Goshawk

In a tree just at the edge of the woods, just past our clothesline, not fifty feet from the house. I was in the cellar working on the table when Anne called me repeatedly, “There’s an osprey in a tree!” It’s a little early in the season for osprey; I wouldn’t expect them until the …

Seven Eights

We got a new piece in Koleinu tonight (well, when I started writing this, March 9), Vay’chulu by Karen Tarlow. That would be Genesis 2:1-3, “And the heavens and the earth were finished…”. The one word “vay’chulu” (ch as in German “ach”) is enough to identify the passage to moderately observant Jews; it’s the first …

Northern New England Spring Quiz

Just one question, for any readers in California, Texas, Kuala Lumpur, etc. What’s going on here? This used to be a common late winter and early spring sight in Northern New England thirty years and longer ago: Those are sap buckets hanging on a sugar maple. Nowadays sugar makers mostly use plastic tubing to collect …

Redpolls

We saw a half-dozen redpolls the weekend Millie and Joel were up in Maine with us, which must have been in mid-January. We hadn’t seen any since up until yesterday morning. Redpolls are little brown-gray finches with a dark red spot on their forehead. They spend the summers in Canada and sometimes, but not always, …