20 September 2026 (seaside goldenrod)

sun on goldenrod the flicker’s fanned tail

10 September 2026 (blustery morning)

blustery morning

a panicked flicker

then the hawk

30 September 2023 (promises)

promises to keep

a trailside flicker feather

points south

5 October 2022 (migrating)

migrating flickers . . .

the burning bush

fully engaged

1 October 2022 (first frost)

first frost

a flicker perches

on a propane tank

11 May 2022 (unfurling ferns)

unfurling ferns . . .

a pair of flicker feathers

flags the trail

18 June 2019 (flickers)

laughter

down by the river

a pair of flickers

September 28: NE winds up to 25 MPH

atop Lighthouse Hill

windblown thoughts scatter

flickers across the meadow

Posted with Blogsy

May 1: May Day

May Day, or Beltane--the pagan holiday celebrating the fertility of the verdant earth. This morning a Red-bellied Woodpecker was chirring repeatedly in the yard while I ate breakfast. Now a flicker's staccato whinny, cardinal's sputtering, and always the titmouse's incessant, loud whistles. The lawn greens in this vernal sunlight, bulbs bloom, buds swell. So much going on out there right now, the "season for loving."

Woodpecker calling
with uplifting urgency:
May Day! I need you!

July 3: Knee high by the 4th of July

"Knee high by the 4th of July" refers to the height one's corn should be by now, if I'm remembering right. For me, it referred to the height of the grass in my backyard before I finally mowed it this evening. Each summer I seem to go longer before mowing, enjoying the various phases of flowers--first the little violets and forget-me-nots, later the daisies and hawkweed. At this point, the flowers had been subsumed by ferns and tall, feathery grasses, and I decided I wanted a cleaner look. Also, I wanted to be able to sit in my backyard without succumbing to an asthma attack from breathing all that grass-dust.

It felt a bit like mowing a hay field, except no bird's nests or baby rabbits were harmed in the process--though I half expected some creature to startle up in front of the mower. I did mow a blue jay feather, which felt wrong somehow, but disturbed nothing else larger than a moth. Still, the neighborhood flicker is calling over and over now, as if in alarm.

Good old sweaty work--
lawn so high it's like haying.
I should have a scythe.

September 21: Flocks of Flickers

On this eve of the Autumnal Equinox, fall is making its arrival felt. For the first time I noticed a few patches of red amid the green carpeting the Mount Megunticook ridge. Mornings are chilly. And migrating flickers are everywhere. I think I saw or heard one every time I went out the office door. I heard them while enjoying lunch on a friend's porch in the lovely late summer sun in Rockport. I saw their white-patched rumps bobbing into the bushes here and there as I ran errands and watched one eating berries from a bush at one stop. And to top it off this flicker-full day, a friend sent me a beautiful photo he'd recently taken of a flicker:

Photo by Karl Gerstenberger: kegerstenberger.zenfolio.com

Derek Lovitch, a bird biologist based in Freeport, keeps track of migrating birds passing over Sandy Point, on Cousins Island in Yarmouth. He actually counts everything he sees each morning he's there. His previous high count of flickers on a single morning during fall migration was 105. This morning's total, during what Derek refers to as an "EPIC, Record-shattering Sandy Point Morning Flight": 1,092! Flickers made up the highest percentage of all the birds that flew over, with 334 cedar waxwings bringing up a distant second. So flickers are on the move en masse, and the falcons are right behind them... Can you feel that energy in the air?

Last day of summer.
Flocks of flickers flee the fall,
falcons on their tails.