COVID I had the incredible opportunity to go on a trip that included time in London so I saw the ravens at the Tower of London. 

Our yard has a bird bath, a hummingbird feeder on the back deck, multiple feeders in the tree outside my home office window (yay, another house with a tree right there to let me watch them swoop and land!). As I record delights in my journal I often have notes about bird songs or sightings. Just the other day a Steller's jay and a robin had some sort of altercation on the wing just as I stepped out our front door, flashing across our little cul-de-sac with a lot of sound and fury. The jay landed in the neighbor's hawthorn tree while the robin swooped in to sit in the middle of the road. I think the robin won.

The book Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems about Birds* crossed my path after I had started my own collection. Edited by Billy Collins and illustrated by David Allen Sibley, it's a beautiful work. Highly recommend and I don't think I have many duplicates here. Later I found The Poets Guide to the Birds*, edited by Judith Kitchen and Ted Kooser, another wonderful collection that you're most likely to find from a bookseller who sells used books. My poetry book collection grows and grows alongside my appreciation of our fine feathered friends.

"Crows"
Mary Oliver

Crow is crow, you say. What else is there to say?

"Canto for the Chestnut-Eared Laughingthrush"
Hai-Dang Phan

Hidden somewhere in that mystery must be
Our very own Chestnut-eared Laughingthrush.
Garrulax konkakinhensis was our day’s journey
And query, who appeared in our dreams calling.

"Fifty Robins"
Amber Coverdale Sumrall

The first robins of winter descend like drunken paratroopers;
I imagine they’ve been feasting on fermented pyracantha berries

the way they drop, woozy and chortling, to the ground,
gleefully snagging drowning worms from the saturated soil.

"Evening Walk, Mid-March"
Sarah Busse

But the sky is full of occasion—robins.

Robins invisible
in the still-bare trees, twittering, chirruping
cheerily around the entire suburban block.

It couldn't be called song,
that curiously bubbling chatter-sound they make,
waxy and bibulous as a pubhouse or bridal shower.

"Baby Wrens"
Thomas R. Smith

I am a student of wrens.
When the mother bird returns
to her brood, beak squirming
with winged breakfast, a shrill
clamor rises like jingling
from tiny, high-pitched bells.

"Sixty Years Later I Notice, Inside A Flock Of Blackbirds,"
David Allan Evans

as the flock suddenly
rises from November stubble,

hovers a few seconds,
closing, opening,

"Great Blue Heron"
T. Allan Broughton

.... I’ve seen
his slate blue feathers lift him as dangling legs
fold back, I’ve seen him fly through the dying sun
and out again, entering night, entering my own sleep.

"Once" by Tara Bray

.... The heron stood
stone-still on my spot when I returned.
And then, his wings burst open, lifting the steel-
blue rhythm of his body into flight.

"Our Heron" 
Willam Olsen

Then a heron. Pulled forward by fish, the baiting saint of the shallows. 

"Not Knowing Why" 
Ann Struthers

Adolescent white pelicans squawk, rustle, flap their wings,
lift off in a ragged spiral at imaginary danger.
What danger on this island in the middle
of Marble Lake? They’re off to feel
the lift of wind under their iridescent wings,
because they were born to fly,

"Poor Patriarch" 
Susie Patlove

The rooster pushes his head
high among the hens, trying to be
what he feels he must be, here
in the confines of domesticity.
Before the tall legs of my presence,
he bristles and shakes his ruby comb.

"The Birds" 
Linda Pastan

as they swoop and gather—
the shadow of wings
falls over the heart.
When they rustle among
the empty branches, the trees
must think their lost leaves
have come back.

"Praise Them"
Li-Young Lee

The birds don’t alter space.
They reveal it. The sky
never fills with any
leftover flying. They leave
nothing to trace. 

"Waking Up"
David Allan Evans

We wake up again to the sound
of those same birds just

outside our window. I can’t
name them, wouldn’t need to

if I could, 

* That's a Bookshop affiliate link just in case you don't have a local bookstore or library. Any commission I receive from book sales will be donated to organizations working for safer, human-friendly streets and transportation equity. Making it safer for people to walk and bike is good for the birds, too, since those are the cleanest and greenest forms of transportation.

Seed Snail 'Speriment: Episode 2

 Episode 2 will be short and sweet: Seedlings! Eight days by the calendar after the planting April 28, although that was an evening project so it's more like 7-1/2 days.

The morning of May 6 as I misted the coils I spotted three tender stems still bent over, tops buried.

By the end of the day the biggest of the three had lifted its leaves to the air.

By the next morning, May 7, those leaves stood taller, a second one had freed its top, and the first green bent-over stem appeared in the golden straightneck summer squash.

