Tag: birds

2020, a decade, and a new bird

It’s that time of year again, time for the first bird of the year. It’s a tradition among birders, bird watchers that the first bird you see on New Year’s day will be a theme for the year to come. It can be the first animal you see if you’ve been up for hours and seen no birds, which happened to me two years in a row with squirrels. The moment I owned squirrel as my power animal for the year, birds appeared. It was like magic. Those two years were about trying to balance work and play. The last two years it’s been dove, and I was really hoping, praying that it wouldn’t be a third year in a row. Why, you might ask, because dove is about matters of the heart and coming to terms with Goddess energy, feminine energy for me. Learning lessons of the heart is never easy, always worthwhile, but never easy. I was ready to get a message from the universe that I’d done my heart and love work to a point where I could move on. My husband, Jonathon, and I are closer than ever and have hit that deep abiding, contentment where the fire burns low and high, but never goes out, and we know how to throw more wood on our fire and get sparks. Eighteen years of marriage and we’ve never been happier as a couple and as individuals; yay, working your shit!

I’ll mention it here before someone else asks, our other halves, Genevieve and Spike, requested to not be part of my public persona a couple of years ago. They found the “fame” part of things uncomfortable. They are private people and deserve to have their personal life be as private as they wish, yes it was a bone of contention for awhile, but if you love someone you honor their wishes, so I have. It has been difficult, because I blog from my heart, and write from heart in many ways, though I write fiction. It’s made blogging about my life very difficult and is one reason I almost stopped doing it. I don’t know how to edit my real life the way I edit my fiction. This has been some of the heart and love work of the last two years.

I’m happy to say that this year’s bird is, Dark-eyed Junco. It’s a type of sparrow, though you’d never know it to see the charcoal gray and white body, or the black upper body with a white stomach, or a mostly charcoal body, or – they are incredibly varied in their plumage. There are even different colors for different regions of the country that look nothing like the birds we see here. They are winter birds here, arriving between October to November, or even as early as late September. You know the term, snowbirds for people who travel to warmer climates for winter and then return in the spring that’s exactly what Juncos do here. We’re their winter vacation spot.

Jonathon and I saw a small flock of Juncos at the same time this morning as we made coffee and wrangled breakfast. He called out, “Junco!” I actually turned away as if he’d called it and so it couldn’t be my bird of the year. I even walked to another window and everything was hiding from me, just movements in the trees, until I realized that there was no rule, no calling dibs on a bird. Once I owned that we had the same bird of the year for 2020 then suddenly I saw the downy woodpecker and the white-breasted nuthatch on the trees and bird feeders. It’s been like that every year, until I own the first bird/animal the rest of the world is quiet, then boom – birds and other animals everywhere.

If you think that sounds too mystical, all I can tell you is that it works that way for me. Also, we’re Wiccan, as in yes modern day Witches, which is a nature based religion, so paying attention to birds and other wildlife is a part of our faith. God and Goddess speak through nature all the time if you know how to listen.

If squirrel’s lesson for me was balancing work and play, and dove was about love and the divine feminine, what does Junco mean? My husband and I aren’t entirely certain yet. We’ll be meditating and paying attention as time goes by, but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with travel, maybe even moving. The Juncos were in a flock, so it could also be about group communications. Interpreting the lessons of nature isn’t always an exact science, but then most faith isn’t that simple, add magic and it can get a lot more complicated. So here’s to 2020, a new decade, and the year of the Junco!

