silent spring

[ritaxis]

Early days yet (Buena Vista/Calabasas Roads, Watsonville, March 24, 2006)

I saw two hawks today, and I heard another.
I saw sourgrass blooming bright and acid yellow in the orchards.
The ditches were running with brown water.
The wind was fresh, the clouds were fecund,
everything moist and burgeoning.
The apple trees, pruned, reaching for blossom time,
the fields, plowed and fallow, weed-bedecked, ready.
In five miles of open land,
twelve Brewer blackbirds trying to make a flock.

The sky clear of blackening wings.
The wires unsagging from the weight of missing blackbirds.
No rusty hinge squealing, announcing the return of the redwings.
The fences uncrusted by the marks of their leavings.

It's early days yet. Yes? There's time. Yes?
This year's matings can produce an avian resurgence. Yes?
Yes?

Comments

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

We already have the swirling flocks of little birds, but we also have a small flock of crows and a batch of seagulls. I'm not sure what's up with the seagulls, they usually hang by the fast-food restaurant dumpsters.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

See, that's what I haven't seen -- swirling flocks of little birds. I might have been looking in the wrong places. But I expect to see them in fallow fields. Isn't that about right? I don't expect the swallows much until later in the year, and I am seeing them a bit. But the flocking things -- where are they?