JUST A REMINDER THAT I NO LONGER POST ON THIS BLOG.

PLEASE VISIT ME HERE

Tuesday, November 24, 2009


November
(small gift series)
oil on canvas
6x6in, 2009, available

Today in the thick grey fog and drizzle I came upon this nest very low among the wild grasses . I like to think it is that of a Bobolink, although I've read they usually nest right on the ground.

Bobolinks nest in hayfields and meadows across the northern United States and southern Canada during the summer months of May through early July, and I am happy to say that each year I've had the pleasure of seeing and hearing more and more of them on the Niagara escarpment.

Their song has been vividly described as "a bubbling delirium of ecstatic music that flows from the gifted throat of the bird like sparkling champagne," "a mad, reckless song-fantasia, an outbreak of pent-up, irrepressible glee," and as "a tinkle of fairy music, like the strains of an old Greek harp."
The Bobolink makes one of the longest migrations in the western hemisphere—a round trip of approximately 20,000 km (12,400 miles)! They migrate to the vast grasslands of southwestern Brazil, Paraguay, and northern Argentina to spend the austral spring and summer months of November through March.

No comments:

Post a Comment