By the evening of May 7 that first golden summer squash had stuck its leaves up in the air although they're still a bit bent over, a second was visible, the Mortgage Lifter tomatoes had sent up a couple of tiny threadlike stems, and the Black Like Tula tomatoes had the tiniest hint of green at one spot. Time to capture this for posterity. This is happening!

I do need your reassurance that you also see the Tiny Tinerton Tomato seedlings here, if your eyes are that good.

Okay, okay, here's a close-up.

For real, I swear, there's a tiny spot of green coming up in the Black From Tula Tomato.

As exciting to watch as when I was a kid poking seeds straight into the dirt of the family garden!

Seed Snail 'Speriment: Episode 1

Kind of a gutsy move to name this Episode 1 given that I don't know whether I'll have any reason to write Episode 2, but here goes.

My acupuncturist and I were talking about gardening and she mentioned using "seed snails" as her technique to start plants from seed this year. She has a greenhouse, which makes her A Serious Gardener in my book. She said this technique gave her much stronger starts last year than the usual system of little individual soil pots.

I'd been thinking of starting seeds but couldn't figure out where I could possibly do so, with no real room in the garage to do a grow light set-up, almost nowhere in the house that Bad Cat can't get to that would have the kind of space I'd need for big seed flats. Rolls of seeds saving a lot of space and getting good results? This sounded as if it would be worth a try. 

At least it will be a leg up on my usual "poke them in the soil, hope the growing season is long enough for them to produce something" method which netted me only a couple of zucchini last year, and who can't grow zucchini?! Me, that's who. I've also been reading Vegetables Love Flowers and am a bit more attentive to soil temperatures than in the past (another reason not to poke everything into the soil just yet). 

A quick visit to Dr. Google and I had some how-to on the snail seed-starting method from Rural Sprout. I also had a DIY recipe for seed-starting mix, also from Rural Sprout. A trip to Eastside Urban gave me perlite and vermiculite that didn't have any extra unwanted ingredients.

The Rural Sprout post gave me most of the information you'll need if you want to try this. I'll add a couple of notes on things they didn't specify or that I did a little differently.

How much mix for how many rolls? The ratio is 2:1:1: coconut coir:perlite:vermiculite. I made a total of 2 quarts of mix. This turned out to be more than enough for the 10 rolls I made. I think I should have made the mix a little bit deeper so I'd probably make this amount again for the same number of rolls. I used the extra in one of my big planter pots where I was putting in a couple of lemon thyme plants.

Wet coir, or dry? If like me you buy it in compressed blocks, not shredded in a bag, the picture doesn't really tell you. I had to wet down the coir to get it to break apart, so that's what I went with.

Dampen the mix before making the rolls. This makes it a bit clumpier and easier to work with.

How much twine will you need? A length a bit longer than the length of my paper strip gave me enough to go around the roll twice and tie off.

What kind of paper/cover. I cut up a couple of brown paper sacks and ended up with 10 strips. The piece that had been the bottom of the sack was a bit tougher to roll up since it was stiffer but it worked.

Poking the seeds down into the mix: That's tricky in these skinny spaces. I used the end of the plastic stakes I was using to mark the varieties to poke the seeds down in. Could have used a chopstick or something similar, maybe a toothpick.

This isn't a completely scientific test of the process. I used seeds I had on hand that are at least a year old, some of them possibly older. Sweetie scored some packets of heirloom seeds at the community garden when he was dropping off some food to give away last year and they don't have dates on the packets. They're all heirloom varieties except for the jalapeños and those are from Ed Hume Seeds based in Puyallup, so they're pretty local.

What I planted:

• Tomatoes: Cream Sausage, Black Sea Man, Black by Tula, Thorburn's Terra-Cotta, Mortgage Lifter
• Peppers: Datil (hot! 100,000-300,000 Scoville heat units) and jalapeño.
• Squashes: Golden Straightneck Summer Squash, Rheinau Gold Summer Squash, Genovese Zucchini 
• Mystery Melon: I saved seeds from a really sweet Italian melon similar to a cantaloupe that I ate in the summer of 2022. I didn't write down the name of the variety, but at the time I looked up and found it was an heirloom variety and the seeds would be true if I saved them. I dried and saved them in such a good spot I forgot about them in 2023. In 2024 I planted some in a bucket, got small plants and one small melon that I didn't pick in time to eat it so it self-composted. Trying again!

I set the rolls up in a couple of pie pans in our big kitchen window. It faces north so it gets light without being too hot. Now to wait and see.

