April 21, 2010. Wednesday.
Situation: Here’s how difficult it can be to identify a bird. Around noontime today I saw out our kitchen window a bird perching on the trumpet vine that grows up a post of our front porch (and grows through the roof by summertime). I had a very good view of the bird and had a long enough time to observe it to go upstairs and get the Audubon bird book, leaf through its perching bird section several times, then even go find a paper and pen and jot down the color features of the bird and leaf through the Audubon again. Here’s what I wrote down as the color features: black and white wings with brown tail feathers, brown nape and cap, black beak and a black goatee-like spot under its beak, white belly or breast with a black and white neckerchief or crest. I found nothing in the Audubon to fit this description: no chickadee, no sparrow, no wren, no finch, no swallow, no vireo, no warbler, no thrasher – I’m even leafing through the damn book again – nothing. What kind of bird is this? I work tonight, and I was prepared to take Mway for a walk sometime before I leave around 3:45 pm. But around 2:15 I hear the Boy taking Mway out the door and then in the distance the sound of her barking which means that the Boy is tossing a stick for her. I’m going to take advantage of this – and not take Mway for a walk today.
2 comments:
You want me to interview you – that would be your Part ??
I think that would be the best way to present the material: more or less as a dialogue. I could of course pose as the interviewer myself, but then I would just be talking to myself. I trust you to ask the right questions. Though you’re hardly a master of prose, you are nevertheless one of my masters, and though you may flout the laws of man, you make the law for me. (I depend on you; unlike Kafka’s dog, I know where my food comes from.) But if you need some help with the questions, I can coach you along. M.
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