Tags
birds, Carolina Wren, garage, little brown bird, nature, nest, photography, spring
I swear I left the door open for just a couple of hours, as I tended the garden and the dogs. Swoosh! at my head came a LBB, the bane of a birder’s existence while in the field. Little Brown Bird is the go-to scientific identification for all sorts of sparrows and wrens that so closely resemble each other that only intense field scrutiny can resolve the question – what did I just see. So on that afternoon, the swiftness of flight and my startled response to a bird flying back to front out of my garage left me with but one conclusion: I had an LBB trying to nest in my garage. IN my garage.
I do not want the interior of my house or even my garage becoming a site of passerine development and I immediately searched the space in front of my headlights. Yep. There it was. Tucked high above my reach on a decrepit sheet of burlap, woven bits of leaf litter, moss, twigs created a shallow cup in the shelf corner. Clue number one that Little Brown Bird was a wren.
Clue number two was heard as I tended flower beds and dogs, garage door CLOSED, the next day: teakettle-teakettle-teakettle. The chunky little brown bird darted into a nearby pine shrub, and perched with its tail held high. Clue number three.
Teakettle-teakettle-teakettle.
Now I was certain that a Carolina Wren sought my garage shelf for development. I kept the garage door closed, for the next day or two,surely long enough, I thought, to encourage this picky wren to seek other marvelous real estate in my wooded property.
Yesterday, I once again kept the garage open, as I tended the garden and the dogs. Life was easy. For everyone. Including my Little Brown Bird.
Suffice it to say, I removed the nest before this development had gotten too far.
May I suggest, LBB, my hanging fern?
As the sun set one hundred fifty years ago, Ira Sayles glumly faced life as a civilian. The New York abolitionist had enlisted in the summer of 1862, joining Alfred neighbors and friends in forming Company H, 130th Regiment of the New York Volunteers. Their first deployment was in Portage Station, New York, to be issued uniforms and weapons, and to elect company officers. Private Ira became 1st Lieutenant Sayles. The regiment traveled by train, their early legs through Williamsport and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania lined by cheering children and flag-waving townsfolk. A brief stop in Washington, D.C. was followed by passage down the Potomac, into the Chesapeake Bay, to Fort Monroe. The soldiers, by and by, found themselves in the September humidity of southeastern Virginia, eight miles from the North Carolina border, and just mosquito-wings distance from the Great Dismal Swamp. Camp Suffolk would soon surround the southern town of Suffolk, with earthen forts, trenches, and rifle pits.
Ira included poems in letters to friends and siblings; submitted a poem to be published with his daughter’s obituary; and while visiting his old stomping ground, had various selections published in the Alfred University paper. Throughout his long career as principal, teacher, geologist, and paleontologist, Ira kept up his art. On March 30, 1891, Ira wrote My Seventy-Fourth Birthday, which he self-published in Washington, D.C. in between his work sessions with the United States Geological Survey. The first stanza reads:
Last night, from my kitchen chair, I participated in a webinar, arranged and delivered by the Illinois State Genealogical Society. At nine o’clock P.M. EST I sat at my desk, clicked my emailed link, turned up my speakers’ volume, and joined the crowd listening to Harold Henderson’s presentation on 