The First Bird of the New Year

  
I have been a birder since high school, long before I took my first ornithology class in college for my biology degree. Yes, I mean bird watching. I’m like a ferret on crack for anything winged and flying near me. Yes, this is the same person that writes Urban Fantasy featuring Anita Blake and Meredith (Merry) Gentry. My world is not all zombies, vampires, and wereanimals, thank you, or even fairy princesses that happen to be private detectives. It’s not even just violence and sex, or is that sex and violence, sometimes I forget which order they go in. Hmm . . .
I hear crows calling, and I know that call. There’s a hawk somewhere nearby. Binoculars are sitting right here on my desk, because, yeah. I few seconds of looking near the crows and there it is. A big red-tailed hawk, beautiful bird with a paler than normal golden red tail, some can brick red almost brown, and it’s that rufous tail that gives them their name. It’s probably a female from the size alone, males are smaller. Bluejays and other tinier birds have joined the crows in harassing the hawk. They’re all doing the bird equivalent of, “Get out of our neighborhood, you trouble maker!” Though I suppose it’s more like, “Get out of our neighborhood, you killer!” Red-tails don’t normally take small birds, but they will kill and eat most anything they can catch, if they’re hungry enough. The crows and other birds aren’t taking any chances. The bluejays are even dive bombing the hawk, a few striking it on its shoulders and back, then dashing away. Brave birds, and puzzled hawk as it tries to keep its footing on branches too small for its large taloned feet. When it settles into stillness again if I look away for a moment it’s hard to find it again in the autumn leaves and dead tree branches. It’s remarkably camouflaged for a bird about the size of a toddler. 
Wait, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, I’m a birder. *laughs* There is a tradition among birders that the first bird you see on the first day of the new year will be your theme for the year. Some serious birders travel to exotic locations to stack the deck in favor of something exotic for that first bird. I was someplace exotic last year, but I honestly don’t remember my first bird. It maybe the first time in years that I didn’t make a note of it, so getting back to tradition I will be looking for my first bird of the year when I get up tomorrow.  
I’ve had years where it was starlings which are all about group communication, and squabbling if you watch them for very long. The hawk has just flown higher on the tree and is sitting so pretty. Maybe my first bird will be the red-tailed hawk and I will have a predatory year where I have to remember to aim at what I want and commit fully to getting it. If a hawk hesitates, or isn’t sure it wants that rabbi, it will miss it’s mark and go hungry. If it misses too many opportunities it will starve. Predators are all about committing fully to your goals. For two, or three years running it wasn’t a bird, because every New Year’s morning there were squirrels playing in the yard, but not a single bird moved until after I’d seen squirrels. They were always in groups of at least three and they were chasing each other, and playing. I finally figured out the message, I was supposed to balance work and play better. This was back when I was doing two big books a year, and basically was a workaholic with very little time for other things. And before someone asks, no the dogs, cat, or domestic animals you keep do not count as your first “bird” of the year. Go outside, see the real world, and find out what it has to teach you.

What Feeds Your Muse?

People ask, what inspires me, well nature inspires me. My short story, “Geese”, came from me walking out my door years ago and seeing Canadian geese settling down for the night on the shores of a lake. I have a biology degree, as well as an English degree, and I have always found equal inspiration in nature and in words. Though I think that nature feeds my soul a little bit more than it feeds my writing. What follows is my early morning. It didn’t translate into many pages for the day, but it was a mood recharging beginning, and sometimes as a writer you need that more than pages.

My first animal of the morning, besides our three dogs, was a chipmunk. How can anyone look at a chipmunk and not smile? Then worms were fleeing across the walkway, well, as fast as worms can flee. I looked to see what the disturbance was and – mole! I watched the earth heave and roll as the little digger chased worms underground. Worms, especially earthworms, are some of their favorite foods. Yes, moles disturb your lawn, but they also aerate it, which is something we pay men with machines to do, right? Why not let the mole do it for free? They will also eat harmful grubs that destroy your lawn, flowers, and vegetable garden. By the way moles have the softest fur I’ve ever touched, though today’s mole never let me see him/or her at all. I carry the memory of the mole that got into our house in Indiana like a sensory touchstone. Mole fur makes mink feel rough.

