Wild Life / postcard
house sparrow on the BQE
Hi, friends — I moved my studio last week (we now have a studio instead of a garage—art over cars, hooray!). I’m still out of sorts and settling in, so this week I have a postcard for you instead of a full newsletter. I’ll be back again before you know it. In the meantime, a few thoughts:
We went to Brooklyn last weekend, and it felt like traveling back in time, to when casual encounters with strangers were a normal part of daily life. People were only lightly masked, and maybe one in fifty had a face covering. Somehow, already, masks feel anachronistic but also comforting to me—like seeing someone wear a great pair of leg warmers. I am grateful for the science that is making this possible.
Driving home, I stopped at the light before the on-ramp to the Brooklyn-Queens-Expressway. Ahead of us, in the middle of the most engineered, concrete, life-crushing bonanza, a house sparrow landed about ten yards in front of our car. It had a tasty worm morsel that it stabbed at and gobbled up. Then it flew off, no bother, right before the light turned green.
This cheeky bird has stayed with me all week. Life swoops in where it feels impossible, chipping away, setting blooms in sidewalks.
All acts of rebellion, seen.
Animal encounters in recent comments—
Thank you for contributing to the animal diary. Animal sightings continue apace, and I love this one from Jim: “What is the sound of a mountain lion stalking you? It’s the breeze, chirping birds, leaves rustling, your own breath. You would never know.”
I am also super appreciative of the stories and cautious understanding of yellowjackets, here. Speaking of wasps, I highly recommend (love love love) Joshua Evans’s beautiful essay about the wasp harvest festival in Kushihara, Japan, and hunting the giant hornet, in the book On Eating Insects: Essays, Stories and Recipes.
Also—
I’m enjoying the fireflies right now, so next time: fireflies! (Bobcats still waiting in the wings . . . )
Wild Life / this newsletter is a place to learn about the life around us, one small step/paw/tiny heartbeat at a time. Thanks for reading and sharing with friends and family. Have a great weekend.
Yay to art over cars! I was watching little sparrows while out walking this morning. There were several fluttering ahead of me, each stopping to perch in the opening of a chain link fence. How amazing to be so body aware, to know you can fit precisely into such a small opening.
I spent the last couple weeks at a residency in the great Oregon Outback. In addition to range cattle, I saw cottontail rabbits, pronghorn antelopes, evidence of coyotes. The local wildlife refuges were overflowing with dozens of types of bird—pelicans, trumpeter swans, red winged and yellow headed blackbirds, avocets, and the first cedar waxwings I’ve seen in real life. And a lovely little red crested sapsucker who awakened me each morning at 5:00 am with his dulcet hammering on a drainpipe right outside my bedroom window.