When icicles hang by the wall

Well these are Idaho icicles from last winter, but I found something in this picture tonight that I hadn't noticed before. See the dove on the branch on the very left edge of the photo? For several weeks I heard a dove calling, but it didn't sound like the mourning doves I was familiar with. I was looking for a white-winged dove, a bird which was featured in a story about his boyhood that my father told me a few months before his death. But I couldn't spot the white on the wings. Then my daughter-in-law told me she was seeing a "fat" dove in her yard across the street every day. So I looked harder and finally saw the ring on the back of the neck. I was seeing a "life bird" for me, the Eurasian Collared Dove, right in my own backyard. Then I tried to get a picture, but they always flew away. There were a pair, and thus a lot of calling, especially in the morning. And they are fatter than your average mourning dove. And now I see the other dove is in this picture, too, toward the center of the picture, smaller, and higher, and seen between two icicles with slightly greater space between them.

Tonight's poem by the Bard of Avon has been a favorite of mine for many years; I'm not sure if it is because of the owl, or of 'greasy Joan" or just the rollicking English sounds in it. I love my language!

When icicles hang by the wall

When icicles hang by the wall 

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, 

And Tom bears logs into the hall, 

And milk comes frozen home in pail; 

When blood is nipt and ways be foul, 

Then nightly sings the staring owl: 

Tu-who! 

Tu-whit! Tu-who! -- A merry note! 

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. 

When all aloud the wind doth blow, 

And coughing drowns the parson's saw, 

And birds sit brooding in the snow, 

And Marian's nose looks red and raw; 

When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl 

Then nightly sings the staring owl: 

Tu-who! 

Tu-whit! Tu-who! -- A merry note! 

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.



William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616) , from Love's Labour's Lost, Act V, Scene 2