I saved one worm that got lost on the bricks, and put him away from the mole’s hunting area, and then a bird sang high and bubbling in the holly tree just beside the house. It sang out several times the sweetness of the song falling down around me as if joy could be translated into sound. I’ve checked and double checked and the small bird that I barely could glimpse through the thick branches, I believe was a field sparrow. They are supposed to like more prairie than we have in our yard, but we do have a hedgerow area, and with habitat vanishing maybe they’ve gotten more adventuresome, or maybe he was just passing through for the running water. We’re getting birds to the water that wouldn’t normally bother with suburbia. It might have been a warbler who’s song I’m unfamiliar with, but it moved more like a sparrow, and wasn’t quite as small as most of the warblers I see in this area. I’m always loathe to bird just by ear – I don’t seem to trust it without another birder to say, “Yes, that’s the song.” But for right now I think it was a Field Sparrow, and whatever bird it was, another male answered in the distance. I’ll have to check that direction and see if there’s a grassy field area. If I’m closer to the right habitat then them coming for the water makes more sense.

To top it off I had a pair of Cedar Waxwings just outside my office in the big sugar maple right by the pond. They are one of my favorite birds! I never saw any until just a few years ago. They love the water garden. One of our robins chased them off, because Waxwings are fruit eaters and so are the robins. Everyone is raising babies, so they guard their food sources.

Will any of the above translate into more story ideas? I don’t know, but one thing I’m learning is anything that fills up the tank of my energy, creativity, or happiness is useful in some way. I spent too many years trying to just write without thinking about where the creativity comes from, or what feeds my muse, what feeds me. In the last year I’ve really looked hard at that, and one of the first things that sparked that excitement that is so necessary for an artist, or a scientist was ladybugs and irises. I remember squatting in the grass by a tree, pushing the grass aside and finding a cluster of ladybugs like bright red and black jewels, so shiny in the sun when I revealed their hiding place. There were purple bearded irises growing against the white picket fence. I stood and gazed up at them as they rose above me. It was the white picket fence and irises, that my grandmother had never mentioned to me that convinced her it was a real memory. We’d rented the house so briefly that she’d almost forgotten it herself, but it bothered her that I remembered it, almost scared her, because babies under two aren’t supposed to remember details like that. I don’t remember anything else about the house, but the wonder of those tall flowers, and the cluster of insects, that first sharp smell of ladybugs as I poked at them with my fingers, that remains. Flowers, insects, birds, mammals, reptiles, all of it can still fill me with wonder and joy. It still feeds a part of me that first toddled out into the sunshine to stare up at flowers taller than I was like some pre-school Alice in Wonderland. As an artist you need to find out what feeds your inner child, because a sense of wonder needs to be a permanent part of you as an artist. I know it’s cool to get jaded and world weary like Hemingway, or Fitzgerald, and Gods know that I can get weary of the world, but if I let it make me feel jaded I lose something I need to create. It harms something I inside me if I forget to admire the beauty and life around me. Think back to your earliest happy memory, what was it? What thrilled you as a child? Usually whatever that was is something you still need in your life. It will refresh your heart, cleanse your soul of that harshness that seems to gather. It will feed your muse.

“The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; –
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away . . .”

William Wordsworth (1710-1850)

Don’t give your heart away, you need it to create, to love, to be.

The picture is of me about the same age that I saw those irises and ladybugs. That may even be the same house. That’s my mother with me. She died when I was six, and she was twenty-nine.

