For the beauty of the lands and waters and the strength of the people and creatures, I give thanks. To walk on this land is a great gift.
Got a plum cake over to Tom and Peggy, it was still warm in the pan, yesterday morning. Mebbe it wasn’t biscotti (me yelling over the phone at Tom I’M NOT A ONE HIT WONDER YOU KNOW while Peggy was no doubt rolling her eyes) but it sure is edibibble.
Walked in Fraser Foreshore Park and received the gift of a new bird; it was a yellow-breasted chat. I got a good long minute of him, yellow underneath like a waistcoat, over pale trews, and browny-green on top, and then my goodness he flew so I got his flight pattern and then there was his call, which was what got my attention in the first place.
I walk those woods, or I should say that little strip of biodiversity jammed and vulnerable between Sto:lo and Burnaby South’s industrial zone, often enough that I know what the background noise is like; nothing but crows and possibly eagles on a really hot day in August. A pleasant sunny day with a bit of wind in May and the woods ring with everything avian that has the capacity to sing, pretty much all blowing up their syrinxes at once. But this fellow was alone, and he said chak, like a bird four times his size and bellicose, and I thought who the hell is that? for he is not much of a conversationalist and I have not heard him before.
He kept making noise, that irritating chak! noise, until by great good fortune he turned out to be as yellow as a goddamned Minion and thus almost comically visible to an amateur such as I. (Less than five metres off the trail, less than five metres up a tree, and in bright frikkin sunshine. HULLO. He flopped from branch to branch and he didn’t care who saw him. And I could have stood there a while longer but chose not to, because I don’t persist in standing as well as I used to, and I had enough markers to be able to figure out what manner of critter I was looking at (I’d also clocked the eyestripe). This species is omnivorous. He’ll do well in that park if he eats millet, someone is feeding the ground birds.
I offered to take Paul to lunch and he deferred to Keith who was on another call. We were on the way back to my place and heard from Keith, so we went over for a late lunch there and I got to see the whole family including Alex, which was very pleasant. My plum cake was well received. Paul and I then spent an hour singing and playing (I of course, even with my recent illness, am well rehearsed, so I made it hard on myself by picking up an instrument I do not regularly play at this time, a standard sized mandolin. I felt like butterfingers and clumsy had come to live in my hands, it was quite comical.)
THAT BUILDING IS CONCRETE. I sang as loud as my body can when I’m sitting down and Katie didn’t hear a thing. It was so good, so very good to see her. Alex had a new game which he was playing with his oldest friend on line, which is in my view cute as hell. How else are kids supposed to sustain friendships without some technology I esk you.
I ate the bean chili that Keith made, and drank beer, and came home.
Doc appt today
mOm have you seen this birding site?
