I Love Birds!

Give me some bird song, and my spirits are instantly lifted, I don't know what it is, but there's nothing like a few birds chirping at the window to make everything seem just fine and dandy with me. The return of some of our bird populations this week, flying up from the south and settling into the vines and trees near the front door, make spring seem not so far off. Of course this isn't California, where spring really DOES begin in mid-February, still our new seasonal residents are sing gloriously away and I am beginning to dream of warmer days.

One of my favorite bird poems is this by Gerald Manley Hopkins: 

The Windhover

I caught this morning morning's minion, king-

dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding

Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding

High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing

In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,

As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend the hurl and gliding

Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird -- the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here

Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, 

Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.