20140518-195349.jpg

Dawn Chorus

I did not sleep well, at all, last night. I’m still sick from the virus and sinus infection that I caught sometime last month, which went undiagnosed. Yes, I went to the doctor. I’ve slept most of the last few days. So much, in fact, apparently I can’t sleep anymore. My mind is too full of ideas, goals, things I need to do so other people can do their job to keep resting. I made myself sleep until 5 AM, but after that I allowed myself to get up and start getting dressed. If I felt wretched, then I’d go back to bed, but if I could manage it I wanted to be up.
In the bathroom as I dressed, I could hear the dawn chorus of the birds at their spring best, that spurred me on, energized me. Now, of course, the energy is ebbing and I’ve got a fine tremble in my arms as I type this, so perhaps not the smartest thing I’ve done, but . . . I called circle to the music of the birds in a choir all around me through the open windows. The cool, spring air is still caressing my bare legs in the skirt I’m wearing. I’m wearing orange and black for Halloween colors, which makes me smile, and because orange is the color for the navel chakra, and I’m wearing citrine set in gold, because those are colors that are good for the solar plexus chakra. These two chakras have been depleted, or blocked for weeks and now I know why. Sometimes I can keep pushing on sheer will power and guts, but eventually I pay the price, this illness is that price, but I push, that’s who I am. I push myself and I push those around me, not push them around, but I always want the best for and from those closest to me either in my personal life, or business. I want us all to be happy and to be the best possible us we can be, I don’t apologize for that, it’s who I am. Never apologize for who you are if it works for you and is your true self.
I called circle and entered sacred space with the moon still shining overhead in a veil of clouds, and the spring air soft on my skin, every bird in the neighborhood singing their hearts out like a blessing in the air, and darkness still thick enough that I had to light my candles carefully in the dark, so I didn’t trip over our three small dogs. For those who don’t know, I was lighting a candle for each element – earth, air, fire, and water. I also light a candle for spirit, and then invoke God and Goddess. If you haven’t guessed, I’m Wiccan, some of us use the term witch, but I do not. I find the word is too dramatic for most of the people here in the Bible belt and explaining that our path of faith is Wiccan, as they are Christian, or Jewish, or Muslim, works better than other terms. Some words are hard to separate from their past associations like witch, or inquisition.
The three small dogs were very happy that I was up and wanting to come over to the office and meditation area. They know they get treats and which drawer they’re kept in, and if they were bigger dogs they would so have had it opened and burgled months ago. I’ve caught our two Japanese chins, Keiko and Mordor, worrying at it, and trying with mouth and paws to open it. Our pug, Sasquatch, awaits his orders when they need muscle, like ramming doors that will not open. It’s given him his umpteenth nickname of Rhino. Sometimes Rhino finds doors too solidly closed and you hear a thump, and he staggers himself, but mostly he gets the doors in the older parts of the house to open, but most doors open promptly by their human staff, if they’re allowed in that room at that time.
I watched the first glow like a cut in the darkness that allowed the light to seep through, and then dawn spread in a pink, mauve, purple, lavender neon extravaganza lighting up the eastern sky just behind my eastern candle and I was able to greet the light, praise God and Goddess, though dawn always feels more feminine to me. I asked for their help in healing, and being positive while I healed, and finding the lessons that I’m supposed to be learning during all of it.
Now, the dogs are over with our daughter Trinity, who’s job it is to feed them, and I’m left to bird song and the first sounds of my neighbors rising for their days. The sun is a visible ball of fire through the trees like an orang-yellow spotlight and the sky is soft blue with clouds. I’m finishing the first tea of the day in my new chipmunk mug, and feel better than I’ve felt in two weeks. I can see the two silkie bantam hens grooming and searching for insects in the grass of their yard, and I am feeling all together domestic and biology loving, and that always makes me want to write. For those who are new to my books, or who know me only through the mirror of my books, you will find more about nature and animals in my blog and personal musings than violence, sex, vampires, or werewolves, or wereanything. I work in a world that is incredibly violent, but I try not to live there. I need the other sides of myself to nurture the parts that are drawn to the violence, and as for sex, I still haven’t decided how much of that to put here, or anywhere on line. I simply can’t decide my comfort level, so I leave it alone for the most part in these personal writings. If I find my comfort level at some point that may change, but for now there will be more of writing, ornithology, faith, and puppies in my blog than sex and sadism. If that isn’t what you want there are other writers that seem more than happy to share their most intimate details with you, or share the intimate details of others, but I am not one of them. I still feel that intimate reality is a gift to be shared with those who actually get to see you naked on purpose for happy nefariousness, not something to simple titilate and tease for more readership. Which is weird since I put more details in my books during the sex scenes than pretty much anyone out there, but that’s my fiction, and I’m comfortable with that. Don’t get me wrong, I love sex, but sharing my personal sexual details with the world, still not sure that’s a good idea, so – more of blossoms, than blow jobs, in my blog. Yes, that is a tortured reference to Dickens.
Now, I hear crows and they’re letting me know they’ve found a hawk, or perhaps the fledgling great horned owl that our pair raised this year, and I want to see what they’ve found. It sounds more like their, “We’ve found an owl, than we’ve found a hawk,”. Grabbing my binoculars . . . owl!

