Warming Up
I took my new binoculars for a walk in the park today. For a little country town, Stephenville has a nice city park, with some good acreage and a creek, surrounded by residential neighborhoods. I don't have to work today, so I was able to take a leisurely stroll, looking, listening, waiting, enjoying the beauty of the morning.
I didn't see much that is uncommon, even though I heard a variety of songs and calls from the bushes. Most of them sounded like cardinals, and I would even venture to guess that most of them WERE cardinals. I saw several males but no females, which is unusual in my experience.
I just love the variety of the simple "walk in the park" list:
Mourning Dove
White-winged Dove
House Sparrow
Great-tailed Grackle
Common Grackle
Turkey Vulture
Northern Cardinal
Northern Mockingbird
European Starling
Western Kingbird
Scissor-tailed Flycatcher
American Robin
Blue Jay
Downy Woodpecker
Cliff Swallow
Eurasian Collared-dove
No, I suppose there isn't anything earth-shattering in that list, but each one is so fascinating in its own right. The collared-dove was the last thing I saw today--and the first time I had seen it in Stephenville or anywhere other than the Gulf Coast. They really must be spreading fast.
Birding is beautiful because it is unhurried, or at least it can be. I found a little path down to the creek from the main path, and it led to a little rock shelf overlooking the creek, surrounded by tall trees, washed with the bubbling sound of a tiny falls upstream. It was a place of perfect peace and solitude. There were not many birds there, but many invisible cardinals and mockingbirds provided the soundtrack of heaven. Time ceased to matter in this little haven of rest, and I poured out my heart to the Father who feeds me as he does the sparrows.
I visited the highway overpass on the edge of the park where thousands of Cliff Swallows make their home. They were completely unafraid of me, swarming around me like the bats around Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins (to which my roommate took me yesterday). Theirs is a restless life, it seems. But there were forty or so taking a break on a handy power line, giving me a chance to study their plumage and shape. They seemed so similar to Cave Swallows and so different from one another that it was a hopeless business. But I am fairly convinced they were all, in fact, Cliff Swallows.
The binoculars served their purpose with great aplomb. Many park walkers/runners stared, so I had to be careful where I pointed those things. But the elect have a mission that the benighted can only try to understand. Have compassion and preach the gospel, for you never know who just might be elect!
I didn't see much that is uncommon, even though I heard a variety of songs and calls from the bushes. Most of them sounded like cardinals, and I would even venture to guess that most of them WERE cardinals. I saw several males but no females, which is unusual in my experience.
I just love the variety of the simple "walk in the park" list:
Mourning Dove
White-winged Dove
House Sparrow
Great-tailed Grackle
Common Grackle
Turkey Vulture
Northern Cardinal
Northern Mockingbird
European Starling
Western Kingbird
Scissor-tailed Flycatcher
American Robin
Blue Jay
Downy Woodpecker
Cliff Swallow
Eurasian Collared-dove
No, I suppose there isn't anything earth-shattering in that list, but each one is so fascinating in its own right. The collared-dove was the last thing I saw today--and the first time I had seen it in Stephenville or anywhere other than the Gulf Coast. They really must be spreading fast.
Birding is beautiful because it is unhurried, or at least it can be. I found a little path down to the creek from the main path, and it led to a little rock shelf overlooking the creek, surrounded by tall trees, washed with the bubbling sound of a tiny falls upstream. It was a place of perfect peace and solitude. There were not many birds there, but many invisible cardinals and mockingbirds provided the soundtrack of heaven. Time ceased to matter in this little haven of rest, and I poured out my heart to the Father who feeds me as he does the sparrows.
I visited the highway overpass on the edge of the park where thousands of Cliff Swallows make their home. They were completely unafraid of me, swarming around me like the bats around Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins (to which my roommate took me yesterday). Theirs is a restless life, it seems. But there were forty or so taking a break on a handy power line, giving me a chance to study their plumage and shape. They seemed so similar to Cave Swallows and so different from one another that it was a hopeless business. But I am fairly convinced they were all, in fact, Cliff Swallows.
The binoculars served their purpose with great aplomb. Many park walkers/runners stared, so I had to be careful where I pointed those things. But the elect have a mission that the benighted can only try to understand. Have compassion and preach the gospel, for you never know who just might be elect!
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