This week is for the birds… beautiful, happy, doing-what-they’re-supposed-to-do birds .  Every now and then I check on one of my favorite bark scars… this one happens to be on a flowering tree in a Starbucks patio.  I have no idea how the scar got into the bark of the tree.   I hope it was an accident of nature and not done by some brainless, open-carry person with a knife who’d rather be carrying an assault rifle.   I first saw the scar and took a picture a couple of years ago.  It has been for me a kind of long-term thematic apperception test.  The image seems more bird-like than anything else.  Birds are for me mostly friendly creatures, but I’ve not had much experience with raptors… avian, mammalian, or reptilian… so it’s probably why I like them.  A friend of mine who has coffee with me in this patio says the image is threatening… but comically threatening.  Go figure.  Maybe I should set up shop in the patio beside this tree and do consultations.  On second thought, that sounds too much like that four-letter-word work; so I think I’ll stick with retirement.

Birds and flowers… that’s more my style.  The little hummingbird mother nesting in our back yard on the geranium tendril not ten feet from where I sit and read the paper is a gift of nature.  She is a model of diligence and patience.  The day began a bit cooler than usual, so she spent more time keeping her chicks warm than chasing around the garden gathering food for them. My hummingbird feeder hangs a few feet from her nest, so she can pop up there for a quick snack and be back on the nest before her babies have time to get cold. She’s a good Mother.  I’m guessing hummingbird males have nothing to do with the care and feeding of chicks, and I’ve never seen a second bird hanging around when it’s time to teach them to fly.