I love my field guides. Some were gifts, some I found in used bookstores, garage sales, dumpsters. They speak to me of different times and different places. Places and times where flocks of Passenger Pigeons darkened the air and where a Starling was a wondrous life-bird. They bring me close to landscapes I will never know, because of the distance in miles and the distance in years.
My favorite field guides have a suprising poetry in their descriptions of the natural world. Here is one:
Curly Grass Fern
Minute unfernlike plant
that looks like its name –
curly grass.
Almost imopossible to find
without lying flat
on the ground.Except in winter.
Broughton Cobb, A Field Guide to the Ferns and their Related Families of Northeastern and Central North America
Houghton Mifflin Company, copyright 1956.
What did you see this week? As before, I’ll download everything and make a hard copy. Someday, maybe, our observations will allow another generation to experience the beauty of the land we now know.
And again, I’ll go first:
In the back yard this week the bushtits began to join their families into the aggregate flocks that grace the feeders during the winter.
And yes, for you non-birdwatchers, there is a bird called “Bushtit”…
