For the birds!

We're tired of writing about hoar frost / rime ice covered trees. We're fed up with comments and speculation about the events leading up to, on, and subsequent to January 6, 2021 in Washington, D.C. So, today we're very pleased to inform you that we have at least three bright red male cardinals in the neighborhood.

Photo by J. Harrington

Perhaps one day we'll manage to get a photo of all three together in the oak branches overlooking the deck. We've seen them all at the same time. That's how we're sure there's at least three. But, by the time we've collected our camera and returned, one or more of the birds has left the vicinity. We were unsure what determined the gender of a bird's embryo, so we asked the internet and got this answer, including a video of a half male / half female cardinal. Birds do strange things with their chromosomes.

The weather forecast does call for a (brief) January thaw this week. That should return our trees to less ghostly appearances. It's also likely to get us thinking more about fly fishing and adding mentions here from time to time. We look forward to the arrival of better days as daylight lengthens and temperatures increase, but the next eight weeks or so are usually the longest in our year. Fortunately, we also have poets like Shelley who ask appropriate questions for this time of year.

Ode to the West Wind

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

I 

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, 

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead 

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, 

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, 

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, 

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed 

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, 

Each like a corpse within its grave, until 

Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow 

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill 

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) 

With living hues and odours plain and hill: 

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; 

Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear! 

II 

Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion, 

Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, 

Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean, 

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread 

On the blue surface of thine aëry surge, 

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head 

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge 

Of the horizon to the zenith's height, 

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge 

Of the dying year, to which this closing night 

Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, 

Vaulted with all thy congregated might 

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere 

Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh hear! 

III 

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams 

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, 

Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams, 

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay, 

And saw in sleep old palaces and towers 

Quivering within the wave's intenser day, 

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers 

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou 

For whose path the Atlantic's level powers 

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below 

The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear 

The sapless foliage of the ocean, know 

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, 

And tremble and despoil themselves: oh hear! 

IV 

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; 

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; 

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share 

The impulse of thy strength, only less free 

Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even 

I were as in my boyhood, and could be 

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven, 

As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed 

Scarce seem'd a vision; I would ne'er have striven 

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. 

Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! 

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! 

A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd 

One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud. 

V 

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: 

What if my leaves are falling like its own! 

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies 

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, 

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, 

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! 

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe 

Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth! 

And, by the incantation of this verse, 

Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth 

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! 

Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth 

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, 

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

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