First Bird of the Year

Birders have a tradition that the first bird they see on New Year’s day will be their bird for the year. It’s a sort of theme for the year. Some serious birders will travel to exotic locales to try and make sure their first bird of the year is something spectacular, or at least something that they’ll be proud to knock off their life list (the list of birds they’ve seen). It’s part bragging rights for the hardcore listers, birders that seem to live for marking checks off their life list of birds. I’ve been a birdwatcher since college, but I’m not a serious lister. I’m not actually a serious birder, truth be told, but the tradition of first bird of the year is something I’ve kept, because I’ve added it to our path of faith.
We’re Wiccan, a nature based religion so it seemed a natural to use the idea of the first bird, or animal, of the year you see being a theme for the year. When I say, animal, I don’t mean your dog, cat, etc . . . unless it’s the only animal you see for hours. If you manage to not see any birds at all when there should be birds everywhere, then maybe the animal in question is your theme for the year. Two years running I saw nothing but squirrels for hours. One of the meanings of squirrel is to balance work and play, and for me I’d been doing too much work and not enough play. I’ve since fixed that imbalance with a vow last year to play as hard as I work. I’m doing it again this year, with a plan to play even more! I ended up finishing the newest Anita book earlier than I have in years, and I ended more energized and in better spirits than ever before, rather than exhausted.
So, what was my first bird of the year? It was a yellow-bellied sapsucker. Yes, it’s a real bird, not just a punchline for cartoons, or movies. I’ve only seen one of these birds ever, and it was in our backyard in the summer. It’s not a common bird here in Missouri, or at least not that I’ve seen. I’m always willing to believe that someone else’s bird viewing may vary from mine. It was a female, because of the lack of red on it’s head and neck, but even female yellow-bellied sapsuckers have some red on them, this bird had none at all. I looked up pictures of the bird and found that the juveniles can look like the females, but without red, so I thought, well than that’s it, but it wasn’t. The longer I looked at the bird, the more it’s colors looked crisp, and not dull, like the juveniles. I did some research and found that some females can have no color on their heads, and that the color is due, in part, to the bird’s diet. Western Tanager males get their amazingly bright colors from their diet, too, as other birds, as well. Cedar Waxwings’ diet can change whether they have yellow, or red, tipped feathers. Sometimes if we don’t eat enough of what’s good for us, we lose some of the color in our lives.
The above explanation is because not only did I see a yellow-bellied sapsucker, but it had to be the same female, because she had the same markings, or lack thereof. I get on the Cornell site for birds, which is always my first stop on the internet, once I’ve used my bird guides to identify the bird. Peterson’s guide is still my favorite, but I also have the Audubon guide, as well. The Cornell site has interesting facts about the birds, and I find them helpful for possible insights into what the bird might mean. Though, I go to the Ted Andrews’ books Animal-Speak, and Animal-Wise first, but if it’s a bird that’s not in the books, or I just want more possible insights from the natural behavior of the bird.
So, what does it mean that yellow-bellied sapsucker was my first bird of the year? Ted Andrews talks about it meaning that you need to pay attention to the sweetness in your life, the hidden sweetness, since sapsuckers have to drill holes in trees to get to the sap. Though unsightly the holes aren’t supposed to be harmful to the tree. Deep holes, the bird uses it’s long tongue to reach the sweetness, but they also make rectangular holes near the surface of the tree where they just remove the first layers of bark so that sap fills the hole and they lap it up, and they also eat the cambium layer of the bark, and will come back and check the holes to eat insects that come to eat the sap and are trapped in it, sort of insects in amber, when they’re still fresh and yummy. They also drill holes in very orderly patterns. Other woodpeckers will drill here and there and are attracted to dead, or insect riddled trees. Woodpeckers don’t cause insects to attack trees, they actually will eat them out of the injured bark, and help keep the tree healthy for longer, but sapsuckers feed on living trees. Dead wood has no sap, so they need living, growing trees for their food.
