location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, New York, USA
The rains seemed to follow us back from our last couple days in Italy, though, from the looks of things, it must have been raining at our place for much of the time we'd been away. The kale in our garden had survived the winter had thrown up two foot tall flower spikes, and the grass in our lawn looked as if it had never been mowed.
A replacement flywheel had come for my chainsaw while I'd been in Italy, and today I installed it, took the saw out for a test cut, and was delighted to find that it was working once more.
The laboratory window had been shut while I was gone, so the dead bird I found out on the laboratory deck hadn't been killed by a cat. Investigating further, I found dozens of small bird droppings in a tight formation beneath the center of the window, but when I looked up, I could see no nest or anything else that could account for such a concentration. Given this evidence, I deduced that the dead bird had been fighting for days with his reflection in the window, shitting over and over in the same place as his rivalry with his image kept him from going anywhere else. He grew weak and died before his foolishness dawned upon him, thus winning himself a Darwin Award. Looking at his rainsoaked corpse, I determined he was a male Yellow-rumped Warbler, similar to the one I'd photographed with special equipment a month ago. I remember male Goldfinches banging themselves repeatedly against the south-facing windows of my childhood home. For some reason (I think I coined the word) my family referred to this behavior as "turtling."
Arrival of Spring, looking east from the dining room over a period of two weeks in late April and early May.
