But in the meantime, I can’t resist sharing just a couple (out of many!) of the sights from this morning’s walk with the girls.

Dame's Rocket

Glory the Oriole (named by the Burgess Bird Book)

Rattles the Kingfisher

We stumbled upon another nesting site, this one belonging to a red-bellied woodpecker.

There was a great blue heron fishing, and  green herons are back now too.

There were other wildflowers and ferns, yellow warblers, and two new kinds of vireos (to me) — warbling and white-eyed. We saw some turtles, as well as one “accidental” Eurasian bird, a greenshank.

Tree swallows swooped everywhere; Younger Daughter worked hard to get a photo of one in flight, and Older Daughter labored for the perfect yellow warbler picture.

It was the best possible way to spend the morning.

Mrs. Robin has laid a full clutch of eggs under our noses. Her nest is awfully near the ground, and awfully near the front door. But we’re all on the alert against predators and have even altered our lifestyle to the extent of letting the dog out the back door instead of the front door to avoid spooking her. I wish her all the best… she’s settled in on full incubation duty now.

I was beginning to think that the pileated woodpecker nest we’d found was not active after all, but the other day when I checked on it, I witnessed the parents changing shifts.

The female arrived...

...and the male flew away.

They must have nestlings in there now. It’s a deep cavity; I could see no trace of the adult bird in there before he flew away, much less youngsters. Maybe when they get a little bigger.

Last but not least under the Nestwatch category was this visit by Mrs. Oriole yesterday. She was plucking mane strands from the tire-horse on our rusty old swingset.

I wish her well. John Burroughs writes in “The Tragedies of the Nests” of a young oriole that was strangled by one of the strands in its nest. I hope Mrs. Oriole’s family fares better. The male has been serenading the neighborhood, and between him and the rose-breasted grosbeak the air is full of music.

First edition cover, 1955

I’ve been rereading this first part of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. I liked the movies, but they have wholly paved over my own first experience of the books. I wanted to go back and perform a work of imaginative restoration.

I can’t begin to say how great it is to be journeying with the fellowship again — though of course, the fellowship at this point is breaking up, or greatly reduced, as Frodo and Sam launch together in their elven boat toward Mordor.

One aspect of reading vs. viewing: I can pause and think about the story. It results in a longer enterprise, one in which Tolkien’s world seeps into my perspective over a course of days. It stays with me. I like that. My day-to-day life has felt very ho-hum; I needed this book that reaches deep into the themes of real heroism, and the battle of good and evil, and the tang of life with risk and danger and great reward, to enliven me.

Some of the things that strike me:

*Gandalf. He is the archetypal mentor, one we’d all love to know: wise, old yet vigorous, full of surprises. He goes into the abyss on behalf of the fellowship. And the scene where he battles the Balrog in Moria — a battle not of wits or strength, but of knowledge and authority — never gets old for me.

*History. Gandalf and other wizards, Elrond and other elves, even Sauron — these are characters that populate the landscape of Middle Earth, characters who have lived literally for ages. Their knowledge of history is close to the bone because they have lived through it and seen events with their own eyes, then been given the privilege of learning from it. What a world it would be to have that dimension! In a way we do, through books; we can learn from “those who have gone before.” We can interact, through our reading of old books, with great minds that perished before we were born. But in Middle Earth they still breathe and laugh and talk back. They are still at work putting their knowledge into action, protecting borders, discerning threats, speaking into the fray.

*Elves. Another appealing aspect of Tolkien’s world is the variety of beings there, each very distinct — hobbits, men, dwarves, elves, wizards. The elves are the elevated class, rich in poetry and song, in beauty and wisdom. Yet they are also quite earth-ward in their giftedness; the elves of Mirkwood and Lothlorien belong fully to the woods. They live there without leaving any imprint or scar, and they love the natural world and know it intimately. They are skilled not just in the more ethereal arts of epic poetry and music, but in the practical arts of rope-making, boat-making, waybread-making. At the root they are beings who are keenly attentive to nature. Tolkien’s idea of wisdom is very this-worldly as it’s depicted in the elves.

*The ring. What a concept — a device by which evil enslaves all, activating its power through lesser gifts. There’s just a lot to think about there.

Last time I read LOTR -- it's beside me on the couch, temporarily set aside for another great work of literature!

Because I don’t have tons of reading time these days, I borrowed a library copy of an unabridged audio recording of the book. This has helped me to make faster progress, because I can listen while I’m making supper, supplementing my time among the pages. The girls have been listening as well, and it’s been neat to see their response.

Younger Daughter emerged from her room yesterday with a map she’d made, filled with perilous woods and mountains, and a carefully threaded dotted line tracing the route through the obstacles. She’d invented her own parallel story to Tolkien’s, one with a different mission and different obstacles, but one that clearly shows the book’s impact on her imagination.

Older Daughter gives me periodic progress reports and plot summaries, and I’m always amazed by her depth of insight into what’s really at stake in the story. When I eavesdrop on the girls’ play, I hear it again.

I have mixed feelings about audiobooks. They raise the question of whether I want to instill a love for stories, or a love for books. Listening gives a very different experience than reading, though it shares some key elements. The girls do open the book to pore over the maps. I hope they will read it themselves one day, drinking in the visual experience, the internal quality, and the slower pacing of wading through words. But for now, I’m grateful that there is an unabridged recording of the book, because it allows the girls to move through it more quickly than if they were dependent on my reading aloud.

He’s a good-sized bird with a rich, cinnamon-colored back and an incredible repertoire of song phrases. When we read about him, we learned that he’s a shy bird who usually stays hidden in the bushes, but he can be seen singing over his territory in the spring. Both days we were there, he was perched in the same tree, singing his heart out.

Brown thrashers eat insects, seeds, fruit, and small amphibians which they forage for on or near the ground. They are related to mockingbirds and catbirds and are said to have the largest song repertoire of any North American bird. After listening for awhile, I believe it! Our Smithsonian Handbook makes me smile in its description of the way the male “sings conversation-like phrases of hello, hello, yes, yes, who is this? Who is this? I should say, I should say, with the varied phrases being given in two’s and three’s.” Over 1,100 song types have been recorded for this one bird!

As we watched, two catbirds landed in the same tree and seemed to listen curiously. Then a male Baltimore oriole did the same thing. The thrasher was unperturbed, but he never gave anyone else an opening in the conversation — just kept up his unbroken stream of cheerful volubility.

The second day, I took some video. There are other noises — yellow warblers, red-winged blackbirds, engine noises. When the chime on my phone sounds, it almost sounds like a noise the thrasher could make if he wanted to!

We really enjoyed making the acquaintance of this bird. I hope the season will see the successful rearing of a brood of chatterboxes just like him!

The brown thrasher is discussed (briefly) in chapter 30 of the Burgess Bird Book. It’s online here. I agree with Peter Rabbit:

“Did I hear him sing!” cried Peter, his eyes shining at the memory. “He sang especially for me. He flew up to the top of a tree, tipped his head back and sang as few birds I know of can sing. He has a wonderful voice, has Brownie. I don’t know of anybody I enjoy listening to more. And when he’s singing he acts as if he enjoyed it himself and knows what a good singer he is…”