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What was your first bird of the year? The first bird you saw outside on New Year’s Day. Mine was cardinal for the second year in a row, but 2022 it was a single scarlet male the only color in a winter landscape full of snow. This year the day was gray looking more like late November here than December. Three female cardinals fluttered around the bird feeders their soft brownish tan bodies with the tips of faint red at crest, wing and tail blending into the dead leaves and bare trees so that only their movement betrayed them. The first bird traditionally tells us what the coming year will be like, or what will be important to us. I have had January firsts where the birds all hid and I saw mammals, squirrels one year, and a cat one year. But it’s usually a bird, then you have to figure out what the message is for the year. Squirrels for me are to balance work and play better. Cat, was a sign to ask my allergist if I could have my first cat. That was a really wonderful moment after twenty years of allergy shots. Doves usually mean it’s going to be a year of matters of the heart, or issues associated with Goddess. Cardinals usually mean I need to be willing to be seen more, to stand out and say, look at me! It’s a lesson I struggle with like most writers, because on one hand we want our books to be wildly popular and sell tons, and make us tons of money to go with all those sales, but we are also usually introverts and shy, or at least more comfortable at our desks than doing interviews or public appearances. Even if we’re good at the public side it drains us. I was not happy with last year’s message of bright red cardinal, but female cardinal is a little less flashy. She does most of the egg sitting in the spring because her coloring lets her blend in and not attract predators while the male is the stalking horse saying, look at me and don’t look for our nest. Do I get to hunker down at home and nest this year? Cardinals don’t stop with laying eggs and raising chicks just once in the spring, unlike most song birds they will rinse and repeat two to three times a year. Here in Missouri where the weather stays mild longer I’ve seen them still feeding fledglings in early October. Though that’s a chancy month in the Midwest, because we can get a freak October snowfall. The year I noticed them feeding in October the weather stayed mild, luckily. They build a fresh nest for each set of eggs, probably because even the slowest predator might figure out where their nest is if they keep going to the same location to feed babies from March to October. Once they successful raise all their young then it’s time to form winter flocks with the juvenile birds who look just like mom. The males won’t get Dad’s bright red plumage until next spring, so the threesome I saw by the feeders on January 1st probably weren’t all females, but mom and chicks all camouflaged together to up the chances of this year’s babies surviving the winter without getting eaten by a hawk, or other predator. Maybe that’s my lesson for the coming year that I don’t have to be the brightest thing in view, but just concentrate on laying as many eggs (ideas) and raising as many chicks (books) as possibly this year. Be wildly productive and concentrate on writing new stories, and don’t put all my eggs in one nest, basket like the cardinal I’ll up my chances of success by having multiple nests for different broods (ideas/novels/stories) and concentrate on raising them until their ready to fly on their own and share with all of you.