What I’ve taken from the above is that I need to work for the sweetness in my life. Sometimes it’s just below the surface, and sometimes it’s deeper and harder to find, but it’s worth the work, and I need it to survive. I need the sweetness and joy in my life to thrive and be happy. I know that seems self-evident, but in years past I have lost sight of that. All work and no play meets some deadlines, but eventually it uses up the writer until the very well of creativity that you counted on dries up from lack of being refilled. You can’t just take water out of the creative well, you have to either put some in, or allow the well time to fill up on its own either through rain, or water seeping up from below. Like the sapsucker there are different ways for the creative imagination to fill up; either dig deep and get the sweetness near the center, or shallow and eat the living “bark”, sweet sap, and more protein (substantive) food will be attracted to the sweetness you’ve made in the tree. I’m taking that the more I work to bring creativity and the fun things into my life, near the surface of my life so its visible and not as hidden deep in the tree, the more food I will I have, and the better I will feel, do, be. Also, that there should be more than one way for me to get sweetness into my life and my work. I need to be flexible enough to do what works, deep round holes, or shallow rectangular ones, but I still have a pattern, a rhythm, an orderliness that works for writing, and for having fun in my life. Flexible orderliness is what I’m calling it. Years ago I would be too wedded to a schedule, and anything that disrupted it threw me horribly out of my writing schedule, but I’ve learned to be more flexible, in this last year, especially, I’ve learned to go with the flow of whatever wonderful, exciting, craziness is happening in my life. This year is going to be more of the same, I think, and that’s a good thing. Also, it is significant that sapsuckers feed on living, growing trees, unlike other woodpeckers. My sweetness and creativity come from things that grow, change, and are not static. I need to embrace that and not be afraid of the growth that will come in this next twelve months. Change used to really throw me, but I’m getting better at it, and this was a message that more is coming, but it’s all good.
Now, here’s the trick to all this animal message, or totem, guide stuff. You could have seen a yellow-bellied sapsucker and taken a completely different message from it. It’s all about what feels right for you, what your inner sense of rightness tells you. Some scholars over the centuries have called it our conscience, or even the voice of God telling us what is right, what is wrong. You have to be still enough, quiet enough in your head to listen, to truly listen. If you are too busy moving around, bustling, talking, lost in activity, the message can get garbled or lost all together. As a Wiccan I believe that the power and beauty of God and Goddess is all around us, that nature is that physical manifestation of Deity. We walk through the power of creation every day. We are surrounded by miracles, but most of us hurry past and never see them. It’s the old idea that there are angels walking amongst us, but you have to be open to the possibility that they exist and are present to have any chance of seeing them. The same goes for any message from Deity, you have to listen, you have to be aware that Deity really does talk to us, not in a flare of trumpets, or a angel in white robes and huge wings, that is possible, but God isn’t so flashy most of the time, I think. I didn’t need something that spectacular, just a little black and white bird, to be reminded that I need to work for sweetness in my life in the coming year, to be flexible in my orderliness and schedule, and that some creativity would come from deep inside, but some of it would be closer to the surface, and that it would have different shapes and sizes, but it was all about keeping it organized, though to others it may look like I’m just hitting my head against a tree.
I hope everyone had fun seeing their first bird, or animal, of the year, and that whatever comes our way we see the lessons we need to learn, do the work we need to do, and walk our path this year in the most positive and productive way possible.