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If that mockingbird don't sing
Apr. 2nd, 2012 03:19 am
Currently at Toronto Pearson: 3. High today: 6. Ice pellets intermittently this afternoon.
Yesterday evening, a little after seven, standing on the GO train platform, I was looking up into the deep blue for Venus, trying to see if it can be made out even in broad(ish) daylight. I thought I heard a kestrel, so I looked away, and saw it perched on a rooftop looking over a field, and then thought maybe it sounded like a nighthawk ... and then a robin, and a blue jay, and a cardinal, and a sparrow, and probably several car alarms. This was the second time in my life I've listened to a mockingbird, though I didn't know they were mockingbirds until today, when I looked up catbirds--which, for some reason, I'd decided the first one was--and realized that it didn't seem to be one of those. Why didn't I think the first one was a mockingbird? (Why do I so often think of kestrels? Once I thought, as people do, that one of those kestrels at York, the first one I noticed, was a peregrine falcon. You make do with the concepts you've got. Sometimes they're too grand, and sometimes they're too small. But you need to grab on--the oldest root of "concept", like "capable", has to do with grasping--with something, for a start; the trick is to not keep clutching when you should know it doesn't fit. Kestrels come first to my mind now because of some day some years ago when I was hanging around the steps of some church on College Street, waiting for someone or something, watching and listening to a kestrel wheeling around and around way up in the sky. At least, I suppose that's why they do; that's what I've got to suppose with.) I can only guess I assumed there weren't any mockingbirds around here. (Back in highschool, my best friend was adamant that he had seen an oriole in the park near his house, which I used to go far out of my way home to walk through every day. I mocked him for this; there aren't any orioles around here. Well, in fact, there are, at least sometimes. Still, if you think you've seen one, you've probably actually seen a redstart. I still wonder which it was. L. and I once saw a budgie hanging out with a flock of sparrows.) Wikipedia and Audobon both have southern Ontario as the northern part of the northern mockingbird's breeding range; apparently, in recent years, they've been at least passing through if not resident in the winter, too.
The juncos are still here. The squirrels have ripped down my pink plastic baffle; it was either that or they were going to chew right through it, eventually. The dandelions have not in fact bloomed yet, and I think it's safe to say that if they didn't bloom this March, they never bloom in March. So, three months a year the dandelions never bloom in Toronto.
Yesterday evening, a little after seven, standing on the GO train platform, I was looking up into the deep blue for Venus, trying to see if it can be made out even in broad(ish) daylight. I thought I heard a kestrel, so I looked away, and saw it perched on a rooftop looking over a field, and then thought maybe it sounded like a nighthawk ... and then a robin, and a blue jay, and a cardinal, and a sparrow, and probably several car alarms. This was the second time in my life I've listened to a mockingbird, though I didn't know they were mockingbirds until today, when I looked up catbirds--which, for some reason, I'd decided the first one was--and realized that it didn't seem to be one of those. Why didn't I think the first one was a mockingbird? (Why do I so often think of kestrels? Once I thought, as people do, that one of those kestrels at York, the first one I noticed, was a peregrine falcon. You make do with the concepts you've got. Sometimes they're too grand, and sometimes they're too small. But you need to grab on--the oldest root of "concept", like "capable", has to do with grasping--with something, for a start; the trick is to not keep clutching when you should know it doesn't fit. Kestrels come first to my mind now because of some day some years ago when I was hanging around the steps of some church on College Street, waiting for someone or something, watching and listening to a kestrel wheeling around and around way up in the sky. At least, I suppose that's why they do; that's what I've got to suppose with.) I can only guess I assumed there weren't any mockingbirds around here. (Back in highschool, my best friend was adamant that he had seen an oriole in the park near his house, which I used to go far out of my way home to walk through every day. I mocked him for this; there aren't any orioles around here. Well, in fact, there are, at least sometimes. Still, if you think you've seen one, you've probably actually seen a redstart. I still wonder which it was. L. and I once saw a budgie hanging out with a flock of sparrows.) Wikipedia and Audobon both have southern Ontario as the northern part of the northern mockingbird's breeding range; apparently, in recent years, they've been at least passing through if not resident in the winter, too.
The juncos are still here. The squirrels have ripped down my pink plastic baffle; it was either that or they were going to chew right through it, eventually. The dandelions have not in fact bloomed yet, and I think it's safe to say that if they didn't bloom this March, they never bloom in March. So, three months a year the dandelions never bloom in Toronto.
