Mid-April Snow Storm and Eager Birds

This weather is simply absurd. I know that's a shallow, anthropoid thing to say, but I'm sure the bears agree.

With just two weeks remaining before the Nashville Marathon, Alison walked out into a mid-April snow storm for a 22-mile run this fine, spring morning. And since I made these photographs, the snowfall has increased to a white-out. With 30-mile-per-hour windgusts, I'm sure Alison's vocabulary just now is slipping down to her reptilian three- and four-letter words.

Last Sunday we were 80 degrees with frogs and flood waters, and the Sapsuckers, Flickers, and Swallows returned and began selecting places to nest. Neighbor Aaron and I got lucky yesterday morning by taking advantage of a three-hour window that we did not know was a window to install the new double sliding door, which opens the living room nicely to a fuller view of the place, but because the new door opens on the left instead of in the middle, as the old door did, the dog -- and this is almost interesting -- cannot figure out how to go outside through the new door. She just goes to her traditional spot in the middle of the door's width, puts her head down, and waits for the usual space to open up. I was brought up watching and reading Rin-Tin-Tin and Lassie and Ol'Yeller, so I was properly prepared to expect dogs to display an uncanny intelligence. I'll need re-training after yesterday. That the dog's name, Sophie, comes from "sophia," the Latin for wisdom, proves that the universe is essentially ironic in structure.

I include the close-up of Audubon's Carolina Parakeet because I did my first presentation of some of my Audubon material on campus Wednesday night and I concluded with this image as an unexpected self-portrait.

By early afternoon, the high winds blew the snow clouds into the next county, and I went out with camera and binoculars to read the news. We lost a mature aspen, but it will make tolerable firewood next fall if I get it cut and split soon. The Towhees arrived a few days ago but only showed themselves to me today. And I was very glad to see a small group of Fox Sparrows moving through the brush and low tree limbs, trying to stay ahead of me. Every year I look for them, but these are the first Fox Sparrows I've seen here in eight years. Where did they go?