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| Once again time to quote favorite lines from a favorite spring poem. |
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| "Hounds of Spring" from Atalanta in Calydon by Algernon Charles Swimburne. |
"For winter''s rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remember'd is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover,
Blossom by blossom the spring begins."
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| Click to enlarge. |
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| I know I just wrote a blog about wild turkeys last week, noting their colorful heads. But they came back and this time on a sunny day that showed off their iridescent feathers. Turns out the turkey is not just a big brown bird with a flashy head. |
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| It's a walking rainbow! |
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| Some details. Click to enlarge. |
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| Feathers like burnished metal scales. |
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| Copper, gold, and bronze. |
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| Impressive! |
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| Wild turkeys have been passing through my yard lately. Males are primed for breeding season. This one kept spreading his tail, puffing up his feathers, and strutting. And what female turkey could resist that red, white, and blue skin head? | |
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| Striking the classic turkey pose. |
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| Then there's this guy who seems to be still growing into his head gear. Click to enlarge. |
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| Some turkey facial ornaments have names. That's a snood dangling over the the beak, red wattles under the chin, and various other head bumps are called caruncles. Get a load of the snood on this guy. And the wattles. And the caruncles. |
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| Looking good, turkeys! |
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| Remember last week's blog about crocuses? A day after the flowers bloomed a fleet of honeybees arrived and got to work in them. There were so many honeybees that the flower patch was humming. Click to enlarge. |
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| See the big yellow pollen sac on this one's hind leg? It's stuffed with tasty crocus pollen. |
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| Christy Lefteri wrote in The Beekeeper of Aleppo: "Where there are bees there are flowers, and wherever there are flowers there is new life and hope." There are only 12 days to go until spring. |
