Posts Tagged ‘nature’
nuthatch: bold acrobat
Sometimes I hear a knocking at the door and answer, to find no-one there. Instead, a nuthatch is tapping, banging a sunflower seed against the shingles. Later, he will sound off in the grey woods, ‘yank, yank, yank.’ He is one of my favourite birds: the red-breasted nuthatch, Sitta canadensis.
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This nuthatch is slightly smaller and has a shorter beak than its cousin, the white-crested nuthatch. We have both but the white-breasted species has a faster-repeating ‘song’ to announce its territory.
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The red-breasted nuthatch has a reddish orange breast, a short tail, and sturdy feet and bill. It has a white eyebrow and a black line on either side of its eye. Perhaps its neatest trick is to walk upside down on branches, head downwards.
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In my poetry book, mnemonic: soundscape and bird song, I pay tribute to the red-crested nuthatch in a couple of poems. Here is a stanza from ‘woodland mnemonic’ …
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nuthatch, bored, pulls
endless rope, yank, yank, yank
hangs upside-down, beats
a seed against the shingles
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In the book are 53 poems about bird song and other sounds in nature, and 15 illustrations of birds found in New Brunswick. Some poems are merely descriptive, others see bird calls and songs as metaphors for various life events. For a copy, contact Chapel Street Editions here, or Amazon.ca here.
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“An orchestra of other surrounding sounds prompt the author’s poetic rendering, revealing a world chock-full of interesting information for those alert to its resonance. mnemonic offers a doorway in which to first stand, and then engage a journey from poem to poem into the author’s immersive experience of the great world’s soundscapes and birdsong.”
– publisher’s comments on the book
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Enjoy your day and take a little time to watch our neighbours, the birds, and listen to their songs.
All my best
Jane
Rock Project: update
News about my ‘rock project.’ We have been building a side road to our driveway, to serve as a turn-about and also a walking trail. I have been working on embellishments for the last few years. For more about the ‘rock project’ click here.
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I bought a cement bench for our side road! I had put my name in for one at Scott’s Nursery and when I went to get seeds this week, it had arrived. The fine staff at Scott’s put it into the truck for me (it is very heavy). At home, my husband lifted the two pedestals and placed them in the chosen spot. Then he rigged two straps around the flat seat and lifted it into place with the tractor. We had prepared a bench platform, but after the wind storm, it is still filled with downed trees!
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I had my first sit on the bench after it was stable. On a hot day, it was so cool to sit on! Now I have more incentive to go for walks around the ‘loop.’
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All my best!
Jane
three robin’s nests
A robin has built three nests on the ladder leaning against our garage! The top two are well-formed and intact. The lower nest looks disarranged, as though construction was abandoned or a predator has pulled it apart.
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Bird nests are built during a period of a few days using grasses and twigs, mud for a lining. They are used for incubation of eggs and brooding of young. Adult robins don’t use the nest as a bed, but roost on a tree branch. For a great description of how the nest is built, see allabout birds.org.
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We have watched the nests on the ladder, but there is no sign of eggs or baby birds. Every day, we hear the robin singing nearby, ‘cheery, cheer-up, cheer-up, cheeree.’ I hear the robin singing as I type!
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If you love birds and enjoy watching them through the seasons, you might like my new poetry book: ‘mnemonic: soundscape and birdsong.’ The book includes 53 poems about birdsong, bird behaviour, my experiences with birds, birdsong as a life metaphor, and celebration of other sounds in nature. I have also included 15 of my black and white drawings of birds. To get your copy of the book, click here to go to Chapel Street Edition’s (the publisher’s) website. If you would like to purchase the book on Amazon, click here. You can also find my book in several New Brunswick bookstores, including Westminster Bookmark in Fredericton and Dog Eared Books in Oromocto.
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I want to write a story about the robin building nests in our ladder. I have decided to write a third book in my children’s books about ‘Wink.’ The first of these is ‘Wink in the Rain’ (available here), a story about a garden elf and his adventures in finding the perfect umbrella. The second book, ‘Wink and the Missing Sidewalk Chalk,’ a story of the hunt for a thief in the garden, will be published later this year. The story about ‘Wink and the Garden Ladder’ is written and I will soon be doing its illustrations.
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Will our robin use the nests on the ladders to raise a family? I will keep you up to date.
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All my best!
Jane
bookmarks and dog ears: new poetry
Hi everyone. I have been working on a new project, honouring bookmarks, such an important part of our reading life. I will be exploring the humble bookmark in poetry and drawings.
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In Oromocto in New Brunswick, we have a wonderful second-hand bookstore, Dog Eared Books. When used books are brought to the store, staff save the bookmarks they find. My project is to capture some of these in a book-length manuscript. To learn more about this project, click here.
