Some birds

Summer's a vengeful time, ravaging the landscape and its inhabitants with sun. The force of this brilliance is tolerable in the early morning.

Out of the assorted urban trees a meadowlark awakens me. Every day I remember the meadowlark that sang in a large oak at dawn during my youth. There are some songs that will endure. I love to respectfully listen to this morning glory.

There are some birds "(Ceryle alcyon syn. Megaceryle alcyon) that is slate blue above and white below with a slate blue breast band and an additional chestnut-colored band in the female - and the any of numerous small shorebirds (family Scolopacidae) distinguished from the related plovers chiefly by the longer and soft-tipped bill" (Merrium Webster) that I remember jostling for prey on the clay river bend of my shore of the Icelandic River. I would sit in the sun, mesmerized by the agile swoops of the belted kingfishers, cobalt triangulations, glistening feathers spread devastatingly sharp against the stark blueness of the mid-day sky. Sandpipers trotting in the muck, bills diving into the watery edges to plunge into water saturated, clay-borne bait foolish enough to harbour themselves within the depth of the bird's elongated reach. The flying birds dove for fish at the water's ebb, and were no competition to the sandpipers. Yet they seemed to reel, weave around the sky, fighting off their imagined competitors, squawking, antagonizing the silence of the sand driven travellers. They were probably fighting for fish amongst themselves, but the sandpipers did not seem to realize this. I would be mesmerized for hours in this contradiction of species.

Now, I can occasionally glimpse the stoic stance of a blue heron on my English Bay shore. Gulls meander the horizon, and fuss, I miss the intrinsic antics of my river birds.