Pairs
The weather was idyllic throughout the day yesterday. After my satisfying morning trip to the park, I headed to the office to tuck in a few loose ends. Again, just outside my apartment complex a fluttering caught my eye and I fixed on the flutterer's perch in the tree. I don't know why I haven't been keeping my binoculars in the passenger seat before now.
There on the branch were two Inca Doves snuggled together just like the cutesy paintings of unidentifiable birds some people hang up. They sat contentedly, not minding the car parked in the road and not sweating on one another as people would have done in the warm afternoon.
This place seems to be suddenly rife with Inca Doves, and the guru even glimpsed one during his visit. I smiled to myself and proceeded, fortunate not to have honking neighbors behind me yet.
The soft effulgence from the window drew me out of the office again two hours later, and I brought my homework to the cemetery. Though the afternoon was still, I laid my binoculars in my lap just in case. Only one movement drew up my eyes, as a startled female cardinal and Eurasian Collared-dove fluttered to separate perches. The dove sat atop a light pole for the duration of my visit.
As I gathered my things to leave, movement and a new sound in a tree behind me drew me between the stones toward it. The first thing I saw looked like one of those indistinguishable empidonax flycatchers, but I only saw it for a tenth of a second. A Bewick's Wren proved more visible and I noted his plain grayishness compared to a Carolina Wren of the morning.
Seeing another movement and hoping the flycatcher had not gone, I realized that it wasn't a flycatcher. The movement itself should have warned me; it was a Ruby-crowned Kinglet. I watched it for full five minutes without a satisfactory look at its whole tiny frame. Perhaps it sensed the violation of its privacy. I stepped back, respectful of the continual workings of the wild whether I noticed it or not.
There on the branch were two Inca Doves snuggled together just like the cutesy paintings of unidentifiable birds some people hang up. They sat contentedly, not minding the car parked in the road and not sweating on one another as people would have done in the warm afternoon.
This place seems to be suddenly rife with Inca Doves, and the guru even glimpsed one during his visit. I smiled to myself and proceeded, fortunate not to have honking neighbors behind me yet.
The soft effulgence from the window drew me out of the office again two hours later, and I brought my homework to the cemetery. Though the afternoon was still, I laid my binoculars in my lap just in case. Only one movement drew up my eyes, as a startled female cardinal and Eurasian Collared-dove fluttered to separate perches. The dove sat atop a light pole for the duration of my visit.
As I gathered my things to leave, movement and a new sound in a tree behind me drew me between the stones toward it. The first thing I saw looked like one of those indistinguishable empidonax flycatchers, but I only saw it for a tenth of a second. A Bewick's Wren proved more visible and I noted his plain grayishness compared to a Carolina Wren of the morning.
Seeing another movement and hoping the flycatcher had not gone, I realized that it wasn't a flycatcher. The movement itself should have warned me; it was a Ruby-crowned Kinglet. I watched it for full five minutes without a satisfactory look at its whole tiny frame. Perhaps it sensed the violation of its privacy. I stepped back, respectful of the continual workings of the wild whether I noticed it or not.
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