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| Lovely lilac bush at my driveway - more than 50 years old! |
With the beginning of spring, there is also the chattering of the birds early in the morning. The expression ‘up with the birds’ comes to my mind every morning as I hear our feathered friends greeting one another at 4:30 a.m. They sound like they are in our bedroom, when in fact they are in a cluster of trees in the yard. It sounds like there are a thousand birds. Every morning, I wake up at the first ‘peep’ and then drift back to sleep, to be awakened by the twittering of many birds and their friends. In the mix, I can hear the shrill trill of the cardinal – seemingly to be king of the hill or tree.
Somewhere around 5:30 a.m., the group moves a couple of blocks away, still audible but subdued a bit. Once again, I close my eyes and sleep another hour.
The Cardinal, our constant friend, stays here all day. He is high up in the tree or on the phone wire, trilling the entire day. I had heard it is their mating call, the males calling out for a female to please come and rescue him from his perch. And by now, the 11th of May, I think he needs to chart some new territory – she does not appear to be coming to this neck of the woods. May I could import a nice girl cardinal for him.
