Nonfiction stories dealing with surviving harsh rural winters appeal to me — a peculiar penchant. I also have an affinity for the music of Russian composers, eg. Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Mussorgsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich. A parallel? Chopin, too, is a favorite, and he’s from Poland — right up there, along with Schumann, a German.
Category Archives: nature writing
Bird Man
The Bird Man is on the move. He’s wearing a sweat jacket and a ball cap because it’s cold. It’s 38 degrees this morning, and typically, such as during summer, the Bird Man will wear only an old white T-shirt that you and I might demote to rag status, as well as jeans that noContinue reading “Bird Man”
Summer casualties
Everything colorful was gone from the woman’s flower beds, despite all her ardent work. The summer just wouldn’t allow anything other than perennial green now. Listening to Chopin’s tender Nocturnes as dusk descended, I gazed into her yard at a wheelbarrow holding slender planks of oak she had acquired for a trellis. A large ceramicContinue reading “Summer casualties”
An uptick in butterflies
The butterfly was not a butterfly but two fallen leaves. I had been seeing butterflies a lot lately, and so I thought this was yet another encounter. Recently my local Cooperative Extension made an announcement on Facebook that there was an uptick in the insects’ numbers in the Las Vegas area. Now I wish IContinue reading “An uptick in butterflies”
Otherworldly mountain
This photo I took yesterday in Kyle Canyon, Nevada, reminds me of Close Encounters.
Birds, eggs & other journal notes
Mourning Doves: Their brains register the task of parenting Together they build a sloppy nest The eggs are laid — typically two After the eggs hatch, the father and mother alike feed their nestlings with milk They eventually offer plant seeds from their beaks (mourning doves eat mostly seeds) The hatchlings grow strong and go on to singContinue reading “Birds, eggs & other journal notes”
2 great-tailed grackles
Lately I’ve become quite the nature aficionado, specifically regarding the flora & fauna in my community. The other day I spotted 2 great-tailed grackles trading courtship calls from polar opposite ends of a Washoe pine. I thought it quite amusing since these are raucous birds with shrill cries, obscenely long beaks for their body sizeContinue reading “2 great-tailed grackles”
