I wonder what the birds do on nights like tonite. The front blew thru, and the temperatures are going to be below freezing for three nights in a row. There go the Apple blossoms, although as for that, the fruit might like those temperature for setting. And there go the Wild Onion blossoms, although as for that, they are wild, after all. The purple Verbena and Spiderwort and Texas Mountain Laurel blossoms should weather the weather ok, since they’re used to this kind of thing.
But the birds. What do they do on nights like tonite? They must be fluffed up and the shrubs in the back, down below the level of the fence, where the cold wind doesn’t blow so hard. Yet… it does blow, and it is getting cold.
I wonder about those Herons and Egrets I saw the other morning. I was driving eastward into the rising sun and passed a place on the road where two vultures hurled themselves aloft. With big flaps of their wide wings… Wait. Those weren’t vulture wings. They reached too far. And they were jointed in ways no vulture wing is jointed — jointed in a pterodactylic kind of way. Herons, they were! Two of them hurling themselves aloft from the margin of a pond in the early morning sun, making a slow arc, first over the highway and then away somewhere to the southwest.
As I drove by that pond, I looked over and saw an Egret with its neck extended. It must have been staring at the flight of the Herons, just as I had been, although from the look on its face, I wonder if that bird was wondering if it had missed the time-to-hurl-aloft memo and was afflicted with a fear of missing out whatever the Herons had departed to do.
So now I’m wondering about them in addition to our backyard Wrens and Titmice and Sparrows. Where are those two Herons and that FOMO-afflicted Egret? And what are they doing to stay warm on a cold night like tonite?
It’s rough out there.