Root, Trunk, Branch, Leaf: Poems about Trees

Trees amaze me. Their shapes, size, leaves, colors for starters. Then there's all they do that supports life on earth, like make oxygen we need to live. Their underground communication networks, the beneficial phyto-somethings they emit. Truly a source of awe and wonder. 

I have fond memories of the trees of my childhood. I grew up outside Lewiston, Idaho, in a home surrounded by 8 acres or so of pasture, garden, and lawn dotted with lilacs, a big snowball bush, my mom's roses, and trees. The hawthorn protected a gate into the big pasture, the giant willow held a tire swing, the crabapple supported a hammock my middle brother brought back from one of his Latin American journeys, the honey locust the "Freehouse Treehouse" my brothers built for my younger sister and me. We'd haul a bag of books and snacks up the boards nailed to the tree to form a ladder and read for hours surrounded by the buzzing of bees drawn to the sweetness of the cream and yellow blossoms.

Later we lived in the Spokane Valley on a lot with sparse Ponderosa pines. Sparse was good, it turned out, when Firestorm '91 swept across the valley and got stopped just across the street from my parents' home. The fire was stopped there in part by the green space created by their lawn with trees far enough apart that the flames didn't jump the road and keep going, and by my dad getting on the roof with a hose and wetting it down repeatedly.

Since then I've lived with more Ponderosa pine than any other tree, I think. I'm now in a neighborhood with trees all around but can happily report I have no pine needles to rake. When we bought the house it had a couple of cherry plum trees, no doubt chosen by the developer 25 years ago for their dark red leaves, and a maple in a back corner. We've added a nectaplum (a newer hybrid of nectarine and plum), hazelnut, almond, and paper-white birch to add food, shade, and beauty to the landscape. The food hasn't appeared yet but it will someday. Trees teach patience.

I really appreciate trees when I'm on a long walk or bike ride on a hot day, and hot days are increasingly common in the Anthropocene epoch, with climate changes caused and accelerated by human actions. Our actions can include planting a tree, though, to add to the lungs of the planet. Tree cover makes a difference for shade, for habitat, for personal and community health and happiness. You can find out what kind of tree cover your hometown has in this Washington Post article. The Olympia-Lacey area has an estimated 36.8% tree cover, over 4% higher than the average in comparable cities, so yay for that!

I'm fortunate to live close to Squaxin Park in Olympia. I can take a lunchtime walk in a forest that isn't old-growth (over 160 years old as defined in western Washington, like the rain forest around Lake Quinault where I walked in February), but it's legacy forest. 

A legacy forest was lightly logged about a century ago; left undisturbed since then, it's had time to regenerate complex ecosystems. You might think of legacy forests as the old-growth forests of the future, or at least they will be if we don't log them again. (More on legacy forests)

A while back I went to a talk on trees given through Olympia Parks and Recreation. Julia Ratner, a member of Friends of Trees (a local group working to conserve forest lands), shared recordings she made of the electrical impulses of trees translated into musical tones with an Italian-made device called Plants Play. You can listen to a Sitka spruce left isolated by a clearcut and a cedar in an undisturbed forest at the Friends of Trees link. 

As I walk I hear squirrels scolding me, an insect buzzing past, leaves rustling, wind in the trees high above sometimes sounding almost like the ocean, my feet making a gentle pad-pad-pad sound on the trail, water trickling if it has rained recently (and this is in western Washington, so that's likely). I don't hear the communication of the trees but I know it's there.

I've told my family that when I've died I'd like my compost or ashes or what-have-you to be buried under a Susie Tree in a park or reforestation project somewhere. This will give them a place to visit, if they like, that does more for the world than a slab of stone that requires mining and transportation. It's also a nice callback to the first full-time executive director of what was then the Bicycle Alliance of Washington. Susie Stephens also came from Spokane and loved trees. After I became the executive director at what we later renamed Washington Bikes I learned a bit of her history from her mother, Nancy MacKerrow. "Tree Cemetery" by Wu Sheng captures this idea perfectly.

As with all my collections of poetry I've selected a few lines, not necessarily the opening ones. To read the complete poem follow the link.

"When I Am Among the Trees"
Mary Oliver

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."

"Elegy for a Walnut Tree"
W.S. Merwin

and still when spring climbed toward summer

you opened once more the curled sleeping fingers

of newborn leaves as though nothing had happened


"Tree"
Jane Hirshfeld

It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.

"Trees" 
Howard Nemerov

To be a giant and keep quiet about it,
To stay in one's own place;
To stand for the constant presence of process
And always to seem the same;

"Planting a Dogwood" 
Roy Scheele

For when we plant a tree, two trees take root:
the one that lifts its leaves into the air,
and the inverted one that cleaves the soil
to find the runnel’s sweet, dull silver trace
and spreads not up but down, each drop a leaf
in the eternal blackness of that sky.

