May 14, 2022 Weekly Musings

Featured image: Merganser

This morning when I looked out the window to see if the ice was all gone on the lake, I saw two merganser ducks in the water close to the beach. I didn’t know what they were at the time. They are such beautiful ducks with their stately crowns and stark black and white coloring. They were migrating north. Spring is so glorious for many reasons but one of them is the unusual birds that stop on their way north just to say hello. Sometimes, I don’t always catch them but today I did.

I have written about migration many times on this blog. Imagine leaving your home twice a year and flying north for however far you go. Some say birds return to the same northern home as they do when they travel south. I know we seem to always have a pair of loons,  Nesting on the little island on our lake.  I saw them just the other day checking things out. 

The online dictionary defines migration as: “movement from one part of something to another.” I think of our lives as multiple migrations from many different things. For we are constantly changing during our lives and the journeys we take, never ending also in some way living on.

Featured image: Study of the Rose Breasted Woodpecker

Descriptions, identifying, labeling, classification of something,- are we as unique, original, one-of-a-kind beings belong to a system of classification? Taxonomies?

My bird series is all about classifications and labeling human beings and placing us in little cubbies neatly defined. Classifications are menus. I ask the question in my bird series, “Do you follow a menu word for word when you cook or bake something? Or do you improvise?”

I have never made my chocolate chip cookies the same way twice. Personally, I think the difference between an artist and the “other” is whether they follow a menu or not, whether they improvise like a jazz musician or a chief or are bound to the manuscript, the menu. Big difference.

Featured image: Woody

I guess that I really am turning into some kind of birder. I so enjoy watching them move about in the backyard. I have had wood ducks parade across my backyard looking for a place to stay for the summer. They are so vibrantly colored with dark greens, blacks that shine into purples, natural browns and tans. They’re marvelous birds! I welcome their visit when they come. My wood ducks nest somewhere in our woods. But, they are so fickle as mate with a different mate every year.

Taxonomy. Wood duck boxes need to be installed prior to their spring migration when mating occurs which is March-April here in Wisconsin. Wood ducks begin forming pairs at their wintering grounds in January. Like most duck species, they do not mate with the same mate for life. www.wisducks.org

New Works

Rose Breasted Woodpecker

Study of Rose Breasted Woodpecker

Woody

Merganser

Missy

Daffodil

Dreamer