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Three Little Birds

Published May 29, 2020

I, Bernie Harberts, did not use generative AI to write or illustrate this article. Spell check and grammar check, yes. AI, no.

Bird One

Julia said, “I think something’s wrapped around its leg,” and opened her fingers for me to see. In her hand a phoebe with a piece of string wrapped around its foot.

I clipped off the thread with the scissors on my multi-tool. It flew away. Can’t say it was happy. We were, though.

A phoebe perched near Bernie Harberts' tractor shed — The phoebe, also known as the eastern flycatcher. Voracious insect eaters, they love building nests in the tractor shed, right above my Tacoma pickup.

Bird Two

I took a break from writing my book. It was raining. I was restless. Took a peek out of the curtains and there it was, one of the birds on Roger Tory Peterson’s “A Field Guide to the Birds East of the Rockies”. The first rose-breasted grosbeak I’d ever seen.

A rare visitor to these parts, Peterson describes the bird as resembling the robin, “but mellower, given with more feeling (as if a Robin has taken voice lesson.)” Our rose-breasted grosbeak just sat there in the rain pecking at the cheap bird feed.

A rose-breasted grosbeak visiting Bernie Harberts' homestead in the rain

Bird Three

This one appeared on a white sheet of paper in Julia’s studio. She was writing a friend a letter and included this painting of the common blue jay.

Common but magnificent. Take another look.

Julia Carpenter's painting of a blue jay — Re-examine the blue jay (Julia Carpenter).

Pony Pickle and mules Brick, Cracker and Polly grazing at Bernie Harberts' homestead — The homestead. Grazing out front, pony Pickle and mules Brick, Cracker and Polly.

Have a great weekend. Keep an eye out for the birds.

More about life up Shoe Box Canyon: Around the Homestead.

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One Response to Three Little Birds

Christian Harberts on May 30, 2020 at 10:42 am

I have a bird story too! A juvenile European sparrow had been struggling to follow its parents around on the bushes and feeder in place on our balcony. Incessant begging, “shivering” its wings to get attention, food, anything, in that fraught time just after flying the nest. The parents kind of helped, while stocking up themselves. The youngster, awkward, stressed, clumsy, every bit the teen who knows that the big world awaits.

When I next passed by the window and peeked out, the youngster was floofed out on the balcony border, just chilling, precisely like a squirrel flattened out on a limb on a hot day. He looked like a fluffy chocolate chip cookie baking in the oven, with a tail and a beak! I laughed out loud…

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