"Crab Apple Trees"
Larry Schug

I’m tempted to say these trees belong to me,
take credit for blossoms that gather sunrise
like stained glass windows,
because eighteen springs ago
I dug holes for a couple of scrawny seedlings,

"The Bare Arms of Trees"
John Tagliabue

The bare arms of the trees are immovable, without the play of leaves,
     without the sound of wind;
I think of the unseen love and the unknown thoughts that exist
      between tree and tree,
As I pass these things in the evening, as I walk.

"Sequoia Sempervirens"
Tamara Madison

Some of these trees have survived
lightning strikes and forest fires
Some of these trees house creatures
of the forest floor in burned-out caves
at the base of their ruddy trunks

"Honey Locust"
Mary Oliver

Each white blossom
on a dangle of white flowers holds one green seed--
a new life. Also each blossom on a dangle of flower
holds a flask
of fragrance called heave, which is never sealed.

"April Prayer"
Stuart Kestenbaum

Just before the green begins there is the hint of green
a blush of color, and the red buds thicken
the ends of the maple’s branches and everything
is poised before the start of a new world,
which is really the same world

"Tree Cemetery"
Wu Sheng

Plant a tree in place of a grave
Plant a patch of trees in place of a cemetery
Put a flowerbed around each tree
Lay the ashes of the deceased to rest by the stump

"What's Really at Stake"
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I like pulling the tree-sweet air
into my lungs, like thinking of how
even now I, too, am becoming
more tree, as if my shadow side, too,
might soon grow moss. As if I, too,
might begin to grow roots right here

"Honey Locust"
Mary Oliver

Each white blossom
on a dangle of white flowers holds one green seed-
a new life. Also each blossom on a dangle of flower
holds a flask
of fragrance called heave, which is never sealed.
The bees circle the tree and dive into it. They are crazy
with gratitude. They are working like farmers. 

March Delights

The second day of March gifted me with the perfect poem to capture what seeking out delights offers in each day.

"The Good News" by Thich Nhat Hanh comes my way courtesy of reading poetry every morning. At some point in the early COVID era I found A Year of Being Here, a site at which Phyllis Cole-Dai posted a poem that supports mindfulness every day for three years. Ever since I've been reading each day's poems. It turns these poems into old friends, this one reminding me that I can choose to greet a dandelion as a delight:

From "The Good News":

"The dandelion is there by the sidewalk,
smiling its wondrous smile,
singing the song of eternity."

And then there's the poem by his student Marci Thurston-Shaine, "More Good News".

"You and I are flowers of a tenacious family.
Breathe slowly and deeply,
free of previous occupation."

These poems go so well with March, when dandelions are popping out in our lawn to provide some early spring food for the bees. Such an ordinary, everyday flower, treated with scorn by lawnkeepers who attack it for daring to interrupt their smooth swards. And yet they keep coming back, persistent, blooming.

Other early flowers provide more obvious delights. The cherry plum tree I see looking out of my office window is popping with pink, blooming at a rate I almost feel I should be able to see in real time. In the back yard we have a tree dubbed the "Seuss tree." Its slender, lithe branches rise up and then droop over. We keep the bottom trimmed straight off so the branches don't drag on the small deck. This gives the tree the overall effect of a bowl-shaped haircut, resembling many of Dr. Seuss's classic characters. That tree is popping tiny white flowers, somewhat behind the cherry plum. Spring flowers bring so much delight, just waiting to be noticed.

Each morning I visit sites that bring me new poems, some of which find their way into my themed poetry collections. I'm a bit surprised that I missed "The Good News" when I compiled poems that celebrate the everyday and ordinary in life.

The site grateful.org also makes up part of my morning routine. The question of the day sometimes relates to poems I've already read that morning, or reminds me of a poem I've read in the past. The question always inspires attention, notice, appreciation—all essential elements of finding delights.

One day in March the day's question asked, "When I shift my focus to the extraordinary nature of the ordinary, what do I notice?" My response:

Simply paying attention shifts focus. Thinking of how things came to be, and came to me, shifts focus outward, to a broader awareness and appreciation. So many, many steps, coincidences, choices, decisions, happenstances if that’s a word, natural processes, sunlight and air all aligned and here I am, here we are, here is my afghan and my sofa and the coffee in my cup and the cup and the table. Extraordinary and ordinary, all at once.

Each day's delights are both ordinary and extraordinary.

Related Reading

• A Year of Poems: March
• Walking in March: Of Woods and Work
• Reruns: March Posts Worth Revisiting
• January Delights
• February Delights
• Bike Delights