February came to an end with several days of cold, gray rain, broken by a sunny day or two, then more rain. Today was a chilly, windy, cloudy day, clearing, but the sky still crowded with gray and white, and small patches of blue. Now and then the sun came out, then slipped behind the clouds again.<\/p>\n
Few birds were out in the strong, late afternoon wind. A Black Vulture soared, high and fast. Crows flew over and cawed. Lots of Robins and a small flock of Red-winged Blackbirds, with a few European Starlings and a very few Common Grackles fed in one yard, and Yellow-rumped Warblers and Chipping Sparrows in another, all staying close to the ground.<\/p>\n
One Northern Mockingbird sang from a perch low in a bush, close to the roadside, the first Mockingbird I\u2019ve heard singing this season.<\/p>\n
As I walked along the edge of the old field, head down in the wind this afternoon, I saw mostly only brown, drab, flat weeds and grass, brushed with the soft gold-tan of broomsedge on the edge of the dreary thickets of vines and privet in the field. No sparrows came out today. Instead, along the roadside I passed a blue Bud Lite can, an empty, crumpled package for Camel cigarettes, odd bits of white paper and styrofoam, a plastic water bottle, a thin strip of orange plastic, a white elastic band for a ponytail, another Bud Lite can, some wrinkled cellophane, a piece of faded yellow paper with print on it, another plastic bottle, still half-full of dark soda \u2013 and four lush yellow daffodils blooming on tall, drooping stems in a clump of dark-green leaves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
February came to an end with several days of cold, gray rain, broken by a sunny day or two, then more rain. Today was a chilly, windy, cloudy day, clearing, but the sky still crowded with gray and white, and small patches of blue. Now and then the sun came out, then slipped behind the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1589"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1589"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1591,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1589\/revisions\/1591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}