Not all blackbirds are red-winged #phenology

The driveway today is about one third mud, one third ice, and one third puddles, with lots of overlap between the puddles and the ice. Not quite time yet to remove the Yak Trax. Water is flowing and seeping all over the places locally. The pond up the road should be open, if not ice free, sometime in the next week or ten days. As we drove through the Carlos Avery pond area this morning we looked for waterfowl but there were none to be seen yet. This anticipation makes me think of Wallace Stevens’ Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, especially V and VI, where today’s anticipation becomes tomorrow’s arrival.

red-winged blackbird, mid-March arrival

Photo by J. Harrington

We’ve not yet seen any red-winged blackbirds this month but, then again, all we’ve done is quickly drive past their roosting areas so they may be here and we’ve just had bad timing. Or, they’re not here yet but soon will be. Spring-like weather arrived this year sort of all at once. Will spring migration follow suit? Are Wallace Stevens and Paul McCartney writing about the same kind of blackbird?

Our Leopold Phenology calendar notes that “Wood frogs begin calling and breeding the first day and night over 50 degrees.” We’ve reached daytime temperatures of 50℉ a couple of times recently. In a normal year we won’t reach overnight temperatures of 50℉ for another couple of months. Meanwhile, we can enjoy St. Patrick’s Day tomorrow and the Vernal Equinox on Saturday, when the daytime temperature is again forecast to exceed 50℉.

That’s it for today. We wish we had more to report but are ending up spending time doing necessary, although annoying, things like replacing the coffee maker. That trip shot most of this morning. May tomorrow be a better day!

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

By Wallace Stevens

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,   

The only moving thing   

Was the eye of the blackbird.   

II

I was of three minds,   

Like a tree   

In which there are three blackbirds.   

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.   

It was a small part of the pantomime.   

IV

A man and a woman   

Are one.   

A man and a woman and a blackbird   

Are one.   

V

I do not know which to prefer,   

The beauty of inflections   

Or the beauty of innuendoes,   

The blackbird whistling   

Or just after.   

VI

Icicles filled the long window   

With barbaric glass.   

The shadow of the blackbird   

Crossed it, to and fro.   

The mood   

Traced in the shadow   

An indecipherable cause.   

VII

O thin men of Haddam,   

Why do you imagine golden birds?   

Do you not see how the blackbird   

Walks around the feet   

Of the women about you?   

VIII

I know noble accents   

And lucid, inescapable rhythms;   

But I know, too,   

That the blackbird is involved   

In what I know.   

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,   

It marked the edge   

Of one of many circles.   

X

At the sight of blackbirds   

Flying in a green light,   

Even the bawds of euphony   

Would cry out sharply.   

XI

He rode over Connecticut   

In a glass coach.   

Once, a fear pierced him,   

In that he mistook   

The shadow of his equipage   

For blackbirds.   

XII

The river is moving.   

The blackbird must be flying.   

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.   

It was snowing   

And it was going to snow.   

The blackbird sat   

In the cedar-limbs.

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