Sunday bird blogging

Surprisingly, there will be bird blogging.

I had some time to kill yesterday morning. I had to pick up photos at Walmart at 11, and I couldn't stand sitting around the bland Best Western hotel room any more, so I went out for a cup of coffee, and drank it sitting on a park bench. The air was thick and damp, with low gray clouds threatening rain or worse, but I stayed until swarms of black ants converged on my feet and started crawling over my shoes.

A few blocks from the park, I saw a store called the Cherry Street Antique Barn, and I stopped. There wasn't much that interested me -- some nice pieces of furniture, walls of cowboy boots, Texas curios, and a lot of junk. I asked about old pictures and the owner only had one -- she said people come in and buy them by the boxes (undoubtedly so they can be sold for exorbitant prices at flea markets in the Northeast.)

But Susan, the owner, also had this bird, a juvenile mockingbird almost ready for release. She does a lot of bird rehab, and she told me stories about trying to care for injured buzzards and I told her about the Wild Bird Fund and birding in Central Park. Of course she knew about Judy -- everyone in a small town like Graham knows about everyone else -- but mostly we talked about birds and cowboy boots and the morning that had seemed to stretch out almost to infinity earlier was over before I knew it and it was time to go to Walmart.