Trees

My Grandparents listened to a radio program called, I believe, The Bell Telephone Hour. It was an hour of music played and sung by the great artists of the day. One of the songs I remember was this Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918) poem put to music and sung by the deep and passionate voice of Paul Robeson.

There is much controversy about this poem. Published in 1913, it's arguably, not the best poem ever written, but for many people of my generation, it was a poem memorized and recited so often that it's woven into our very heart strings....we will cherish and defend it to the death!

Trees

I think that I will never see,

A poem lovely as a tree

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;


A tree that may in summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair;


Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain.


Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

This old pine that stands a little way from out back door offers shelter to any number of birds. Here a young Acorn Woodpecker works to store some tidbit in bark already riddled with storage holes. As you can see, there are still many uneaten acorns from years past tamped into place, but the urge to store and store and store is upon them. This fellow was hatched out in a hole inside a dead branch on this tree and he hasn't strayed far to fill his larder.

This pair of young Ravens were hatched high in the top of a tree at my Daughters, but they chose this tree for their daytime nursery. They would arrive fairly early in the morning and sit there all day alternately dozing and screaming for the tidbits dutifully provided by their hardworking parents. About four in the afternoon they would make their way back toward my Daughter's house. Maybe they still slept in the nest..

After about a week of this, they began flying from tree to tree, first one would fly and then the other would follow. At this stage, I noticed that a Raven would call out.."Caw-Caw." A second later another would answer, "Caw=Caw." Then one would say, "Caw=caw-caw-caw." The other would echo precisely. The parents teaching the offspring Ravenspeak? Was it a specialized twin language between the two young birds? I listened this summer and found that they did this a lot. Sometimes one would echo another and then send back a new series of caws which the first would then repeat. Maybe the repeat is a sort of verification..Ravenspeak for 'copy that.'

This sweet mother Mourning Dove brought her babe into the tree for a last feeding before dark, and this is the tree the peacock chose to roost in.

Enough rambling on........