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I am about five weeks into the project and I am having a very rewarding time. The bookmarks are diverse in character and I have had to learn a lot about subjects quite new to me. Just an idea of the variety I have encountered:
- class notes on ways of presenting arguments in the field of logic;
- a hockey card of one of the Soviet players in the 1970’s;
- a chart showing the Queens and Kings of England;
- a local teacher’s permit from 1959;
- a bookmark from Owl’s Nest Bookstore in Fredericton (now closed);
- a stack of small cards made for a game of charades;
- a card with the number ‘150’ — from an Irish dance feis competition.
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These are only a few of the collection.
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Because I love bookstores, the bookmark from the Owl’s Nest Bookstore was of interest. The word ‘bibliosma’ refers to the smell or aroma of books. The books I mention in the poem were in the bookshelves of the store in the weeks before it closed, evidenced by their Facebook posts and photos.
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bibliosma
‘… went all the way to Fredericton to buy this old book’
-saying on a bookmark
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Owl’s Nest Bookstore
grey cat purrs in the window
prowls between stacks
while I search for wildflowers
careful steps between hardwoods
lifting of leaves, counting of petals
rummage for botany among
overflowing shelves of books
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first find, hardcover, dark green, old
1919 Botany of the Living Plant
Frederick Orphen Bower, botanist,
lover of ferns
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and here, The Wildflowers of Canada—1895
a reprint classic, on the cover, scant
specimen of golden chain tree ‘Laburnum,’
scentless but inside—heady smell
of mayflower, lily of the valley, lilac—
colour plates of wildflowers
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and a hardcover, The Blossom on the Bough: A Book of Trees
Diane Ophelia Dowden, 1826
delicate apple blossom overcomes
almond and vanilla smell of books
three bees buzz, overpower
rumble of traffic on Queen Street
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copies of The Fiddlehead
my poems in some of them
‘Old Man’s Beard’ The Fiddlehead 180, 1994‘
‘The Gazing Ball’ The Fiddlehead 196, 1998
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find the book
you didn’t know you wanted
at the bottom of a pile
glimpse of indigo shimmer of water
No Faster Than a Walk
Gillis and Gillis
love covered bridges
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book on the top shelf
always
a
stretch
Gavin Maxwell
Ring of Bright Water
‘it is no will-o’-the-wisp
that I have followed here’
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book store closed in 2018
blue and white bookmark
left between pages
sketch of an owl
memory of a grey cat
a forest of books
bibliosma
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I hope if you are from the Fredericton area, you remember the Owl’s Nest Bookstore. And I hope you enjoy my poem.
All my best!
Jane
the rock project: plans for 2024
As I have said in past posts, one of our long term projects on our property has been to develop a woods side road to be a turning loop for the driveway and an easy walking trail for me.
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This year, I have three things to do to move the ‘rock project’ a little more towards completion.
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1. Clean-up of wind storm debris:
- Over the past winter, we have had a couple of storms that made a shambles of our ‘walking loop.’ After the wind storm on December 18 and 19th, 2023, we had 18 softwood trees fall across the roadway! After a little chain saw work, the roadway is clear again, but it may never return to the tidy woods we once had. I am a biologist and I realize that trees are always falling in the forest, but I think we will do some clean-up. Just putting branches and bigger tree chunks into brush piles in the woods will suit me well, because I know animals will use a decaying pile for shelter and habitat. My plan is to gather stray branches and sticks when I go for my walks around the ‘loop.’ I will deliver them to a convenient brush pile and get my exercise at the same time.
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and to the right
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2. Collection of a few more rocks for the rock wall:
- On every drive we take, I bring back a souvenir rock from a ditch, a bit of landscape to contribute to our ‘rock project.’ I have always loved aspects of geology. I understand the role of landscape, and geomorphology in our lives. When we go on drives, we think about the terrain we move within. Since New Brunswick has a glacial history, I know that elements of landscape have glacial origins … small hills are parts of eskers, the sediments once deposited by rivers and streams flowing within a melting glacier. Some elements of landscape display a sedimentary history … as we drive, we see cuts through bedrock, exposed when the highway was built. The rocks we collect remind me of our many drives through the New Brunswick landscape.
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3. Continue creating interesting stops along the walk:
- this year we want to purchase a concrete bench for the loop, at the half-way mark. I have my name for one at Scotts Nursery, to arrive in a week or so. I also want to improve the small stone pile where my iron lantern sits to make it more like the stone platform I made last year for two small meal birds.
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If you would like to see more about the history of our ‘rock project’ have a look here.
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All my best!
Jane (a.k.a. Alexandra)
a life-list first: sandhill cranes
As the result of a posting on Facebook (in New Brunswick Birders), my husband and I took a drive to the Canaan Forks area of New Brunswick to see if we could see any of the sandhill cranes spotted there. We had given up on finding them and were on the road out of the area when my husband spotted two in a field between us and the river. I wish I was a better photographer: they were so elegant and deliberate, walking the edge of the field. As they walked and fed, their legs and necks were in a strange sort of synchrony. They appear quite ‘muscular’ and could be confused with a deer if their heads are down feeding.
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Both birds had the red patch on the front of the head. They stayed together, turning to retrace their steps when they came to a small ditch between fields.
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The sandhill crane (Antigone canadensis) can now be added to my life list!!!!!
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Have fun watching the birds now returning from their migrations!
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All my best,
Jane
soundscape and birdsong
These last two weeks have been fun for bird watchers. I saw my first dark-eyed junco, just back from a winter spent to the south. I also heard that lovely, impossible-to-imitate song of a winter wren. And I have cleaned up our feeding area so the spring birds will be easier to watch.
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This weekend, I am looking forward to talking with other bird watchers about my new poetry book ‘mnemonic – soundscape and birdsong.’
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I am looking forward to the event, hosted by the folks at the L.P Fisher Public Library, who have been so supportive of my writing through the years! Wish you could come and hear me read …
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All my best!
Jane
an alien flora
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soon! a new children’s alphabet book
On my list of goals for the year is a project I haven’t talked about before. A friend and I have been working on her new book, A Child’s Botanical Alphabet.
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I have known Jenn for years, since we both worked on Fredericton’s WordFeast in 2017. Jennifer Houle is a seasoned author, with two award-winning poetry collections, The Back Channels and Virga (Signature Editions). Her first children’s book, Un logis pour Molly/A Home for Molly, was published by Éditions Bouton d’Or Acadie in summer of 2022 in both French and English.
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Here is what Jenn is saying about A Child’s Botanical Alphabet:
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This book started out as a little rhyme I made up for my boys when they were toddlers. I loved teaching them to name common flowers & trees around the yard & neighbourhood. Having a vocabulary for things helps deepen imagination, sense of relatedness. I imagined it as a book that caregivers could read with children as they explored … the pages are meant to be coloured on & leaves & flowers pressed between pages. So it’s a book meant to be used. Oh! And there are Luna Moths fluttering throughout. . .presiding spirits.
Jennifer Houle, Facebook, March 20, 2024
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When Jenn asked me to do the illustrations for her book, I said yes because I loved the concept and I had some suitable pencil drawings already done. I knew from the start I wanted the illustrations to be in colour, so I did my first work of this sort in the digital world. I used GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) to colourize each pencil drawing. I have learned so much about colour and its presentation. Jennifer was easy to work with, so in spite of some learning curves, we are very happy with the result.
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As we work on the last small edits, we are excited to see A Child’s Botanical Alphabet in its final form and show it to you. Stayed tuned for more information!
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All my best,
Jane
‘outside-in’
In the last few days, I was at the home of a friend and recognized a painting on her wall. I painted it years ago, in 2015, in a still life phase of my art. The things included in the painting were possessions I love and still have, mostly depictions of items normally found outside: a marble egg, a book of wild plant identification, two statuettes of mushrooms from my collection, a seashell from my Dad’s collection, a chunk of amethyst, a special fern-embossed candle holder and candle I keep on our mantle, red berries from our berry bush, and in the background, the fern curtains from our living room.
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I looked up the others I had done in the series, all still life. No. 2 was a painting of the stained glass window in our house (I can see it from where I am sitting). Included in the still life are my hollow silver bird, my large glass jar, filled with potpourri, and a stack of plant identification books. The pine cones in the painting are from our yard … every year this time the big pine releases its cones in tight, sticky packages. After they sit in the sun a few days, they dry and open, releasing their seeds.
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The first in the series was called ‘Outside-in’ and depicted the large green resin dragon I keep among my indoor plants. It also shows my moss garden inside its glass cloche. I makes me sad to see the vines of my Mom’s lipstick plant which died a few years ago.
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In these days of de-cluttering and getting rid of things, I am glad to still have all the items in the paintings (except the vine). However, the paintings themselves are no longer with me, sold in Isaac Way’s Art Auction in Fredericton. Who purchased them? I only know the whereabouts of the one in the home of my friend.
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Perhaps I will be inspire to do a 4th painting in the still life series, depicting some of the other things I love. We will see.
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All my best,
Jane (a.k.a.) Alexandra
nichepoetryandprose 