Back yard birding reveals
the Black-Capped chickadee
Heard before its seen
A hooded eye for sure
Its back a mossy gray
white-cheeked
And as soon as I've filled the feeder,
It flies from tree
to feeder
in a blink
and snatches seed
and materializes back to tree
who was that masked bird?
A chipper thing--
it seems carefree
Hanging with its mate,
It sings merrily of its deeds
chick-a-dee-dee-deeds!

And The House Finch knows
how to build stable
community
its family perches on the gutters--
I often wake to the scritch-scratching of their tiny claws
outside my window--
Then moves to nestle in the branches of the birch
the cotton wood, the pine and,
At the appropriate time,
all alight on every bird feeder,
in every back yard
ubiquitous you might say
Ack ack ack
they would say back.

But I have to walk out along the creek to see
The squat Kingfisher
He calls from its wobbly throat
I never see him
he is up there somewhere
spying the creek from the top of a tree
He's looking down on me, I know
and only when a Red-Tailed Hawk
decides to land in a branch above him
does he take off and reveal his secret to me
The large crested head, the blue streak
I can't help but I.D.

And although he's checked out our feeder this year
its best to be within a stand of no less then three pine trees
to catch the Red-Breasted Nuthatch,
There he is
Facing tree roots,
He clings shyly to the bark
Upside down and
Seemingly alone
he calls, a nasal trumpet.
Then scampers
up
over
and down
rosy breasted
eyes sharp and lined
through in black
a shimmer of blue gray
for a cloak
He covers the tree
in one way or another
yet mostly hides from me

--Ellen A. Wilkin