Bushes, Berries, and Birds
There is this bush just outside my kitchen window that grows little red berries in the summer. I think they're probably poisonous. They might not be-I've never tried them because I've always thought they were poisonous. But animals like eating them. Chipmunks cram their cheeks with them. Birds pluck them off the twigs with their beaks. Squirrels bend the branches with their weight as they savor their food. So they're probably not poisonous to chipmunks and birds and squirrels and whatever other animals might eat them. But they could still be poisonous to humans, because some things are like that.
This late in the summer all of the berries are gone, but the birds still land there, and I watch them while I'm washing bell peppers, orange and red. All different kinds of birds, kinds that I've never noticed before because I wasn't really paying attention before. I don't know that I could describe them, but they're all pretty small (otherwise they wouldn't be able to stand on the branches I think, though birds tend not to weigh much because of their hollow bones). There are little black ones with shiny black beaks; do they have white patterns on their head? There are brown ones that have a ring of browny-orangey-red around the edges of their wings. And there are others. Stripes and speckles-combinations of colors-beaks and crests and breasts and wings-and I can't keep track of how they all fit together. Maybe there are only a few different kinds but it seems like a lot because they're not just crows and robins and sparrows (I think).
I like to think about watching the birds again sometime.
This late in the summer all of the berries are gone, but the birds still land there, and I watch them while I'm washing bell peppers, orange and red. All different kinds of birds, kinds that I've never noticed before because I wasn't really paying attention before. I don't know that I could describe them, but they're all pretty small (otherwise they wouldn't be able to stand on the branches I think, though birds tend not to weigh much because of their hollow bones). There are little black ones with shiny black beaks; do they have white patterns on their head? There are brown ones that have a ring of browny-orangey-red around the edges of their wings. And there are others. Stripes and speckles-combinations of colors-beaks and crests and breasts and wings-and I can't keep track of how they all fit together. Maybe there are only a few different kinds but it seems like a lot because they're not just crows and robins and sparrows (I think).
I like to think about watching the birds again sometime.