I can't sleep…
“A bird’s bill is not insulated. Nor are its legs and feet. So all those vulnerability points tend to be smaller in species that winter in cold zones — scaled down as a result of the natural selection process across countless generations.”
Feathers are the first line of defense against weather, Mr. Sibley said in a recent conversation, and besides enabling flight, “they’re streamlining, waterproofing, windproofing, coloration — all those things.” And down feathers, the soft, fluffy kind closest to the bird’s body, he added, are “the most effective insulation known.”
Using tiny muscles where their feathers attach to skin, birds can raise and lower them, thickening the insulating layer around their bodies, he said, “like putting on an extra jacket or getting into a sleeping bag.”
Also thanks to feathers, a bird can tuck in its most vulnerable body parts, particularly overnight. Heads are turned so beaks can be buried into the shoulder-like scapular feathers atop a wing “to reduce heat loss and recycle warmth in the same way people do when breathing into cupped hands,” Mr. Dunne writes. By perching on one leg, the bird can pull the other up into safety, conserving more heat.
Another cold-defying strategy of birds is shivering on demand to raise their body heat — that’s what chickadees do to emerge from torpor.
Small birds lose about 10 percent of their body weight each night year-round while at rest…
— Margaret Roach, from “How Birds Survive Winter Cold” (NY Times, Jan 29 2025)
Photo of Sparrow taken at 6:45 am at Cove Island Park. 22° F, feels like 17° F. Feb 21, 2025. More photos from this morning’s walk can be found here.
Morning of buttered toast;
of coffee, sweetened with milk.
Out of the window,
snow-spruces step from their cobwebs.
Flurry of chickadees, feeding then gone.
A single cardinal stipples an empty branch-
one maple leaf lifted back.
I turn my blessings like photographs into the light;
over my shoulder the god of Not-Yet looks on:
Not-yet-dead, not-yet-lost, not-yet-taken.
Not-yet-shattered, not-yet-sectioned,
not-yet-strewn.
Ample litany, sparing nothing I hate or love,
not-yet-silenced, not-yet-fractured, not-yet-
Not-yet-not.
I move my ear a little closer to that humming figure,
I ask him only to stay.
— Jane Hirshfield, “Not Yet” in “Come, Thief: Poems“. (HarperCollins, April 5, 2011)
Notes: Photo of Red Northern Cardinal on January 1, 2025 by DK at noon in backyard. Poem via having a poem with you.
This morning the world’s white face reminds us
that life intends to become serious again.
And the same loud birds that all summer long
annoyed us with their high attitudes and chatter
silently line the gibbet of the fence a little stunned,
chastened enough…
I fill the feeders to the top and cart them
to the tree, hurrying back inside
to leave the morning to these ridiculous
birds, who, reminded, find the rough shelters,
bow, and then feed.
— Scott Cairns, from “Early Frost” in “The Translation of Babel” (The University of Georgia Press, 1990)
Notes:
Happiness is getting up and going downstairs in the morning, opening all the doors and petting the dogs, walking around the garden and along the wooden pier in the cool morning air and listening to the crows and the chirping of all the other birds as you wait for the water for your tea to boil in the kitchen.
— Orhan Pamuk, “Memories of Distant Mountains: Illustrated Notebooks, 2009-2022.” Translated by Ekin Oklap. (Knopf, November 26, 2024)
Notes:
