Bird Count

My Darling Christopher completed his December bird feeder survey on Monday, Christmas eve. That’s where he fills out a form for the Michigan Audubon Society telling exactly how many distinct birds he saw of each species on one particular day. He collects this information November through April and then sends his totals to Audubon with a small donation. Highlights this month included thirty-four cardinals and thirteen redpolls. The redpolls are especially impressive because we’ve never had them before, we’ve never even seen them before a week ago when two showed up at the finch feeder, with their red caps and pink breasts. The mourning dove count was low, considering nobody is supposed to be shooting them, and we didn’t see a brown creeper, but otherwise everything was about normal for woodpeckers and goldfinches and nuthatches and the like. There is a place on the survey to report species sightings from other days of the month, so Chris can mention the pine siskin from last week.
Christopher is honest on his survey, doesn’t include the sightings he’s had on days previous into the count day, and he counts very carefully, tallying thirty-four cardinals only if he sees exactly thirty-four at one time all together. But I could sympathize with a tendency to inflate one’s bird count, even to claim one saw a bird that one did not see. Maybe a person would exaggerate because he or she wanted there to be more birds in the world and might feel that by claiming to have seen them, he or she could suggest them into existence. Often when two birders are talking about birding it seems they are trying to one-up one another. It is something to be witness to more life and more beauty than other people have been witness to. Even if all the reporting is anonymous, even if nobody will ever know, just the claiming might feel good.

Frozen Ground

There was a list of things I was going to do before winter set in. One thing was to get a load of gravel and fill in the holes in our road and driveway, but I didn't get to it, and then the freeze came and went deep into the ground and is here to stay. Chris and I were going to repair David's window next door, the outer sill of which has rotted, but instead we pulled out the dead wood, sprayed for termites and carpenter ants, and then sprayed in a lot of expanding insulating foam to fill in the space. I did manage to drain the hoses and coil them up, and I did clean the woodstove chimney with my six-inch round brush, but I didn't get plastic up on the guest room windows. In the utility room I left last year's plastic up, so I didn't have to think about re-doing it this year. I suppose I could give up on moving the last leaves away from the side of the house and just do the dishes or something. Or start investigating why those ceiling tiles are falling down in the hallway. Time passes, however, and it's pretty looking out into the woods with all the white snow, reminds me of how cool a white T-shirt used to look in the black light I used to have in my bedroom as a kid. While I'm looking out, a deer high-steps into my line of sight and another deer follows and another deer. I was pretty pissed at those deer this spring for eating all my marsh marigolds, but they are something to see, stepping out there in the snow. Chris saw some redpolls eating at our finch feeder the other day (red caps, pink breasts), something we've never had. We didn't trim the privet hedge or sweep the leaves off the garage roof or power wash the deck or fix the front door so it locks right or burn the piles of trash wood out back or take the moldy chair and broken glass to the dump, but we always find time to feed the birds somehow.

The season's sweets

Christopher and I are among the folks who actually love fruitcake, the richer and denser (and more alcoholic) the better. We got little one from MacKenzie's Bakery in Kalamazoo, and one just came in the mail from a monastery in Kentucky, and this one contains Kentucky bourbon. So we're eating fruitcake, trying and failing to have just a sliver after a meal.

And then there's the candy I make each year, the old-fashioned fudge cockaigne,the brown sugar pecan candies (penucci? pralines?)and the candied orange peels. I have a long essay I wrote a while back about the chocolate candy-making experience, with my recipe, and I'll be happy to share it with any of you for the asking. It is time-consuming making the candy, but it always seems like time well spent. My brother Mikey is now making another candy that is traditional in our family, the English-style toffee, made with almonds, dipped in chocolate. He got the recipe from Blair Brainard, my mother's cousin.

I ate a lot of soup tonight for dinner and vegetables, trying to fend off the craving for sweets, but already after two hours, the sugar monster inside me is rumbling to be fed. It growls each time I let my eyes rest on that pretty (and weighty) tin from Kentucky. As a girl, I sometimes at a whole pound of candy at a sitting. I baked, frosted and ate entire cakes, then washed all the dishes to hide the evidence. There's no graceful way to manage certain appetites.