Winter, with wings

          Photos: Vincent Mounier

I give you: gratuitous bird-feeding pictures. A February pleasure, apparently. It has been over a decade since I fed North American birds from my hands. And that was in Stanley Park, Vancouver. (There was a weaver, in South Africa, inbetween.)

Titmice and chickadees in Brooklyn. (Why not the song sparrows, hopping at my feet? Or the bold cardinals?)

It is precious, the minute pressure of tiny bird feet on your skin.

And it feels for a while as though this is the only thing.

The pictures above were taken in Green-Wood Cemetery. The monarch butterfly mask is from Society 6. The artist who makes this one is  Eclectic at Heart and I like their other masks, too. They are all double-layered, with space for a filter-insert. But they do get loose after a lot of wearing and washing. So (after six months of daily wear) I will order some more. (For grocery shopping we now wear double masks: a surgical mask under the cloth. Yay.)

Pensive chickadee. These pictures (different jacket! Maskless!) were taken up in Pelham Bay a couple of weeks ago, in the Bronx. Then, as now, we walked into the city wilds to enjoy the snow. There were very few people, so I was relieved to de-mask. (Although, an hour into our walk, post-picnic, we bumped right into our friends Stephen and Chad on a narrow, snowy path. Which seemed surreal and perfectly normal, at the same time. We re-masked to greet one another with sounds of muffled effusion.)

I want my own chickadee.

Look at the two birds. It doesn't seem real. Very fast shutter speed on that long-lensed Canon of the Frenchman's.

We saw a family of deer in these woods, sitting in the snow, and chewing whatever deer chew in snowy February. Their coats looked thick and warm. 

Mostly, there was silence. We are becoming connoisseurs of where to find it.

Tomorrow, we will look for some more.

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