the birds are everywhere!

it’s a bird world, after all

it’s July in high country Wyoming

and the birds speak to any who can listen,

a bounty of insects fuel violet green swallows

who fly about the pond and me with controlled abandon:

warblers, goldfinch, cedar waxwing, and robins join the picnic,

I sit for long minutes with my telephoto lens

focused on a large hawk in a fir tree

who seems to wait for the right meal to appear,

great blue herons soar overhead,

distinctive in the straight legs held behind them,

the neck like a Z folded against the body,

the beak long, thin, and rapier deadly,

hungry for any meal

which dares to come near its expectant stance,




the osprey nest on power poles,

a sign on the road cautions to brake for

“young ospreys on the road,”

the birds speak and we should listen.

by Henry H. Walker

July 3, ’17