Mental health with feathers

Woodpecker

Hope is the thing with feathers, according to Emily Dickinson.  A good walk with birds is the thing for my mental outlook. So much to do at home, but the dark rainy morning had changed to a gorgeous sunny afternoon. The sunshine grasped me in her talons and dragged me through the bright blue sky to the trailhead at Renner Road and US 75.

Mockingbird, juvenile.

Greeted by a woodpecker. Under the watch of a kestrel. A red tail hawk circled overhead. A mockingbird posed. Mallards bickered and bullied in Spring Creek under the highway.

Bad boy mallards

Kestrel photo good enough for an ID.

Odd, loud, buzzy, rattled bird calls tantalized me as I got closer to the US 75/190 George Bush tollway interchange.

Kingfishers avoid paparazzi

The buzzy calls led to a pair of kingfishers on a telephone wire above the creek, but under the highways. No mistaking the shape of the kingfishers, or the glorious blue when they swooped along the creek declining to be photographed by the paparazzi.

Teeny brown birds in a budding tree consented to photos but declined to be identified. On the way back I spotted a heron looking scruffy near a heap of trashed grocery carts.




Something was bothering me earlier.  I wonder what it was... besides the ugly grocery carts.




© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder