Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature --if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you --know that the morning and spring of your life are past. Thus may you feel your pulse.
~ ~ Henry David Thoreau
If you can imagine my joy: yesterday I could not believe my eyes, and of course I couldn't get the camera to focus as it fixated upon the window pane, but you can see the shape, the colors.
You can see it, can't you? The bluebird! I have been waiting for years, hoping one day they would come to visit and make this their home. We even put up a house specifically for them.
This morning at dawn he returned, and he and a white-crowned sparrow fed at the ground below the feeder outside my studio window, each keeping a distance between. Several attempts were made to visit the feeder, but the tentative behavior had him feeding at ground level until he flew away. Will he return?
It doesn't take much to bring a smile to my face. I do believe he's scoping us out, making an assessment. What do you think? Will he raise his family here?He couldn't find a more loving place to be.
Moments ago he returned to sing me a song.
Update: Today, Tuesday May 24: Sweetbay identified our bluebird as a Lazuli Bunting rather than a Western Bluebird. Thank you, Sweetbay! Even this Oregon Nature Examiner at first identified incorrectly. According to him, Oregon has three blue birds: the Lazuli (Indigo Blue) Bunting, the Mountain Blue Bird and the most common is the Western Blue Bird. What would we do without our internet friends?
