Saturday February 4th 2012    Tim Candler

        Creatures that greet the sunrise with an audible comment, include Mockingbirds.  Its not unusual to hear in his voice a suggestion of what I guess in my species would be called "Am I still here."  Then as a season progresses toward change that tone becomes, "I'm still here, what are you going to do about it."  The American Robin on the other hand follows a different pattern.  When Spring arrives he becomes more solitary, he potters around in silence and when the sunrises, he basically says "What's That!"  And he can do so rather loudly. Which can rouse a person from his bed earlier than might be necessary in February.

         Wrens, and here I mean Carolina Wrens, have less concentration in thinking. They in my view greet the morning with "Not again, again, again." And then in the afternoon I'll sometimes hear them say "cheeseburger"  several times in rapid succession. And  I've seen a male House Sparrow, already in the barn.  There is an eve up there by the roofing that he cannot resist.  From that beam he can fill the inside of the barn with a magnificent swell of noise loud enough to drown a chain saw, but from outside the barn, where the girls are, you can hardly hear him. So on he'll go, for days, perhaps weeks. Nor am I certain what he'll be saying this year because last year there was discord between us, and I might have thrown a pebble or two in his direction

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