Back to the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge today -- foggy, showery, very few people, everything gold/gray/maroon/brown. Beautiful. Very quiet except for bird calls and rain dripping from leaves. Spring is thinking about springing though. The California Hazelnut shrubs are flowering (as fellow hay fever sufferers may already be aware) and new green grass shoots were everywhere we looked.
I took this photo of a Great Blue Heron hunting in the marsh. I was amused to read in The Birder's Handbook: A Field Guide to the Natural History of North American Birds the following description of the courtship display of male Great Blue Herons: "neck stretch and fluff, circle flight, twig shake." What girl can resist a good twig shake?
Today's front yard critter count:
Raccoons:
Morning: 2 teenagers
Evening: all 7 teenagers
Deer: 0
P.S. to Pat Robertson: Dear Pat, what are we going to do with your bad theology, your hard heart,and your big mouth? Here's what I suggest. Put U2's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb on your iPod, scroll to the song "Yahweh," put the volume on max, and hit "play." Listen to what brother Bono is asking God. I particularly commend to you the following lines:
Take these hands
Teach them what to carry
Take these hands
Don't make a fist
Take this mouth
So quick to criticize
Take this mouth
Give it a kiss
...
Take this heart
Take this heart
Take this heart
And make it break
Repeat as necessary until you fall on your knees and weep for Haiti and its people.
