Rainbow in Winter

Going out in the winter woods found more birds than one sees in the warmer weather, perhaps because then they are cloaked by summer leaves and now are more visible through the bare branches. Pulling into the parking area of the preserve, there was an immense lot of turkeys that wobbled and bent like old grandpas, over seeds scattered from a bird feeder.  Their winter colors were bright and diverse in patchworks of spotted tan, blacks, reds and blues.  They seemed huge and unafraid, pecking a here and a there for corn and millet on a neighborhood lawn.

The snowy path was bordered by browned, tall growth, stalks of brambles and wild grasses left by passing summer, alive with movement caused by knots of feathers, landing.  The stems would vibrate as  tiny clawed feet plucked strings of the field's grass harp, pizzicato verse in an otherwise still world filled with quivering foxtail, wild rye, fescue, bluestem.  Yellows and browns.  Evergreen pine.

Through the stalks of brambles, a diligent worker by a rotted log poked a flash of blue marbled with white and black daubs of contouring color; a brilliant blue with a crested head and black beak digging through the crumbling cellulose of fallen tree for hidden grubs or insects.  In hibernation they wouldn't know what hit them, a Bluejay who was methodically grabbing dinner in twenty degree weather.  Blue.

Two steps further, there was the unusual: a flock of robins. Robins leave by October for Florida; when living in St. Pete, it was noticeable that the birds were fed by the local group of retired folks, eager to share seed and popcorn with the familiar redbreast.  Northerner me was not used to seeing them in January, so this was a happy confirmation of fact, that birds do go south, not just in cartoons.  Here today was a group of twenty, flitting about a bush with small, hard berries.  The preserve does stock a feeder so they will be alright, for the berries remaining were sparse and hard.  Orange, rust red, underneath.

Flashing about were grey and white juncos, grey and black chickadees, both small birds that endure through snow.  An irritated kee-kee-kee came from a tree long stripped of bark and most of its branches; we were being told the business by a brilliantly capped red-bellied woodpecker, one of the larger species found.  Grey, white, black, dappled, red.

Other birds were clamoring in the eternal search for food: crows, Canadian geese, mourning doves, nuthatches, few sparrows, and of course Cardinalis cardinalis, the Northern cardinal who possibly inspires more people to fill bird feeders than any other.  Vivid red, the cardinal will cheerfully whistle even on the coldest of mornings, staunchly remaining a resident after the others have migrated.  There is one who flits around the city neighborhood, often just as a red, straight-arrow blur going from tree to tree.  It cheers one on to make the best of the day.  Red, black, shades of brown.

We trundled onward down the path in search of the champion beech tree, one of this area's treasures, finding it and a bench marked with a forester's name, a man who battled fervently with his whole heart in the name of trees.  A tree becomes a champion when it is designated as the largest of its species, withstanding years of insects, disease, fires, storms and humans; we have one.  I look up at thee and wonder, tall beech, here before the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

So it goes, birds and trees, life and forever; be here before me, be here after.  I sleep a little better knowing of this continuity that will go on for centuries till humans have moved on to the next journey.  Snow lightly falls, temperature drops into the tens, birds huddle in pine branches for the night; books and eyes close for a while under the yellow of a horned crescent moon.  Winter skies, glimmering stars, planets holding steady.  Sleep well.