Hey tweets, I dodged hailstones, rain and sunshine today at the Fill in a
whirlwind of summer/winter/summer/winter that flashed by as quickly as the
passing clouds. Impossible to dress for such a day. But it was all worth it
as I watched my favorite little Anna's perching gamely atop a twig thrashing
in the wind. The little guy stuck his gorget bravely into the breeze,
reminding me of a poem I once had to memorize in high school. I quote
(keeping in mind that high school was 35 years ago, and with apologies to
Kipling):

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can cling to branches and keep your perch too,
Or fly with crows -- nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor fickle females can hurt you,
If all bugs count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of nectar-sucking fun,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And -- which is more -- you'll be a bird, my son.

Yes, I'm afraid that the Turneresque weather today has made it a day for
poetry. (I hope my husband is sitting down when he reads this, because he
knows that a poetry day for me occurs roughly once in a blue moon.)

All kidding aside, I did see real poetry in motion today: two bald eagle
dancing across the sky, soaring and locking claws, tumbling and locking
claws again. Ah, love.

Also on view: hooded mergansers in breeding plumage; paired-up geese
beginning to hiss; flickers doing their flick call and bobbing their bills;
and yellow-rumped warblers getting brighter and brighter.

Here's everything I found today:

pied-billed grebe
double-crested cormorant
Canada geese (including lots of little cacklers)
mallard
gadwall
green-winged teal
American wigeon
northern shoveler
ruddy duck
ring-necked duck
greater scaup
bufflehead
hooded merganser
common merganser
American coot
ring-billed gull
glaucous-winged gull
bald eagle (3 of them)
red-tailed hawk
rock pigeon
Anna's hummingbird
northern flicker
American crow
black-capped chickadee
marsh wren
Bewick's wren
American robin
European starling
yellow-rumped warbler
spotted towhee
white-crowned sparrow
golden-crowned sparrow
red-winged blackbird
house finch - Connie, Seattle

csidles at isomedia.com