Natures On...

Sitting on my front porch at 7:30 this morning, sipping my coffee. I notice nature in all it’s drama. Like a nature show, I sit and commentate in my head the events taking place in my yard and in the street.

I see a woodpecker on the bark of the live oak across the street, a rare site in our neighborhood. He is running in short spurts straight up the tree. This is very interesting, but at the corner of my eye I see a black cat slowly make its way out from under the house next door and walk across the yard. When he gets to the sidewalk he crouches down and flattens out, with his body half on the sidewalk and half on the grass.

A morning dove lights in the street. Walking this way and that, searching for whatever morning doves search for. She pecks the street and walks in diagonals toward the curb.

In the mean time all sorts of bird and squirrel chatter going on. A blue jay lands on the branch above the cat’s head and begins to screech. The morning dove takes no notice of this. It was not the che-che-che of the morning dove emergency call, so the Jay’s warning calls did not register in her morning-dove brain. She walks and pecks in diagonals, up onto the curb and into the grass.

The cat’s bright emerald eyes widen. He watches the morning-dove as she absently makes her way closer. His body is completely flat and still, but his tale seems to have a life of it’s own, swirling left to right, and the tip flicking in the opposite direction. His ears twitch and rotate forward and to the side. As the morning-dove pecks her way a little closer the cat raises his haunches ever so slowly. Suddenly the Jay drops out of the tree from the branch above the cat and almost lands on the cat’s head. The cat jumps straight up into the air and swipes at the jay with one paw in a simultaneous reaction. And just as quickly, the jay flaps back up into the tree. In the meantime the morning-dove flew off with calling her che-che-che emergency call as she went.

The cat looking quite dejected, looked up in the tree for a moment, then slowly walked across the grass and disappeared under the house.

Across the street, two sparrows rolled out of the oak tree in a ball of wings and tails angrily chattering. They landed on the street and rolled around for a short while until one finally flew away. I guess the one who stayed got to keep the oak tree.

Seagull

A seagull sits in the short yellowing grass of Waldenberg Park. He looks quite relaxed as a strong breeze whips by disturbing the steal gray feathers on his back. But he is puzzled. This place is much too quiet.

This used to be a much busier, noisy place. It seems strange to be relaxing in the grass in the middle of the day like this. He knows that this was not always possible. Looking around he sees his friends walking here and there. Some of them are taking advantage of the nice wind today and are hovering low overhead with great ease.


Along the red brick path by the Mississippi river he notices a couple of people with overstuffed backpacks walking by the rail. Then he realizes - that's it! It's the small people. That's why it is so quiet. That's why he and his friends can hang out in the grass undisturbed. The small people are missing. They used to be here almost every day. He realizes he has not seen them for a very long time.

Although it is nice to be able to relax by the river, he actually misses the small people. They would always come in groups. Each group had their own colors, red and gray, blue and white, or green and brown and others, all walking together. And the bigger people would herd them into the grass. There was no standing still when they were around. If you happened to land anywhere near one of them they were sure to chase you back into the air. But, they were great to have around, because they always carried bags, boxes and backpacks full of wonderful things to eat, and the small people would share.

Much to the delight of the small people, the seagull and his friends would fly overhead just out of reach. The small people would toss their food to the seagulls who would dive down and pluck the food up without touching the ground. The small people always had such great things to eat. Sweet, salty, crunchy, gooey and best of all, sometimes even fishy, the small people always provided a feast.

When their bags were empty, they would run. The bigger people would try to stop them and herd them back together again, but they would usually escape and run some more.

The seagull thought about how much he really missed the small people. He wondered where they had gone, and wished that they would come back soon.

Why "The Rookery"?

When contemplating a name for my new blog, I decided it would be a good idea to use an idiom of some sort. I was thinking that idioms have recognizable meaning, but used as a title for my blog would give an esoteric feel to it.

So my quest for idioms began. All I had to do is type “idioms” into Google, and “VOILA!” -lists and lists of idioms instantly appear. I began scanning the lists for just the right blog title. I wasn’t even out of the “A” when I found “As the Crow Flies”. This really appealed to me because I love Crows. It may have something to do with Halloween being my favorite holiday, or the fact that Crows are smart and gregarious and fun to observe.

My research then turned to crows. When I work on any kind of design, whether I’m building a web page, creating art or writing a story, I like to do as much research on the subject as possible before I start the project. I Googled “Crows”. Through Google I found the Wikipedia article about crows. (Did I mention that I think the Internet is a wonderful thing!) Wikipedia confirmed many things that I already knew about them, that they are smart social birds. But something that I didn’t know was how smart they really are. On a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being the smartest, crows rank 10 on the smartness scale. In fact, besides being able to learn speech, much like minor birds and Macaws, they even have been known to make tools to help them gather food - impressive ain’t they.

With my admiration of crows substantiated, I turned to finding suitable imagery. Clipart.com is my favorite source for images in any graphic design project I may have, and my new blog was no exception. I entered “crow” in the search box for all image types and wound up with 1010 images. Woohoo! I love having a lot to choose from. I had an idea of what I wanted the site to look like, so I decided to skip all of the silly, brightly colored vector clipart – and went straight for the turn of the century line art.

Apparently, Victorians loved crows too. It seemed like I was clicking and downloading images of crows for hours. Everything looked good to me. It was going to be hard to choose. Much of the artwork I was downloading was advertising art, so it contained graphic text, to which I paid little attention. Once my download fest was complete, feeling very satisfied, I began to peruse through my treasure of crow imagery. Clicking on and studying each image, I came across “The Rookery” image. Great image, I thought, looks like mom and dad crow having a serious discussion with all the little fledgling crow. But what does “The Rookery” mean?

Back to Google. I Google “Rookery”. And wouldn’t you know it Wikipedia had the answer.


“Rookery
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Birds
A rookery is a nesting colony of birds. The term is especially connected with crows, and the rooka bird similar to the crow, but smaller.”

That’s when I decied “The Rookery” is actually a better name for my new blog than “As the crow flies”. The graphic was perfect for the header. (with some small adjustment for spacing) The definition of “rookery” fits the purpose of my blog, as I plan on hatching new ideas, developing and nuturing my creative mind in this space. - It was fate.

And so it goes, my new blog “The Rookery” blog is born. I’m excided, the creative juices are flowing. I’m hoping that the people who happen to pass by will enjoy what I’ve contributed to this free web space.